MID-AUGUST, some cinemas closed, new films almost at a standstill — so here=s a double helping of our summer feature, going back through cinematic history a decade at a time (finishing next week in the halcyon days of 1933).
1963 facts and figures
Top 5 Money-makers (US):
How the West Was Won
Cleopatra
The Longest Day [released 1962]
Lawrence of Arabia [released 1962]
Irma La Douce
Best Film Oscar: Tom Jones
Best Actor Oscar: Sidney Poitier, Lilies of the Field
Best Actress Oscar: Patricia Neal, Hud
Cannes Festival >Golden Palm=: The Leopard (Italy)
1963 was a great movie year, though not everyone agrees; in his book Alternate Oscars B taking the Academy to task for all the films that should have won an Oscar and didn=t B Danny Peary passed on the year altogether. AEvery time there=s a presidential election, a great many of us wish we could mark a box on the ballot for None of the Above. That=s how the Academy should have voted in the 1963 Best Picture race,@ claimed the irascible Peary. AIt wasn=t such a terrible year, but no film had the stature or emotional impact to be worthy of a Best Picture Oscar.@ That may (or may not) be true if you stick with Hollywood. The big studios didn=t have a very strong year, which was why a British film B Tom Jones, a jolly version of the Fielding classic B ended up scooping Best Picture. The big news of the year was Cleopatra, an impossibly bloated historical that ended up becoming the most expensive film of all time (it still is, once you adjust for inflation); other elephantine epics included How the West was Won and It=s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. On the other hand, even the five Best Picture nominees yielded one excellent movie (Elia Kazan=s heartfelt America, America). And there was also Paul Newman in his sharpest role as Hud, Jerry Lewis as The Nutty Professor, Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood in the touching Love With the Proper Stranger, and the animated skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts B not to mention Peter Sellers stealing the show in The Pink Panther. Our Top 10 includes five American titles, which is about par for the course. Yet it’s the rest of the world that really made the year. This was the heyday of international arthouse cinema, as the world woke up to the impact of the French New Wave and the post-war directors came of age. Several great film-makers were in action this year, many of them producing films to rank with their best work.
Federico Fellini made his masterpiece B 8 2, the greatest >movie about movies=. Jean-Luc Godard made the lush yet acrid Contempt, with a famously nude Brigitte Bardot. Akira Kurosawa made High and Low, mixing thriller with social comment. Kon Ichikawa made the dazzling An Actor=s Revenge. Luchino Visconti made The Leopard, later butchered by 20th Century Fox (the restored 206-minute version played in Cyprus last April). Satyajit Ray made The Big City. Orson Welles took on Kafka in The Trial. Ingmar Bergman outdid them all, following Winter Light B a pastor=s despair at the Silence of God B with The Silence, where God was notable mainly by His absence. Britain too was buzzing, with the >Angry Young Man= revolution in full swing: Richard Harris was an angry rugby player in This Sporting Life, Tom Courtenay an angry (if hapless) dreamer in Billy Liar. Dirk Bogarde stood class conflict on its head as The Servant. And Bond was back, in From Russia With LoveY
Here’s our Top 10
8 2. AA shimmering dream, a circus and a magic act,@ says the back cover of the DVD B to which we can only add >a fantasy, an orgy of stylistic invention and a virtuoso performance by Marcello Mastroianni=. And we don=t even like Fellini …
Charade. Impeccably chic Audrey Hepburn evades a trio of villains, falling in love with debonair (if middle-aged) Cary Grant along the way. Sparkling lines and cobbled Paris streets in stylish Hitchcock pastiche, as deft and charming as any movie ever made.
Le Feu Follet. It=s those Paris streets again B only this time trod by Maurice Ronet, as a young man bent on suicide in Louis Malle=s delicate, melancholy drama. Quietly shattering.
The Silence. Two sisters and a boy roam a deserted hotel straight out of The Shining in hypnotic tale of nihilism and alienation; Bergman=s most abstract film, and one of his best.
The Birds. AThe Birds Is Coming!@ More abstraction, posing more questions than it answers B and the first truly modern horror film, anticipating Night of the Living Dead in its portrait of nameless dread. Brilliantly accomplished.
Billy Liar. Tom Courtenay as young Walter Mitty dreaming of fame and fortune in the north of England; dated in its particulars, still wise, well-observed and seriously funny.
America, America. The immigrant experience B from Anatolia to America B circa 1890, lovingly recreated by director Elia Kazan in lengthy but magnificent three-hour opus.
The Great Escape. Steve McQueen bouncing a ball inside a jail cell, riding a motorbike over barbed wire, digging a tunnel to freedom in the ultimate PoW movie. Don=t forget that stirring Elmer Bernstein score!
Shock Corridor. Undercover hack in insane asylum makes for lurid, incredible, trashy-yet-profound Sam Fuller drama. ANymphos!Y@
Le Joli Mai. Director Chris Marker turns his camera on the lives of assorted Parisians in quirky documentary brimming with poetry and humour.
