The Year in Movies: 1967 (Part Two)

 In case you missed it, I am doing a project where I watch five movies from every year from five specific categories: action, animated, foreign, horror, and romance.  The only real rule I set for myself is it must be from one of those categories.  I may, depending on the choices available, watch multiple foreign movies, seeing as there are obviously foreign action movies, foreign horror movies, and foreign romance movies.  It will not usually be my preference, but I'm sure it will happen.  Foreign is such a wide ranging category that I will also probably watch a foreign romance movie and a romance movie, if you catch me drift.  Can't be helped.

In part one, I put down my thoughts on the action movie Point Blank and the animated Jungle Book.  Those are the only two movies I covered.  If you don't want to click the link, I liked Point Blank and I did not like Jungle Book.  Should have kept that one to my childhood I suppose.  Today, I'll be covering the horror, foreign and romance movie selections of 1967.

Foreign

The Samurai (3/4 stars)

I had sort of assumed that foreign movies would be difficult to pick.  Just so many more potential options and less likelihood I have seen them.  But even so, 1967 was not an easy year.  1967 is considered one of the greatest years in film and that extends to foreign movies as well.  Roger Ebert has eight movies from 1967 in his Great Movies collection.  Five of them are foreign.  Just to give you an idea, he only has 381 movies total, ranging from 1915 to 2007.

Written and directed by influential French new wave director Jean-Pierre Melville, The Samurai is something of a misleading title.  It's not actually about a samurai.  It's about a hitman.  The plot is fairly straightforward, in fact I hesitate to say its' been copied because this plot may have been used before the movie.  A hitman kills someone, almost gets caught, the people who hired him try to kill him to cover themselves.  Truly one man against the world type of movie.

If one were being generous, one could call this movie deliberate.  If one were not so generous, slow would not be inaccurate either.  My only issue with the pace of this movie is the amount of time spent at the police station, which kind of just goes on forever and you know he's not actually going to get jailed.  Well that's not exactly correct.  It went on so long I started to wonder if the rest of the movie was going to be set in the police station, with him eventually being caught. 

As for the rest, well the devil is in the details and I think the deliberateness is both the point and appropriate.  That said, Ebert talks in his review about how action is the enemy of suspense, and how this movie builds suspense through character.  While I won't say I felt no suspense, I wasn't exactly on the edge of my seat for most of this movie.  So I do kind of feel the charm if you will didn't completely work on me.

Horror 

Wait Until Dark (4/4 stars)

There is some debate on whether this is technically horror.  This is not a debate I would care about, not specifically being a horror fan.  This being "not really horror but horror" would in fact be more of a reason I would like it.  However, the ending of this movie pretty clearly has the intended impact of a horror film and has influenced countless horror films.  So I'm going to land myself pretty firmly in the "is a horror film."

And I loved every minute of it.  One of the rare movies that is obviously adapted from a play that almost benefits from that fact.  The main character, played by Audrey Hepburn, begins to feel trapped and suffocated, and so do we.  A few things are quickly established in the movie and this is not a spoiler.  A doll with heroin inside finds its way to Hepburn, unaware of what is in the doll.  Three criminals go to retrieve it and can't find it.  So they create an elaborate plan to get the information out of Hepburn. 

The reason they can fool her at all is because she's blind, newly blind in fact.  She also has no idea where the doll is.  And the result is slowly escalating tension as you hope Hepburn figures out what's happening, and then hope she gets out of it.  In fact, this movie may be one of the most successful movies ever at building up tension gradually up until the climax.  And I really don't want to spoil it, but there's a scene - and if you've seen it you know the scene - that got me.  Maybe the first ever version of this.  I can't imagine how audiences in 1967 reacted considering I'm aware of the trope and it still got me.  Anyway, I highly encourage you to watch this immediately.  It's on HBOMax as of this writing!

Romance

Two for the Road (2.5/4 stars)

I honestly had no intention of watching two Audrey Hepburn movies in one year but I had already seen The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde and this was, from the information I had, easily the best choice on the docket.  It clearly fits the category.  I almost chose Belle de Jour, but the premise of that movie seemed to technically qualify here but seems to be a very different vibe from what you think when you think romance movie.

In any case, I had one major problem with this movie and one minor one: Albert Finney is a dick the entire movie.  He's a dick when they meet, he's a dick later in life, and all their problems in their relationship are related to him being a dick.  Which somewhat connects to my minor problem: Hepburn is falling in love way too easy for a supposedly realistic movie.  She falls in love with Finney based off an evening hitchhiking where he's not very nice to her frankly and then falls in love with the brother of her husband's client in ONE DAY.  This is hailed as a realistic movie, right?

Aside from that, it actually is fairly realistic, I'm just not totally sure Finney was supposed to be clearly in the wrong this whole time.  Maybe he is.  I don't know.  He's a playboy and acts like it.  He tells her it.  He clearly has no interest in settling down or having a family, and eventually they settle down and have a family and he's unhappy about it.  Shocker.  Like I said, the fundamental flaw in this movie is that I never understood what the hell Hepburn could see in him.

But it gets the grade it does because it's (500) Days of Summer 40 years before that movie came out.  We see their life non-linearly, only on times when they are on the road.  They're on the road when they meet, when they decide to get married, when they're newlywed, when they have a kid, and when they're on the verge of divorcing.  So creatively edited, creatively told, witnessing the highs and lows of marriage.  Fairly groundbreaking for the time.

