FRwL

The 1970s is so widely seen as the greatest era for films, how it was daring, ballsy and experimental. So i was wondering shouldn't the two decades bookending this one be pretty highly regarded too? The 80s is pretty much seen as the opposite of everything the 70s stood for, going for cookie cutter, blockbuster, concept. But then the 60s had a lot of the spirit of the 70s too. Maybe not early on but definitely midway it started to have a lot of experimental and unique things.

I was checking out a cinema history book and they split the chapters into different eras, one was called Film Renaissance: 1964-1977. I was kind of amazed it went back so much earlier than just the 70s. They explained that 1964 was a changing year for lots of popculture for music and movies. Those years aren't when the eras exactly started or ended but around that time things phased in and out give or take a few years. The more i look into it the more i'm intrigued how the 60s have a lot of daring things, maybe not R movies but still pretty revolutionary with a lot of unique ideas just like the 70s. Little gems which would be iconic in the 70s seems to originate before: the cop/crime trend of the 70s was already starting out, 68's Bullitt (carchase highpoint pre French Connection) and Coogan's Bluff seems like a proto-Dirty Harry. 66's Blowup has the spirit of 74's The Conversation, even 65's Vinyl was the first adapting of A Clockwork Orange before Kubrick. And for prison movies, if i had to choose i'd pick 67's Cool Hand Luke over 75's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Of course Leone's westerns were here, i was reading the excellent Easy Riders to Raging Bulls which was about 70s cinema and it said Leone could be considered the first of the new wave of directors like Coppola, Spielberg, etc. Russ Meyer the master of tits who would become even greater was already in the zone in 65 with Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! That year also had The Battle of Algiers and Pierrot Le Fou. I'm sure missing a lot since in the book 1001 Movies to See there are many more internationally made movies mentioned for these years.

By the end of the 60s there were more and more great things coming out which i'm not even going to go into, 1969 for example can give any year of the 70s a run for its money (except maybe 74) in terms of how edgy and experimental it is, the year also has a glum apocalyptic feel to it but in a very good way. These eras also seem to mirror how great music was, perhaps the tumultuous things going on in the world helped art. So what do you think about the 60s? Is it really like a proto-version of the 70s or rather the beginning of something the 70s only continued, shouldn't it be hailed as the 2nd best behind the 70s in all polls!?!?!? And most importantly do you like it? I too like it and it's definitely one of my favorite movie decades.

Solid Snake

I wish I had more time to answer this but..the 70s had a lot more of what know. The 60s had some of it, yeah. But...one could say it taught us what we could do and then we went off with it. I'm specifically talking about the US though. Fuck...let me get back on this later on.

Maxflier

I'm no film intellectual, so I don't have much to add to this conversation other than to say that 2 of my top 3 favorite movies of all-time come from the '60s: Planet of the Apes and The Time Machine.

NoirFan

The 1960's were a wonderful decade for foreign films, but, other than the 1980's, one of the worst decade for American films ever. Of course there are dozens (if not hundreds) of exceptions that I'm sure people will be quick to list, but overall Hollywood was adrift for much of the 1960's.

RagingBull80

IMO things started to get interesting in the 60s, paving the way for the 70s.

Solid Snake

yep...

gglass4269

the 60's were truly a great time for cinephiles, looking back now. alot of masterpieces that came out though wern't excepted as such until decades later. (this is true of any decade though)

Solid Snake

great example being Once Upon a Time In The West, Paramount didn't see it as a film they originally thought it'd be....so they cut it down...and it made no sense. Thankfully...we have the intended version Leone wanted us to see here.

TheySentYou

twas a hoppin' decade for Godard and French New Wave, i believe.

plus Blow-Up was great.

Mondo Kane

Since the (Late) 60's was the introduction of the ratings board, I still wish I could get an idea of how audiences (As well as those who made the movies) were able to make the transition into unseen territory.

It sure must've been pretty strange to go to the movies (Where the likes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had just played a few months ago) and all of a sudden, at the same theater, you get to see two butt-naked guys wrestling with each other in Women in Love.
After seeing how movies were always percieved to be for the previous 30 years, this change-up surely must have been quite an experience.

Ash Ketchum

Well, I lived through it, so I can tell you. As a 15-16-year-old boy in 1968, it was pretty exciting to suddenly see nude women in mainstream movies and hear profanity like you'd hear in the street and see violence and blood the way it would be seen in actual violent encounters. I'll never forget marveling at Jane Fonda's body in the opening of BARBARELLA. And, on the more serious side, it was exciting to see social issues getting dealt with more honestly than had been possible under the Production Code, e.g. abortion, pregnancy, drug addiction, racial strife, etc.

My parents, had they been regular movie attendees, would have been upset at all of this. But I was just the right age for it. In fact, my parents did get upset at the movies I went to see--even though, of course, they hadn't seen the movies in question themselves (and never did). My father took me to task for seeing THE WILD BUNCH when I was 16 and my mother took me to task for seeing MIDNIGHT COWBOY when I was 16 and KLUTE and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE when I was 18! (It should be pointed out that MIDNIGHT COWBOY and CLOCKWORK ORANGE were both rated X, which seems surprising now, considering how mild those films were, but there was considerable anxiety about what "children" should be exposed to back then.)

