1965 - 52nd Ceremony

The Story of a Prostitute (Director: Seijun Suzuki)
Nominees: Doctor Zhivago, Pierrot le Fou, The Hill, Chimes at Midnight, Red Beard, Simon of the Desert, The Shop on Main Street, Repulsion, Le Bonheur, Rapture, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Tokyo Olympiad

Oscars pick: The Sound of Music
Nominees: Darling, Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools, A Thousand Clowns

I must admit, Seijun Suzuki's over-stylized and comic booky flicks have not been my cup of tea. They aren't bad, just nothing I was over the moon for. And his knack for making “incomprehensible films” actually got him fired from Nikkatsu Studios. So, to say this movie blindsided me would be an understatement - Prostitute is more spiritual and cerebral, and less incomprehensible than anything I'd seen from the director. It's still visually stylized and audacious, but you now find these traits supported by a story that calls to mind Mizoguchi and Kobayashi. In fact, I was actually in the midst of reading Stephen Prince's book on Kobayashi when I caught Seijun's film - and its detailed examinations on imperial codes of honor, the nature of obedience, and how that fosters the brutality, and attitudes of soldiers seen in his pictures, actually added additional weight and context to Prostitute.*

The story concerns the title character, Harumi (Yumiko Nogawa) who works at a military outpost during the Sino-Japanese war as a “comfort girl”. Here she comes in contact with the cruel and abusive Lt. Narita (Isao Tamagawa) and his meek adjutant, Mikami (Tamio Kawachi) - who she originally plans to use, but falls in love with instead. Mikami later brings shame to his unit when he (with Harumi) is captured by the enemy.

As stated in the Criterion interview, Suzuki sought to show not only the barbarity but the "ludicrousness of war" - and he certainly succeeds in that quest. What also sets this apart from Kobayashi and even Mizoguchi (SPOILER ALERT!) is that there is no comeuppance for Narita. While the other directors could be bleak, they'd give you a few shafts of light at the end (Sansho), or show the monster defeated and left to die in shit (The Human Condition) - but none of that happens here, the assholes live to reclaim their so-called 'honor', which sits on a foundation of lies - but no matter, to their minds they've fixed the problem. As for our lovers, there is no hope. He is destroyed by blind obedience to his country and the emperor, she by her obsessive love for him.**

The film looks eye-popping incredible. Swirling dust storms and desolate landscapes add mood.  The way the camera frames Mikami when he turns to silently look at his executioner, or the bit when Harumi runs through a war zone, lit by explosions that surround her. Later, when she and Mikami are united in a trench, there's a moment of peace, before soldiers suddenly leap across the trench above them. Equally unforgettable are the stunning dream sequences. Scene after scene this picture knocks your socks off.

I wasn't expecting to find my movie of the year when I pushed play at Criterion's streaming site, not from this director. But his unique blending of style and substance carries the stroke of genius. In my opinion, it's Suzuki's finest hour.

Oscar? While I liked 2 of their nominees (Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools), I wasn't so enamored with the film the Academy selected as the year's best - the sappy, manipulative Sound of Music. Still, it's an institution, beloved by many - so I can't really call it a blunder.

The Academy left out a couple of great ones, among them, Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight, which was made with no budget but still is considered one of the director's finest. Welles is the perfect Falstaff and as a director he is still the master of the tracking shot, deep focus shots and can compose a scene like no other, e.g. the great battle which had to be carefully framed and staged, using quick edits to make his mere 100-armed extras seem an even larger force.

I also liked the intense wartime prison story, The Hill, which features Sean Connery at his best. Roman Polanski's Repulsion, which is anchored by an unnerving performance from Catherine Deneuve... despite her voice being dubbed I named her my top actress. And my supporting actress, Silvia Pinal, was a funny, sexy Satan in Buñuel's Simon of the Desert.

* The Story of a Prostitute is an adaptation of a Taijiro Tamura novel, which was previously filmed as Escape at Dawn (scripted by Akira Kurosawa) and released in 1950. I've not seen that version, but from what I've read, it's more romantic in tone.

** Critic David Chute equates her need, to a drowning person clinging to a life-preserver. And that's the perfect way to describe it.

