MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Psycho and 1961

Psycho and 1961

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
28 replies | jump to latest

Man cannot live by Psycho alone(which is why while I certainly post on-topic about Psycho here, it HAS to be connected to other movies, OT or on...).

And I came to muse upon this the other day.

I was re-reading the very good biography of Spencer Tracy by James Curtis, and I tumbled upon this quote late in the book, by Tracy himself in the 60s, when he was an old white-haired man working almost exclusively for Stanley Kramer: "My kind of movie is going out of style. The young people today want Psycho."

So Spencer Tracy was aware of Psycho. I wonder if he actually saw it? For that matter, I wonder if elegant Hitchcockian gents James Stewart and Cary Grant saw it. Probably, and I'll guess that they felt rather like Tracy -- "the movies were changing." Grant later made "Charade," which was a Hitchcock-like thriller with several violent murders, Psycho hangs over Charade as much as North by Northwest.

Anyway, in 1960, Spencer Tracy began his final decade in movies...and less than a decade it turned out to be. Tracy died in 1967, at the age of 67(like Hitchcock, his age matched the years of the century) And from 1960 to 1967, four of Tracy's final five movies were all for Stanley Kramer: Inherit the Wind(1960), Judgment at Nuremberg(1961), Its a Mad Etc World(1963) and Tracy's near-death swan song with Hepburn, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."

The one non-Kramer movie was "The Devil at Four O'clock" (1961) an adventure-drama about a priest(Tracy) and a convict(Frank Sinatra) on an island with a volcano about to blow up. Tracy was amused at how little Sinatra showed up for scenes: "Today I played a scene looking off camera at a stick. The stick was filling in for Mr. Sinatra. My performance was good. Perhaps I should have played more scenes with the stick than fwith Mr. Sinatra."

Tracy interviews of the 60s indicate that he only wanted to work in "important stories," which is why the Kramer movies(save one) hooked him that way: religion vs Darwinism; prosecution of Nazis and the Holocaust; interracial marriage. The "save one" was Mad World and Tracy complained about that -- "the others were important, I don't know what this is." Well, it was actually a typical Kramer message movie(about greed) wrapped in the Biggest Comedy of All Time. And I daresay two generations of movie goers know Spencer Tracy MOST from A Mad Etc. World.

I own Judgment at Nuremberg and I elected to watch it after reading the Tracy book again.

The film is from 1961 -- yep, the year after Psycho -- and I thought about that. It was a UA film made at Universal(just as Psycho was a Paramount film made at Universal.) It was in black-and-white. And though it was a period piece set in 1948 Germany, the film had the "look" of a movie made in the 50's/60's cusp.

Like Otto Preminger at the time, Stanley Kramer was a rather journeyman director who nonetheless could round up sizable all-star casts. The year before Anthony Perkins worked for Hitchcock in Psycho, he worked for Stanley Kramer in On the Beach(yet another "message movie" about the aftermath of nuclear war)..and the top-billed star of Psycho could only get FOURTH billing (after Greg Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire.)

But Judgment at Nuremberg did that better. More stars and for the most part, bigger ones:

Spencer Tracy(as the American judge judging Nazi judges)
Burt Lancaster(as the honorable Nazi judge among worse ones)
Richard Widmark(as the American military prosecutor -- out to convict Nazis after defeating them in battle.)
Marlene Dietrich(as the widow of a German general -- trying to convince Tracy that "we didn't know" about the Holocaust and other horrors.)
Maximillian Schell(as the German defense attorney out to defend the impossible -- winning an Oscar in the process here, Best Actor.)

and "Guest Stars"

Montgomery Clift(as a "slow-witted" victim of Nazi castration)
Judy Garland(as a woman whose affair with a Jewish man -- if it WAS an affair -- led to his execution and her imprisonment.)

Wow. Kramer outdid himself here and ended up in something special with the Clift and Garland cameos -- an on-screen record of their deterioration from substance abuse(especially Clift) which rendered their performances rather weird, sad, and powerful. (And they performed in the vicinity of Spencer Tracy as the judge - a more controlled actor nonetheless ravaged by alcoholism himself -- white-haired and aged decades past his years.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

1961 is noteable to me for the ABSENCE of a lot of directors. Consider 1959. We had a Hitchcock(NXNW), a Wilder(Some Like It Hot), a Hawks(Rio Bravo) , a Preminger(Anatomy of a Murder), a Kramer(On the Beach) and a Ford(The Horse Soldiers.)

Consider 1960. We had a Hitchcock(Psycho), a Wilder(The Apartment), a Preminger(Exodus), a Kramer(Inherit the Wind and a Ford(Sergeant Rutledge.) But no Hawks movie.

