‘60S MOVIES

Still too drained from the last week of dealing with the loss of my brother to concentrate on the pettiness the current political scene seems to have been lowered to. But I was thinking that the common observation that McCain and Clinton replay the battles of the 1960s and Obama offers a new perspective on politics and “American life” has some validity when I fell asleep last night after the news.

But having lived through much of what is generally referred to as “the ‘sixties” I fell back asleep last night—after the garbage truck that arrives around 4AM to noisily empty the Dempsey dumpster from the Indian restaurant across the alley from my bedroom woke me up—creating a list in my head of movies from the 1960s that really represent the way that decade felt, through my own experiences or as an observer of others:

ALFIE and ALICE’S RESTAURANT (two sides of the ‘60s coin)
BREATHLESS (the original French version that influenced so many in the U.S.) and BLOW-UP (one of the most argued about movies of the mid-‘60s)
COOL WORLD (Shirley Clark’s black and white movie based on the Warren Miller novel about a teenage gang in Harlem, and my all-time favorite film, still not on DVD as far as I know)
DON’T LOOK BACK (the D.A. Pennebaker documentary on Dylan, c. ‘66) and DAVID AND LISA (the documentary-like love story about two “mentally disturbed teens”)
EASY RIDER (though I found it more flawed than most) and 8 ½ (another “foreign film” that had a major impact in the U. S. and on me)
FERRY CROSS THE MERSEY (the British invasion bands)
GRADUATE, THE (not the ‘60s as I experienced them, but certainly as some did)
HARD DAY’S NIGHT, A (this movie’s impact redefined the times and partly created “the ‘sixties”)
ICE (I think that was the name, of a movie made by a radical faction of SDS about what a true “revolution” might look like at the time)
JULIET OF THE SPIRITS (visually it had an impact, though not considered one of Fellini’s greatest films)
KNACK…AND HOW TO GET IT, THE (ah, Rita Tushingham, the embodiment of the early ‘60s in many ways)
LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER (great New York footage in this mostly realistic take on the pre-pill, illegal-abortion world of working-class folks—one of my favorite Steve McQueen or Natalie Woods flicks)
MONTEREY POP (best footage of the emerging hippie culture) and MEDIUM COOL (a flawed flick, but some great footage of the ’68 Chicago Democratic-Convention demonstrations and “police riot”) and MORGAN (which in its unique way encapsulated the entire arc of the storyline of the 1960s, and it was made only halfway through the decade) and MIDNIGHT COWBOY (in which the Warhol party scenes ring true)
NOTHING BUT A MAN (one of the first and few early independent “Black films” to have an impact, not necessarily on the majority white audience that never saw it, since it had the usual limited release, but on filmmakers and young politicos and hipsters who did get to see it and were knocked out by its honesty and artistry, like me)
OCEAN’S ELEVEN (the original, Sinatra’s swingin’ world, a major influence on the early ‘60s)
PUMPKIN EATER, THE and THE PAWNBROKER (two harbingers of a new kind of “realism” in “American” films—THE PUMPKIN EATER was made in the UK, with a Harold Pinter screenplay (!) but starred Anne Bancroft and was an “American” sensation, at least among the “cognoscenti,” nominated for lots of Oscars too as I remember it)
QUARE FELLOW, THE (Brendan Behan’s play, well done on screen, raised issues pertinent to the causes of the ’60s)
RAISIN IN THE SUN, A (maybe Poitier’s best?)
SHADOWS (the John Cassavettes “independent film” that was the first of the decade that made the world of what we were calling “underground movies” more viable)
TWO OR THREE THINGS THAT I KNOW ABOUT HER (another French flick that had an impact on the times)
UPTIGHT (not bad Harlem update version of THE INFORMER)
V?
WOODSTOCK (of course, but also WHITEY!, the first feature length film funded by the newly created AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE, and in which I played “the radical”)
X?
YELLOW SUBMARINE
ZABRISKIE POINT and Z (neither are great movies, but both have great moments that are definitely of the times)