Nominees: Psycho, La Dolce Vita, The Virgin Spring, Breathless, L'Avventura, Wild River, Macario, Devi, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, The Cloud-Capped Star, Le Trou, Baishey Shravana
Oscars pick: The Apartment
Nominees: The Alamo, Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, the Sundowners
The 60s and early 70s are considered a golden age for Hollywood. Filmmakers were breaking free from the bonds of the censorship code, which allowed for freedom of expression and experimentation. The summer blockbuster wouldn't become part of the vernacular until 1975, with the release of Jaws (a movie that changed everything. Not always for the better), so while you still had big, event-like pictures (the James Bond series) you also saw an equal share of challenging, art cinema.
Anyhoo --- I've taken away Oscar's and had him just miss the cut in other years, but this time out I’ll not bypass the work from one of my favorite directors, Billy Wilder. While there are outstanding movies to choose from in 1960, and my list of nominees reads like a "who’s who" of cinematic brilliance: Hitchcock, Fellini, Ray, Godard, Kazan, Kubrick, Bergman, Sen, Bunuel, Naruse, and Antonioni (Jesus, this was a golden age). I simply love the Apartment with a passion and believe the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences got it right when they selected Billy Wilder's classic as its best of the year.
Among my nominees: Breathless (aka, À bout de souffle (By a Tether) helped give birth to the French New Wave and is Jean Luc Godard's jazzy free-form ode to the American films genres that inspired him as writer and filmmaker. What it lacks in discipline (and there are stretches where the improv gets dull) it makes up for in attitude and the hip frothiness of its stars, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. It also boasts of another one of my favorite film quotes - "My greatest ambition in life is to become immortal... and then die."
Le Dolce Vita is one of Fellini's twin masterpieces (along with 8 ½, which will be his next feature). The flip side of Le Dolce was Michelangelo Antonioni's L’Avventura, a mystery that really isn't a mystery, but more an examination of the idle rich who have everything and nothing.
Bergman's tragic, brutal tale of revenge and redemption, The Virgin Spring, Hitchcock's spars, scary, beautifully photographed and scripted Psycho (which is only tripped up by that last scene in the Psychiatrists office), Kazan's Wild River, Ray's Devi and my other nominees are all superb motion pictures – but I just can’t deny the great affection I have for the Apartment. It's a movie that draws me in, in so many ways: Intellectually, emotionally - - it's cynically funny, but it also has warmth to it. Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine share an on screen chemistry that is second to none, and Fred MacMurray does a damn good 'arse hole’. Plus the script is note perfect. Time magazine wrote that it's... "a comedy of men's-room humours and water-cooler politics that now and then among the belly laughs says something serious and sad about the struggle for success, about what it often does to a man, and about the horribly small world of big business"
Mr. Wilder, this Felix is ‘finally’ for you.
Honorable Mentions:
Montgomery Clift, Wild River * Burt Lancaster, Elmer Gantry * Toshirō Mifune, The Bad Sleep Well * Jack Lemmon, The Apartment * Albert Finney, Sat Morning & Sun Night * Marcello Mastroianni, La Dolce Vita * Karlheinz Böhm, Peeping Tom * Soumitra Chatterjee, Devi * John Mills & Alex Guinness, Tunes of Glory * Laurence Olivier, The Entertainer
Best Actress: Sharmila Tagore, Devi
Honorable Mentions:
Shirley MacLaine, The Apartment * Hideko Takamine, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs * Nutan Behl, Sujata * Sophia Loren, Two Women * Supriya Choudhury, The Cloud-Capped Star * Birgitta Valberg, The Virgin Spring * Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners
Best Supporting Actor: Chhabi Biswas, Devi
Honorable Mentions:
Shirley MacLaine, The Apartment * Hideko Takamine, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs * Nutan Behl, Sujata * Sophia Loren, Two Women * Supriya Choudhury, The Cloud-Capped Star * Birgitta Valberg, The Virgin Spring * Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners
Shout out to Martin Stephens, Village of the Damned
