MC Yearly Consensus - 1961

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the voting is closed, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Spinal]

1. Viridiana
2. The Hustler
3. Last Year at Marienbad
4. Through a Glass Darkly
5. Yojimbo

[Watashi]

1. Viridiana
2. The Hustler
3. Through a Glass Darkly
4. Yojimbo
5. West Side Story

Great year.

[Russ]

1. The Hustler
2. Judgment at Nuremburg
3. A Raisin in the Sun
4. One Hundred and One Dalmations
5. West Side Story

[soitgoes...]

1. Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
2. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
3. The Human Condition III (Masaki Kobayashi)
4. A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Chronicle of a Summer (Edgar Morin, Jean Rouch)
----------------------------------------------------
6. Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman)

I fail at 1961 films or perhaps 1961 films have failed me.

[Raiders]

1. The Innocents (Clayton)
2. Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
3. Viridiana (Bunuel)
4. The Ladies Man (Lewis)
5. Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman)

----------------------------------

6. Breakfast at Tiffany's (Edwards)
7. Yojimbo (Kurosawa)
8. The Hustler (Rossen)
9. La Notte (Antonioni)
10. Lola (Demy)
11. A Woman is a Woman (Godard)
12. Il Posto (Olmi)

[Yxklyx]

1. Mother Joan of the Angels (Jerzy Kawalerowicz)
2. Lola (Jacques Demy)
3. Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
4. West Side Story (Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise)
5. A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)

6. The Hustler (Robert Rossen)
7. Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi)
8. La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)
9. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
10. Blast of Silence (Allen Baron)

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Il Posto
2. West Side Story
3. The Innocents
4. A Woman is a Woman
5. Viridiana

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. The Misfits
2. The Hustler
3. Splendor in the Grass
4. La Notte
5. The Innocents
----
6. Une femme est une femme
7. Judgment at Nuremberg
8. Divorce Italian Style
9. West Side Story
10. One, Two, Three

[Epistemophobia]

1. Viridiana
2. Last Year at Marienbad
3. The Human Condition III
4. La Notte
5. Early Autumn
----
Yojimbo
Through a Glass Darkly
The Innocents
Lola

And let us not forget, Hercules at the Center of the Earth.

[Malickfan]

1. Yojimbo
2. Blast Of Silence
3. Last Year At Marienbad
4. Viridiana
5. The Guns Of Navarone

[Boner M]

1. Il Posto
2. Last Year at Marienbad
3. The Exiles
4. Viridiana
5. La Notte

HM: Ursula, The Innocents, Through a Glass Darkly

Need to see: Victim, Blast of Silence, The Hustler, Accatone, Breakfast at Tiffany's

[Derek]

Weakest year of the decade, but that says more about how ridiculously awesome the decade is than how weak a year this is.

1. Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
2. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
3. Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
4. A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Underworld U.S.A. (Samuel Fuller)
****************************** *
6. The Ladies' Man (Jerry Lewis)
7. The Hustler (Robert Rossen)
8. La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)
9. Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman)
10. One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder)

HMs: none

[Ezee E]

1. The Hustler
2. King of Kings
3. 101 Dalmatians
4. Parent Trap!!!!!!

[monolith94]

1. Last Year at Marienbad
2. Lola
3. Yojimbo
4. The Misfits
5. The Day The Earth Caught Fire

Honorable mention: The Absent-Minded Professor

[ledfloyd]

1. The Hustler
2. The Guns of Navarone
3. La Notte
4. 101 Dalmations

[The Mike]

1. The Innocents
2. The Hustler
3. The Pit and the Pendulum
4. Murder She Said
5. The Day the Earth Caught Fire

HM: Mysterious Island

Need to see: Mothra, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Colossus of Rhodes

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. A Woman is a Woman
2. Through a Glass Darkly
3. Yojimbo
4. Il Posto
5. Divorce, Italian Style

[origami_mustache]

1. The Human Condition III
2. The Hustler
3. Viridiana
4. Yojimbo
5. Through a Glass Darkly

HM:
One, Two Three
Il Posto
La Notte

[Ezee E]

I can't remember what A Woman is a Woman is about, but I've apparently seen it on Netflix.

[Boner M]

A Woman is a Woman is Godard's most inconsequential film. I'll never get what people see in it.

[Ezee E]

A Woman is a Woman is Godard's most inconsequential film. I'll never get what people see in it.
What happens when you see Quantum of Solace

[Boner M]

What happens when you see Quantum of Solace
Quantum of Stupid Movie Title

[dreamdead]

1. West Side Story
2. The Hustler
3. Through a Glass Darkly
4. Viridiana
5. Yojimbo

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Viridiana
2. La Notte
3. The Innocents
4. Il Posto
5. A Woman is a Woman

[Mysterious Dude]

A Woman is a Woman is Godard's most inconsequential film. I'll never get what people see in it.
I find his consequential films almost unwatchable.

