55 Days at Peking (1963)

55 Days at Peking begins as a kind of epic colonial war–melodrama in yellowface starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven (none of these three actors is in yellowface, but Flora Robson, Leo Genn, and Robert Helpmann are). It's exciting enough for a time in its orientalist way, and John Ireland is excellent. By this film's end, though, 55 Days at Peking has become laughably absurd. The rescue sequence that comes at the film's 11 o'clock hour is nearly hilarious it's so stupid. And I fail to understand why we are supposed to be rooting for these eleven imperialist countries who are in China for their own profit.

The L-Shaped Room (1962)

I was very pleasantly surprised by The L-Shaped Room, which is an early-60s kitchen sink drama set in a cheap boarding house. It has an intriguing, beautiful cast of characters that are played beautifully (including – and this was very surprising – an older lesbian actress who is wonderful). Leslie Caron is excellent, but really the whole thing is very good!

Twilight of Honor (1963)

Twilight of Honor is a 1963 murder-trial movie that is very obviously derivative of Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder from 1959. This one stars Richard Chamberlain (who is almost painfully handsome) and a wonderfully old and bright Claude Rains in one of his final film roles.

This movie is billed as one for adult audiences, and indeed it discusses some rather scandalous material, but that's not enough, really, to make Twilight of Honor interesting. It makes too many odd blunders. In the first place, the title refers to the murder victim, who was an honorable man but dies "without honor", or so the film would have us believe. In the second place, this movie is not at all interested in the murderer at the narrative's center. It's so strange: Nick Adams plays this character, and he garnered an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal, but the movie just doesn't pay much attention to him. He is definitely the film's most interesting character, but the filmmakers don't seem to think so. Instead, he is a figure we are supposed to pity and mostly forget as we turn our attention to Richard Chamberlain and his erstwhile romance with Claude Rains's daughter at the film's end.

Captain Newman, M.D. (1963)

Captain Newman, M.D. is about a military psychiatric hospital during WWII. It's a 1960s movie, unlike most of the WWII content I've been consuming that was made during the war, so this one has a lot of space to be sentimental. And Captain Newman, M.D. is mostly that. It's also mostly a comedy...? The film, in fact, opens with a herd of sheep running all around the base. The sheep have no purpose at all within the plot except that they create farcical situations when they escape and they make everyone run around catching them. In a totally absurd sequence late in the movie, sheep are in ambulances, sheep are in taxis, sheep are in pickup trucks. It looks like something from Wallace and Grommit. 

Anyway, the comedy doesn't work in this movie, or rather, I guess it could work if so much of the movie wasn't invested in talking about the psychological effects of the war, but it's the psychological drama stuff that is actually good. The film stars Gregory Peck, Angie Dickinson, and Tony Curtis, but the great roles are given to the patients: Eddie Albert as a psychotic general, Bobby Darin as a depressed and angry plane-crash survivor, and Robert Duvall as a near-catatonic ghost of a man. Bobby Darin, especially, is amazing. His scenes, which are about uncovering what he experienced in a plane crash with an officer he admired, give us no flashbacks at all. Instead, Darin narrates it for us. It's heartbreaking, and he's wonderful. I was skeptical of this movie's comedic tone, and this whole sequence still brought me to tears. All of the Bobby Darin stuff is excellent. The movie might be worth watching just for him.

You can watch Captain Newman, M.D. on YouTube.

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Bye Bye Birdie is truly painful. This started out sort of cute, but it became completely insipid. The only character of any interest is the Chita Rivera character (played by Janet Leigh in a faux Latina performance). Leigh is billed first here, which is odd because she has two duets and no songs of her own. Jesse Pearson, who played Birdie on tour, plays him here, and his appeal is... inexplicable. He's strangely wooden and unattractive, and one cannot understand why any young girls or grown women would be passing out because of how sexy he is. Ann-Margret can sing, of course, and Dick Van Dyke is his usual silly self, but no one else really can even sing. Oh! and Maureen Stapleton is cast as Dick Van Dyke's mother. They were the same age! It's outrageous.

The Servant (1963)

Released the same year as the film of The Balcony, Losey's film is a Harold Pinter film through and through, and in many ways is a great example of Pinter's work. For one, it is unclear from the jump what people's motivations are and how they manage to exert power over others, but The Servant is undeniably a Pinter power game. I found this intriguing and pleasurable, although I'm not sure it ever manages to be sexy, and I did want it to be (I think it wants to be, too).

Dirk Bogarde is obviously wonderful – he's just so good in everything.

Pigs and Battleships (1961)

Pigs and Battleships (豚と軍艦) is a dizzyingly funny crime film that is also a satire, not only of U.S.–Japan relations, but also of the yakuza in general. 

Despite Pigs and Battleships' presence on the Criterion Channel's Japanese Noir playlist, this is not a noir film.

Mondo Cane (1962)

Mondo Cane is "the original shockumentary" – as all of the synopses call it nowadays. This movie is so very 1960s, though. It's quite silly, really, while also showing us a great deal of savagery.

Mondo Cane's style is a sort of faux-anthropological view of various activities in human societies worldwide. To my mind, this kind of thing ends up being sort of racist, even when it doesn't want to be, and the violence in it, particularly as directed toward animals, is a repeated theme in the film and is, frankly, disgusting.

I didn't hate this, though. It's well made and amusing when it's not horrifying. It has that kind of Italian humor that we can see in movies like I Mostri and I Nuovi Mostri. Mondo Cane, too, would go on to have a series of sequels.

As for the song that was nominated for an Oscar in 1964... what song?

Charade (1963)

So... this is weird. I watched Stanley Donen's 1963 film Charade late last night, and I was delighted by the whole thing. The screenplay by Peter Stone, especially, is very, very good. It is witty and very clever, and there are a great many twists and turns. But the whole thing is played for laughs, even though it is a Hitchcockian-style thriller.

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are an absolute delight, and Walter Matthau and Jacques Marin round out the hilarity.

The strange part is that I've seen this movie before. In May of 2011, to be precise. But I didn't remember having seen it last night (or I wouldn't have (re)watched it), and there were several parts that I feel certain I hadn't seen before.

Either way, my pleasure at seeing it (apparently) again was undiminished, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself once again. 

The Four Days of Naples

Le Quattro Giornate di Napoli is a pretty stellar tale of the Neapolitan civilian uprising at the end of WWII. Excellently filmed with lots of action and lots of heart. This is really superb.

Love with the Proper Stranger

Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen are great in this. Actually, this film is just really good. It takes the usual Hollywood moral stance against abortion, which makes me fairly angry, but the central performances and everything else in the script are really excellent. It's odd, but while I was watching this the film reminded me a lot of Bloodbrothers, the movie with Richard Gere. I think it was the focus on familial connection and the sort of melodramatic approach that Love with the Proper Stranger takes toward family bonds. After the film was over, I looked up the director and it's the same guy – Robert Mulligan. This film is much much funnier than Bloodbrothers, but a lot of the family dynamics are the same, and Mulligan feels the same way about family – you need to escape it! – in 1963 as he does in 1978.

America America

I respected this Elia Kazan movie a great deal, and I would certainly rather re-watch this than one of his Tennessee Williams pictures again, but I had trouble loving America America. It just never wormed its way into my heart the way I expected it to or wanted it to.