Psycho, American suspense film and psychological thriller, released in 1960, that was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and is loosely based on the real-life killings of Wisconsin serial murderer Ed Gein.
After secretary Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh) impulsively absconds from her job with $40,000, she checks into the eerie Bates Motel, which is run by shy, awkward Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and his domineering elderly mother. While taking a shower, Crane is fatally stabbed by Norman’s mother, and Norman disposes of the body. Meanwhile, Crane’s boyfriend (John Gavin) and her sister (Vera Miles) launch a frantic search that eventually takes them to the Bates home. There they fend off an attack by Norman’s mother, who, dressed as the long-deceased Mrs. Bates, in reality is Norman. A psychiatrist later determines that Norman suffers from a split personality that led him to commit murder.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Psycho-film-1960; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJQfFQ40lI; accessed October 18, 2022.
Lawrence of Arabia, British historical film, released in 1962, that became one of the most celebrated epics in the history of cinema. The movie, which presents a portrait of the complicated soldier and author T.E. Lawrence, won seven Academy Awards, including those for best picture and best director, and made lead actor Peter O’Toole a star.
The film opens with the death of Lawrence (played by O’Toole) in a motorcycle accident. A reporter’s questions about Lawrence’s life and character provide a framing device for the story, which begins in about 1916 or 1917. Lawrence is a military cartographer in the World War I British army headquarters in Cairo. Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains) of the Arab Bureau assigns Lawrence to go into Arabia to assess the goals and chances of Arab statesman Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), a leader of the Arab Revolt against the Turks, who are allied with Germany. Lawrence travels with a Bedouin guide, who drinks from a well belonging to a rival tribe led by Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif). Sherif Ali kills the guide, and Lawrence continues on his own. He then meets British Colonel Harry Brighton (Anthony Quayle). Brighton believes that the lightly armed Arabs should retreat and allow themselves to be absorbed into the British army. However, Lawrence conceives a plan to conquer the Turkish-held port of Al-ʿAqabah by approaching it from land, where it is unguarded, a feat which requires the crossing of Al-Nafūd, a desert thought to be impassable. Without Brighton’s knowledge, Lawrence sets out with 50 of Feisal’s men and Sherif Ali. After Lawrence retraces his steps to find a man who has fallen behind and rescues him, Sherif Ali rewards Lawrence’s heroism by replacing his British army uniform with Arab robes. Outside Al-ʿAqabah, Lawrence persuades Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn), leader of a strong local Bedouin tribe, to join with them, and the united force succeeds in capturing the port. Lawrence returns to Cairo to inform Dryden, Brighton, and General Allenby (Jack Hawkins) of his exploits.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lawrence-of-Arabia-film-by-Lean; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AznzZAlwVA; accessed October 18, 2022.
Charade is a 1963 American romantic comedy mystery film produced and directed by Stanley Donen,[4] written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The cast also features Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. It spans three genres: suspense thriller, romance and comedy.
Charade was praised by critics for its screenplay and the chemistry between Grant and Hepburn.[5] It has been described as "the best Hitchcock movie [that] Hitchcock never made".[6] It was filmed on location in Paris and contains animated titles by Maurice Binder. Henry Mancini's score features the popular theme song "Charade".
Charade received generally positive reviews, from 21st-century critics as well as contemporaries. The film has a 94% approval rating based on 50 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.40/10 and the consensus: "A globetrotting caper that prizes its idiosyncratic pieces over the general puzzle, Charade is a delightful romp with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn's sparkling chemistry at the center of some perfectly orchestrated mayhem."[5] On Metacritic the film has a score of 83% based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[9]
In a review published January 6, 1964, in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther criticized the film for its "grisly touches" and "gruesome violence", but also praised it for its screenplay with regard to its "sudden twists, shocking gags, eccentric arrangements and occasionally bright and brittle lines" as well as Donen's direction,[10] said to be halfway between a 1930s screwball comedy and North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock, which also starred Grant.[10]
In a Time Out review, the film was rated positively, with the assertion that it is a "mammoth audience teaser [...] Grant imparts his ineffable charm, Kennedy (with metal hand) provides comic brutality, while Hepburn is elegantly fraught".[11] While reviewing the blu-ray DVD version of the film, Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine gave the film a three-and-a-half out of five rating, calling it a "high-end, kitschy whodunit"[12] and writing that it is a "riotous and chaotic take on the spy thriller, essentially, but it structurally resembles Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None as well as describing it as "some sort of miraculous entertainment".[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charade_(1963_film); accessed October 24, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6T2Q4XO7uA; accessed October 24, 2022.