Best Actor: Sean Connery, The Hill
Honorable Mentions: 

Richard Burton, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold * Omar Sharif, Doctor Zhivago * Terence Stamp, The Collector * Oskar Werner, Ship of Fools * Rod Steiger, The Pawnbroker * Sidney Poitier, The Slender Thread and A Patch of Blue * Mikuni Rentarô, Kiga kaikyô * Soumitra Chatterjee, The Coward

Best Actress: Catherine Deneuve, Repulsion
Honorable Mentions:

Julie Christie, Dr. Zhivago & Darling * Jutta Hoffmann, Karla * Ida Kaminska, Shop on Main Street * Samantha Eggar, The Collector * Anna Karina, Pierrot le Fou * Stefania Sandrelli, I Knew Her Well * Anne Bancroft, Slender Thread * Madhabi Mukherjee, The Coward * Hayley Mills, Sky West and Crooked * Sachiko Hidari, Kiga kaikyô * Elizabeth Hartman, A Patch of Blue * Yumiko Nogawa, TSoaP

Supporting Actress: Silvia Pinal, Simon of the Desert

Supporting Actor: Harry Andrews, The Hill

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1964 - 51st Ceremony

Hamlet (Director: Grigori Kozintsev)

Nominees: I Am Cuba, Charulata, A Hard Days Night, Dr. Strangelove, The Train, Goldfinger, Pale Flower, Nothing but a Man, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Seven Days in May, Onibaba, Night of the Iguana, Nobody Waved Goodbye, Yearning, Marnie, Woman in the Dunes, Loving Couples

Oscars pick: My Fair Lady
Nominees: Becket, Dr. Strangelove, Mary Poppins, Zorba the Greek

Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a fantastic picture, a witty anti-war satire that shows what happens when the inmates and warmongers and the ineffectual run the asylum. Of the Academy's nominated features, it should have won the Oscar without a second thought. My Fair Lady was the top dog - a decent film, but it wasn't the overall best, or even the best musical... or even the second-best musical for that matter. To riff on Danny Peary's comments on the season: the bittersweet French romance The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Beatles A Hard Days Night showed off a greater imagination, stronger camerawork, and featured superior music to My Fair Lady.

My Picture of the Year, however, is the Russian filming of Hamlet (Gamlet). Director Grigori Kozintsev restores the political aspects that Oliver removed in his version of the play, tightens up, and takes out other scenes. He really gets into Hamlet's interior thoughts. Dialogue that was often spoken out loud in other plays and movies, is interpreted as inner monologues. Hearing these words in Russia was strange, but it didn't take long for me to get used to it. No, it's not as pretty and poetic – but the emotional cadences remain. Some famous lines are lost, but all told it didn't hurt the overall effect.

Visually it's a stunner. Kozintsev said that it was his aim to "make visible the poetic atmosphere of the play." And in this, he succeeds brilliantly. The castle itself is more wide open than in other versions, but it still feels like a prison. The beautifully staged and photographed appearance of Hamlet's ghostly father is marked by shadow, crumbling architecture, and flowing capes.

Performances are all strong, and actress Anastasiya Vertinskaya was an amazing Ophelia. There was a tangible sense of fragility in her that made Ophelia's final scenes heartbreaking.

The rich and noteworthy score was written by the great Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich.

Despite a few things that are not purely Shakespearean, this was the best filming of Hamlet I've ever seen. There were no lulls, no moments when I wasn't completely enthralled by what was happening on screen.

A close contender to Hamlet was I Am Cuba. This hard-to-find movie is one that I’ve wanted to see for ages. So, I was jacked to find it at FilmStruck. It’s pure communist propaganda, but visually impressive: Stunning photography, lighting, and camera movement were seen throughout. It earns its stars for what it achieves at a cinematic level alone.

🎬 Trivia by the numbers! This superlative year at the movies boasts the most nominated films with 18! Marine is Alfred Hitchcock's 17th and final Best Picture nominee; Pale Flower is Masahiro Shinoda's 1st (of 4). Deborah Kerr received her 5th and final nom, Anthony Quinn his 4th and last. 

🎭 Acting!
Attenborough showed his range in '64: Reserved in Seance, OTT, and cartoonish in Batasi at the start... but stick with it. He's really quite remarkable. 

Actress was tough because I really liked Seberg, but Mukherjee is so, so extra special. And she shows incredible growth as an actress. As wonderful as she was in the Big City (1963), she's much more subtle here. She's not doing the standard expression thing ('I'm concerned, so I'll crinkle my brow') but giving us the inner struggle - the way she moves, that look in her eyes that shows there's something, some idea or thought going on behind them. In a piece about the actress, Karen Bali wrote... "Madhabi makes the central role of Charu her own. It is without a doubt one of the greatest performances of Indian Cinema. She lives the role. She is Charulata. To date, Madhabi in Charulata remains the benchmark for what an ideal Tagore heroine should be..."

