The 1966 Mini-List

[swo17]

RESULTS

Below is a list of films you can vote for from this year. If you want to be able to vote for something that isn't listed here, you need to ask me to add it to the list. The only reason I won't do so is if I deem that it belongs in another year. I have my own curious system for assigning films to years, but rest assured that I will never let a film miss its chance to qualify in one year or another. I am the ultimate arbiter of year assignments.

Discussion for this mini-list and requests for additions to the list of films below will run until September 30. On October 1 I will create a form for voting that will allow you to populate anything between a top 10 and a top 25 from among the films listed below. You will have until the end of the day October 16 (first Sunday on or after the 14th) to submit a ballot that way. If you don't see a certain film listed below, you won't be able to vote for it, so please speak up before September 30 to avoid disappointment.

Sorted alphabetically by title, using the native title for German and all Romance languages other than Romanian, and the English-language title in all other cases

Abschied von gestern (Alexander Kluge)
Aleph (Wallace Berman)
Alfie (Lewis Gilbert)
Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller)
All My Life (Bruce Baillie)
Alvarez Kelly (Edward Dmytryk)
An American Dream (Robert Gist)
And So It Is (Jorge Sanjinés)
Andrei Rublyov (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Another Day, Another Man (Doris Wishman)
Arabesque (Stanley Donen)
Artype (George Maciunas)
At the World Cafeteria (Věra Chytilová)
Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
L'Authentique Procès de Carl-Emmanuel Jung (Marcel Hanoun)
Baby Footage (Alison Knowles)
Bariera (Jerzy Skolimowski)
Batman (Leslie Martinson)
La battaglia di Algeri (Gillo Pontecorvo)
Behind the Scenes of Red and Blue (Kevin Brownlow)
The Bible: In the Beginning... (John Huston)
A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Fielder Cook)
Blindfold (Philip Dunne)
Blink (John Cavanaugh)
Blood Bath (Jack Hill & Stephanie Rothman)
Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Blue Max (John Guillermin)
Breakaway (Bruce Conner)
The Brides of Fu Manchu (Don Sharp)
Brigitte et Brigitte (Luc Moullet)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Sergio Leone)
By a Man's Face Shall You Know Him (Tai Katō)
Caccia alla volpe (Vittorio De Sica)
Cages (Mirosław Kijowicz)
Cash Calls Hell (Hideo Gosha)
Cassis (Jonas Mekas)
Castro Street (Bruce Baillie)
Cathy Come Home (Ken Loach)
La caza (Carlos Saura)
Le Celluloïd et le Marbre (Éric Rohmer)
Cerro pelado (Santiago Álvarez)
Chafed Elbows (Robert Downey Sr.)
Charlie Brown's All Stars! (Bill Melendez)
Charlie Is My Darling (Peter Whitehead)
The Chase (Arthur Penn)
La Chasse au lion à l'arc (Jean Rouch)
Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol)
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles)
Circus of Fear (John Llewellyn Moxey)
Closely Watched Trains (Jiří Menzel)
Coach to Vienna (Karel Kachyňa)
Le colt cantarono la morte e fu... tempo di massacro (Lucio Fulci)
I coltelli del vendicatore (Mario Bava)
Come Drink with Me (King Hu)
Les Créatures (Agnès Varda)
Cul-de-sac (Roman Polański)
La Curée (Roger Vadim)
Daimajin (Kimiyoshi Yasuda)
Daisies (Věra Chytilová)
The Deadly Affair (Sidney Lumet)
The Death of Mr. Balthazar (Jiří Menzel)
Le Deuxième Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Disappearing Music for Face (Chieko Shiomi)
Django (Sergio Corbucci)
2 once di piombo (Maurizio Lucidi)
Dutchman (Anthony Harvey)
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (Jun Fukuda)
Elégia (Zoltán Huszárik)
Elsa la rose (Agnès Varda)
Emotion (Nobuhiko Ōbayashi)