But came 1961? No Hitchocck movie(the first year without a Hitchcock movie in his entire American career.) No Hawks movie. No Preminger movie. We did have a Wilder movie(One, Two , Three with James Cagney.) And we did have a Kramer movie(Nuremberg.) I daresay what is MOST notable about 1961 is that Hitchcock finally stopped giving his fans "one a year." And then he disturbed them with nothing in 1962 either. Noting til The Birds in 1963.

1959 has North by Northwest and 1960 has Psycho and those are my two favorite films of all time so those are pretty much my two favorite movie years of all time(plus all those other great 1959 and 1960 movies.)

So 1961 is always a bit of a let down as movie years go.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

On my list of favorite films "per year" -- my 1961 pick has always been "The Guns of Navarone." I never saw it first run(or second) but it swirled around my chlldhood as a major adventure film seen and talked about by my "little friends." I finally caught up with it as the two-part opening movie for BOTH The CBS Thursday Night Movie AND The CBS Friday Night movie...in September of 1969. All summer long, CBS ran a commercial touting Navarone with that great moment that Greg Peck(never more handsome and mature looking) yelled in that big booming voice of his (to David Niven): "You're in it now...up ..to..your...NECK!" Exciting, how Greg said that line. And I was excited by The Guns of Navarone when I saw it.

But not as much as North by Northwest. Both films have big sequences on cliffs -- and the giant guns of Navarone are somewhat of a simile to the giant heads of Rushmore.

Navarone was more of apiece with the "men on a mission movie" (The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Professionals) than with the kind of fanciful adventure-romance-comedy that NXNW was. The OVERALL story of NXNW is just more fun with its "this could happen to you" wish fulfillment for men and women in the audience.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

...and if I have an "announcement" to make here (pretty much to myself) it is that I think I'm dropping The Guns of Navarone from my Number One of 1961 position and substituting in...Judgment at Nuremberg.

Its a big deal to me. And I'm making a change to my "best of the 60's list" for the second time. And again it is the Stanley Kramer movie that "makes the jump." To wit:

My favorite film of 1963 used to be "Charade." Over the years I decided that Mad Mad World is much more important in my life and that I've seen it more times and that its a bigger deal. So in it went.

My favorite film of 1961 used to be "The Guns of Navarone." I own that film and I own "Judgment at Nuremberg" and I just find myself watching Nuremberg much more often, and marveling at its all-star cast of somewhat damaged stars(plus: Richard Widmark, the "star who never seemed like star" to me; he always had to be cast WITH other stars).

I've noticed on a few recent watchings of Navarone that while the first hour has great action set-pieces(a shootout on a boat with Nazis; a mini-tidal wave; ;and a cliff climb)....it slows down quite a bit in the second half and bogs down in a lot of pro/anti war arguments before taking WAY too long to blow up those guns at the end. It is still a fine adventure, but a overlong, overproduced one.

Meanwhile, Nuremberg is over loaded with good ideas, and uses its stars well: Tracy spends time outside the courtroom wandering around Nuremberg and having a non-romantic romance with Nazi widow Dietrich. Lancaster barely speaks and sells it with his steely look of shame and defiance(and gets a BIG speech near the end.) Widmark -- oddly his "heroic" US prosecutor role was turned down by bigger stars -- is angry and righteous as he realizes that his bosses want to keep Germany as a friend versus Russia.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Burt Lancaster won his 1960 Oscar for Elmer Gantry while making Nuremberg and brought it to the set(he had beaten Spencer Tracy for Inherit the Wind and, famously that year, Perkins wasn't even nominated for Norman Bates) Little did Lancaster know that the NEXT Best Actor Oscar winner was right there on the set: Maximillian Schell, who would capture the humiliation, the outrage and the bravery of trying to defend Nazis before a jury of Americans. Schell was a little-known actor recruited from the TV production of "Nuremberg"(over Brando, who wanted the part) and though he didn't blow away all those bigger stars around him, he held his own and the character won the Oscar.

I realize that I've reached a point in my life where I'm as entertained by what people SAY in movies as in any action sequences or murder scenes. And there is something to be said for movie stars. Take your pick -- Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn in Navarone(all charismatic, with Niven's rather odd, slight size and manner. Or Tracy et al in Nuremberg. Both casts are great -- but the Nuremberg cast is bigger, hence better.

And I can now bring in Psycho this way: Psycho famously had the two most shocking murder scenes ever filmed(and one was more shocking than the other), and horrific narrative content relating to death and taxidermy. It was almost refused an MPAA label.

But deep into Judgement at Nuremberg, prosecutor Widmark introduces REAL footage of all the emaciated living human beings and all the skeletal corpses found at the concentration camps. This is far more horrific than anything in Psycho and yet -- it is Psycho that has the horrific reputation in film history, not Nuremberg.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hitchcock scholar Robin Wood brought up the concentration camps in his review of Psycho -- claiming no intention to be callous in comparing a fictional work t real horrors. But he saw the fictional killings in Psycho and the real killings in Nuremberg to be linked by "the evil of the perprators, the innocence of their victims, and the fact that human beings are capable of this behavior."