Best Actress: Madhabi Mukherjee, Charulata
Honorable Mentions:
Jean Seberg, Lilith * Mariko Kaga, Pale Flower * Anne Bancroft, The Pumpkin Eater * Pamela Franklin, The Third Secret * Nobuko Otowa & Jitsuko Yoshimura, Onibaba * Deborah Kerr & Ava Gardner, Night of the Iguana * Ingrid Bergman, The Visit * Sophia Loren, Marriage, Italian Style * Kim Stanley, Seance on a Wet Afternoon * Constance Towers, The Naked Kiss

Best Actor: Richard Attenborough, Guns at Batasi & Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Honorable Mentions: Tom Courtenay, King & Country * Anthony Quinn, Zorba the Greek, The Visit * Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove * Peter O'Toole, Becket * Richard Burton, Becket, Night of the Iguana * Soumitra Chatterjee, Charulata * Peter Ustinov, Topkapi * Ivan Dixon, Nothing but a Man *  Christopher Plummer, The Fall of the Roman Empire * Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Hamlet

Supporting Actor: Sterling Hayden and George C. Scott, Dr. Strangelove

Supporting Actress: Anastasiya Vertinskaya, Hamlet







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1962 - 49th Ceremony

Harakiri (Director: Masaki Kobayashi)

Nominees: To Kill a Mockingbird, Cléo from 5 to 7, The Trial, The Exterminating Angel, The Miracle Worker, The Devil's Trap, Kanchenjungha, The Inheritance, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, The Graceful Brute, Ivan's Childhood, The Given Word, Lawrence of Arabia

Oscars pick: Lawrence of Arabia
Nominees: The Longest Day, The Music Man, Mutiny on the Bounty, To Kill a Mockingbird

Viewed on the television, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia could sometimes seem as dry as the desert it's set in - but in the theater, it was a whole different ball game, and those lengthy scenes (Sharif's long ride towards the well, for one) weren't dry at all, but brilliant and captivating. While told on a grand scale, it's the small things I noticed on the big screen - the slow spreading blood on a keffiyeh, to the sparkling sands in medium shots. Beyond that, the desert scenery is both gorgeous and formidable, and the story is brimming with humor, horror, adventure, and sharp character interaction; plus, Peter O’Toole is impressively charismatic, and runs through a range of emotion, both high and low. Oscar selected a great one for its best picture. 

However, Felix is going with another - the transcendent Harakiri - a brutal but brilliant indictment of the Bushido code.

It's a film that cuts deep emotionally and challenges you intellectually. It asks you to be an active viewer, to puzzle out the mystery and the implications behind it - what it means to this society, and to governments, and ideologies and humanity as a whole. It's scathing and says, "to hell with the rhetoric and sloganeering... let us see the unvarnished truth behind the bullshit!"

It runs long but doesn't feel long. There's not an unnecessary scene because it all matters, everything speaks to the themes of honor (true honor, not the facade put up by those in power), of what it means to be a parent, what it means to be a human being.

Harakiri is a film of visual widescreen beauty, with images that are meaningful and tell the story as much as the dialog. It's incredibly acted - carried by Tatsuya Nakadai's somber performance. All in all, it's a towering cinematic achievement in a year filled with fantastic pictures.

Note: Here's a list of other movies I liked. Spotlight on '62

Best Actress: Anne Bancroft, The Miracle Worker
Honorable Mentions:
Leslie Caron, The L-Shaped Room * Irene Papas, Electra & Antigone * Anna Karina, Vivre sa vie * Meena Kumari, Sahib bibi aur Ghulam * Sayuri Yoshinaga, Foundry Town * Corinne Marchand, Cleo from 5 to 7 * Bette Davis, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane * Janet Margolin, David and Lisa * Ineko Arima, Love Under the Crucifix

Best Actor: Tatsuya Nakadai, Harakiri (pictured top)

Honorable Mentions:
Leonardo Villar, The Given Word * Toshirō Mifune, Sanjuro * Gregory Peck, To Kill a Mockingbird * James Mason, Lolita * James Stewart & John Wayne, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance * Anthony Perkins, The Trial * Robert Mitchum, Cape Fear * Peter O'Toole, Lawrence of Arabia * Soumitra Chatterjee, Abhijan * Per Oscarsson, The Doll