End After 9 (George Maciunas)
es (Ulrich Schamoni)
Les Escargots (René Laloux)
Everything Is a Number (Stefan Schabenbeck)
The Evil Faerie (Owen Land)
Eye Blink (Yoko Ono)
Eye of the Devil (J. Lee Thompson)
The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
Fahrenheit 451 (François Truffaut)
The Family Way (Roy Boulting)
Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer)
Faraon (Jerzy Kawalerowicz)
Father (István Szabó)
Fighting Elegy (Seijun Suzuki)
Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, etc. (Owen Land)
Five Minutes Thrill (József Nepp)
Five O'Clock in the Morning (Pieter Vanderbeck)
The Flicker (Tony Conrad)
Forecast: Zero (Elo Havetta)
The Fortune Cookie (Billy Wilder)
Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Richard Lester)
Galia (Georges Lautner)
Gambit (Ronald Neame)
Gamera vs. Barugon (Shigeo Tanaka)
Genji monogatari (Kon Ichikawa)
Georgy Girl (Silvio Narizzano)
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (Alan Rafkin)
Glasgow Belongs to Me (Edward McConnell)
La Grande Vadrouille (Gérard Oury)
La guerre est finie (Alain Resnais)
Hand Film (Yvonne Rainer)
Hare Krishna (Jonas Mekas)
Harper (Jack Smight)
Here Is Your Life (Jan Troell)
The Hero (Satyajit Ray)
Historias para no dormir (Narciso Ibáñez Serrador)
Hold Me While I'm Naked (George Kuchar)
The Hot Month of August (Doris Wishman)
House of Joy (Evald Schorm)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Chuck Jones)
How to Steal a Million (William Wyler)
Impostors (Jan Němec)
I Was Happy Here (Desmond Davis)
Incompreso (Luigi Comencini)
Incubus (Leslie Stevens)
Invocation of Canyons and Boulders (for Stan Brakhage) (Dick Higgins)
Irezumi (Yasuzō Masumura)
Isadora: The Biggest Dancer in the World (Ken Russell)
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez)
Jahrgang '45 (Jürgen Böttcher)
Je ne vois rien, je n'entends rien, je ne dis rien (Ben)
Der junge Törless (Volker Schlöndorff)
Khartoum (Basil Dearden)
Kyiv Frescoes (Sergei Parajanov)
Der lachende Mann - Bekenntnisse eines Mörders (Walter Heynowski & Gerhard Scheumann)
Late Season (Zoltán Fábri)
Law of the Border (Lütfi Akad)
Lights (Marie Menken)
La Ligne de démarcation (Claude Chabrol)
Lord Love a Duck (George Axelrod)
Lupe (Andy Warhol)
Made in U.S.A (Jean-Luc Godard)
Mademoiselle (Tony Richardson)
A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann)
The Man in the Frame (Fyodor Khitruk)
Masculin féminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
Ming Green (Gregory Markopoulos)
The Miraculous Virgin (Štefan Uher)
Miss Muerte (Jess Franco)
Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey)
La muerte de un burócrata (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)
My Brother's Wife (Doris Wishman)
Nachricht vom Filmfestival in Venedig (Alexander Kluge)
Nevada Smith (Henry Hathaway)
Night Games (Mai Zetterling)
9 Minutes (James Riddle)
9 Variations on a Dance Theme (Hilary Harris)
La noire de… (Ousmane Sembene)
Noon Wine (Sam Peckinpah)
Notes on the Circus (Jonas Mekas)
The Office (Krzysztof Kieślowski)
Old Shatterhand Came to Us (Dušan Hanák)
One (Yoko Ono)
One Man of the Gambler's Code (Tai Katō)
One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey)
1000 Frames (George Maciunas)
Outer and Inner Space (Andy Warhol)
Operazione paura (Mario Bava)
Opus 74, Version 2 (Eric Andersen)
Paddle to the Sea (William Mason)
Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (Mary Ellen Bute)
Patriotism (Yukio Mishima)
Pearls of the Deep (Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, Věra Chytilová & Jaromil Jireš)
Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (Jean Eustache)
Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
Le Petit Poucet (Walerian Borowczyk)