[thefourthwall]

1. The Innocents
2. Through a Glass Darkly
3. The Hustler
4. West Side Story
5. Splendor in the Grass

I wish I could vote for Last Year at Marienbad based on the clips I've seen, but that seems unethical--why is this dvd out of print?

[SirNewt]

1. Yojimbo
2. Divorce Italian Style
3. Through a Glass Darkly
4.
5. The Guns of Navarone

[Grouchy]

1. Viridiana
2. The Innocents
3. Yojimbo
4. The Guns of Navarone
5. The Pit and the Pendulum

[The Mike]

5. The Pit and the Pendulum
Glad I'm not the only one. Awesome times.

[Grouchy]

Glad I'm not the only one. Awesome times.
One of the great Corman movies. That ending shot is fucking sadistic.

[Raiders]

I really need to see Corman's film. I fully expect to love it.

[MadMan]

Damn, I've only see three movies from this year. Two I like (Yojimbo, which is awesome, and The Pit and The Pendulum, which is pretty cool and one of Corman's best efforts), but the third one I hate (101 Dalmatians). So I'll have to abstain.

[Duncan]

1. La Notte
2. Viridiana
3. Last Year at Marienbad
4. Yojimbo
5. The End of Summer

[soitgoes...]

5. How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman10 years off. This was 1971. Close. ;)

[SirNewt]

One of the great Corman movies. That ending shot is fucking sadistic.

I remember just loving the short story when I read it in Middle School (was it written by Poe? Oh I can't rememver). I really need to see the film.

[baby doll]

1. Lola (Jacques Demy)
2. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
3. L'Année dernière Ã* Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
4. Le Gros et le maigre (Roman Polanski and Jean-Pierre Rousseau)
5. Accattone! (Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Need to re-see: The End of Summer (Yasujiro Ozu); La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)

[SirNewt]

1. Lola (Jacques Demy)
2. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
3. L'Année dernière Ã* Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
4. Le Gros et le maigre (Roman Polanski and Jean-Pierre Rousseau)
5. Accattone! (Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Need to re-see: The End of Summer (Yasujiro Ozu); La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)

I know I saw this. Crap when you see five of his films in one week it's impossible to keep them straight.

EDIT: Wait, I remember it now.

[Duncan]

10 years off. This was 1971. Close. ;)
Ha, a typo in my viewing log I guess.

[Grouchy]

I remember just loving the short story when I read it in Middle School (was it written by Poe? Oh I can't rememver). I really need to see the film.
Yeah, it's by Poe. Keep in mind, it's a very loose adaptation. It only retains, literally, the pit and the pendulum from the title. The rest of the plot is taken from some other Poe story, I can't remember which right now.

[SirNewt]

Yeah, it's by Poe. Keep in mind, it's a very loose adaptation. It only retains, literally, the pit and the pendulum from the title. The rest of the plot is taken from some other Poe story, I can't remember which right now.

Well, they can mix and match Poe all they want. As long as it's Poe it's good.

[MadMan]

Yeah Poe is pretty awesome. His actual version of The Pit and the Pendulum is one of his more creepy and suspenseful tales.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Yojimbo
2. Last Year at Marienbad
3. The Hustler
4. The Innocents
5. Breakfast at Tiffany's


I don't think I'll get to The Misfits before this closes since I'm going out of town this weekend.

[Lazlo]

1. The Hustler
2. West Side Story
3. Viridiana
4. Yojimbo
5. Breakfast at Tiffany’s

[Bosco B Thug]

One of the great Corman movies. That ending shot is fucking sadistic.
Hmm, quick spoiler to jog my memory?

Despite my poor memory, I re-watched The Pit and the Pendulum pretty recently and I'm pretty confident that I was rather underwhelmed by it. House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death are awesome, so 'PatP' definitely was a disappointment.

[Yxklyx]

Hmm, quick spoiler to jog my memory?

Despite my poor memory, I re-watched The Pit and the Pendulum pretty recently and I'm pretty confident that I was rather underwhelmed by it. House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death are awesome, so 'PatP' definitely was a disappointment.

Yeah, I thought TP&TP was pretty awful unlike the other two you mention which are pretty good.

[MadMan]

I think that The Pit and the Pendulum>The House of Usher. Haven't seen The Masque of the Red Death yet.

[Grouchy]

Hmm, quick spoiler to jog my memory?
Eyes of the woman trapped inside an iron maiden.

[Spinal]

Ending soon.

[Spinal]

#10

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/gr1.jpg

Il Posto

Director: Ermanno Olmi

Country: Italy

Domenico and Antonietta are two suburban Italian youths who meet while seeking jobs from a big city corporation. After a bizarre screening process made up of written exams, physical agility exercises and probing interview questions, they land jobs in the Technical Division and Typing Services respectively.