Goldfinger is a 1964 spy film and the third instalment in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The film also stars Honor Blackman as Bond girl Pussy Galore and Gert Fröbe as the title character Auric Goldfinger, along with Shirley Eaton as the iconic Bond girl Jill Masterson. Goldfinger was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and was the first of four Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton.
The film's plot has Bond investigating gold smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger and eventually uncovering Goldfinger's plans to contaminate the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. Goldfinger was the first Bond blockbuster, with a budget equal to that of the two preceding films combined. Principal photography took place from January to July 1964 in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States.
Goldfinger was heralded as the film in the franchise where James Bond "comes into focus". Its release led to a number of promotional licensed tie-in items, including a toy Aston Martin DB5 car from Corgi Toys which became the biggest selling toy of 1964. The promotion also included an image of gold-painted Eaton on the cover of Life.
Many of the elements introduced in the film appeared in many of the later James Bond films, such as the extensive use of technology and gadgets by Bond, an extensive pre-credits sequence that stood largely alone from the main storyline, multiple foreign locales and tongue-in-cheek humor. Goldfinger was the first Bond film to win an Oscar (for Best Sound Editing) and opened to largely favorable critical reception. The film was a financial success, recouping its budget in two weeks and grossing over $120 million worldwide.
In 1999, it was ranked No. 70 on the BFI Top 100 British films list compiled by the British Film Institute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(film); accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA65V-oLKa8; accessed October 18, 2022.
Passing through the backwoods town of Sparta, Mississippi, Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) becomes embroiled in a murder case. He forms an uneasy alliance with the bigoted police chief (Rod Steiger), who faces mounting pressure from Sparta’s hostile citizens to catch the killer and run the African American interloper out of town. Director Norman Jewison splices incisive social commentary into this thrilling police procedural with the help of Haskell Wexler’s vivid cinematography, Quincy Jones’s eclectic score, and two indelible lead performances—a career-defining display of seething indignation and moral authority from Poitier and an Oscar-winning master class in Method acting from Steiger. Winner of five Academy Awards, including for best picture, In the Heat of the Night is one of the most enduring Hollywood films of the civil rights era.
https://www.criterion.com/films/29459-in-the-heat-of-the-night; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9bzzr3uhco; accessed October 18, 2022.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel" and other short stories by Clarke. Clarke also published a novelisation of the film, in part written concurrently with the screenplay, after the film's release. The film stars Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain, and follows a voyage by astronauts, scientists and the sentient supercomputer HAL to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith.
The film is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of space flight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous imagery. Kubrick avoided conventional cinematic and narrative techniques; dialogue is used sparingly, and there are long sequences accompanied only by music. The soundtrack incorporates numerous works of classical music, by composers including Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian, and György Ligeti.
The film received diverse critical responses, ranging from those who saw it as darkly apocalyptic to those who saw it as an optimistic reappraisal of the hopes of humanity. Critics noted its exploration of themes such as human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Kubrick the award for his direction of the visual effects. The film is now widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film); accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LAi7l3iQuE; accessed October 18, 2022.
The Apartment is a 1960 American romantic comedy-drama film directed and produced by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with I. A. L. Diamond. It stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Willard Waterman, David White, Hope Holiday and Edie Adams.
The film follows an insurance clerk (Lemmon) who, in the hope of climbing the corporate ladder, lets more senior coworkers use his Upper West Side apartment to conduct extramarital affairs. He is attracted to an elevator operator (MacLaine) in his office building, unaware that she is having an affair with his immediate boss (MacMurray).
The Apartment was distributed by United Artists to widespread critical acclaim and was a commercial success, despite controversy owing to its subject matter. It became the 8th highest grossing film of 1960. At the 33rd Academy Awards, the film was nominated for ten awards, and won five, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Lemmon, MacLaine and Kruschen were Oscar-nominated. Lemmon and MacLaine won Golden Globe Awards for their performances. It provided the basis for Promises, Promises, a 1968 Broadway musical by Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Neil Simon.
Ever since its release, The Apartment has come to be regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, appearing in lists by the American Film Institute and Sight and Sound magazine. In 1994, it was one of the 25 films selected for inclusion to the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.[3][
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apartment; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcslkrBMLGc; accessed October 18, 2022.
To Kill a Mockingbird, American dramatic film, released in 1962, that was adapted from Harper Lee’s coming-of-age novel that addressed racism and injustice. The movie is widely regarded as an American classic.
To Kill a Mockingbird recounts the childhood experiences of six-year-old “Scout” Finch (played by Mary Badham) during the Great Depression in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. When her widowed father (Gregory Peck), a principled and respected attorney, defends a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, Scout and her brother witness the horrors of racism. They also learn valuable lessons about courage, compassion, tolerance, and prejudice.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-film-1962; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR7loA_oziY; accessed October 18, 2022.
