Catch up with the idea behind this series here.
I’m back guys. Sorry for taking a week off but my older brother got hitched and I had a drunken Best Man speech that needed attending to. I trust you spent the week watching all the wonderful movies being highlighted in this column.
We’re halfway through my favorite decade of film and 1965 is the first time the Oscar telecast came to you live and in color (any readers actually old enough to remember?). Going into the ceremony, bookies were split between “The Sound of Music” and “Doctor Zhivago,” but it was the light-hearted former that waltzed away with top honors.
The Academy continued to show courageous love to foreign titles with Hiroshi Teshigahara earning a Best Director nomination for “Woman in the Dunes” in ’65 and Claude Leloach doing the same for “A Man and a Woman” in 1966.
That was the year that Fred Zinnemann’s morality play, “A Man for All Seasons” took Best Picture and five other awards, beating out Mike Nichols’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which remains one of the greatest film debuts of all time in my book. The Oscars were making some risky choices but they still missed out on honoring these timeless films.
1965 – “Repulsion” (Roman Polanski)
Polanski had already been noticed and feted by the Academy with a Best Foriegn Language Film nomination bestowed upon his Polish debut, “Knife in the Water,” but there would be no such recognition for his English language bow. Of course, with a luminous Catherine Deneuve in the leading role and an intense focus on the psychological effects of sexual repression, it may as well have been completely foreign to Hollywood.
It’s easy to look at the film with stern eyes in the wake of what has become of Polanski’s personal life, but who else could put sexual desires under the microscope of film so purposefully? Maybe it takes a pervert to make something as honest and bracing as “Repulsion?” Personal life aside, there’s no denying two things about this film. The first is the performance of Ms. Deneuve.
Already a major international star thanks to “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” she couldn’t have picked a role more opposite than the one that earned her fame. Anchoring the film from first frame to last, with lengthy portions of dialog-free screen time, Deneuve never less than fully embodies the complex internal struggle between desire and repulsion without resorting to emoting it. Falling into dementia is a venerable booby trap for terrible overacting, but Deneuve has complete control of her performance and keeps the surrealist touches grounded in terrifying reality.
The other undeniable attribute to the film is Polanski’s gift for atmosphere. Barely 30 years old, he was already showing a master’s touch for combining composition, movement and audio to convey his intentions. Often described as a horror film, “Repulsion” has only a tiny amount of content which could merit that genre tag, as Polanski is much more interested in the terrors of the mind than the outside world (a theme that pops up again in “The Tenant”). The opening shot attests to this as the camera slowly pulls back from an extreme close-up of Deneuve’s eye.
The claustrophobic set design and camerawork is excellent and belies the film’s reported $300,000 budget. The aforementioned sound design could be taught in classes (has a ticking clock ever been creepier? Or an orgasm, for that matter?). It’s a perfect package and an apt appetizer for the career of one of cinema’s greatest provocateurs.
1966 – “Young Torless” (Volker Schlöndorff)
Boarding school. Has anyone ever made a movie about how awesome an experience boarding school was? No? It’s a nightmare for everyone then. Young Torless is no exception as he deals with relentless torture from his fellow students, but not necessarily in the manner you’d imagine.
Director Volker Schlöndorff was only 26 when he directed the film (young filmmakers is definitely a common thread in this series) and even though it was his debut, he had already spent years in the French film industry as an assistant director to Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais, among others. His return to Germany and this film in particular, were the catalyst for one of the most interesting and important periods of cinema in that country. A reflective period of coming to terms with World War II and facing it head first, Schlöndorff would later be joined Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders in declaring “The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new cinema.”
“Young Torless” takes the archetype of schoolboy bullying and turns it into a fascinating indictment of fascism and those who supported it. Torless initially earns interest for seemingly focusing on the bullies of the story rather than the victim, only to turn the tables in a final act that indicts those who stand by and do nothing in the face of evil as perhaps even more at fault for the state of the world. It’s the type of ethical questions that most Germans would have liked to avoid at the time, but Schlöndorff places them front and center.
True, the final speech sends this message home with a bit too much force, but the power of the statement is not blunted. 15 year old Mathieu Carrière carries the film nobly, with his strikingly Aryan teenage face providing a perfect canvas for Schlöndorff to work. Franz Rath’s beautiful yet bleak, black and white cinematography providing the perfect backdrop.
Hans Werner Henze provides a poignant score, but is employed sparingly and aptly for a film dealing with the metaphorical power of silence as a theme. As a political statement, as a defining moment in European cinema and as a triumph of storytelling, “Young Torless” deserves to be seen.
Those are my picks. I should note that “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is in my top 5 movies of all time but I didn’t choose it for this series because I assume you all have seen it. If you haven’t, you have no business calling yourself a movie fan. Have your say in the comments and check out these films if you haven’t.