I know that Judgement at Nuremberg got network TV showings in the late 60's; I wonder if they cut the holocaust footage out.

Interesting: in the movie itself, Nazi war widow Marlene Dietrich is contemptuous of the Holocaust footage. She tells Tracy "I see that (Widmark) brought out his usual horror films -he always uses them when he wants to indict the rest of us." And defense attorney Schell angrily protests the showing of the films in the courtroom as "inflammatory." Sound familiar?

That's another thing I liked about "Nuremberg." It had the intelligence to go beyond the usual("The Holocaust was horrific" and to take in the nuances -- some Germans kept claiming they didn't know, they never would have supported it, you've got to believe them, etc.

--

Yes, this is a Psycho board, but Psycho is a movie with connections to other movies all around it. Perkins went from working with Stanley Kramer in On the Beach(and giving a HORRIBLE overemotional performance in one scene) to Hitchcock in Psycho(and Hitchcock "cooled Perkins down" from such hysteria and got a great performance.) Judgment at Nuremberg is a "serious issues film" which nonetheless features footage far more horrifying than anything in Psycho.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And there is the fact that the years 1959, 1960, and 1961 had rather the same pack of stars and directors floating around : Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant and John Wayne; Spencer Tracy in the final white-haired years of his career and life; Judy Garland and Monty Clift struggling with demons that would defeat them. Anthony Perkins young and making a name for himself -- but not the name he expected(Norman Bates.)

By switching in Nuremberg for Navarone, I end up with three 60's b/w films in a row

Psycho 1960
Judgment at Nuremberg 1961
The Manchurian Candidate 1962

and then one more soon after:

Dr. Strangelove 1964.

Tells me something. Here is my revised list for the 60s:

1960 Psycho
1961 Judgment at Nuremberg
1962 The Manchurian Candidate
1963 Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
1964 Dr. Strangelove
1965 The Great Race
1966 The Professionals
1967 Wait Until Dark
1968 Bullitt
1969 The Wild Bunch

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

One more thing about Judgment at Nuremberg

As part of my very young child development in a family of moviegoers, I recall seeing the movie poster at a theater for "Judgment at Nuremberg" in a theater lobby. The poster is the faces of the 7 stars of the film in profile -- white faces against a black background.

And even THEN, without knowing who any of those faces belonged to...I knew: they were movie stars. They were important people. They were "bigger than us little people."

Over the years of growing up and seeing more movies to come... I would learn...one by one...who each and every one of those movie stars were, why they were important, which ones were MORE important.

A movie poster launched a lifetime of curiosity.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

In a relative off-year one can always look to overseas and oversee (lol) what they have to offer in 1961:

Britain:

The Innocents (classic early 60s British chiller based on Turn of the Screw)

Victim (excellent early film about homosexuality with a great Dirk Bogarde performance)

Japan:

Yojimbo (classic director, classic star, classic score, lots of influence on later films)

The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (conclusion of Masaki Kobayahsi's massive anti-war trilogy starring the great Tatsuya Nakadai, the villain of Yojimbo, btw)

Italy:

Divorce Italian Style (classic Italian "sex comedy" starring Marcello Mastroianni)

La Notte (one of Antonioni's more entertaining and accessible films AGAIN starring Marcell Mastroianni)

Accatone (interesting early Pasolini- less self-indulgent than his later films - starring the great Anna Magnani)

France:

Last Year at Marienbad (Alan Resnais puzzling and visually dazzling film)

Spain:

Viridiana (surrealist masterpiece by Luis Buñuel)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Well, there you go! One must not forget the "foreign film," particular in those times of real development in nations other than America of not only a movie industry, but a "new wave" movie industry.

Its funny: I'm not sure that 1961 is an "off year" to me personally for any other reason that there is not a Hitchcock movie in it. From 1940 to 1960 in America, Hitchcock delivered one movie a year, sometimes two. But in 1961: nada. (EXCEPT: Psycho played in January 1961 at the Crest Theater in Los Angeles for an "Oscar voting run." I saw the photo in a 1961 Variety: Janet Leigh screaming in the shower was blown up on the side outside wall of the theater.)

West Side Story was, of course, the mega Oscar-winner of the year and a big hit, and I like it. But I liked The Guns of Navorone more and now, Judgment at Nuremberg even more.

Disney had two great ones that year:

101 Dalmations -- which introduced my young self to "Hitchocck before Hitchcock." The evil female villain Cruella DeVille. Her horrendous scheme : kidnap and kill puppies and skin them into a coat! that's PSYCHO, man! And she lives in a creepy Psycho-esque house. And she has two henchmen - like Leonard and Valerian in NXNW. And there is a rescue of the puppies and a big car /truck chase at the end. Probably my favorite of 1961 as a kid.