Won the Italian Film Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. Olmi went on to marry the female lead, Loredana Detto. She never made another film.

"Majestic predecessor of modern-day drone dramas like Office Space ... Olmi's late neo-realist classic in essence identifies three stages of workplace alienation: the big interview, the queasy first day, and—adding seasonal frisson to this ever more timely film—the crash-and-burn company holiday shindig ... Work and faith are the filmmaker's recurring themes - sometimes considered as one ... " - Dennis Lim

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/500Une_Femme_bedroom.jpg

A Woman is a Woman

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Country: Italy/France

Angela, a striptease artist, wants to have a baby, and tries to persuade her boyfriend Emile to go along with the idea. Emile will have none of it, so she goes after Emile's friend, Alfred.

Won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Also earned Best Actress (Anna Karina). Godard's first film in color. There are many references to other French New Wave films throughout, including Breathless, Jules and Jim and Shoot the Piano Player.

"... A Woman is A Woman, along with his great My Life to Live, remains one of [Godard's] more accessible works. Never heavy-handed, the film defies genre-placement. This subversive musical celebrates female empowerment and takes sly jabs at Hollywood film conventions." - Ed Gonzalez

[Spinal]

#8

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/la-nottestill.jpg

La Notte

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Country: Italy/France

A successful writer and his wife visit their friend who is dying in the hospital. After their visit, he goes to a promotion party for his new book, while she visits their old living area of Milano. They meet back at home and decide to visit the party of a billionaire who wants him to write a book about the history of his company. Both have flirts, and they both notice this fact.

Won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film is a recurring joke in the films of Monty Python. In the trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it is used as an example of a run-of-the-mill film, along with Herbie Rides Again.

"... here, as in L'Avventura, it is not the situation so much as it is the intimations of personal feelings, doubts and moods that are the substance of the film. And these Signor Antonioni has implanted and developed with a skill that is excitingly fertile, subtle and awesomely intuitive. Upon a crisply graphic background of real buildings and places in Milan that would lead one to expect the exposition of a virtually objective document, he has superimposed and intruded a completely subjective account of the interior loneliness, boredom and emotional exhaustion of a woman, and a man." - Bosley Crowther (1962)

[Spinal]

#7

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/71627-004-590EEF04.jpg

West Side Story

Director: Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise

Country: USA

Have you seen Romeo and Juliet? It's like that. Except set in New York City. And with singing and dancing and stuff.

Won ten Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris), Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno) and Best Color Cinematography. Only lost one nomination (Best Adapted Screenplay). It's well known that Marni Nixon dubbed the singing voice for Natalie Wood, but Rita Moreno also received help on the song "A Boy Like That" from Betty Wand, as the song was below her range. While recording the end of "Quintet", both Moreno and Wand had colds, so the vocals for Anita were recorded by Nixon, meaning that she is singing vocals for two different characters.

"In the end, of course, the moral of the tragedy comes through in the staggering sense of wastage of the energies of kids. It is screamed by the candy-store owner, played trenchantly by Ned Glass, when he flares, 'You kids make this world lousy! When will you stop?' It is a cry that should be heard by thoughtful people - sympathetic people - all over the land." - Bosley Crowther (1961)

[Spinal]

#6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/through-a-glass-darkly-harriet-ande.jpg

Through a Glass Darkly

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Country: Sweden

On an island, a recently released mentally sick young woman is spending her vacation with her husband, a doctor, her father and her younger brother. She is suffering from hallucinations and hysteria. She thinks she is visited by God.

Won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Won the OCIC Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. The title derives from a Biblical passage (1 Corinthians 13) in which seeing through a glass darkly refers to our understanding of God when we are alive; the view will only be clear when we die.

"Nykvist's lighting is essentially another character. How he sees, how he shades, how he conceals, all sum up into how we are to feel about the characters. The same film photographed by another cinematographer might seem shallow, even silly. Certainly Bergman attracted his share of parody. But this film, shot this way, surprises us by how much power it builds." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/B6A35A21CB.jpg

The Innocents

Director: Jack Clayton

Country: UK

In Victorian England, an inexperienced young woman becomes governess to a small orphan girl living in a lonely stately home occupied only by the child, a housekeeper and a small complement of servants. Her initial misgivings allayed by the child's angelic nature, her anxieties are once more aroused when the girl's brother is sent home from boarding school for wickedness of some unspecified kind. Then eerie apparitions and inexplicable behavior on the children's part cause her to wonder about the house's history.

Clayton was named Best Director by the National Board of Review. During the cursed video in The Ring, about 25 seconds in, a young boy's muffled singing can faintly be heard. This audio track is taken from The Innocents.

