1965 Poll

[oscarwerner]

My top hit of 1965 is
1-The Knack... and How to Get It (Richard Lester)
---------------------------------
Other 19 films:
Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio)
Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa)
For a Few Dollars More ( Sergio Leone)
Darling (John Schlesinger)
My Home Is Copacabana (Arne Sucksdorff)
The War Game (Peter Watkins)
The Cincinnati Kid ( Norman Jewison)
The Sound of Music ( Robert Wise)
Repulsion (Roman Polanski)
The Flight of the Phoenix ( Robert Aldrich)
The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie)
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold ( Martin Ritt)
The Hill (Sidney Lumet)
Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah)
Forest of the Hanged (Liviu Ciulei)
Compartiment tueurs ( Costa-Gavras)
Doctor Zhivago (David Lean)
The Agony and the Ecstasy (Carol Reed)
I Am Twenty ( Marlen Khutsiev)
--------------
Some films left out of list, but i would recommend:
Help! (Richard Lester)
Ship of Fools ( Stanley Kramer)
Von Ryan's Express (Mark Robson)
Once a Thief ( Ralph Nelson)
The Bedford Incident (James B. Harris)
The Naked Prey (Cornel Wilde)
The Collector ( William Wyler)
Sandra (Luchino Visconti)
Pervyy uchitel (Andrey Konchalovskiy)
The Saragossa Manuscript ( Wojciech Has)
Life at the Top (Ted Kotcheff)
Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman)

[liquidnature]

The Sound of Music (Wise)
A Charlie Brown Christmas (Melendez)
Így jöttem / My Way Home (Jancsó)
Shenandoah (McLaglen)
Per qualche dollaro in più / For a Few Dollars More (Leone)
Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Godard)
Repulsion (Polanski)
Elégia (Huszárik)

[rischka]

viento negro is '65, how did i miss it. i might add some shorts too

the sound of music i have probably seen 10-15 times. there is definitely some stuff i love in it. christopher plummer mostly

and may i say if it wasn't for poor yoyo, GUIDE would be my #1, everyone watch it, it is far FAR from stereotypical bollywood stuff

(for those who may be bollywood averse)

[Lencho of the Apes]

Good catch, Rischka. It's '64 on LB. Added!

[liquidnature]

the sound of music i have probably seen 10-15 times

same here. Not gonna argue that it's some misunderstood masterpiece or anything, I just love it dearly and it was one of the first 'classic' films I watched as a kid. Watched it again last year and the love was affirmed.

[karl]

Fine year. Am tempted once again to make a list with just the Commies. But the Japanese are really on fire in '65, so no:

A Fugitive from the Past (Uchida Tomu)

With Beauty and Sorrow (Shinoda Masahiro)
Ilyich's Gate (Marlen Khutsiev) - This is the director's cut of "I Am Twenty," under the director's original title. I haven't seen the shorter version.
Red Beard (Kurosawa)
Intimate Lighting (Ivan Passer)
Three (Aleksandar Petrović)
Age of Illusions (István Szabó)
The Coward (Satyajit Ray)
Tokyo Olympiad (Ichikawa Kon)
The First Teacher (Andrei Konchalovsky)
Torrid Noon (Zako Heskiya)
White Mountains (Melis Ubukeyev)
Ordinary Fascism aka Triumph over Violence (Mikhail Romm)
Karla (Herrmann Zschoche)
Time, Forward! (Sofiya Milkina, Mikhail Shvejtser)
The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has)
Long Live the Republic (Karel Kachyňa)
Days of Temptation (Branko Ivanovski Gapo)
Before Tonight Is Over (Peter Solan)
A Spring for the Thirsty (Yuri Ilyenko)


Already leaving off too many wonderful movies: Walkover, The Shop on Main Street, Flag in the Mist, Chimes at Midnight, Kommando 52, An Innocent Witch, Two (Mikhail Bogin's, not Satyajit Ray's - and I'm even the one who made the subtitles for it!), Fists in the Pocket, The Koumiko Mystery, A Moment of Joy, A Blonde in Love, A High Wind in Jamaica, Repulsion, The Hill, Women's Prison, Le Bonheur, Simon of the Desert, Skylark, My Way Home, and Bells Toll for the Barefooted.

