1960s

  • Bo Widerberg – Ådalen ’31 AKA Adalen Riots (1969)

    1961-1970ArthouseBo WiderbergDramaSweden

    Quote:
    Flushed with the success of his Elvira Madigan, Swedish director Bo Widerberg concocted another story of teenaged love juxtaposed with social upheaval in Adalen 31. The title refers to the 1931 worker’s strike against the Adalen paper mill in Northern Sweden. As the strikers debate whether or not to use violence in pressing their complaint, the daughter of the factory owner (Marie De Geer) is impregnated by the son of a worker (Peter Schildt). The strike is “resolved” in a bloody confrontation between the laborers and government troops, resulting in the death of the boy–and, on a greater scale, the collapse of Sweden’s Conservative Government. The girl ultimately opts for an abortion, which partially explains why Adalen 31 was originally given an “X” rating by the then-conservative Motion Picture Association of America.Read More »

  • Vera Chytilová – Sedmikrásky AKA Daisies (1966)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseCzech RepublicExperimentalVera Chytilová

    Synopsis:
    If the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named Marie, embark on a gleefully debauched odyssey of gluttony, giddy destruction, and antipatriarchal resistance, in which nothing is safe from their nihilistic pursuit of pleasure. But what happens when the fun is over? Matching her anarchic message with an equally radical aesthetic, director Věra Chytilová, with the close collaboration of cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, unleashes an optical storm of fluctuating film stocks, kaleidoscopic montages, cartoonish stop-motion cutouts, and surreal costumes designed by Ester Krumbachová, who also cowrote the script. The result is Daisies, the most defiant provocation of the Czechoslovak New Wave, an exuberant call to rebellion aimed squarely at those who uphold authoritarian oppression in any form.Read More »

  • Kostas Manoussakis – O fovos AKA The Fear (1966)

    Kostas Manoussakis1961-1970ArthouseCrimeGreece

    PLOT: In this disturbing family drama, a prosperous middle-aged farmer takes up gambling and whoring at the expense of his devoted second wife. Meanwhile, his son the pervert becomes fascinated with the family’s maid, a deaf-mute.Read More »

  • Charles Crichton – The Battle of the Sexes (1960)

    1951-1960Charles CrichtonComedyCrimeUnited Kingdom

    Angela Barrows is a man-eating business woman sent by her American employer to investigate their export opportunities in Edinburgh. En route she meets Robert MacPherson a businessman who asks for her help to bring his company into the 20th Century. The staff, led by Mr Martin has other ideas though, and a battle between the old and new business methods soon breaks out.Read More »

  • Martin Ritt – 5 Branded Women (1960)

    Martin Ritt1951-1960DramaUSAWar

    Yugoslav partisans grimly crop the hair of a village quintet of women believed to have consorted with the occupational Nazis. Four, for various reasons, have indeed – and their seducer is a lone, swaggering sergeant whom the partisans briskly emasculate. Escorted out of town by the sheepish Nazis, the forlorn ladies link up, patriotically and romantically, with a band of tough mountain guerrillasRead More »

  • Tetsuji Takechi – Hakujitsumu AKA Daydream (1964)

    1961-1970ArthouseEroticaJapanTetsuji Takechi

    A very early example, perhaps the first ever, of Japanese “pink” cinema from infamous director Tetsuji Takechi. A woman visits the dentist and ends up descending into a world of surreal S&M fantasies…Read More »

  • Franz-Josef Spieker – Wilder Reiter GmbH (1967)

    1961-1970ArthouseComedyFranz-Josef SpiekerGermany

    Synopsis
    Georg, the head of an advertising company, finds Kim living in a wooden house surrounded by bogs and woods. Kim is hired to ride through Munich on his horse, poses with models outside the Feldherrnhalle. He is featured in a film an is extensively covered by the newspapers. A nun fleeing through the woods to escape from the roaring Kim, lands in a bog and is only rescued by Kim and his team after Georg has saved the rescue on film. The rescue is first glorified on a record, the record is a best-seller and Kim becomes a star…Read More »

  • Jacques Besnard – Estouffade à la caraïbe AKA The Looters (1967)

    France1961-1970AdventureCrimeJacques Besnard

    One for all the Serge Gainsbourg and Jean Seberg completists.

    Guy Bellinger wrote:
    Morgan, a lapsed burglar, is drugged and shanghaied on board a yacht by beautiful Colleen. When he comes to, the athletic young man learns that Colleen and her friends want him to break open the vaults of a Caribbean island where a ruthless dictator has deposited a treasure stolen from his people. Despite the way he has been treated, Morgan accepts the mission. The group, supported by local resistant fighters, storm the fortress, but Colleen’s father gets killed during the attack. The treasure is finally retrieved and is returned to the people. Morgan and Colleen will say yes to each other for better or for worse.Read More »

  • Kôji Wakamatsu – Gendai sei hanzai ankokuhen: aru torima no kokuhaku AKA Dark Story of a Sex Crime: Phantom Killer (1969)

    1961-1970AsianEroticaJapanKoji Wakamatsu

    An highschool student who doesn’t manage to sleep with girls decides to rely on rape.Read More »

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