Supporting Actress: Angela Lansbury, The Manchurian Candidate
Runners up: Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker, Mary Badham, To Kill a Mockingbird & Margaret Johnston, Night of the Eagle

Supporting Actor: Peter Sellers, Lolita (pictured above)

  

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1963 - 50th Ceremony

8½ (Director: Federico Fellini)
Nominees: The Big City, The Birds, Contempt, This Sporting Life, America, America, Muriel, Hud, An Actors Revenge, High and Low

Oscars pick: Tom Jones
Nominees: America, America, Cleopatra, How the West Was Won, Lilies of the Field

It seems every year my beloved Fellini is surpassed by slightly superior efforts, but in 1963 there was not a shadow of a doubt. The year belonged to him. As much as I like my nominees, none of them quite approach the epic genius of Federico’s masterpiece.

8½ is an exhilarating viewing experience and it fits my film/artistic sensibilities to a “T”. It’s surreal and challenging, but not so completely enigmatic that I found it impossible to understand. Like most Fellini films it is deeply personal: In trying to make a movie, Federico hit a block - and so he made the movie about struggling to make a movie.

The picture is a banquet for the eyes and imagination; some images were created simply for the pleasure of their aesthetic value alone -- which has confounded critics over the years (the casting of old women as Priests. There was no secret symbolism attached to it as some supposed, Fellini just like the way they looked). While other images were done for clear reasons - to illustrate the mindset and character of the people in a scene - as in a driving sequence, where the male passenger is hidden in shadow, and the female driver next to him is immersed in light.

In truth though, I prefer to simply bathe in the glorious madness of it all.  The movie has one foot set in inspired intention. It addresses the nature of the creative process and the struggle to find meaning when you're at a crossroads - and that deserves thoughtful consideration, true. But the other foot is there for unfettered artistic minds. It’s an exaltation of imagination and creativity, and one should just let go and drink that all in.

Italian film historian Peter Bondanella called 8½, "art film colossal" – and considered it equitable to poetry, with cadence and meter. On the end scene, he wrote that "Fellini wants his audience to experience an image designed to produce an emotion, not to analyze an idea designed to make an intellectual argument."

Finally: It wasn't a great year for Oscar, neither Cleopatra, or How the West Was Won deserved nominations, and its winner, Tom Jones, was simply idiotic and too self-satisfied in how cute it thinks it is.

Other movies I liked in 1963: Lilies of the Field, Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, Bandini, The Silence, The Leopard, Jason and the Argonauts, The Servant, Billy Liar, The Executioner (El Verdugo), Le Joli Mai, Legend of a Duel to the Death, The Sun in a Net, Young Aphrodites, Barnali, The Haunting, The Great Escape, From Russia With Love, Charade

Best Actor: Richard Harris, This Sporting Life
Honorable Mentions: 

Toshirō Mifune, High and Low * Paul Newman, Hud * Dirk Bogarde & James Fox, The Servant * Sidney Poitier, Lilies of the Field * Gunnar Bjornstrand, Winter Light * Marcello Mastroianni, 8 1/2 * Kinnosuke Nakamura, Bushido, Samurai Saga * Nino Manfredi, The Executioner * Tom Courtenay, Billy Liar * Maurice Ronet, The Fire Within

Best Actress: Nutan Behl, Bandini
Honorable Mentions:
Madhabi Mukherjee, The Big City * Sachiko Hidari, She and He & The Insect Woman * Julie Harris, The Haunting * Judy Garland, I Could Go on Singing * Rachel Roberts, This Sporting Life * Audrey Hepburn, Charade * Delphine Seyrig, Muriel * Ingrid Thulin, Winter Light & The Silence * Barbara Krafftówna, How to Be Loved

Supporting Actress: (Tie) Patricia Neal, Hud & Julie Christie, Billy Liar (pictured)

Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas, Hud

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1961 - 48th Ceremony

Last Year at Marienbad (Director: Alain Resnais)
Nominees: Viridiana, Yojimbo, La Notte, The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer, Mother Joan of the Angels, One Eyed Jacks, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Through a Glass Darkly, The Innocents, The Young One, Dancing in the Rain

Oscars pick: West Side Story
Nominees: Fanny, Guns of Navarone, The Hustler, Judgment at Nuremberg

A modernist work of art, a master class of form over traditional narrative. Last Year at Marienbad has been called a “film about the power of cinema”, and a story of repressed memory, or false memory. But it’s ultimately whatever you think it is.