[wba]

Karla (Herrmann Zschoche)

Thanks, Karl!! Somehow this one got past me. I've added it to my Top 20. Phenomenal film!

[patrick]

White Mountains (Melis Ubukeyev)
Intimate Lighting (Ivan Passer)
The Debussy Film (Ken Russell)
A Spring for the Thirsty (Yuri Ilyenko)
The First Teacher (Andrei Konchalovsky)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov)
The War Game (Peter Watkins)
J.S. Bach: Fantasia in G Minor (Jan Svankmajer)
Now! (Santiago Alvarez)
Doctor Zhivago (David Lean)
The Hand (Jiří Trnka)
Elegy (Zoltán Huszárik)
Kustom Kars Kommandos (Kenneth Anger)

[kanafani]

Subarnarekha (Ritwik Ghatak, 1965)
The Brick and the Mirror (Ebrahim Golestan, 1965)
Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has, 1965)
Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel, 1965)
Guide (Vijay Anand, 1965)
Yoyo (Pierre Étaix, 1965)
Triumph Over Violence (Mikhail Romm, 1965)
White Mountains (Melis Ubukeyev, 1965)
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965)
Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks, 1965)
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1965)
Pleasures of the Flesh (Nagisa Ōshima, 1965)
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)
The Coward (Satyajit Ray, 1965)
Vinyl (Andy Warhol, 1965)
It Happened In Hualfin (Raymundo Gleyzer, Jorge Prelorán, 1965)
Man Is Not a Bird (Dušan Makavejev, 1965)
Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965)

[kanafani]

Vinyl (Andy Warhol, 1965) - The only Clockwork Orange adaptation that matters </hottake>

[Roscoe]

Any official decision on SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS? 1965 eligible or not?

[Lencho of the Apes]

We don't do official decisions here, you're on your own. IMDB says 1964. Deal with that fact as you see fit.

[Roscoe]

Cool. Thanks.

[flip]

it looks like the parajanov didn't make our 1964 list (which is here), no doubt because imdb at the time said it was from 1965, so to give it a chance to make one of our year poll lists, i think i'll vote for it here.

[rischka]

ok i'll vote for it too

[pabs]

And I'll watch it for the first time - this poll being the latest reminder that I haven't seen it yet. As sometimes happens with polls, they're the best opportunity I get to finally see some of the most lauded films I hadn't got around to watching.

[---]

glad we're counting Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as '65! That allows me to add it to my DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED list

[karl]

Karla (Herrmann Zschoche)

Thanks, Karl!! Somehow this one got past me. I've added it to my Top 20. Phenomenal film!

Tis indeed a great film, seemingly designed to dismay the authorities. One of those famously banned East German movies of '65, along with The Rabbit Is Me (also very good), Spring Takes Time, Just Don't Think I'll Cry, and Berlin around the Corner (all three of which are on my '65 watchlist). Most of these weren't restored and screened until 1990, but they're 1965 on IMDb, so hey.

As for the Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors controversy, 1965's Spring (or Well) for the Thirsty was made Shadows' cinematographer Ilyenko in response to Shadows, so it seems to me unlikely that they came out in the same year. That said, if Shadows was '65 for the '64 poll and is now '64 for the '65 poll, I say let 'er be a '65.

[wba]

Yeah, that year was seemingly a wonderful one fro East German cinema (but probably also 1964), even if some works weren't screened or even completed. I also need to see more of the banned stuff, which is out completely on DVD in Germany, if I remember it correctly (even the unfinished feature films!).

