cinemadiso's - 1960s In Films Vol 2. List
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The Battle of Algiers (1966)La Battaglia di Algeri
Gillo Pontecorvo's multi-award winning picture 'The Battle of Algiers' has perhaps never been as pertinent as it is now. Set from 1954 to 1962, the movie uses documentary-style black and white photography to recreate real events. Algerian liberation fighters use terrorist techniques against the French colonial occupiers; the French retaliate with brutal military force. Brilliantly directed set-pieces and remarkable crowd scenes make the film a masterpiece; the ominous familiarity of its subject makes it a must-see" - The Times How to win battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in Cafes. Sounds familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.'' - Pentagon tlyer for their in-house screening of Battle Of Algiers All the armies of the world - including the Pentagon - will never, but never, be able to conquer a country which wants to control its own destiny" - Saadi Yacef - Director:
- Gillo Pontecorvo
- Cast:
- Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi
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His crime: nonconformity. His sentence: the chain gang. Paul Newman plays one of his best-loved roles as Cool Hand Luke, the loner who won't - or can't - conform to the arbitrary rules of his captivity. It recalls other hallmark Newman performances: Luke is The Hustler without a dream of victory, Harper without a moral mission, Hud without a father to defy. A cast of fine character actors, including George Kennedy in his Academy Award-winning role of Dragline, gives Newman solid support as fellow prisoners. And Strother Martin is the Captain who taunts Luke with the famous line, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate." No failure here. With rich humour and vibrant storytelling power, 'Cool Hand Luke' succeeds resoundingly. - Director:
- Stuart Rosenberg
- Cast:
- Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Strother Martin
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High and Low (1963)Tengoku To Jigoku
Based on the Ed McBain novel, High and Low is a gripping police thriller starring Toshiro Mifune. Wealthy industrialist Kingo Gondo (Mifune) faces an agonising choice when a ruthless kidnapper, aiming to snatch his young son, takes the chauffeur's boy by mistake - but still demands the ransom, leaving Gondo facing ruin if he pays up. An anatomy of the inequalities in modern Japanese society, High and Low is a complex film noir, where the intense police hunt for the kidnapper is accompanied by penetrating insight into the kidnappers state of mind. Kurosawa's virtuoso direction provides no easy answers, and in short, intense sequences, he portrays the businessman, the police and the criminal as equally brutal but nonetheless human. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Toshirô Mifune, Yutaka Sada, Tatsuya Nakadai
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Andrei Rublev (1966)Andrey Rublyov
Widely regarded as Tarkovsky's finest film, 'Andrei Rublev' charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, a period marked by endless fighting between rival Princes and Tatar invastions. Made on an epic scale, it does not flinch from portraying the savagery of the time, from which, almost inexplicably, the serenity of Rublev's art arose. The great set-pieces - the sack of Vladimir, the casting of the bell, the pagan ceremonies of St. John's night and the Russian crucifixion are tours-de-force of visceral film-making. - Director:
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- Cast:
- Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Klara Rumyanova, Ivan Lapikov
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After saving the lives of his platoon during the Korean War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is hailed as a bona fide American hero. This couldn't have come at a better time for his mother (Angela Lansbury) who is hell-bent on boosting the career of his stepfather, a senator straight from the McCarthyite wing of the US political spectrum with designs on the Presidency. So far so familiar - but why does Shaw's former captain (Frank Sinatra) have recurring nightmares that suggest that his distinguished comrade-in-arms might not be all that he seems? - Director:
- John Frankenheimer
- Cast:
- Frank Sinatra, Paul Frees, Laurence Harvey
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Divorzio All'Italiana (1961)Divorce Italian Style
Baron Fefé Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) is a Sicilian nobleman bored of life and of wife Rosalia (Daniela Rocca): he falls in love with young and beautiful cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), who spends summers in the same palace. Since divorce is impossible in Italy in the 1960s, he decides to kill the wife, knowing that sentence would be very light if he proved that he committed murder for a matter of honour, i.e. when he found the wife together with another man. Therefore, he starts finding a lover for Rosalia, using Carmelo Patané (Leopoldo Trieste), a painter well-known by her. - Director:
- Pietro Germi
- Cast:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Daniela Rocca, Stefania Sandrelli
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Perhaps the crowning achievement of Bunuel’s career, the film centres on an idealistic young nun named Viridiana (Silvia Pinal). Before she is allowed to take her final vows, the Mother Superior requests that she visit her uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), who has "selflessly" provided for the girl over the years. Having always considered him an unspeakable beast, she is surprised when he graciously welcomes her into his home. Just as graciously, he sets about to corrupt Viridiana beyond redemption - all because the girl resembles the wife that died on their wedding day. - Director:
- Luis Buñuel
- Cast:
- Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal
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One of the most popular screen Western ever made, this Academy Award-winning classic blends adventur, romance and comedy to tell the true story of the West's most likeable outlaws. No-one is quicker then Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) when it comes to get rich quick schemes, and his sidekick Sundance (Robert Redford) is a wizard with a gun. When these two bungling bank and train robbers tire of running from the law, they set out for Bolivia with Sundance's girlfriend (Katherine Ross). Though they can barely speak enough Spanish to communicate: "This is a stick-up!", that's only a minor detail to the two nicest "bad-guys" who ever rode the West. - Director:
- George Roy Hill
- Cast:
- Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
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Charulata (1964)The Lonely Wife
Cited by Ray as one of his best films, this tale of a neglected housewife in Victorian-era Calcutta is adapted from a story by Rabindranath Tagore. Sailen Mukherjee stars as a newspaper journalist who is driven more by professional ambition than the needs of his cultured and intelligent wife Charaulata (Madhabi Mukherjee). Sensing her loneliness, he enlists the help of his cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), a sensitive would-be writer, to keep her company. Charu and Amal hit it off and, almost inevitably, their feelings for each other begin to deepen... - Director:
- Satyajit Ray
- Cast:
- Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Shailen Mukherjee
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Persona (1966)Kinematografi
Bergman's masterpiece of self-doubt, identity and eroticism is an audacious example of cinematic art. The notional story centres on newly mute actor Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) recuperating at her coastal holiday home in the care of a nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson). As tensions between the pair grow, their very selves seem to blur, chronology becomes uncertain and what is real and unreal loses significance. Yet the true impact of Persona goes beyond mere storytelling, touching, as Bergman said, 'wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover'. - Director:
- Ingmar Bergman
- Cast:
- Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook
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Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are ideal as malevolent marrieds Martha and George in first-time film director Mike Nichols' searing film of Edward Albee's groundbreaking 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'. Taylor won her second Academy Award (and New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and British Film Academy Best Actress Awards). Burton matches her as her emotionally spent spouse. And George Segal and Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Sandy Dennis score as another couple straying into their destructive path. The movie won a total of five Academy Awards and remains a taboo-toppling landmark over 40 years later. - Director:
- Mike Nichols
- Cast:
- Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal
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Samurai Rebellion (1967)Jôi-uchi: Hairyô tsuma shimatsu
Framed within the classic Japanese conflict between giri (feudal loyalty) and ninjo (human feeling) Samurai Rebellion finds ultimate value in the mutual love of a husband and and wife... a rare enough moral resolution in any Japanese warrior film. This is made even more unusual by the fact that the director Kobayashi was a Marxist critic of society, who might have regarded romantic love as a bourgeois luxury. Mifune played Isaburo Sasahara, a man who has spent his life of self abnegation in the service of his lord. A fine swordsman, his only equal is Tatewaki Asano, played by Nakadai. Unused to protesting against personal or social injustice, Sasahara is finally roused by his lord's seizure of his daughter in law. Not only is he brought into direct opposition with his own clan, but with his former friend, Asano. - Director:
- Masaki Kobayashi
- Cast:
- Toshirô Mifune, Yôko Tsukasa, Gô Katô
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Paul Newman heads a superb cast featuring Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott and Piper Laurie in this riveting film that received an Academy Award nomination as Best Picture of 1961 and brought all four of its stars Oscar nominations. Newman is electrifying as Fast Eddie Felson, an arrogant, amoral hustler who haunts back street pool rooms fleecing anyone who'll pick up a cue. Determined to be acclaimed as the best, Eddie seeks out the legendary Minnesota Fats, who's backed by Bert Gordon. The love of a lonely woman could turn Eddie's life around, but he won't rest until he bests Minnesota Fats, no matter what price he must pay. - Director:
- Robert Rossen
- Cast:
- Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie
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Deep in the suburbs of Pasadena, a bored, confused and alienated twenty-one year old graduate named Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) awkwardly drifts from moment to moment, in constant turmoil over his lack of direction and the uncertain, impending future. Driven by a desire for experience and desperate to avoid the corporate, deluded and mediocre world of his affluent parents, Benjamin succumbs to the advances of an older woman and begins an affair with the persuasive and enigmatic Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) the wife of one of his father's business partners. But what starts as a farcical fling becomes painfully complicated when Ben finds himself falling in love with her daughter. - Director:
- Mike Nichols
- Cast:
- Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross
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8½ (1963)Otto e mezzo
Marcello Mastroianni is (Fellini's alter ego) Guido, a successful filmmaker who, embarking on his next film, discovers he has a complete "director's block": he has no story to tell! Harassed by his producers, his mistress (Sandra Milo) and his wife (Anouk Aimee), while struggling to find the inspiration for his film, he increasingly retreats in dreamy recollections of his life and lovers, until fantasy, memories and reality merge in the director's mind - and on screen, in an astonishing, masterful spectacle, culminating in an electrifying triumph of optimism. As Guido-Federico says at the end of 8 1/2: "Life is a party, let's live it together!" - Director:
- Federico Fellini
- Cast:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale
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