The Year In Movies: 1967 (Part 1)

I want to watch a lot of movies.  More movies than I can actually watch.  So I need to figure out a system to watch movies, a trick to picking them.  There are simply too many movies out there that haven't been seen by me and it's hard to know where to start.

Thus, the creation of my latest project, a project that will take me a very long time if I actually see it to completion.  I will attempt to watch five movies - action, animated, horror, foreign, and romance - in a given year, starting in 1967 and ideally continuing for the next 50 years.  I will grant I may run out of steam well before that though.

Why 50 years?  It's a nice, satisfying number.  Why not start in 1972 and continue to the present day?  Well, by the time I finish this project, it will not be 2022 anyway and I'd be leaving at least one year on the table.  But more importantly, that's essentially the beginning of action movies in its modern day form.  The action movies of the past were Westerns or war movies.  It's an arguable starting date of course.  I was motivated to start this because of the excellent History of Violence column by Tom Behran over at AV Club.  He actually began his column with 1968's Bullit, but argued you could start with Point Blank.  So I started with Point Blank.

And if you're wondering why I picked these five categories.  The answer is simple: to address movie viewing blind spots.  I am not what you would call a horror movie fan.  I don't really understand the appeal of watching a movie to get scared.  However, I haven't really given them much of a chance for that very reason.  I changed my tune - or at least am willing to give them a fair shot - after I watched The Exorcist last year, which I now consider one of the greatest movies of all time.  How many great movies could I miss out on by ignoring horror?  That's why I'm doing this.

Animated is the one I'm most ambivalent about - there are definitely a few classics missing in this 50 year period that I haven't seen, but I've also seen a decent number of the obvious ones and I'm not sure I have anywhere close to a movie per year of animated movies to watch here.  I am willing to watch movies I've seen before if I haven't seen them for a very long time and barely remember it.  Or if I wonder if my opinion on a movie has changed.  Even still, I'm hoping I don't regret having animated movies as one of my categories.

Foreign and romance categories are easy enough to justify.  I would be shocked if I can't find at least one movie worth watching that fits under romance.  This category is broad for a reason.  It could be a serious drama or a romcom.  It could be experimental or mainstream.  The only requirement is the movie actually has to be about the romance.  And as for foreign, I mean foreign language.  And this is about the safest category possible.  There is absolutely at least one foreign language movie per year I haven't seen that is considered a classic.  Or could be considered a classic by me.  This would be true even if I gave all five categories to foreign language movies.

Introduction over, let's get started.

Action 

Point Blank (3/4 stars)

This is a strong start.  While I maybe didn't love this movie, it is absolutely worth watching.  I can see why Tom didn't start with Point Blank for his action movie column.  For one thing, it is absolutely nothing like current action movies.  The story is not told in a strictly linear fashion, but what one would call "time-fractured."  It was a very confusing first five minutes for me, but you figure it out.  And no need for exposition with this editing, because you learn A LOT in those first five minutes.  You get the entire backstory, motivation, and what his goal in those first five minutes.

The appeal of this movie is mostly the editing, if you're into that.  The plot is very straightforward.  Man is shot, robbed, and presumed dead.  He lives and wants his money back.  That's it.  The movie is him trying to find someone to pay him back.  Lee Marvin is good, but there's not really anything to his character.  He really is as simple as he seems.  Just wants his money back.  I don't even think he wants revenge.  He probably does want revenge on the man who shot him, but I truly don't think he does for anyone else.

This is one of those movies that you totally understand its classic status, and you know if you watched it at the time, you would be singing its praises, but 50+ years of movies have happened since, and dulled its impact on you.  Steven Soderbergh is on the commentary track of this and pretty much copied its style for The Limey.  Lee Marvin's action hero blank slate has certainly been done to death in action movies.  

There is a popular theory about this movie that I won't share because it could be considered a spoiler, but it certainly makes sense.  It got me thinking longer than your average action movie.  That said, I think my issue is just that Lee Marvin is a nothing character.  He's an empty vessel, a blank slate.  In the present day, he never smiles and talks as little as possible.  I think I need something.  But I admire the style and editing of this movie.

Animated

The Jungle Book (1/4 stars)

I am fairly certain I have seen The Jungle Book before, but it had to be when I was in the single digit age of my life.  So I was interested in revisiting it because I had no opinion on the movie.  The only thing I remember is "Bare Necessities." 

I... didn't like it.  I am more worried for the animated section of this than ever.  I don't know if my problems with this movie are specific to this movie or are just going to be a problem pre-Pixar.  This isn't really much of a movie.  There's not really any stakes.  I don't really like most of the songs.  I didn't like the voice actors, which just seemed really out of place to me.  I didn't like this movie!

It's also just plain boring.  It's amazing how much more boring the movie was with narration than if they had simply let what happened on the screen tell us.  I could not figure out why we were getting told the step-by-step process of the panther's thoughts when the animation was doing a perfectly good job.  We can see him walking away, see his eyes when he turns around, and know exactly what his thought process is when he's considering leaving the baby.  But for some reason, the movie feels the need to share this all with us anyway.

I don't really get it.  I get why it was popular at the time.  Walt Disney had just died.  There is no way they were going to bash this movie.  I don't get how it stayed a classic all these years though.

I'll be covering my horror, foreign, and romance sections for part two.