Pictures at an Exhibition (Osamu Tezuka)
Piece Mandala/End War (Paul Sharits)
The Plague of the Zombies (John Gilling)
Police Car (John Cale)
The Pornographers (Shōhei Imamura)
El precio de un hombre (Eugenio Martín)
The Prime of Life (Juraj Jakubisko)
La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (Roberto Rossellini)
Process Red (Hollis Frampton)
The Professionals (Richard Brooks)
Punch and Judy (Jan Švankmajer)
Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (William Klein)
The Quiet Racket (Gerald Potterton)
The Quiller Memorandum (Michael Anderson)
Rasputin: The Mad Monk (Don Sharp)
Ray Gun Virus (Paul Sharits)
Readymade (Albert Fine)
Red Angel (Yasuzō Masumura)
La Religieuse (Jacques Rivette)
Report from Millbrook (Jonas Mekas)
A Report on the Party and Guests (Jan Němec)
The Reptile (John Gilling)
La resa dei conti (Sergio Sollima)
Return of Daimajin (Kenji Misumi)
Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman)
Il ritorno di Ringo (Duccio Tessari)
Le Roi de cœur (Philippe de Broca)
Romance (Jaromil Jireš)
Rosalie (Walerian Borowczyk)
The Round-Up (Miklós Jancsó)
Samurai Wolf (Hideo Gosha)
The Sand Pebbles (Robert Wise)
Schmeerguntz (Gunvor Nelson)
Screen Test #3 (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test #4 (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test: Ingrid Superstar (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test: Lou Reed (Coke) (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test: Marcel Duchamp (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test: Mary Woronov (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test: Nico (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test: Richard Rheem (Andy Warhol)
Screen Test: Susan Bottomly (Andy Warhol)
Seconds (John Frankenheimer)
The Secret of the Urn (Hideo Gosha)
Sensation of the Century (Nobumasa Kawamoto)
7 Women (John Ford)
The Shooting (Monte Hellman)
Shout (Jeff Perkins)
Signore & signori (Pietro Germi)
Silence Has No Wings (Kazuo Kuroki)
Sins of the Fleshapoids (Mike Kuchar)
66 (Robert Breer)
The Sky Socialist: Environs and Outtakes (Ken Jacobs)
Sky West and Crooked (John Mills)
Smoking (Joe Jones)
El sonido de la muerte (José Antonio Nieves Conde)
Spur der Steine (Frank Beyer)
The Stranger Within a Woman (Mikio Naruse)
Sunday at Six (Lucian Pintilie)
The Sword of Doom (Kihachi Okamoto)
Tant qu'on a la santé (Pierre Étaix)
10 Feet (George Maciunas)
Tendre voyou (Jean Becker)
They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell)
This Property Is Condemned (Sydney Pollack)
Three on a Couch (Jerry Lewis)
Tiempo de morir (Arturo Ripstein)
Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki)
Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Tram (Krzysztof Kieślowski)
Trans-Europ-Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet)
Tristesse des anthropophages (Jean-Denis Bonan)
Tung (Bruce Baillie)
Uccellacci e uccellini (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Une étudiante d'aujourd'hui (Éric Rohmer)
Un homme et une femme (Claude Lelouch)
Unsere Afrikareise (Peter Kubelka)
The Velvet Underground & Nico (Andy Warhol)
Violence at Noon (Nagisa Ōshima)
The Voice of the Water (Bert Haanstra)
War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk)
The War of the Gargantuas (Ishirō Honda)
The Wedding Party (Brian De Palma et al.)
What's Up, Tiger Lily? (Woody Allen)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols)
Wings (Larisa Shepitko)
Woman of the Lake (Kijū Yoshida)
Word Movie (Paul Sharits)
Wrath of Daimajin (Kazuo Mori)
The Wrong Box (Bryan Forbes)
You're a Big Boy Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
YUL 871 (Jacques Godbout)
Zatoichi's Pilgrimage (Kazuo Ikehiro)
Zatoichi's Vengeance (Tokuzō Tanaka)