Me? I think memory is a ghost. And this is a ghost story, fueled by an unsettling desire.

Throughout the picture, a man, credited as X, tries to persuade A, who doesn’t remember him, that they had an affair the year before. Is X’s pursuit romantic, or is it harassment?

Screenwriter Robbe-Grillett originally wrote in a rape scene and felt that X had probably never met A before. Director Resnais removed the rape and was of the opinion that the two had probably met a year earlier. This collision of contrasting ideas lends an overall disquieting tone to the film.

Memory is a ghost, it’s vague and ethereal. And this reads like a ghost story.

Maybe it’s that spooky organ music, which makes me think of Carnival of Souls. Maybe it’s the way the camera glides through hallways as if we are watching the movie through the eye of a floating spirit. Maybe it’s the use of split lenses (not split screen work mind you) so that when we see two people in the same room, it appears as if they are NOT inhabiting the same space at all. Maybe it’s the backgrounds that suddenly change, like the Hotel itself is an apparition.

It’s in the way people move, or don’t move. The performances are disassociated, stilted; these people are more like phantoms than flesh and blood. The story X tells A is unreliable and ever changing: is that false memory or a specter’s wispy fugue state of mind?

Everything in this film keeps me off balance (and I like that): People are constantly seen in reflective surfaces, in one scene their shadows are painted in. Their clothing changes mid-conversation. They are shot draped in the deepest darkness, and in other moments, in a white glare so blinding they seem to disappear into the background...

...like ghosts.

And memory is a ghost. We are seeing what the characters are remembering - memory is faulty - remembering is like visiting an ever-fluctuating spirit world.

That’s how I see it. But whether you are of the opinion that the movie is an enigmatic artistic masterpiece or feel it’s the pretentious work of two self-indulgent intellectuals, this is the magic of Marienbad. Each viewer works the film out for themselves, and no two people see the same exact thing.

🎭Loads of great acting this year: a few faves that just missed the cut include Hayley Mills (Whistle Down the Wind), Annie Girardot (Shadows of Adultery), Carroll Baker (Something Wild), James Cagney (One, Two, Three), and the all-star casts of The Huster and Paris Blues. 

One that made it all the way to the top...

Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Mother Joan of the Angels - If you've seen Ken Russell's The Devil's, this is the aftermath. Mother is not as campy or garish, which I preferred. The performances are superb, and I named the mesmerizing Lucyna Winnicka -who shows great range here- my best actress (on her second nomination). It's a rather chilling tale with an ending- SPOILER ALERT- that outdoes a similar act from the Exorcist. 

Best Actor: Toshirō Mifune, Yojimbo
Honorable Mentions: 

Stuart Whitman, The Mark * Paul Newman, The Hustler * Marcello Mastroianni, La Notte & Divorce, Italian Style * Dirk Bogarde, Victim * Clark Gable, The Misfits * Tatsuya Nakadai, The Human Condition III * Mieczyslaw Voit, Mother Joan of the Angels * Dilip Kumar, Ganga Jumna * Peter Cushing & André Morell, Cash on Demand

Best Actress: Lucyna Winnicka, Mother Joan of the Angels
Honorable Mentions: 

Duša Počkaj, Dancing in the Rain * Harriet Andersson, Through a Glass Darkly * Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's * Deborah Kerr, the Innocents * Silvia Pinal, Viridiana * Emmanuelle Riva, Léon Morin, Priest * Ayako Wakao, A Wife Confesses * Hideko Takamine, Happiness of Us Alone * Jeanne Moreau & Monica Vitti, La Notte

Supporting Actress: Ruby Dee, A Raisin in the Sun

Supporting Actor: Martin Stephens, The Innocents

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1960 - 47th Ceremony

The Apartment (Director: Billy Wilder)
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, 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.

Best Actor: Anthony Perkins, Psycho
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 * Lee Eun-shim, The Housemaid * Hideko Takamine, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs * Nutan Behl, Sujata * Sophia Loren, Two Women * Birgitta Valberg, The Virgin Spring * Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners * Supriya Choudhury, The Cloud-Capped Star 

Best Supporting Actor: Chhabi Biswas, Devi

Shout out to Martin Stephens, Village of the Damned

Best Supporting Actress: Janet Leigh, Psycho







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1959 - 46th Ceremony

Hiroshima Mon Amour (Director: Alain Resnais)
Nominees: Apur Sansar, Nazarin, North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder, The 400 Blows, Floating Weeds, Some Like it Hot, Rio Bravo, Room at the Top, Fires on the Plain, The Human Condition pts I & II

Oscars pick: Ben-Hur
Nominees: Anatomy of a Murder, Diary of Anne Frank, The Nuns Story, Room at the Top

When I was a teenager, Jaws was my favorite movie, my first favorite movie as a matter of fact (before then I'd never really thought about ranking such things), as I moved into adulthood, it became On the Waterfront, and in my old age? Well, I've come to see that I have more than one; but if you ask, I'd answer that Hiroshima Mon Amour is my favorite of the here and now.