[Photo: Twenty Four Frames]
[Photo: Harvard Film Archive]
Comments
21 responses to “LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1965 and 1966”
Yes, “Repulsion” would be my runaway pick for 1965, Oscar-nominated or not. Nicely done.
I never know If I should count Good The Bad and The Ugly as 66 or 67, with the whole Italy/US release thing. But I guess that would be my 66 choice.
As for 1965, Id go with Zhivago. I know, I’m not offering anything obscure, but I’m a huge Lean fan, and this is easily my favorite work by him.
I am HUGE Polanski fan, and wrote an intense paper for my “Horror Films” course on the sexual politics of “Repulsion.” It’s a typical topic, but I never had more fun than when I wrote that paper. Mainly because it gave me an excuse to throw away my other schoolwork and watch “Repulsion” over and over. :) Great film.
“Repulsion” is a great choice (haven’t seen “Young Torless” yet).
My picks would be Kurosawa’s “Red Beard” for 1965 and Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev” for 1966.
No no no. 1966 can only be “Persona!”
Seriously, please tell me you at least considered Bergman’s greatest masterwork?
Haven’t seen it
Woah.
Dude.
If you haven’t seen it, you have no business calling yourself a movie fan.
I know
1965:
Andy Warhol’s “Vinyl”
Kon Ichikawa’s “Tokyo Olympiad”
Wojciech Has’ “The Saragossa Manuscript”
Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville”
Orson Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight”
Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion”
Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot le Fou”
Russ Meyer’s “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill”
Ritwik Ghatak’s “Subarnarekha”
Andre Delvaux’s “The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short”
1966:
George Kuchar’s “Hold Me While I’m Naked”
Sergio Leone’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”
Vera Chytilova’s “Daisies”
King Hu’s “Come Drink with Me”
Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona”
Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculine-Feminine”
Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar”
Chad, I am very eager to hear your thoughts on 67 and 68 races. The peak of the counterculture movement, a fascinating period that most of my family members were on opposite sides of. And also given all the comparisons, some of which i don’t entirley agree with, that have been made between Inception and 2001. I’m interested in knowing your thoughts on those particular races. How 2001 garnered Kubrick his only academy award for an achievement in visual effects, while Oliver took best picture over both the cosmic masterpice and the then ultra-violent, but now relativley tame Bonnie and Clyde.
Not to mention the former year When The Graduate, one of the most successful movies ever made at that point, earned only one academy award for Mike Nichols direction. While it may not seem like the same kind of generation defining film of Nichols ground-breaking feature, David Finchers The Social Network certainly could be percieved as a film for the millenial generation, and may even potentially speak to them in the same way that the romanitc-comedy which launched Dustin Hoffmans career once did.
Just my late night thoughts.
1965: Bunny Lake Is Missing
1966: The Family Way
I’d definitely pick Repulsion over Bergman’s Persona, which didn’t do anything for me. Granted, the film might have went completely over my head, but it seemed like a nonsensical experiment to me. Sven Nykvist’s cinematography is brilliant, though. Maybe I should give it another shot.
I haven’t seen Young Torless yet.
Andrei Rublev all the way for 1966. It’s one of my all time favorite movies. Big fan of Young Torliss too.
“Persona” is Bergman’s masterpiece. Chad, you *must* see it. Now. Go on! Move your bum!
We’ll wait here and converse amongst ourselves while you do so. Topic of discussion? Uh… How ’bout… “Who’s Right: The Israelis or the Palestinians?” And… go!
Oh, and I’d go with Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight for 1965. Hopefully whatever rights issues have prevented it from being widely available in the US will be cleared up at some point soon, because this movie needs to be seen and rediscovered in a big way.
I wouldn’t have pegged you for a fan of The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, Hartigan.
Huge fan
What an excellent write up! And it’s a very appropriate one for me to read today seeing as how my “Repulsion” DVD has just arrived in the mail. I can’t really add much to the conversation because I’ve never actually seen “Repulsion” (or “Young Torless” for that matter), but I enjoyed what you wrote all the same.
‘Repulsion’ is far and away the best film of 1965. ‘Sound of Music’ makes me cringe. I also love ‘Loves of a Blonde’ and ‘Fist in His Pocket.’
As for 1966, my favorite film would be John Frankenheimer’s awesome, awesome, awesome ‘Seconds’ with Rock Hudson. Brilliantly acted, the camera work is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and the ending is unforgettable. Also – ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’ (of course) and ‘Au hasard Balthazar.’
Seconds is definitely one of my favorite films of all time too, but it’s more than deserved nomination for Cinematography made it ineligible for the column.