The 1960 Mini-List

[domino harvey]

I'm obviously not going to get to all fifty of these in time to vote for them, but is anyone actually voting for any of these titles so I can give due consideration, time and will permitting?

SpoilerShow

Afraid to Die
Aki tachinu AKA Autumn Has Already Started
Cloud Capped Star
Domaren AKA the Judge
El esqueleto de la señora Morales
Era notte a Roma
Faces in the Dark
Flaming Star
Girl of the Night
Goodbye Till Tomorrow
Hell Bent for Leather
Historias de la revolución
I baccanali di Tiberio
Ice Palace
Il bell'Antonio
Integration Report 1
Key Witness
L'Amour existe
La giornata balorda AKA A Crazy Day AKA From a Roman Balcony
Le huitième jour
Le passage du Rhin
Le voyage en ballon
Les loups dans la bergerie
Let No Man Write My Epitaph
Lettere di una novizia AKA La novice
Ljubav i moda AKA Love and Fashion
Lullaby
Madalena
Mountain Road
Night and Fog in Japan
Nikt nie wola AKA Nobody’s Calling
Oscar Wilde
Ovader
Rear Entrance
Si le vent te fait peur AKA If the Wind Frightens You
Sunrise at Campobello
Terrain vague
The Angry Silence
The Challenge
The Crying Woman
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
The Great Imposter
The Housemaid
The Jailbreakers
The Plunderers
The Pusher
The Rat Race
The Ruffians
The Story of Ruth
The Young One
Three Came to Kill
Tutti a casa
Via Margutta
Wandering Princess
World War III Breaks Out

[Rayon Vert]

SpoilerShow

The Cloud Capped Star is high enough on my list. I really, really liked that one.

The Housemaid and The Angry Silence fall just outside of it - nos 26 and 27. I like everything in my top 30. I can't imagine there won't be votes for The Housemaid.

Don't bother with the Rossellini!

[swo17]

Not sure how much they'd be up your alley, but Cloud-Capped Star has some lovely cinematography, and Afraid to Die is a decent enough yakuza film that's mostly fascinating as Yukio Mishima's only lead role (other than for Patriotism)

[Red Screamer]

I'm definitely voting for The Young One and Il bell'Antonio for reasons described earlier in the thread, as well as L'Amour existe which is kind of like Resnais' visually dynamic essay shorts but with the poetry and mystery of something like Toute la mémoire du monde replaced with anger and contempt. I find it very moving. Aki tachinu / Autumn Has Already Started I saw a couple days ago and found disappointing, with the child actors making the melodrama somewhat cloying for me. It has some nice use of widescreen, but never reaches the heights of the same in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.

[swo17]

I'm obviously not going to get to all fifty of these in time to vote for them, but is anyone actually voting for any of these titles so I can give due consideration, time and will permitting?

Might be worth mentioning that these are the only ones that actually can be voted for at the moment:

SpoilerShow

Afraid to Die
Aki tachinu AKA Autumn Has Already Started
Cloud Capped Star
El esqueleto de la señora Morales
Era notte a Roma
Il bell'Antonio
Integration Report 1
L'Amour existe
Night and Fog in Japan
The Angry Silence
The Housemaid
The Young One
Tutti a casa

Presumably if anyone planned to vote for any of the other films on your watch list, they would have asked in this thread for me to add them to the list in the first post. Hopefully I've made that point clear enough

[TMDaines]

I might vote for Do widzenia, do jutra... (Janusz Morgenstern). Could you add it?

[swo17]

Added, and as a reminder, this is your last day to request that titles be added to the first post before I create the poll tomorrow

[knives]

I’m still chewing on it, but I’d like to nominate Philip Roth adaptation Battle of Blood Island as an option. It’s a great proto-Hell in the Pacific.

[swo17]

Added

[domino harvey]

L'amour existe (surprised you haven't already seen this!)

It's possible that I have, but when I first started logging movies I didn't log shorts and that's when I would have been first going through Pialat, so I'm not sure if I have or not. I don't remember it at any rate!

I enjoyed this (though not to the extent that it will be making my list), and sadly it will be my last film watched for the project (at least during the eligibility period). I think I learned a lot through this process: I already have so many movies I haven't seen that clouding the process with acquiring almost as many more because they too look interesting only ensures I now have twice as many unseen movies. I ended this list with adding 31 films to my seen tally (for a total of 147 films seen from 1960 - which according to Letterboxd makes it my most-seen year [yet]), but barely a dent in the grand scheme of making my way through the unwatched backlog. And only one film, one of the first I watched for this project, ended up making it to my list, so was it worth it? I don't know, is it ever? I'm the guy who's seen like 170 80s slashers, I have no proper frame of reference here for time invested versus gain!

