Digging the 60s

I hated the Thomas Crown Affair. I thought it pretentious, silly and plotless. The only good thing about it was the theme music, "The Windows of Your Mind." Couldn't understand why they did a remake of it a couple of years ago.

But that's just my personal thing. I loved La Dolce Vita and just about everything else that Fellini has ever done.

But the '60s? Anyone who actually remembers the Sixties wasn't actually there.

Pretentious,absolutely,silly:I agree but plotless,no.The entire soundtrack is marvelous Merry Andrew.Michel Legrand scored it.And as for actually REMEMBERING the sixties,I don´t because I was born in ´68!
Why they should remake TCA?Why remake anything at all?Totally
stupid idea,I agree.
oh yes,and it´s "Windmills",not "Windows",but hey,you´re my first reply and I´m glad.

Oooh,a few more:

Husbands
Faces
Repulsion
Easy Rider

Windmills, windmills! Damn, I've been tilting against them all my life.

Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy are two of my all-time favorites. Easy Rider is memorable for -- among many other things -- introducing Jack Nicholson to the screen.

I´m glad we´re agreeing on something Quixote!
What about the two Casavettes films I mentioned?

Great film decade, but I disagree in many of your choices, Hebba.

Jules et Jim and Midnight Cowboy are very good films.
I also enjoyed Un Homme et une Femme. Repulsion is quite interesting.
La Dolce Vita is not my favorite Fellini (though the scene in the Trevi Fountain is unforgettable).
Easy Rider was fun, but not a good film at all.
Blow Up was good -I could tell-, but bored me to death.
As for Point Blank, Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair, I think they are all pretentious, epidermic.

My 60s favorites:

The Organiser (I Compagni), directed by Mario Monicelli
The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols
The Milky Way (La Voie Lacteè), directed by Luis Buñuel
Antonio Das Mortes, directed by Glauber Rocha
King of Hearts (Roi de Coeurs), directed by Philippe de Brocca.

(And yes, The Windmills of Your Mind" was a great song. I like the Vanilla Fudge version best.)

fbaezer,I was mentioning my favourite films,not necessarily "good" films.
and I love The Graduate too.I need to check out the others.Glauber Rocha is someone I`ve never even heard of and you´re welcome to slap my wrists.
Belle Du Jour is lovely but I imagine that if "Blow-Up" bored you then you didn´t "dig" this Bunuel offering.
Point Blank,I agree is way off the pretentious scale but I still enjoyed it a lot.

In fact, I loved Belle du Jour. I think it's ageless.

Glauber Rocha was a radical Brazilian filmmaker, part of the so-called "Cinema Novo". His films were quite known in Latin America and some of Europe -where they were distributed in the 'alternative' cinemas.
Antonio Das Mortes (Antonio of Deaths) is a "matador de cangaceiros", a hired gunman, specialized in a strange kind of mystical bandits that populated Brazil's impoverished Northeast. He changes sides and confronts another "matador", Matavaca. The whole film is in verses, quite violent and oniric. With a very sixties combination of guerrilla, mysticism, violence, pacifist fight for social justice and psychodelia.

P.S for the guys in Brazil: The alternative title of Antonio Das Mortes is "O Dragaô De Maldade Contra O Santo Guerreiro" (The Dragon of Evil Against the Saintly Warrior).

The only Brazilian director I´m familiar with is José Marins.Now HE was an original.Good grief some insane films that guy made.

I'm just glad I'm not the only one who was bored by "Blow-Up."

LOL, Merry Andrew.

Hebba, I've only seen a documentary about Marins, and he sure was crazy.

In the documentary it said that in one the movies, Marins put live snakes in a pit, and they were really attacking the baby-doll clad actresses. One snake was strangling one of the women and Marins was saying: "what an actress!", until she her face got blue, and a crewman jumped and saved her.
Legend says that Rocha wanted to use live bullets in the Das Mortes-Matavaca shoot-out.

Sixties' iconoclasts were quite blunt, indeed.

Heck Merry Andrew,"Blow-Up" is one of my favourite films and I´ve seen it countless times.Each to their own eh?
Fbaezer,I´ve seen that doc. too.The live tarantulas was hysterical too and that Marins had to ply his "actresses" with booze before he let about 50 of the damn things loose.Incredible!!

IMO, one of the best films of the 60s is 1962's "The Manchurian Candidate."

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0056218

Frank Sinatra was magnificent in his role, as was Lawrence Harvey. I understand that Angela Lansbury, who played Harvey's mother, was only four years older than her "son".

I have read that release of the movie was held up because of the Kennedy assassination.

Of American films, "Midnight Cowboy" and "The Manchurian Candidates" are good choices -- innovative and powerful films. Can't put either ahead of "2001: A Space Oddysey" though.

Lightwizard- 2001 WAS ahead of its time, in terms of inventiveness. It seems just like yesterday, that I sat with a group of friends pondering the "meaning" of that last scene. Powerful stuff!

Foreign films would have to be "8-1/2" and "L'Avventura" (leading off the decade with a powerful imagery over dialogue technique with "2001" ending the decade on the same note!) The black train running through the deserted town, glimpsed between the stark architecture with the two figures wandering around aimlessly is still powerful in "L'Avventura."
"8-1/2" is the film about filmmaking. Brilliant.

Viewing "2001" on a small TV screen is like seeing a Jackson Pollock painting reduced down to the sized of a coffe table book. Good news -- it's slated for IMAX in the next few years! The only way to literally fly. Can you even imagine the trip through time and space in the finale in IMAX? I saw it at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood in a revival in the 70's after it began to reach it's true stature as a great movie. The air in line outside the theater was thick with the smell of weed, wouldn't you know!
They have redone that theater with an even bigger screen but I don't know if it qualifies as IMAX.

Hebba: I agree on Midnight Cowboy. I didn't see any of the foreign films. But you haven't mentioned any musicals and the 60s gave us great musicals:
West Side Story, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Funny Girl and Oliver, to name a few.

And what about Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and To Kill a Mockingbird for some "goodies".

Ah, yes, The Lion in Winter. Another perennial all-time favorite of mine.