The Absent-Minded Professor. Black and white, like Psycho. Kinda cheapjack, like Psycho. Used process shots, like Psycho. BIG hit, like Psycho(I stood in a very long line to see it.)

And an almost "forgotten man" delivered his final film. Frank Capra. A Pocketful of Miracles. A Technicolor and Panavision version of a movie he made in the 30s ..and as out of its time as Psycho was of its time. Its charming in its own sad way.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

"Its funny: I'm not sure that 1961 is an "off year" to me personally for any other reason that there is not a Hitchcock movie in it."

A year without Hitchcock, or a Kubrick (lots of years, actually...LOL), or a Kurosawa is indeed a sad thing. Although both Kurosawa and Hitchcock keep working to fairly ripe old ages, the gaps between their films got wider and wider as well.

I've always considered 1970 somewhat of an "off-year", despite a few bona-fide classics such as M.A.S.H. and Patton. It was the "Red-headed Step-child Year" of the late 60s and early 70s, cinematically speaking. 1970 was my birth year, so it's kind of sad for me. Now, if I had been born in 1968 or 1972...

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

@christo. 1970 feels to me of a piece with 1971-1975: Lots of great foreign films and lots of cool US films too. My fave film of the year is The Conformist - Storaro's cinematography on this film reverberated thoughout the rest of the decade for sure (for example, Coppola asked Gordon Willis on Godfather to imitate Storaro's work on The Conformist) - and all of the following are near perfect I'd say: Tristana (if Vertigo and Belle de jour had a baby....), Le Boucher, La Rupture, Le Cercle Rouge, Performance, The Last Picture Show, Little Big Man, Five Easy Pieces, Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Now add in all the interesting, very much worth seeing partial successes: Where's Poppa?, Kelly's Heroes, Bed & Board, Zabriskie Point, Deep End, Claire's Knee, Ballad of Cable Hogue, Bird with Crystal Plumage, Catch-22, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Brewster McLeod, Husbands, Diary of a Mad Housewife (which has some deep Psycho steals!), The Honeymoon Killers, Hospital, The Out-of-towners, Hi Mom!... I mean 1971-1975 probably do stand taller than this overall but we'd kill for a cinema year like 1970 now!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

"Its funny: I'm not sure that 1961 is an "off year" to me personally for any other reason that there is not a Hitchcock movie in it."

A year without Hitchcock,

--

I did a little checking and its perhaps a LITTLE wobbly as to whether or not Hitchocck delivered " a movie a year" from his American years of 1940 through 1960.

Clearly, Vertigo was his 1958 film and NxNW was his 1959 film and Psycho was his 1960 film...but

The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Wrong Man are often BOTH listed as 1956 films. I think the thing is that The Wrong Man saw limited Oscar release at Christmas 1956 and "went wide" in 1957.

Also: I Confess is clearly his 1952 film and Rear Window is a 1954 film, but in between those two, Dial M for Murder has been listed as a 1953 film or a 1954 film.

I suppose the "deal" is that either Hitchcock had a 1953 and 1957 film OR, having 2 films in 1954 and 2 films in 1956, sort of allowed for a "spread" into "one year over."

Meanwhile, 1955 had both To Catch a Thief and The Trouble with Harry.

Back to the forties, after two "two a year" early years, Hitchcock settled into one a year from 1942 on: Saboteur 42 Shadow of a Doubt 43, Lifeboat 44, Spellbound 45, Notorious 46, etc.

And hey, maybe Hitchcock did one to two films a year in Britain in the 30's..but I don't know that period well.

--

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

or a Kubrick (lots of years, actually...LOL),

---

Is there another filmmaker in film history who was allowed to go so long between making films? It was, I suppose part of Kubrick's myth that we had to wait five, seven, or TWELVE years between movies...and like it.

Terrence Malick, I suppose, but he never had a large following.

Meanwhile, Alexander Payne went 7 years without a movie after Sideways(The Descendants) and James Cameron went 12 years after Titanic(Avatar). Those guys were kind of "chickent" about trying to top their biggest hits(Titanic as blockbuster, Sideways as critical fave.) Look at Hitchcock, he only took two years off before getting The Birds underway and in theaters after Psycho, and took the critical heat: "This isn't as scary as Psycho." (Nope, but it is an even greater technical achievement.)

---

or a Kurosawa is indeed a sad thing. Although both Kurosawa and Hitchcock keep working to fairly ripe old ages, the gaps between their films got wider and wider as well.

--

I'm not conversant with Kurasawa's release pattern, but Hitchcock's was tricky. After Psycho, the "once a year" pattern ended, with one exception: he did Marnie in 1964 one year after The Birds in 1963. One confidant said one reason Marnie was sub-par was that the aged Hitchcock should NOT have tried to direct another movie so soon after the rigors of The Birds (a movie so hard to make said Hitchcock, "that I shall never make another movie called The Birds again.")