[therewillbeblus]

Swo, can you please add Georges Lautner's Galia?

[swo17]

Done

[therewillbeblus]

Whoops, far more importantly, I meant to ask about Yvonne Rainer's short Hand Film as well

[swo17]

Also done

[yoshimori]

Thanks for the list. I also have the following shorts/fragments on my 1966 list and would certainly vote for them if they meet your date criteria: "Kiev Frescoes" (Paradjanov); "Ming Green" (Markopoulos); "Castro Street" and "Tung" (Baillie); and "Aleph" (Berman). The last has a complicated history, but IMDB lists it as 1966, fwiw.

The Conner may be #1 for me (my favorite music video), and I'd recommend everyone who hasn't seen them watch Fighting Elegy (my favorite Suzuki) and Cul-de-sac (my favorite Polanski). Lots of good films here.

[therewillbeblus]

I totally missed Breakaway when scanning through the first time- I had it as '67 on my own list, thanks for the flag! Great piece of work

[swo17]

Thanks for the list. I also have the following shorts/fragments on my 1966 list and would certainly vote for them if they meet your date criteria: "Kiev Frescoes" (Paradjanov); "Ming Green" (Markopoulos); "Castro Street" and "Tung" (Baillie); and "Aleph" (Berman). The last has a complicated history, but IMDB lists it as 1966, fwiw.

Aleph was already on the list. I've added the others

[Rayon Vert]

Please add Hitchcock Torn Curtain

[swo17]

Added

[domino harvey]

Can you please add:

Arabesque
Le Roi de cœur
Tendre voyou
This Property is Condemned

[swo17]

Done

[knives]

Can you please add the following:
Человек в рамке’ Directed by Fyodor Khitruk
The Bible: In the Beginning… Directed by John Huston
展覧会の絵’ Directed by Osamu Tezuka
丹下左膳 飛燕居合斬り’ Directed by Hideo Gosha


Thanks.

[domino harvey]

I should say that Arabesque has only one thing going for it, and that's that it is the most stunning example of a director entertaining themselves at the complete detriment of anything else because they know the project is a waste of time. Like, this is God Tier unnecessary directorial flourishes and over-virtuosity. You've been warned!

Oh, and please add Blindfold as well (If this were a list of cinematic clothing from 1966, Claudia Cardinale's chorine outfit is #1)

[Red Screamer]

I should say that Arabesque has only one thing going for it, and that's that it is the most stunning example of a director entertaining themselves at the complete detriment of anything else because they know the project is a waste of time. Like, this is God Tier unnecessary directorial flourishes and over-virtuosity. You've been warned!

I watched Modesty Blaise last night and I think that pretty much describes Losey's film too. Though Donen is less bitter and more fun to hang out with than Losey is.

[swo17]

I've added the titles mentioned above

[brundlefly]

Mike Kuchar's "Sins of the Fleshapoids" is a happy-making thing.

[Toland's Mitchell]

I know some Billy Wilder fans aren't crazy about The Fortune Cookie, but I like it quite a bit and would like to see it added. Also missing is the spaghetti Western, The Big Gundown. Although this one could be 1967. Letterboxd has it in '66 and according to Wikipedia, its first release was in Spain in Nov '66, however imdb has its first release in Italy in March of '67. The 1967 Italy release seems likelier but thought it was worth mentioning. Just as long as it's eligible for one of the years.

