No, I won't make you wait any longer. That'd be cruel. Here is my full ballot...
1.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
2.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
3.
Once Upon A Time in the West (1968)
4.
Chimes at Midnight (1965)
5.
Army of Shadows (1969)
6.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
7.
Two for the Road (1967)
8.
A Thousand Clowns (1965)
9.
Z (1969)
10.
One, Two, Three (1961)
11.
High & Low (1963)
12.
The Graduate (1967)
13.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
14.
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
15.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
16.
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
17.
Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
18.
Jules & Jim (1962)
19.
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
20.
The Professionals (1966)
21.
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
22.
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
23.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
24.
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
25.
Blast of Silence (1961)
So nine of my twenty-five did not make the top hundred. I knew at least one of them was a lost cause, voting wise, and a few others were definitely longshots I figured, but I thought three or four of these nine were almost certain to be there, and that one of those was a lock. Alas.
Chimes at Midnight
1965, Orson Welles
It wound up with forty-five points from three votes, including my twenty-two points, but it wasn't enough. As great as this film is, and is is considered by many Welles fans to be his absolute best film, even mightier than
Citizen Kane, it has been notoriously difficult to get a hold of a decent copy in the United States. For that reason alone, I knew it was a longshot to make the cut. Still, I'm impressed with how close it got. One more decent-sized vote and it would have been there. When I saw Orson's
The Trial sneak in at #99, I thought well
maybe after all...but it simply wasn't to be. This was Welles' third and final Shakespeare film, following
Macbeth (19548) and
Othello (1952), and clearly Sir John Falstaff is a character Welles connected with, and not just because he ballooned to Falstaffian proportions late in life. The Battle of Agincourt sequence remains a triumph of editing savvy, and films as famous and Oscar winning as
Braveheart heavily cribbed from it.
Two for the Road
1967, Stanley Donen
This is a clever yet honest look at the stages of a couple's relationship, from meet cute to not-so-happily married with child in tow. The clever part comes from the screenplay's construction, which plays with time at various points along a road the couple physically and metaphorically travels, starring one of the most luminous beauties of all cinema in Audrey Hepburn and the wonderful Albert Finney in the first phase of his still going career. It isn't as straightforward as
Barefoot in the Park nor as iconic as
Breakfast at Tiffany's, both of which made the Top Hundred, but it is much more amazing than either. Oh, well. It managed thirty-two points from two votes, mine accounting for nineteen of them. Even though it didn't make the cut, I hope a lot more of you discover it in the future.
A Thousand Clowns
1965, Fred Coe
Much like
Chimes at Midnight,
A Thousand Clowns was not so easy to find for decades, which is at least one reason why I was the only person who voted for it. Jason Robards gave three dozen wonderful performances over his long career, but this may be the best of the best....even if somehow he didn't even manage an Oscar nomination (the year Lee Marvin won for
Cat Ballou). One of his co-stars, Martin Balsam, did win, and it was nominated for score, adapted screenplay, and Best Picture. But it has been a bit lost in popular culture since then. Too bad. Loved it to pieces the first time I saw it as a kid, and that appreciation has deepend over my lifetime as I have grown closer to Murray Burns' age myself.
One, Two, Three
1961, Billy Wilder
It has the help of being helmed by one of the most successful writer/directors the medium ever saw, and it stars one of the 20th Century's greatest and most beloved icons...yet
One, Two, Three still hasn't caught up in reputation to some of the other greats from Billy Wilder or starring Jimmy Cagney. For me the second I discovered this Cold War Screwball Farce I was ga-ga for it, much more so than the much more famous
Some Like It Hot which will surely make the 1950s List and the wonderful but very different
The Apartment which landed all the way at number eight, here. Of my nine that didn't make the list,
One, Two, Three was actually the closest, with forty-nine points (it took fifty-nine ot get in), and four other MoFos voting for it. Hope more of you discover this hysterical fast-paced gem that we love.
The Americanization of Emily
1964, Arthur Hiller
I have chatted this one up a lot, but either not enough of you saw it (which is what I'd like to think) or you just aren't all that cool (which I fear). The best film role Jim Garner ever had and a razor sharp script by Paddy Chayefsky make this satire of the D-Day Landing a true classic. Just not here on the MoFo '60s List. It received only two votes, twenty-six points, a dozen of which came from me. I can't say I expected this one to make it, but I was hoping. I also suspect it is one of those that when more of you take the time to watch it, you'll be kicking yourselves for not including it on your ballots when it would have counted.
Cléo from 5 to 7
1962, Agnès Varda
I was sure Jacques Demy's
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg would make the cut, and it did, but I thought it was almost as likely that his wife's perhaps best film,
Cléo from 5 to 7, would also join it. It did not. It got twenty-one points from three votes, but I expected this one to get six or seven votes. This real-time journey of a young singer awaiting a diagnosis that may be cancer, it has the same kind of Existentialism on display in the other French New Wave titles that made the list, but with a wry Humanism and gentle but rich performance by Corinne Marchand, I thought this would be a winner with the Art House crowd here.
Jules & Jim
1962, François Truffaut
This was the big shocker, from my list. International film pioneers of the era like Godard, Melville, Resnais, Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, Costa-Gavras, and Buñuel make the MoFo List, but there is no room for even one film by François Truffaut?!? Baffling. Six of us voted for
Jules & Jim, but it only managed twenty-eight points as we all had it on the second half of our ballots. Kee-RAY-zee, Man. Truffaut's
Shoot the Piano Player actually got closer to making it with thirty-nine points from only three lists. Seriously, if
The 400 Blows is not only just ON the '50s List but in the top half, I may leave you punks once and for all.
The Professionals
1966, Richard Brooks
I know this doesn't have the same brand-name recognition as the Westerns that did wind up making the list, but I did think that those of us genre buffs who adore it would carry it far enough to make the hundred. But as only two of us bothered to vote for it, a measly eight points....well, sheee-it. It is as much an adventure film as it is a Western, and it is immensely enjoyable. For those who didn't get around to watching it for the purposes of voting, do yourselves a favor and track it down, now.
Blast of Silence
1961, Allen Baron
This one I knew had zero chance of making it, but I was happily surprised to see somebody else put it on their list. It was just one person, and together we gave it a whopping four points, but star/director Allen Baron's tough, low budget Noir about a hitman coming into New York City for a job at Christmas time is weird and darkly funny and boasts some amazing shots of the unglamorous sections of the five boroughs akin to some of the work Cassavetes had done in
Shadows a couple years before, only tied to a mean and lean bit of genre fun.
OK, fess up, who else was hip enough to vote for this flick?
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