Then the gaps began to appear. There is no Hitchcock movie in 1965. Then Torn Curtain in 1966 -- a comparative failure despite two megastars in it(Newman and Andrews.)

Torn Curtain really seems to have hurt Hitchcock -- he griped about his megastars to the press(so no megastars ever worked with him again); he suddenly looked like a bad bet -- would he ever make a classic or a hit again?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hitch took the very important movie years of 1967 and 1968 off...and then brought out Topaz at the very end of 1969. That was three and a half years since Torn Curtain...a long time , at the time, to be out of the game.

I like to note that in the "gap" between Torn Curtain and Topaz in theaters, in the US several of Hitchcock's greatest hits started appearing on network TV(Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Birds) and local TV(Psycho) and...Hitchcock got HUGE in those years in terms of giant TV ratings, and an increased fan base. The hunger for a new Hitchocck picture was immense -- no way Topaz filled the bill.

Then came the shortest gap in Hitchcock's "late gap years." Stung by the failed reputations of Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz in a row, Hitchcock "got it together" and had a new movie in theaters within two and one half years after Topaz. A GOOD new movie -- the infamous Frenzy. I'll note this: Topaz was a Christmas 1969 release, so Topaz was playing well into early 1970. By the END of 1970, Hitchcock announced Frenzy as his next picture. And he was filming by 1971. So he almost had his old pace going.

Frenzy in 1972 was such a solid commercial and critical comeback hit, that I think the now very aged and ill Hitchcock, knowing that his reputation was secure, simply "stalled for time" -- what would become Family Plot was announced in 1973, but it took forever to get a script written , a cast assembled and a film made. The gap between Frenzy and Family Plot in 1976 was the longest in Hitchcock's career: almost four years. You could go to high school in between.

But as I like to point out: Hitchcock made only two movies in the 70s. Kubrick only made two movies in the 70's. Even.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've always considered 1970 somewhat of an "off-year", despite a few bona-fide classics such as M.A.S.H. and Patton. It was the "Red-headed Step-child Year" of the late 60s and early 70s, cinematically speaking. 1970 was my birth year, so it's kind of sad for me. Now, if I had been born in 1968 or 1972...

---

(From swanstep): @christo. 1970 feels to me of a piece with 1971-1975: Lots of great foreign films and lots of cool US films too.

---

I enjoy reading the "both of youse" detailing of the great foreign films (of both 1961 and 1970), but I always feel like I have to sit back and watch(read) given my dearth of personal experience seeing them.. I READ about all of them.

---

My fave film of the year is The Conformist - Storaro's cinematography on this film reverberated thoughout the rest of the decade for sure (for example, Coppola asked Gordon Willis on Godfather to imitate Storaro's work on The Conformist) - and all of the following are near perfect I'd say: Tristana (if Vertigo and Belle de jour had a baby....), Le Boucher, La Rupture, Le Cercle Rouge, Performance, The Last Picture Show, Little Big Man, Five Easy Pieces, Garden of the Finzi-Continis.

---

Ah...I think The Last Picture Show is from 1971, but the rest certainly are from 1970. And I've read that about the visual influence of The Conformist on The Godfather, which tells us that one movie can influence another in a very positive way.

My "take" on 1970 -- particularly having lived it as a young buff of American studio films, at least -- is that the Old Hollywood was literally old -- Hawks' final film, 1970's Rio Lobo, was another Rio Bravo retread and just plain bad. Wilder's 1970 film was the surprisingly lush and emotional "Sherlock Holmes," but it was not very entertaining, and he couldn't get big stars for it(shades of Hitchcock with Frenzy.) Topaz was a late 1969 release but to critics(not me)it stank up 1970 and added Hitchcock to Hawks and Wilder as "over." (Hitch had a surprise for them.)

Airport was a huge hit and considered an "Old Hollywood throwback" but it wasn't a good classic Old Hollywood movie and its attempts to be hip(split screens) fell flat. Another old director without auteur cachet was at the helm of that one(George Seaton.).

Love Story, too, was a huge hit and considered an "Old Hollywood throwback" but it wasn't that good either -- and Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal weren't quite Bergman and Bogart.

Even Patton -- despite that great opening sequence and Coppola's fairly hip script -- felt a bit empty and underproduced. Actor Robert Blake (of all people) noted a late scene in the picture where Patton shoots down a plane with his pistol and noted "years ago, you'd get all sort of big explosive action there, but almost nothing happens -- movies have lost their (semen ejaculate)."

Tora Tora Tora (with Martin Arbogast Balsam first-billed alphabetically) joined Patton in feeling at once epic but not quite exciting enough to be a classic.

In this way, 1970 was sort of the year in which "Hollywood ground to a halt" and -- perhaps too smugly celebrated now -- had to be "saved" by TWO sets of young turks: (1) first, the young art filmmakers with Eurofilm influence(Coppola, Rafelson, Altman) and (2then the young entertainers(Lucas and Spielberg in the lead, John Landis and Robert Zemeckis behind them.)