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 musical comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring the English rock band the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists. The film portrays 36 hours in the lives of the group as they prepare for a television performance.
The film was a financial and critical success and was nominated for two Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay. Forty years after its release, Time magazine rated it as one of the 100 all-time great films.[3] In 1997, British critic Leslie Halliwell described it as a "comic fantasia with music; an enormous commercial success with the director trying every cinematic gag in the book" and awarded it a full four stars.[4] The film is credited as being one of the most influential of all musical films, inspiring numerous spy films, the Monkees' television show and pop music videos, and various other low-budget musical film vehicles starring British pop groups, such as the Gerry and the Pacemakers film Ferry Cross the Mersey and John Boorman's vehicle for The Dave Clark Five, Catch Us If You Can.
In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked it the 88th greatest British film of the 20th century.[5]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzUgekUI6k; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzUgekUI6k; accessed October 18, 2022.
Bonnie and Clyde is a 1967 American biographical neo-noir crime drama film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the title characters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. The film also features Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, and Estelle Parsons. The screenplay is by David Newman and Robert Benton. Robert Towne and Beatty provided uncredited contributions to the script; Beatty produced the film. The music is by Charles Strouse.
Bonnie and Clyde is considered one of the first films of the New Hollywood era and a landmark picture. It broke many cinematic taboos and for some members of the counterculture, the film was considered a "rallying cry".[3] Its success prompted other filmmakers to be more open in presenting sex and violence in their films. The film's ending became iconic as "one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history."[4]
The film received Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons) and Best Cinematography (Burnett Guffey).[5] In 1992, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[6][7] It was ranked 27th on the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, and 42nd on its 2007 list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_and_Clyde_(film); accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZpm1zj9510; accessed October 18, 2022.
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and loosely based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulle. Written by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, it stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly and Linda Harrison. In the film, an astronaut crew crash-lands on a strange planet in the distant future. Although the planet appears desolate at first, the surviving crew members stumble upon a society in which apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech. The apes have assumed the role of the dominant species and humans are mute creatures wearing animal skins.
The outline Planet of the Apes script, originally written by Serling, underwent many rewrites before filming eventually began.[3] Directors J. Lee Thompson and Blake Edwards were approached, but the film's producer Arthur P. Jacobs, upon the recommendation of Charlton Heston, chose Franklin J. Schaffner to direct the film. Schaffner's changes included an ape society less advanced—and therefore less expensive to depict—than that of the original novel.[4] Filming took place between May 21 and August 10, 1967, in California, Utah and Arizona, with desert sequences shot in and around Lake Powell, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The film's final "closed" cost was $5.8 million.
The film was released in the United States on February 8, 1968, and was a commercial success, earning a lifetime domestic gross of $32.6 million.[5] The film was groundbreaking for its prosthetic makeup techniques by artist John Chambers[6] and was well received by critics and audiences, launching a film franchise,[7] including four sequels, as well as a short-lived television show, animated series, comic books, and various merchandising. In particular, Roddy McDowall had a long-running relationship with the Apes series, appearing in four of the original five films (he was absent from the second film of the series, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in which he was replaced by David Watson in the role of Cornelius), and also in the television series.
The original series was followed by Tim Burton's remake Planet of the Apes in 2001 and the reboot series began with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011.[8] In 2001, Planet of the Apes was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[9][10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_(1968_film); accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6luDsjJqgjA; accessed by October 18, 2022.
This is the definitive counterculture blockbuster. The down-and-dirty directorial debut of former clean-cut teen star Dennis Hopper, Easy Rider heralded the arrival of a new voice in film, one pitched angrily against the mainstream. After the film’s cross-country journey—with its radical, New Wave–style editing, outsider-rock soundtrack, revelatory performance by a young Jack Nicholson, and explosive ending—the American road trip would never be the same.
https://www.criterion.com/films/27528-easy-rider; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwST6mpT7Ds; accessed October 18, 2022.
One of the British New Wave’s most versatile directors, John Schlesinger came to New York in the late 1960s to make Midnight Cowboy, a picaresque story of friendship that captured a city in crisis and sparked a new era of Hollywood movies. Jon Voight delivers a career-making performance as Joe Buck, a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy city women; he finds a companion in Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida, played by Dustin Hoffman in a radical departure from his breakthrough in The Graduate. A critical and commercial success despite controversy over what the MPAA termed its “homosexual frame of reference,” Midnight Cowboy became the first X-rated film to receive the best picture Oscar, and decades on, its influence still reverberates through cinema.
https://www.criterion.com/films/29369-midnight-cowboy; accessed October 18, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS2IdfBkkj0; accessed October 18, 2022.