Mini reviews of the 100 greatest films (according to Robert the List)

55. The Graduate 1967 USA Mike Nichols

It’s a lot of fun. It’s a good yarn. It’s funny. It looks great. It’s iconic. Anne Bancroft is fantastic.

Wikipedia:
"The Graduate is a 1967 American independent romantic comedy-drama film…based on the 1963 novella by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The film tells the story of 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate with no well-defined aim in life who is seduced by an older married woman, Mrs. Robinson, but then falls for her daughter, Elaine.
…
Casting
Nichols' first choice for Mrs. Robinson was French actress Jeanne Moreau. The motivation for this was the cliché that in French culture, "older" women tended to "train" the younger men in sexual matters….Doris Day turned down an offer because the nudity required by the role offended her….Shelley Winters, Ingrid Bergman, Eva Marie Saint, Ava Gardner, Patricia Neal, Susan Hayward, Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Geraldine Page were also considered for the role of Mrs. Robinson….
..
When Dustin Hoffman auditioned for the role of Benjamin, he was just short of his 30th birthday at the time of filming. He was asked to perform a love scene with Ross, having previously never done one, and believed that, as he said later, "a girl like [Ross] would never go for a guy like me in a million years". Ross agreed, believing that Hoffman "looked about 3 feet tall ... so unkempt. This is going to be a disaster."…

…Hoffman was paid $20,000 for his role in the film, but netted just $4,000 after taxes and living expenses. After spending that money, Hoffman filed for New York State unemployment benefits, receiving $55 per week while living in a two-room apartment in the West Village of Manhattan.
Before Hoffman was cast, Robert Redford and Charles Grodin were among the top choices. Redford tested for the part of Benjamin (with Candice Bergen as Elaine), but Nichols thought Redford did not possess the underdog quality Benjamin needed….Harrison Ford also auditioned for the role of Benjamin Braddock but was turned down.…Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen, Anthony Perkins, Warren Beatty, George Peppard…were also considered for the role of Benjamin Braddock.
Ronald Reagan was considered for the part of Benjamin's father Mr. Braddock, which eventually went to William Daniels. Nichols cast Gene Hackman as Mr. Robinson, but he was later fired after a few days of rehearsals; he was replaced by Murray Hamilton. Hackman would later say being fired from the film still hurts him.
Despite playing mother and daughter, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross were only eight years apart in age. Bancroft and Hoffman differed less than six.
Filming
The quality of the cinematography was influenced by Nichols, who chose Oscar winner Robert Surtees to do the photography. Surtees, who had photographed major films since the 1920s, including Ben-Hur, said later, "It took everything I had learned over 30 years to be able to do the job. I knew that Mike Nichols was a young director who went in for a lot of camera. We did more things in this picture than I ever did in one film."
….The wedding scene was highly influenced by the ending of the 1924 comedy film Girl Shy starring Harold Lloyd, who also served as an advisor for the scene in The Graduate.

Music
See also: The Graduate (soundtrack)
The film boosted the profile of folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. Originally, Nichols and O'Steen used their existing songs like "The Sound of Silence" merely as a pacing device for the editing, until Nichols decided that substituting original music would not be effective, and decided to include them on the soundtrack, an unusual move at that time.
...
In popular culture
Numerous films, TV shows, music videos, and commercials have referenced The Graduate.
…In the 1992 film The Player, Robert Altman's satire of Hollywood, Buck Henry pitches a sequel to The Graduate to producer Griffin Mill (played by Tim Robbins) during the film's opening sequence.
…
Stage adaptation
Terry Johnson's adaptation of the original novel and the film ran on both London's West End and Broadway, and has toured the United States. There is a Brazilian version adapted by Miguel Falabella. Several actresses have starred as Mrs. Robinson, including Kathleen Turner, Lorraine Bracco, Jerry Hall, Amanda Donohoe, Morgan Fairchild, Anne Archer, Vera Fischer, Patricia Richardson and Linda Gray.
The stage production adds several scenes not in the novel nor the film, as well as using material from both film and novel. The soundtrack uses songs by Simon & Garfunkel also not used in the film, such as "Bridge Over Troubled Water", as well as music from other popular musicians from the era, such as The Byrds and The Beach Boys.
The West End production opened at the Gielgud Theatre on April 5, 2000, after previews from March 24, with Kathleen Turner starring as Mrs. Robinson. Jerry Hall replaced Turner from July 31, 2000, followed by Amanda Donohoe from February 2001, Anne Archer from June 2001, and Linda Gray from October 2001. The production closed in January 2002. The 2003 U.K. touring production starred Glynis Barber as Mrs. Robinson….”