[nrh]

thought seijun suzuki's born under crossed stars was unexpectedly strong, which i guess is stupid considering the strength of his other work this year. a taisho era adolescent drama of sorts, definitely putting forth themes and ideas he'd push even further in fighting elegy. doesn't have anywhere near the theatrical strangeness of tattooed life but there is some fascinating work here.

[karl]

On Karla ("may contain 'spoilers'"):

https://eastgermancinema.com/2013/01/19/karla/

This website also has write-ups of the other '65 East German films, for those interested.

[wba]

On Karla ("may contain 'spoilers'"):

https://eastgermancinema.com/2013/01/19/karla/

This website also has write-ups of the other '65 East German films, for those interested.

This is a great blog, Karl. By far my favorite on East German cinema.

[karl]

ADVENTURES OF A DENTIST (Elem Klimov): Funny, bizarre satire of Soviet society that might sneak into my top 20. Available version is an ugly cropped washed-out Russian DVD, but it has played on the Criterion channel in what's surely a much improved copy. Does anyone have this?

From the Criterion site:

Adventures of a Dentist follows a recent dental-school graduate who arrives in a small town to begin his practice. Dr. Chesnokov (Andrey Myagkov) is afraid of hurting his patients but soon demonstrates a remarkable talent for painlessly extracting teeth—Klimov illustrates his virtuoso feats with plucked strings and abracadabra jump cuts, the teeth leaping into Chesnokov’s forceps. The neurotic dentist ingratiates himself with the townspeople, prying molars left and right from scores of aching mouths, but his colleagues soon grow suspicious and resentful. Chesnokov begins to flinch from both the authorities who scrutinize his method and the supporters who want to prove his miraculous gifts beyond a doubt. In a moment of crisis, he refuses to pull a young woman’s tooth, setting off a chain of events that leads to the breaking of the patient’s heart—and the silencing of her cheeky musical numbers on the film’s soundtrack. Talent, it seems, cannot survive in this world, where envy, bureaucracy, and even admiration conspire to squash it wherever it appears.

Klimov may have felt that his talent was held at bay by censors and administrators—Adventures of a Dentist was slapped with a deadly “category three” designation, ensuring that few prints were struck and the film was barely exhibited—but it certainly was never squashed.

[rischka]

ehh this may only interest me but in an effort to get in the mood i watched a short called mods & rockers. this is a sort of ballet with music by the beatles!



there's go go dancing and a lot of choreography deeply reminiscent of jerome robbins' in west side story. i imagine youths of the day would find this lame



i did notice a lonely black kid who appeared to pick up a biker (rocker) at the end so that was cool



anyways i like dance and it was fun in a goofy early 60s way. eternal enmity of mods & rockers=west side story possibilities.

[pabs]

Haha it looks like a tv episode of Batman.

Here's a short review of this year's Bellocchio film by David Thomson from his book "Have You Seen...?" :

[brian d]

^ that’s one of the best films i’ve seen this year, and one of the best dysfunctional families i can recall seeing. for anyone who’s seen strange voyage, it has a similar but darker tone to it.

[pabs]

I don't know why, but when I think back on Fists, I also think of Harold and Maude. It's been a long time since I saw either one, so there must be something subliminal in the connection I make between them.

[rischka]

OK I'VE WATCHED THE WAR GAME AND IT IS VERY DISTURBING

it's also on youtube. watching pestilent city and realizing i'd forgotten about goldman's echoes of silence too





nice photography, no storyline, in the best mekas fashion

[pabs]

The Parajanov is listed as 1965 at Letterboxd.

I liked it, but it's not going on my list - it's too famous and already on nearly all the greatest films lists. It doesn't need more promoting from SCFZ.

[greennui]

Seisaku’s Wife (Yasuzô Masumura) - A gloomy Masumura melodrama featuring another sensual, top notch performance by Ayako Wakao. She, the shame of the village ends up getting mixed up with pride of the village, the returning war hero.