[therewillbeblus]

Recommended 'shortlist'

SpoilerShow

Alvarez Kelly
Andrei Rublev
Battle of Algiers
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
Blow-Up
Breakaway
Brigitte et Brigitte
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo
Chimes at Midnight
Daisies
Le Deuxième Souffle
Dutchman
Fighting Elegy
The Flicker
Galia
Hand Film
The Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e uccellini)
Kill Baby, Kill! (Operazione paura)
Lord Love a Duck
Masculin Feminin
The Miraculous Virgin
Night Games
Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus
Persona
Ray Gun Virus
A Report on the Party and the Guests
Red Angel
Schmeerguntz
Seconds
The Shooting
Three on a Couch
Violence at Noon

[swo17]

I've added the Kuchar, Wilder, and Sollima

[therewillbeblus]

In case anyone else likes fun, I'd like to plug two incredibly entertaining films from this year that may not have the largest audiences on this board:

A Big Hand for the Little Lady: Even with all the talented principals involved, I never expected this western-dressed chamber thriller to be so engrossing. Cook’s immaculate direction of Carroll’s juicy, acidic script makes for a steadily involving development of social dynamics with creative forward momentum around (mostly) a single hand of cards! I was reminded of Mamet, as domino wrote in his initial writeup, but also Tarantino’s primarily concentrated-setting theatre pieces, in that Cook manages to take a space pulsating with aggressively combative energies, and imbue it with a tonal zest that is intimately inviting rather than claustrophobically repelling. The scene-chewing dialogue is appropriately hammy at times when delivered by characters who are offensively hammy as front personalities, but then the dialed-down explanations and self-conscious exchanges as power dynamics shift between individuals are equally intoxicating, and demonstrate the eclectic hold these collaborators have on their material. This is a film that understands several things on levels of mastery: how to get the most out of performers, how to stage scenes and modulate a screenplay’s humor, wit, and suspense without defaulting to intrusive action, and most importantly, how people function in groups. Like Mamet, that last strength's observational talent permits the script's elasticity around the ‘realism’ of dialogue, because the authenticity of behavioral psychology is so apt that the rich lines don't need to be. The narrative evolution that takes place in 90 minutes under purely social conditions is nearly unparalleled in cinema, and I highly suggest everyone who likes movies check this out. It seems to contain all the broad enticing gifts of cinema that should be universally respected and enjoyed amongst members here.

Alvarez Kelly: After a series of heady viewings, this was a nice palette cleanser, and the only film new to me of the batch. Holden plays an apolitical lone ranger emulating a western James Bond in nearly every way; unpersuadable and cool-headed, a ladies-man and calm conniver, and barely sweats under his supremely confident demeanor - even when getting kidnapped or losing limbs! Holden also exhibits gravitas in the exact conditions where Bond would become serious in a close-quarters social conflict, and his one-off condescending lines are explicitly written for a Bond scenario. It’s such a self-conscious imitation that it’s a testament to Dmytryk’s temper control that the film holds together as a sincere work. Widmark adds some glue, portraying an ultra-serious and impassioned complementary figure (a bit like his role in the dynamic of Two Rode Together, though with both parts emphasized to their absurd limits) and the film admirably but noticeably refrains from taking a stand on whether it’s better to be an individualist or a collectivist in a political landscape.

We’re certainly attracted to Holden’s titular nonconformist, who is too magnetically suave to alienate himself from his milieu, but he’s also an impassive anti-Bond playing around in a spy’s sandbox. His acclimation to the racket assists in a blending of worlds and the narrative is less interested in making us question the morality around being political or not, and far more passionate about the trajectory of development the characters accrue as they engage with their social context, as well as the comic possibilities that emerge when Dmytryk fiddles with tone. This is all-around a competently constructed, immensely entertaining, and intelligently choreographed picture in its novel setpieces and adoptions of swinging 60s pop culture and counterculture ideas translated into cold war western iconography. Anyone looking for a fun and funny late-genre entry that maintains an internal logic without descending into parody, check this out and have a great time.

Does anybody know if either the Italian or French blu-rays of Alvarez Kelly are any good, or have removable subs?

[domino harvey]

Both great films that will be on my list

[therewillbeblus]

From a cursory internet search, it seems like the newer Italian blu is six minutes shorter (I can't find any stills or details on PQ), and the French disc has removable subs and is region free

[domino harvey]

It’s Sony, isn’t it? Could see it coming stateside from one of the usual suspects

[therewillbeblus]

I got it for ~$15 on eBay, shipping included, which felt like a good deal compared to other international prices I saw. Looks like a sharp image too from the stills available online