One thing I remember about the early 70's were a bunch of movies that I WANTED to like(The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Westworld) that had great premises and action entertainment value, but that were clearly made on the cheap by studios that were struggling to survive(well, MGM was...Warners kept changing owners.) As I watch all the perfectly produced zillion-dollar comic book movies of this century, I sigh at the memory of how BAD a lot of 70's entertainment was - until some sharp folk got involved. Again: I LIKED The Omega Man, but despaired at its poor quality -- "This is as good as I get in 1971," I recall thinking. Same thing with Soylent Green -- Charlton Heston starred in both, he became a marker of poor quality(oh -- Skyjacked, too. Same deal.)

My personal favorite of 1970 was MASH. I've opined on the "personal connection" that made it one of the great movie-going experiences of my life(bonding with a Korean War veteran father, at his request, to see this R-rated film), but aside from that personal aspect(and AREN'T the movies personal to us all?), I dug on Altman's filmmaking style, the comedy of the film("Goddam Army!") the sex of the film, the blood of the film. the "buddy" aspects of the film, and the very, very MEAN tone to the film that rather set my own cynical course in life. (MASH the movie is yet another one we are told "could never be made today." And yeah, that's right.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

It occurs to me that while it was not my original intent in taking up that year -- 1961 is 60 years ago now. A "1" year -- as opposed to a "0" year (where you find Psycho in 60 and MASH in 70 and GoodFellas in 90.)

I often felt that years ending in "1" don't seem to get much respect. Its like the decade is barely underway and we have to wait a few years to see what's REALLY going to happen.

But at the movies...1961 had West Side Story and The Guns of Navarone as the "big ones." And The Absent Minded Professor and 101 Dalmations killing it with the boomer babies.

I love 1971 with its emphasis on sex and violence and crime. The French Connection(overrated) and The Last Picture Show(ditto) fought it out at the Oscars, but it was also the year of Dirty Harry and Get Carter and Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange...rough, rough films. The French Connection crossed over into those crime films, but wasn't nearly as entertaining.

By 1981, we are well into the Spielberg/Lucas era, and they collaborated together on their biggest joint venture: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Superman II gave them summer competition, as did the rather weak Bond entry For Your Eyes Only. I have high regard for a rare example of a "true summer sleeper" -- Dudley Moore's adorable and side-splitting turn as "Arthur" the drunk(with Liza Minelli saved one last time and John Gielgud for the Oscar ages.)

1991? Silence of the Lambs was that rare thing: a genre film that won Best Picture -- in the "Psycho"-related horror genre. CGI and morphing made their biggest new splash with Terminator 2 -- little did we know that this would be the 'bad process photography" of the 21st Century. There was already the feelling(to me at least), that the Spielberg/Lucas era was giving way to more grown-up entertainment in the 90's. A lot of crime pictures(led by QT but also including The Usual Suspects and LA Confidential) , a lot of gruesome mainstream thrillers (Silence of the Lambs, Misery, Se7en, Copycat.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

2001? 2011?

Eh, I'm not sure our 21st Century decades are all that distinctive. The goalposts were reached in the 20th Century: R rated movies, a shift to SciFi and fantasy and families, a mix of both going forward. We are into our third decade of comic book hero movies, that's THE story of the century so far.

It will be interesting to see if 2021 gets to BE a "movie year."

2020 was not. And that will be historic decades from now. The first year where world societies had NO real slate of widely released, widely talked about, widely attended movies to remember the year by. That's kinda sad.

Its not going to stop a hollowed-out Oscar ceremony, though. Business is business, bucks are bucks.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I think The Last Picture Show is from 1971

Oops, you are right - released at the *end* of 1971 at that. It's elegaic tone makes it feel to me like it somehow *has* to be from before the rapey/bloodbath year of 1971.

Somewhat related. I normally list Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 as my fave film from 1961, and it's an important entry for me because it's the first woman-directed film that I see as 'winning' its year (according to me, it's the last until Deborah Granik's Leave No Trace in 2018). Well, Cleo was always listed and referred to as a 1961 film until the late '90s and I was happy to have it slotted in there in a relatively 'down' year. Alas, around the arrival of IMDb, Cleo started to be listed, apparently accurately, as released in 1962 where it's in competition with Lawrence & Manchurian, two films with which you don't want to be in a shootout, a la Psycho & The Apartment or Sunset Blvd & All About Eve.

So, I continue to cheat and list Cleo in 1961 where it was when I originally fell in love with it!

