The 1968 Mini-List

[swo17]

RESULTS

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

Discussion for this mini-list will run until November 30. On December 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 eligible films. You will have until the end of the day December 18 (first Sunday on or after the 14th) to submit a ballot that way.

[domino harvey]

Please add Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell and Where Eagles Dare

[swo17]

Done (on the new database)

[therewillbeblus]

Where Eagles Dare rules- easily one of the best 'Men on a Mission' movies. Please add David Brooks' The Wind is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea

[swo17]

Got it

[Rayon Vert]

Please add Signs of Life and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. If... is also 1968 on IMDB.

[swo17]

I have If.... as 1969, as both Criterion and MoC have it. It looks like it opened in the UK right at the end of 1968, and then everywhere else in 1969. It also won the Palme d'or in 1969. I lean heavily toward those 1969 indicators, but yes, IMDb and Letterboxd both call it 1968. Does anyone have strong feelings either way?

[Rayon Vert]

Didn’t it make quite a splash when it premiered? Wiki also has it as a 1968 film. I’d say it goes there.

[swo17]

Didn’t it make quite a splash when it premiered? Wiki also has it as a 1968 film. I’d say it goes there.

If no one else cares, I guess I'll put it in 1968 since there's a good case for it

[yoshimori]

Master of the lists! Please to add Matsumoto's "For My Crushed Right Eye" and Teshigahara's Burnt Map.

All. The latter is one of my favorite films ever and will jockey with 2001 and Petulia for my top spot this year. Every frame is a compositional masterpiece, and it's one of the very best examples of its genre -- schlumpy private investigator searches for a missing man whom no one really seems to want to find. Also recommending Hani's Inferno of First Love, for those who haven't seen it.

[swo17]

I have the Matsumoto as 1969, which agrees with Letterboxd. Helpfully, IMDb puts it in 2019

[yoshimori]

... Helpfully, IMDb puts it in 2019

Ha!

[swo17]

Here is the official list of eligible films for 1968. If you think I've missed anything, please bring it up here in the thread

[domino harvey]

Alexandre le bienheureux (Yves Robert)
/R/Antiwork: the Movie. Philippe Noiret's overworked farmer mourns his wife's passing by refusing to get out of bed, leading to a reactionary panic amongst his neighbors who fear the moral degradation of refusing the work on the community. This is a sweet and generally good-natured comedy that would be a great movie for kids, as all of the gags are family friendly and Noiret is accompanied on his anti-journey by his smart dog, who Noiret never even bothers to name ("Chien"), who procures daily food for Noiret by traveling into the village with a basket and a shopping list. The dog brings some of the best laughs not because he's cute (though he is) but because how others interact with him is funny (something I wish more "cute animal" movies would realize): like the puppets are treated in a Muppet movie, everyone interacts with the dog as though he were human and can be understood or communicated with as such. Also, fans of Freddy Got Fingered will be crestfallen to learn that this film beat Tom Green to one of that film's most memorably oddball visual gags decades earlier.

My only reservation for what is an otherwise genteel movie is that I wish the women in Noiret's life weren't painted so one-dimensionally as joy-sucking shrews... but then I followed this up with another Noiret movie, Tango, and holy shit that might be the most stridently misogynistic movie I've ever seen. So, like, this is basically the Feminine Mystique in comparison!

...It's also time for my monthly diatribe against boutique labels. Do people who run labels not realize how strongly this film's message would resonate with a lot of people who post-Covid are waking up to the realization that they don't need to push themselves to work 60+ hour weeks to be happy? This movie would be fucking HUGE right now if someone released it in the states. Plus, like, just put your logo on this fantastically simple poster and you're done:

[ryannichols7]

I don't see All My Good Countrymen on the form despite being 68 in the "list assignments" thread - one of the first ones I plan to hit

[swo17]

I've got it as 1969 now on the new system

[alacal2]

The Anniversary (Roy Ward Baker) please.

[swo17]

Added

[the preacher]

A few contenders to add:

Seyyit Han: Topragin Gelini / Bride of the Earth
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193493/

Koritsia ston ilio / Girls in the Sun
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135512/

Egri csillagok / Stars of Eger
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062925/

Hasta el viento tiene miedo / Even the Wind Is Afraid
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061752/

Grazie zia / Thank You Aunt*
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063033/

*Lou Castel reminds you to vote for

[swo17]

Added

[BrianB]

Can you add Black Panthers (Varda) or do you have it as another year?