Trevor

As I watch more and more classic films from yesteryear, I'm thinking "the older the better". 60s are better than the 70s, which are better than the 80s, etc etc

Ash Ketchum

Wait till you get to the '40s--best film decade ever.

rw2516

My favorite decade for movies. AIP, Hammer, Amicus in their prime. Foreign horror. Japanese monsters. Spaghetti westerns. The spy/secret agent craze. Connery as Bond. The WWII adventure epics. Beach movies. Hot rod/racing movies. Biker flicks. Elvis. John Wayne. Disney. Gorgeous technicolor.

stingermck

This.

Trevor

I'll probably think that, until I get to 1939. If I had to guess, I'll end up always choosing the 1930s as the best decade of film.

Dr Mabuse

The one thing I don't like is the 60's is when foley really came into its own.

Every step the character makes has an almost tap dance 'click' to it. Foot chases turned into 'click click click click click', every step HAD to be foley'd all to hell. Breathing became over accentuated. I'm sure they all thought about how advanced their new manipulation of sound was. It's distracting and sometimes irritating.

Beyond that it was an incredible decade for films. Any decade with 'Winter Light', 'The Wild Bunch', 'Bonny & Clyde', 'Hara Kiri', Lawrence of Arabia', 'Through a Glass Darkly', 'Le Samourai', 'Butch Cassidy & The Sundace Kid'(yes it's a great film), 'Yojimbo' and 'Sanjuro', 'Au hasard Balthazar', 'Woman in the Dunes', 'Army of Shadows', 'Breathless'... the mind boggles. Too many true masterpieces to list.

MAN we could use another decade like the 60's

Sean O'Hara

One of the reasons the ratings board came about is that foreign films, which weren't constrained by the Hayes Code, started making inroads into the American market. Audiences in cities were flocking to French, Italian, and Japanese films, and the studios needed a way to compete. There's a very good book, Five Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris about the 1968 Academy Awards, where the old Hollywood (Dr. Doolittle, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) went against the new (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde), with In the Heat of the Night winning because it split the difference.

The '60s are really two film eras. The first half, when the studio system was collapsing and producers kept casting Fabian and Rickie Nelson in desperate attempts to attract teens and 20-somethings, is the worst era in Hollywood history. But the second half is part of the American New Wave when we got all the breakthrough pictures that redefined Hollywood. People talk about how great the '70s were, but that's a simplification -- what they really mean is the period from '67-'77.

slop101

The '60s wasn't the best decade for American film (with the old studio system getting literally old and antiquated and out of touch), but it was a fantastic decade for foreign films.

inri222

Don't forget :

L'avventura
La notte
L'eclisse
Il deserto rosso

Groucho

Films from the 1960's are fascinating to me. Some are completely revolutionary and ahead of their time, others look and feel like they were made 20-30 years earlier.

Generally, the more hippies and/or Italians are in the film, the better it'll be.

Ash Ketchum

25 Essential Hollywood movies from the 1960s (off the top of my head):

Comedies:
The Apartment (1960) – dir.: Billy Wilder
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) – dir.: Billy Wilder
Dr. Strangelove (1964) – dir.: Stanley Kubrick
A Hard Day’s Night (1964) – dir.: Richard Lester
The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (1966) – dir.: Norman Jewison

Dramas:
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – dir.: John Frankenheimer
Seven Days in May (1964) – dir.: John Frankenheimer
The Pawnbroker (1965) – dir.: Sidney Lumet

Epics and War films:
El Cid (1961) – dir. Stanley Kubrick
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) – dir.: David Lean
The Dirty Dozen (1967) – dir.: Robert Aldrich

Westerns:
The Magnificent Seven (1960) – dir.: John Sturges
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) – dir.: John Ford
Ride the High Country (1962) – dir.: Sam Peckinpah
Major Dundee (1965) – dir.: Sam Peckinpah
The Wild Bunch (1969) – dir.: Sam Peckinpah
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) – dir.: Sergio Leone

Horror/Sci-fi:
Psycho (1960) – dir.: Alfred Hitchcock
You Only Live Twice (1967) – dir.: Lewis Gilbert
Planet of the Apes (1968) – dir.: Franklin Schaffner
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – dir.: Stanley Kubrick
Night of the Living Dead (1968) – dir.: George Romero

Crime:
The Wild Angels (1966) – dir.: Roger Corman
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) – dir.: Arthur Penn
Coogan's Bluff (1968) - dir.: Don Siegel

rw2516

Another good thing about the 60s were the battle of the sexes comedies. Usually with Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, etc. It seems every married guy in the 60s had a best friend who was a swinging playboy expert on women, always eager to give the married guy advice(usually wrong) on how to deal with wife problems. Some of the crazy schemes these guys would concoct to get a woman or mess with the wife rival the D-Day invasion plans in their complexity.

FRwL

That's no problem that hollywood wasn't so hot in the 60s, seeing what the rest of the world had to offer always meant more to me!

FRwL

What's the 3rd movie?