Tobruk (1967)

Tobruk has some great effects. George Peppard, Guy Stockwell, and Nigel Green are great, but Rock Hudson is extra wooden in this one. Still, there are some truly awesome fire fights. And Tobruk has dialogue in French, German, Italian, and Arabic – all of which is done without subtitles. Anyway, this film is exciting enough, but the plot is frequently confusing, and the movie is light on character development. Oh, this movie is also pro-Israel propaganda... not in an awful way but certainly in a way that is insistent.

Banning (1967)

I really like Robert Wagner. In all sorts of things. Banning is, oddly enough, a golf movie, although it begins by being a kind of con-artist/seduction kind of thing. I quite enjoyed the con-artist/seduction part. The golf part is not that interesting. 

The big golf showdown involves a kind of auction game where someone bids on a team winning a large golf tournament. This is called a Calcutta, and I've never heard of anything like it before. This kind of thing was apparently widely understood by Banning's audience, because the film itself takes no time to explain the rules. I had to pause the movie in the middle and read up on golf Calcuttas.

Wagner is handsome and clever, and Guy Stockwell and James Farentino are, too. Jill St. John is totally delightful, but Anjanette Comer is legitimately terrible in this. I've never heard of her before, so perhaps she's terrible in everything? Who's to say. 

This is an odd, sexy little film with a sleek script that I haven't seen available in many places. It was on my radar because the main song in the film was a) composed by Quincy Jones and b) nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar in 1968. I watched it through the Cave of Forgotten Films.

Portrait of Jason (1967)

This documentary really is unlike anything I've ever seen. Portrait of Jason is a really difficult film in many ways, and stunning because of when it came out. But it's also frustrating. Jason Holliday, the film's subject, gets so drunk in the movie, that one isn't always sure what he's talking about or what he means, and his thoughts meander. But this portrait of a gay hustler in 1967 that played at the NYFF is an important document, either way.

Tri (1965)

Tri (Three) is a three-part film set in Yugoslavia, with each part set at a different period during WWII. Bata Zivojinović is the main character in each of the sequences, and he's really excellent. Aleksandar Petrović's film is unflinching and occasionally difficult but always riveting drama. It is in fact brilliantly directed, with act one being a powerful, tragic character study, act two an adventure film, and act three a kind of quiet, meditative drama. Each of the stories feels profound. I loved this.

Two Petrović movies were nominated for the oscar for Best Foreign Language film - Tri and the film he would make next, I Even Met Happy Gypsies, which is also excellent.

Tri is rather hard to get hold of, however. I downloaded my copy from the great website The Cave of Forgotten Films which has been shut down by opponents of freedom.

Oscar (1967)

Oscar is one of the funniest films I've seen in years. It's a farcical gem directed by Édouard Molinaro  (who directed the hilarious La Cage aux Folles, which was – as you probably know – remade as The Birdcage) that would work just as well as a stage play – it has a unit set – but which Molinaro has made wonderfully cinematic. The farce feels like a kind of French Joe Orton, with similar morals (although less queer). This movie had me in hysterics. The lead actor, the brilliant Louis de Funès, just does bit after bit, and it is hilarious. I cannot recommend it enough if you need something just stupidly funny.

The Deadly Affair (1967)

Decided to watch another British spy movie scored by Quincy Jones, since I liked A Dandy in Aspic so much and the Criterion Channel had a whole selection of movies scored by Jones. The Deadly Affair was directed by Sidney Lumet from a novel by John le Carré and starred James Mason, Maximilian Schell (great as always), and Simone Signoret.

The Deadly Affair got a bit of a slow start, but it ended up being quite good. I won't spoil the mystery by talking about it, but this is definitely a film worth watching. The main takeaway here is that Simone Signoret – and we already knew this, so I guess it was no surprise – is a genius. She gives an incredible performance. She's sensitive and hard at the same time, vulnerable and vicious, brokenhearted and steel. It's really a perfect portrayal. She has four scenes, and she's just terrific.

Also, for some reason there is an extended sequence at the theatre, where we watch the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of none other than Edward II directed by Sir Peter Hall. We are, of course, treated to the sequence in which the young king is sodomized by a red-hot poker. I rolled my eyes. The show, for the record, looks awful. The set is really hideous. Why this is in the film is beyond me, but it is there all the same.

El Amor Brujo (1967)

Not to be confused with Carlos Saura's El Amor Brujo, Rovira Beleta's film is sort of bananas, honestly, and the acting is out of control in its theatricality. But El Amor Brujo is an enjoyable curiosity, even if it doesn't have the level of amazing flamenco that Los Tarantos does. For me, the highlight of this film – in which a man fakes his death so that he can haunt his girlfriend and gaslight her into coming back to him – is when the woman's new boyfriend realizes (and is relieved) that this man is alive and not a ghost. Real men you can fight, he says, ghosts are another matter.

The Face of Another

The Face of Another (他人の顔) is an ok semi-horror film slash psychological thriller. The production design is the best thing about it. Mostly, though, Teshigahara's film is busy philosophizing about faces and masks, and it doesn't feel like it really gets anywhere, at least to me.

Two for the Road (1967)

Two for the Road is a very cleverly told tale about a relationship and three (or four?) different trips through the south of France taken by a couple at different times. The editing is smart, and the script keeps all of these balls in the air in smart ways.

The central question of the film, however, is this romantic relationship: will they divorce? Will they stay together? Will they murder each other? To be honest, by the film's second act, I had already started, rather, to dislike the two of them, and didn't care if they stayed together or not.