[swo17]

I have it as 1970 per the Criterion set but I see that several sources call it 1968. It was certainly shot that year

[DarkImbecile]

For whatever reason, among the big titles of this year I don’t have as many blind spots or classics in need of a rewatch as usual, so my first two viewings for this list were a little more off the beaten path:

A Dandy in Aspic (Mann/Harvey) — This slow-burn spy thriller can’t decide whether to commit to what I’m guessing is the more cynical, ironic tone of its source material or indulge the sexy charm of a slightly more grounded Bond film, but I’m also not sure it could have fully succeeded at either anyway. The plot is largely ridiculous, but it does manage to establish some decent atmosphere in a handful of scenes, and Laurence Harvey sells a kind of weary tension as the titular dandy, a Russian double agent working in the British intelligence services. 

It’s hard to tell if the more obnoxious stylistic affectations are the responsibility of a declining Anthony Mann or of Harvey (who was suddenly thrust into the director’s chair after Mann’s death partway through filming), but the attempts to convey the mental state of Harvey’s spy when under duress with audio-visual distortion and memory fragments are pretty unsuccessful. 

Mia Farrow is quite good at providing the sexy charm I mentioned, but her character is ultimately completely superfluous to the narrative and themes, just providing someone beautiful for Harvey to flirt with, sleep with, and use as a means of establishing a tiny modicum of humanity for his character. 

Not disastrous on any one front, but nothing better than mediocre in any respect either.


Genocide (Nihonmatsu) — “Humanity’s facing extinction, and now this!”

This may be a low-budget creature feature whose ambition far exceeds the capacity of its production design, but it is also an absolutely deranged genre mash-up with an ending so audacious that I laughed for a solid minute after the end title card came up. I can’t pretend it’s well-made enough from pretty much any perspective to be recommended without a lot of equivocation, but I also can’t deny how glad I am to have watched it or how much I’m hoping others will seek it out just for the experience.

It’s one of those films where half the joy of having watched it is trying to explain all of its insanity to others, so I’m going to self-indulgently do so below for those who won’t just watch this blind for the fun of it:

SpoilerShow

MINOR SPOILERS:
For the first 75 minutes, this is just your basic atomic anxiety monster/mad scientist movie about insects wanting to eradicate all humans to eliminate the possibility of global nuclear destruction, infused with some not entirely coherent geopolitical/sexual/racial commentary on issues ranging from abortion to Auschwitz, and featuring an interlude of psychedelic imagery, close-ups of wasps chewing on human flesh, and lines like these:

“The insects are singing about destroying humanity…”

“Insects have babies too, that’s why I asked you not to capture them.”

“Are you a biologist too?” “No, I just love insects, because they never lie.”

There’s also, among other things, a missing thermonuclear weapon being hunted by the American military and communist spies; domestic melodrama between a philandering entomologist assistant named Joji, his devoted Japanese wife, and the blonde white girl he’s been sleeping with during insect-finding expeditions; a race against time by a heroic scientist to save his assistant from wrongful murder charges; and the prolonged physical and psychological torture of a black American airman by basically every character and most of the insects in the film.

MAJOR SPOILERS:
For all the wild specifics of the everything that came before (including the mad scientist villain being revealed as Joji’s girl on the side, who was a child in Auschwitz and now believes humanity must be eradicated) the final ten minutes are really where things escalate.

Joji the cheating husband sacrifices himself to save his pregnant wife, Yukari, from the extra-venomous killer insects in a scene that manages to be both harrowing and laughably ridiculous. After being rescued, she steals a tiny boat with an outboard motor and no supplies and flees into the Pacific Ocean to “have my baby somewhere without any insects”…

Meanwhile, tension with the American military spills over when they kidnap the hero scientist at gunpoint to secure his anti-venom for the US; they also decide to just set off their missing nuclear weapon (killing everyone in the area and raining radiation on Japan) rather than risk the communists finding it. Our hero tries to stop this, fails, then another American airman shoots the callous Colonel Gordon to prevent nuclear disaster… but Gordon sets off the bomb anyway, the other American shoots himself, the plane flies into a swarm of insects and explodes, and the film ends with Yukari floating in the ocean in the shadow of the mushroom cloud that has consumed every other character in the film and may or may not set off World War III. Oh, and the genocidal insects are still trying to kill all humans.

Just a stunningly bleak, bitter ending to a film that looked headed to a much more conventional conclusion only moments before.

[TMDaines]

Annychka, please.

Edit: this might be 1969 actually.

[swo17]

Yeah, I have it as a 1969 film