An innovative and vital piece of the French New Wave (Left Bank contingent), it centers on an intense affair between a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) and a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva). The two spend the day getting to know one another and working through (mostly her) personal demons. The brilliant opening sequence establishes the visual, audial, and thematic motifs - focusing primarily on the nature of memory, as the woman recalls things she couldn't have seen firsthand in regard to Hiroshima, the difference between being there and having it told to you is relayed through the jarring juxtaposition of movie versions of bombing victims to disturbing footage of the real thing. (Seeing the lovers covered in ash at the beginning, was another startling image).

Language-wise... there’s a lyrical quality to writer Marguerite Duras' dialogue, a thread of musicality woven throughout. But it’s not like the nature-born poetry of Ray’s Pather Panchali. It's more exacting, structured - but beautiful none the less. I also find it interesting the way characters can shift from 1st to 3rd person narratives or even take on the personality of another character from a different place and time (as when the Japanese channels the persona of the woman's German lover). The screenplay earned Duras a well-deserved Oscar nomination.

On the technical side of things, I admired the work of its dual cinematographers - Michio Takahashi in Japan and Sacha Vierny for the French locations. Each used different lenses and lighting techniques and such, which lends a distinct look to each time frame. The score, provided by Georges Delerue and Giovanni Fusco, is a mix of the somber and the off kilter - it too reenforces the concept (the scene where Elle splashes her face in the sink; it’s the music that tells us that she’s suddenly back in Nevers). The editing - the matching of hands, bodies, and landscapes, from past and present is expertly done, and again, is another element that sells the idea of time merging. 

Acting? While Eiji is rock solid as Lui (him), the persistent male lead, the feature rests on Riva's capable shoulders. She gives a haunting performance in her film debut. When we first see her playful smile at the start, you can see how a man could instantly be drawn to her. But later a shadow falls over her face, and when she stares off into space it's as if she were stuck simultaneously in both the 'then', and the 'now' - which is just what the director and writer wanted. It's astonishing work, and her scenes hit me hard, shook me up (the moments set in Nevers are devastating).

While I’ve heard that some folks consider the film detached/cold on a first viewing, that was not the case for me, as it instantly got under my skin. I had such a powerful emotional and intellectual reaction to this movie... you could say its exploration of memories that linger, and those that slip away -of the traumas of war; of love destroyed, and the scars left on a soul- stole the breath from my lungs. 

Note: Like Tarkovsky’s horses or Fassbinder’s mirrors, one of Resnais’ visual trademarks is the zeroing in on hands. Even where they are not in close-up, they might be doing something interesting… as when the woman tells the man the story of the German and her hand curls and shakes subtly. Or when she draws her hands away from the man and her fingers briefly move as if she were pressing the keys of a piano.

Other movies I liked: Fires on the Plain, Ballad of a Soldier, Ride Lonesome, Kiku and Isamu, Pickpocket, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Odds Against Tomorrow, Violent Summer, Sleeping Beauty and more. 1959 offered up a lot of treasures.

Best Actor: Soumitra Chatterjee, The World of Apu 
Honorable Mentions: Ganjiro Nakamura, Floating Weeds * Laurence Harvey, Room at the Top * Tony Curtis & Jack Lemmon, Some Like it Hot * Cary Grant, North by Northwest * James Stewart, Anatomy of a Murder * John Wayne, Rio Bravo * Vittorio De Sica, General Della Rovere * Eiji Funakoshi, Fires on the Plain

Supporting Actor: Joseph Schildkraut, The Diary of Anne Frank

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (top)
Honorable Mentions:
Machiko Kyo, Floating Weeds & Odd Obsession * Audrey Hepburn, The Nun’s Story * Marilyn Monroe, Some Like it Hot * Simone Signoret, Room at the Top * Lucyna Winnicka, Night Train * Juanita Moore & Susan Kohner, Imitation of Life

Supporting Actress: Zhanna Prokhorenko, Ballad of a Soldier (left)



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