THROUGH THE DECADES: 1953
1953 facts and figures
Top 5 Money-Makers (US):
The Robe
From Here to Eternity
Shane
How to Marry A Millionaire
Peter Pan
Best Film Oscar: From Here to Eternity
Best Actor Oscar: William Holden, Stalag 17
Best Actress Oscar: Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday
Cannes Festival “Golden Palm”: The Wages of Fear (France)
The three biggest hits of 1953 were also among the year’s Best Picture nominees B which could never happen now, and reflects a certain complacency in this not-quite-vintage year. Hollywood had it made, its >serious= films also making tons of money, and the moguls were in no mood for change. In fact, all three films B The Robe, Shane and even multi-Oscar-winner From Here to Eternity B seem a bit stodgy nowadays, and Hollywood was actually near the end of its glory days. TV was the biggest threat, kept at bay with novelties like Cinerama and 3-D (a 3-D film, House of Wax, was another of the year=s big hits), but even the world of films was changing. Two modest French magazines B Cahiers du Cinιma and Positif B had recently been founded, pushing the so-called auteur theory that deified directors over studios; and the world was getting bigger, with Japan producing many talked-about films and India on the brink of discovery. Young (or youngish) directors were creating revolutionary work. Ingmar Bergman=s Summer With Monika was mature and sexually explicit. Michelangelo Antonioni=s La Signora Senza Camelie was made in a new way, using the camera as if it were one of the actors. Japanese directors made many of the year=s best films: Yasujiro Ozu with the gentle and profound Tokyo Story (recently named the fifth-greatest film of all time in a Sight & Sound poll), Kenji Mizoguchi with Ugetsu and Life of O-Haru. Max Ophuls= Madame De Y was ineffably elegant. Jacques Tati=s near-silent comedy Monsieur Hulot=s Holiday was a worldwide hit. Roberto Rossellini=s Voyage to Italy starred his wife Ingrid Bergman, banished by the puritans of Hollywood for her scandalous extramarital affair. The year’s big sensation was an actress at the other end of the sex-kitten scale B pneumatic Marilyn Monroe, actually a superb comedienne though only one of the films she made in 1953 (the delirious Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) was any good. Elsewhere, Mogambo was fine entertainment, Roman Holiday was pleasant B and made a star of Audrey Hepburn B but lacked a certain passion, and the best American cinema probably lay on the fringes. In neo-realist experiments like The Little Fugitive, following a boy on a da
y in Coney Island; in avant-garde shorts like Kenneth Anger=s Eaux d=Artifice; in pulp fiction like Sam Fuller=s Red-baiting Pickup on South Street; in one-offs like the weird Dr Seuss kiddie fantasy The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T; and B above all B in the cartoons coming out of Warner Bros., led by Daffy Duck in the gloriously post-modern Duck Amuck.
Here’s our Top 10
The Wages of Fear. A rich and potent cocktail B approximately 70 per cent nail-biting adventure, 30 per cent existential dread B director Henri-Georges Clouzot=s edge-of-your-seat road movie is indelibly exciting.
The Band Wagon. Fred Astaire (a.k.a. the Most Elegant Man in Film History) teams with Cyd Charisse on >Dancing in the Dark=, quips his way through a witty script and sings a bunch of songs including >That=s Entertainment=. It doesn=t get much better than this.
Ugetsu. A ghost story like no other, exquisitely crafted by director Kenji Mizoguchi; the misty lake crossing, the wondrously serene final shot, the famous back-and-forth pan when our hero re-enters his home, still have film buffs drooling 50 years later.
Beat the Devil. ABreathe that sea air, gentlemen! Every breath a guinea in the Bank of Health!@ Orotund villains, silly-ass Englishmen and a bewildered Humphrey Bogart in hilarious shaggy-dog semi-comedy.
The Naked Spur. Never mind Shane, here=s the year=s best Western: James Stewart as ferocious bounty hunter, Robert Ryan his cunning quarry in sharp and pitiless psychological adventure.
The Big Heat. Hard-boiled crime thriller with the emphasis on violence B a pot of boiling coffee in the face B and Glenn Ford as the cop turned avenger. Intense and disquieting.
Stalag 17. A PoW movie played for laughs? Oscar-winning work by William Holden in Billy Wilder=s constantly surprising mix of light and dark. Best scene: >When Johnny Comes Marching Home=.
Kiss Me Kate. Musical version of The Taming of the Shrew is politically incorrect but highly enjoyable, featuring superb Cole Porter score. Best song: >Brush Up Your Shakespeare= (AIf she claims your behaviour is heinous / Kick her right in the Coriolanus!@).
Genevieve. Vintage cars race from London to Brighton in tart, mildly naughty, archetypally English comedy. Best line: AHawling like brooligans!@
Julius Caesar. John Gielgud meets Marlon Brando (and wins) in lavish but intelligent version of Shakespeare historical. Best appeal to angry Roman mob: AFriends, Romans, countrymenY@