[swo17]

I like that this exercise motivated me to dig deeper than I had for the first 1960s round, and I'm recency biasing several new discoveries into my list that I'm grateful to have discovered this way, though I too had similarly lofty ambitions that have been dashed. I'm realizing that to fit in a proper watch of every worthwhile-sounding recommendation and re-watch of anything I'm thinking of listing to have it all fresh in my mind, and to be able to do so without it completely taking over my life, I would need at least like three months per release year, which I doubt any of you would be up for. Still, I think this strikes a decent balance between stopping to smell the roses and not having any one iteration of the decades project exceed the typical human lifespan

[yoshimori]

> I would need at least like three months per release year, which I doubt any of you would be up for.

Three months per year sounds completely reasonable to me. [I'd probably pick years randomly ... 1960, 1978, 1946, 2004, etc. But I'm not doing the extra work, so I leave it you.]

[swo17]

Ha, even if we just did every year since the Oscars started, it would still take like 30 years to get through an entire round. Some of us would not survive the whole thing, and would have to have our children finish for us

[domino harvey]

Worth remembering that 1960 got a double sized slot, whereas every other year will just get one month. Hopefully the brevity helps anyone feeling overwhelmed, since there’s already no way to see everything so everyone can just make a few select viewing choices in the time allotted

[swo17]

Here's the survey for voting. As I've said before, you have until the end of the day on the 8th to cast your vote. However, that's kind of an arbitrary deadline, and if anyone would appreciate having more time just let me know. Just don't keep 1960ing too long or you'll miss 1961, which has already started

[swo17]

Just to be safe as this is a new thing, I would suggest everyone maintain a copy of their own list in addition to submitting the form

[Rayon Vert]

Out of curiosity, swo, are you able to count and see the lists as they are coming in?

[swo17]

Yes. I can see that six of you have voted so far. I can see your names and IP addresses

[the preacher]

Done! I didn't expect to find "The Brute" (which is 1961) and missed Phil Karlson's Hell to Eternity, so one for another.

[swo17]

Huh. The Fábri was a last-minute addition to 1960 when I was adding all the 1960s films from the Hungarian set put out by the MNF (the Hungarian National Film Institute). The liner notes include some history on the film's release, which is described broadly as 1959-61. They describe test screenings that took place in 1959 which ran afoul of the censors, as well as the 1961 Cannes screening that IMDb recognizes. On the back of the box where only one year is identified for each film, they displayed 1960, so I went with that, assuming they would be some kind of an authority on the matter.

I should mention that in every other case where I found a film like this during the last few days of the 1960 round (IMDb saying 1961 but another source suggesting 1960) I deemed that it was too late to assign the film to 1960. (Off the top of my head, the biggest one of these was Ce soir ou jamais, which domino says belongs in 1961 anyway.) In this one case, I made plans to watch the film (which I have not yet seen) with my mom this week, and threw it in 1960 in the event that I might find it list-worthy. I honestly didn't expect it to be on anyone else's radar and assumed no one would notice. That's what I get for assuming things

[alacal2]

I'm finding this a lot more interesting than the decade list which just had too many masterpieces competing against each other. I also felt that after the first 20 placings or so it became increasingly arbitrary. This allows films to 'breathe' I think. Like others on here, I'm never going to have the time to watch/re-watch everything I'm drawn to but I find it a great discipline to digging into my huge backlog. Another plus is Domino's mention of his unwatched pile which has greatly improved my self-esteem!

[swo17]

If you've submitted a list you should have received a PM from me confirming as much. If you've submitted a list and not heard from me, please reach out and let me know. Also, is anyone feeling like they're going to need longer than the 8th to submit a list?

[therewillbeblus]

This timeline has been more than generous, so no, although I'm going to get Le Trou from the lib on the 7th and likely won't be able to rewatch it til the 8th, so I plan to submit my list at the last minute just to give that film a fair shake

Unfortunately due to the sheer volume of films eligible, I felt I had to drop films I rated higher on Letterboxd but have no memory of in favor of films I'd seen more recently and could actually recollect affection for, so apologies in advance if you're passionate about those that got the axe

[TMDaines]

No, let's keep the pace going and submit this week.

[domino harvey]

This year already got an extra month’s delay, anyone not ready has no excuses