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Note too that in general this whole question of what year a film belongs to is a bit fraught. Most obviously, many prestigious, Oscar-bound films going all the way back to Casablanca have been released near the very end of the *previous* year before the year in which most people had a chance to see them. And even if something isn't strictly Oscar-bound the same phenomenon can occur. I remember Rushmore topping lots of critics lists in 1998 but it didn't get a release beyond film festivals and NYC&LA until late February 1999. Boy was I psyched to see it by then. One of the big Oscar winners for 1998, Shakespeare in Love, worked the same way although the wide release came in Jan in that case IIRC.

Anyhow, why this ends up sort of being important in terms of how things felt at the time is that 1999 *felt* like a bumper cool comedy/dramedy year at the movies with Election, Opposite of Sex, South Park-Bigger Longer &Uncut, Office Space, Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, Mifune, Dick, Dogma, Galaxy Quest and, yes, Shakespeare in Love and Rushmore. If you shunt those last two back to 1998 you miss how the movie year really felt in my view.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

You raise a good point. There is often a lag time with a lot of foreign films between the date of their release in the home country and the year in which they were shown in the United States.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Oops, you are right - released at the *end* of 1971 at that. It's elegaic tone makes it feel to me like it somehow *has* to be from before the rapey/bloodbath year of 1971.

---

Makes sense. Bogdanovich "had his cake and ate it too" on that one. It was filmed in black and white, set in 1951(just two decades prior...the year of Strangers on a Train), uising "homage" techniques to emulate Ford, Hawks and Hitchcock....BUT...it had a heapin' helpin of 1971 R-rated sexual content and nudity. Like Hitchcock's own Frenzy(released about 8 months after Picture Show but a 1972 film and that is where it nests), Picture Show is a "classic homage film" with contemporary sexual content.

Indeed, that's why Richard Schickel wrote of Frenzy "If Hitchcock is perfectly capable of imitating himself, why leave the job to a man like Peter Bogdanovich?"

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

omewhat related. I normally list Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 as my fave film from 1961, and it's an important entry for me because it's the first woman-directed film that I see as 'winning' its year (according to me, it's the last until Deborah Granik's Leave No Trace in 2018).

--

"According to me" ...matters. I think for any movie buff --whether mainstream studio or esoteric international fare -- constructing a list of personal favorites gives one a "tour of one's movie life" -- great memories and a sense of one's own taste.

---

Well, Cleo was always listed and referred to as a 1961 film until the late '90s and I was happy to have it slotted in there in a relatively 'down' year. Alas, around the arrival of IMDb, Cleo started to be listed, apparently accurately, as released in 1962

--

Ah, 1962...a very major movie year...even without a Hitchcock in it(The Birds was supposed to go there, I'm kind of sorry that it didn't make that release date.

Peter Bogdanovich as a MOVIE HISTORIAN has opined that 1962 is when the American studio system really ends. He cites the cessation of Looney Toons that year(Bugs, Daffy et al) as the marker, but notes it is really where the old studio system was fully functional..and then no more. "International productions" would be more of the norm, even for American studios.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

it's in competition with Lawrence & Manchurian, two films with which you don't want to be in a shootout, a la Psycho & The Apartment or Sunset Blvd & All About Eve.

---

Its funny how great films often "pair up" in their movie years. Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve had that "yin and yang" thing going -- both about acting in general and actresses in particular, one set on the East Coast on Broadway, the other on the West Coast in Hollywood...and Sunset is more cinematic than the rather talky(in a good way) Eve.

Psycho and The Apartment are linked as black and white films in a Technicolor year; as "envelope pushers" on content(sex in both films; violence in Psycho)...and as affecting tales of the "little people" and how larger society crushes them. In the "Sam and Lila scenes," Psycho seems to lose against the more incisive and populated "Apartment," but I go with the cinema and shocks of Psycho, ultimately. Also, The Apartment has that early scene where Lemmon never gets to see Grand Hotel on TV because of the commercial breaks...it is too broad for the sophisticated movie in which it resides. All it takes sometimes is one scene to "ding" a great movie a little(see also: that scene with the French gal talking about blueberry pancakes in Pulp Fiction.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

--
So, I continue to cheat and list Cleo in 1961 where it was when I originally fell in love with it!

---

For me, that's The Wrong Man.

TV Guide would often list The Wrong Man as a 1957 film, which put it in conflict with my other favorite of that year, 12 Angry Men(the two films share Henry Fonda, black and white, New York and side by side studies of the justice system.)

But now I read of The Wrong Man as a 1956 release(at the very end of the year, for Oscar consideration! Only in LA and NYC! Hitchcock Oscar bait!) and my troubles are over.

Favorite movie 1956: The Wrong Man.
Favorite movie 1957: 12 Angry Men.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Note too that in general this whole question of what year a film belongs to is a bit fraught. Most obviously, many prestigious, Oscar-bound films going all the way back to Casablanca have been released near the very end of the *previous* year before the year in which most people had a chance to see them.

---

Yep. The American movie studio year used to have a real traffic jam at Christmas time: a mix of Oscar bait AND intended blockbusters.

