1963 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 1963:

1. Cleopatra
2. How the West Was Won
3. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
4. Tom Jones
5. Irma la Douce
6. Son of Flubber
7. Charade
8. Bye Bye Birdie
9. Come Blow Your Horn and Move Over, Darling
10. The Great Escape

What are your top three films for 1963? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. Contempt
2. 8 1/2
3. Winter Light

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

1. 8 1/2
2. Contempt
3. High and Low

shouts out to Charade and the Big City

 

1. Contempt
2. The Insect Woman
3. Dry Summer

 

1. The Pink Panther
2. The Great Escape
3. 8 1/2

 

Contempt floored me in a way few other films ever have. It is Godard showing how well he could make a (mostly) conventional film, and that he was going to continue to branch out beyond the types of films the French New Wave were beginning to be known for.

 

1. Cleopatra
2. The Great Escape
3. The Pink Panther

 

1. Charade
2. The Birds
3. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

 

1. 8 1/2
2. Contempt
3. The Birds
Pretty big gap between 2 and 3 but to this day I still get a little anxious when I see a flock of birds.
This thread reminds me I need to see High and Low and Winter Light.

 

The Birds was my first Hitchcock so it has always played more in my imagination than others. The birds aren't quite as scary as sharks like in Jaws, but you can't trust them either.

 

you can never, under any circumstances, trust birds of any kind.

 

please do not trust the birds

 

Birds are drones prove me wrong

 

you can trust some birds, for example penguins

 

1. Winter Light
2. 8½
3. High and Low

 

1. High and Low
2. The Birds
3. Shock Corridor

Missed the other threads, but this is a good idea!

 

Also from 1963 and well worth watching outside of the other brilliant films mentioned so far in this thread (it was a good year!), is a short film called Borom Sarret / The Wagoner by Ousmane Sembène, who directed Black Girl a few years later.

It's somehow unbelievably the first film made by a black African, which feels kind of unreal that that didn't happen until 1963, about a poor wagoner ferrying people around, often for free, and the struggles he faces when crossing the divide between the rich and poor in Senegal. Sound design and conversations is all done in post production, and there's absolutely no attempt to sync to the visuals - so it's like an added layer of the narration.

On Youtube, and 20 minutes long - so well worth finding the time;

 

I had not heard of this film but I have seen Moolaade, which is the last film he made. It was great and haunting.

 

This and Black Girl are the only ones I've seen by him, but I thought they were both incredible, so have been meaning to watch more of his work, so I'll add Moolaade to the list! African cinema in general is a bit (a lot!) of a blind spot for me, so been looking to fill in some gaps recently.

 

I've only seen Moolaade too but it was great, I'll add both of those to my watchlist.

 

Coincidentally enough, I was teaching the Harlem Renaissance last week and I was trying to convey to my students the connection between how peoples' needs are being met and their ability to create art. Just like the Harlem Renaissance was possible because Black people were in a safer and more inviting environment, the same is true for Africa and the post-colonization opportunities that would exist that did not before. The canon is so heavily slanted toward the United States, Western Europe, and Japan because so many potentially great directors, actors, and writers never had a chance to express their ideas in many parts of the world.

 

Re: Sembene, his 1968 film Mandabi just recently got added to the Criterion Channel/released on disc. This was his first colour film and the stills I’ve seen from it are gorgeous. Haven’t watched the film myself yet, but I’ve been meaning to since the restoration came out. I should definitely try to get to it before the 1968 thread.

His film Camp de Thiaroye is a really incredible work of Third Cinema. I had to watch it in my first or second year cinema studies core unit, which was such a gratifying experience because they hardly ever show us genuinely challenging works from outside of cinema’s main canon.

 

I’m no scholar in African cinema or anything, but Med Hondo is one of the major names you should explore. I worked on a paper about his film West Indies last year, which is honestly one of the best films I’ve ever seen. An ambitious Brechtian musical addressing 400 years of slavery and colonialism. It’s all set on a single recreated slave ship and doesn’t really play out in a directly linear sense, which affords it incredible space collapse the difference in time periods to mount its critique. Highly recommend seeking it out.

 

Thank you for the recommendation , that sounds fascinating! I’ve never heard of him before, but will certainly mark that film down to check out.

 

8 1/2 takes it with 11 votes. Contempt was very close with 10 votes. 8 1/2 will move on to the bracket.