"Clayton's filmmaking, mustering frisson by both candle and blazing daylight, could serve as an object lesson in its genre. Only Robert Wise's The Haunting, out two years later, came close to its edge-of-sight menace, repressed gothic angst, and all-suggestion creep-outs." - Michael Atkinson

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Eveinb1961.jpg

Last Year at Marienbad

Director: Alain Resnais

Country: France

In a huge, old-fashioned luxury hotel, a stranger tries to persuade a married woman to run away with him. But it seems she hardly remembers the affair they may have had (or not?) last year at Marienbad.

Earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film's style has influenced the look of several commercials (including those in the late 1980s for Calvin Klein's Obsession) and the music video for "To the End" by the British rock band Blur, which is a direct pastiche of the film.

"Hopelessly retro, eternally avant-garde, and one of the most influential movies ever made (as well as one of the most reviled), Marienbad is both utterly lucid and provocatively opaque—an elaborate joke on the world's corniest pickup line and a drama of erotic fixation that takes Vertigo to the next level of abstraction. It's a movie of alarming stasis - elegant zombies positioned like chess pieces in a hyper-civilized haunted house - and unsurpassed fluidity." - J. Hoberman

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/paulnewman460.jpg

The Hustler

Director: Robert Rossen

Country: USA

Fast Eddie Felson is a small-time pool hustler with a lot of talent but a self-destructive attitude. His bravado causes him to challenge the legendary Minnesota Fats to a high-stakes match, but he loses in a heartbreaking marathon. Now broke and without his long-time manager, Felson faces an uphill battle to regain his confidence and his game.

Won two Oscars (for Cinematography and Art Direction) and was nominated for seven others including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Paul Newman), Best Supporting Actor (Jackie Gleason), Best Actress (Piper Laurie) and Best Adapted Screenplay. George C. Scott was also nominated in the Supporting Actor category, but publicly refused his nomination. All the pool shots in the movie are performed by the actors themselves except one: the massé shot (cue ball sends two object balls into the same pocket), performed by Willie Mosconi.

"Newman appears to put on decades as the film progresses, as he takes on the posture of someone whose callowness has begun to ossify. Newman would revisit the character years later, chipping away some of the hardness in 1986's worthy Martin Scorsese-directed sequel The Color Of Money. Here, Newman gives a great performance as a man learning hard lessons too fast." - Keith Phipps

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/mifune-yojimbo.jpg

Yojimbo

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Country: Japan

Sanjuro, a wandering samurai enters a rural town in nineteenth century Japan. After learning from the innkeeper that the town is divided between two gangsters, he plays one side off against the other.

Earned an Oscar nomination for Costume Design. Earned Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival (Toshirô Mifune). The film is an uncredited film version of Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest. Kurosawa challenged his assistant directors to come up with an image for the film to let Sanjuro know he was entering a bad town. Dissatisfied with all of their ideas, Kurosawa himself then came up with the idea of the dog carrying the human hand.

"It’s fun to watch the opening fight scene in Yojimbo to see where it influenced both George Lucas and Sergio Leone in separate ways. Leone takes Kurosawa’s humor, specifically mimicking Mifune’s last line to the coffin maker ... Lucas borrows the fighting style of the Samurai. Compare it the scene in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, when Liam Neeson and Ewan Macgregor rescue Natalie Portman from the droids in the first act. Watch how Neeson kills the droids with his lightsaber with speed and sheaths his saber exactly like Sanjuro." - Alan Bacchus

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/aluisbunuelviridianadvdreviewV IRIDI.jpg

Viridiana

Director: Luis Buñuel

Country: Mexico/Spain

Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior. After some time on his large country estate, he tries to seduce her, believing that she resembles his deceased wife.

Won the Golden Palm at Cannes. Voted best Spanish film by professionals and critics in 1996 Spanish cinema centenary. Initially banned in Spain and completely denounced by the Vatican.

"More than 40 years after its original release, Viridiana still shocks. In 1960, Franco invited the long-exiled Luis Buñuel to return to his native Spain to produce a film completely to his liking. Ask and you shall receive: Viridiana was Buñuel's sly 'fuck you' to the Spanish dictator and his political bedfellows, including the Catholic Church." - Ed Gonzalez

[Spinal]

1. Viridiana (59)
2. Yojimbo (56)
3. The Hustler (51)
4. Last Year at Marienbad (39)
5. The Innocents (31.5)
6. Through a Glass Darkly (26.5)
7. West Side Story (24)
8. La Notte (21)
9. A Woman is a Woman (19)
10. Il Posto (16)

Near misses:
Lola (13)
Human Condition III (12)
The Guns of Navarone (12)

[Philosophe_rouge]

I'm surprised but thrilled the Innocents made the list.

[baby doll]

Good for Buñuel, too bad about Demy.