It took a long time for summer to take hold as "blockbuster season," so movies like The Sting, The Exorcist, The Towering Inferno and the 1976 King Kong went out at Christmas...and played well into the next year. It screws up the box office gross records, too. 1973's The Exorcist is considered the highest grossing film of 1974, for instance.

"On topic," Psycho has been listed as the Number Two hit of 1960...behind Ben-Hur, which was officially a 1959 release. So I say: then Psycho was really Number One! (Hitchcock's only such.)

But some lists put Disney's boomer kid bonanza Swiss Family Robinson at Number One for' 60.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And even if something isn't strictly Oscar-bound the same phenomenon can occur. I remember Rushmore topping lots of critics lists in 1998 but it didn't get a release beyond film festivals and NYC&LA until late February 1999. Boy was I psyched to see it by then. One of the big Oscar winners for 1998, Shakespeare in Love, worked the same way although the wide release came in Jan in that case IIRC.

---

This has maintained through several decades now. An Xmas time year end Oscar bait movie plays in LA and NYC only...and then the rest of us get to see it the next year.

I suppose Hitchcock benefitted from how many of his "big ones" did NOT come out at the end of the year.

Vertigo came out in May 1958 . NXNW in July 1959. Psycho in June 1960. Deep into their years, fully identified WITH their years of release. Later, both Torn Curtain and Frenzy were summer releases.

The Birds, and later Family Plot, were March/April Easter releases.

I know that both The Wrong Man AND Topaz(!) were released at Christmas for Oscar consideration. (Hopes were high that Hitchcock had a "serious" film with Topaz, a career topper with international French bona fides for Oscars...I suppose that is why it is a rather dull film compared to NXNW.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Anyhow, why this ends up sort of being important in terms of how things felt at the time is that 1999 *felt* like a bumper cool comedy/dramedy year at the movies with Election, Opposite of Sex, South Park-Bigger Longer &Uncut, Office Space, Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, Mifune, Dick, Dogma, Galaxy Quest and, yes, Shakespeare in Love and Rushmore. If you shunt those last two back to 1998 you miss how the movie year really felt in my view.

---

That's true. There is a book out there that posits 1999 as the best movie year of the 90's. Funny: I can never pick a solid personal favorite for that year, even as LA Confidential easily wins 1997(and the decade) and Saving Private Ryan was IT for me in 1998.

My chart has "The Green Mile" as the one that wowed me in 1999(Tom Hanks, Stephen King in his emotional mode via Frank Darabont of Shawshank fame)...but it has never really held on for me. I can't watch it much today. Too long, too mawkish(though the scene of the intentionally sabotaged electric chair execution is still powerful.)

I think 'The Green Mile" may soon be joining Charade and The Guns of Navarone in being bumped from my personal favorite list and replaced. The Matrix probably goes in there for 1999 --it is SO meaningful(the first one only), SO influential, and I have a male in-law who has seen it like 50 times...a few times with me.

And for me, 1994 and 1997 were more spectacular movie years than 1999.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

A little more on Stanley Kramer.

I suppose I should be embarrassed to be switching in not one, but TWO Stanley Kramer films as favorites of the 60's.

In the "auteur literature," not much good is said about him. Its as if his decision to make "important message pictures on important subjects" drew him more brickbats than praise...mainly because he was seen to be too heavy handed and pedantic in his story telling.

I will admit that in key courtroom scenes in Nuremberg, the acting is TOO overdone, there is too MUCH yelling(especially by Burt Lancaster in his big scene), the emotional points hit too hard.

But for me, that's something you accept to "keep the good stuff in memory." How Spencer Tracy is such a cool old coot. The completely raw and emotional performance of Monty Clift..it feels like a REAL breakdown committed to film. And the ideas at play .

As for Kramer's other one on my list -- Mad Mad World -- that one's a dichotomy. So many CRITICS derided it as "unfunny." So many FAMILY and FRIENDS -- often in my company -- have never laughed harder and longer at a movie(especially in any scene with Jonathan Winters.) And Spencer's there, too -- surrounded by comics and playing things simultaneously old and sly.

Mad Mad World isn't so much a Kramer move as a childhood memory of great, great fun and coupled with The Great Race as one of my few childhood favorites worthy of mention as an adult.(With The Great Race, I get Blake Edwards in there -- Breakfast at Tiffany's is too uneven and I can't say the Pink Panther films were all that great...but Jack Lemmon FINALLY handsome and macho as Professor Fate, teamed with Peter Falk as his sidekick in crime...sublime...and massively expensive and overproduced, too. Just like Mad Mad World."

So: Stanley Kramer makes the list for one movie that is "out of his wheelhouse"(Mad World) and one that is powerful stuff even if sometimes ham-handed.

Side issue: Has Steven Spielberg become the Stanley Kramer of our time?