Runtime: 1 hour 46 minutes
Trailer:
Clip:

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57. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 UK Stanley Kubrick

Wikipedia:
“2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Its plot was inspired by several short stories optioned from Clarke, primarily "The Sentinel" (1951) and "Encounter in the Dawn" (1953). The film…follows a voyage by astronauts, scientists, and the sentient supercomputer HAL 9000 to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith.
The film is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of spaceflight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous themes. Kubrick avoided conventional cinematic and narrative techniques; dialogue is used sparingly, and there are long sequences accompanied only by music. Shunning the convention that major film productions should feature original music, 2001: A Space Odyssey takes for its soundtrack numerous works of classical music, including pieces by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian, and György Ligeti.
Polarising critics after its release, 2001: A Space Odyssey has since been subject to a variety of interpretations, ranging from the darkly apocalyptic to 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 extra-terrestrial life. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Kubrick the award for his direction of the visual effects, which apart from his lifetime-achievement Oscar, was the only Academy Award the director would receive….
The film is now widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made…

Plot
In a prehistoric veld, a tribe of hominins is driven away from a water hole by a rival tribe, and the next day finds an alien monolith. The tribe learns how to use a bone as a weapon and, after a first hunt, use it to drive the rival tribe away.
Millions of years later, Dr Heywood Floyd, Chairman of the United States National Council of Astronautics, travels to Clavius Base, an American lunar outpost. During a stopover at Space Station Five, he meets Russian scientists who are concerned that Clavius seems to be unresponsive. He refuses to discuss rumours of an epidemic at the base. At Clavius, Floyd addresses a meeting of personnel to whom he stresses the need for secrecy regarding their newest discovery. His mission is to investigate a recently found artefact, a monolith buried four million years earlier near the lunar crater Tycho. As he and others examine and photograph the object, it emits a high-powered radio signal.
Eighteen months later, the American spacecraft Discovery One is bound for Jupiter, with mission pilots and scientists Dr Dave Bowman and Dr Frank Poole on board, along with three other scientists in suspended animation.
…(ending: spoilers ��)
At Jupiter, Bowman finds a third, much larger monolith orbiting the planet. He leaves Discovery in an EVA pod to investigate. He is pulled into a vortex of coloured light and observes bizarre astronomical phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual colours as he passes by. Finally he finds himself in a large neoclassical bedroom where he sees, and then becomes, older versions of himself: first standing in the bedroom, middle-aged and still in his spacesuit, then dressed in leisure attire and eating dinner, and finally as an old man lying in bed. A monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it, he is transformed into a foetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light, which afterwards floats in space above the Earth.

Production
…After completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), director Stanley Kubrick told a publicist from Columbia Pictures that his next project would be about extraterrestrial life…How Kubrick became interested in creating a science fiction film is far from clear…
Kubrick obtained financing and distribution from the American studio MGM with the selling point that the film could be marketed in the ultra-widescreen Cinerama format, which MGM had recently used on How the West Was Won.
…In a draft version of a contract with Kubrick's production company in May 1965, MGM suggested Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and David Lean as possible replacements for Kubrick if he was unavailable. (author’s note: whaaaaaat?????? lol could you get 4 more diverse directors??)

Pre-production
…Illustrators…were hired to produce concept drawings, sketches, and paintings of the space technology seen in the film. Two educational films, the National Film Board of Canada's 1960 animated short documentary Universe and the 1964 New York World's Fair film To the Moon and Beyond, were major influences.
According to biographer Vincent LoBrutto, Universe was a visual inspiration to Kubrick.
The 29-minute film, which had also proved popular at NASA for its realistic portrayal of outer space, met "the standard of dynamic visionary realism that he was looking for".
…Universe's narrator, actor Douglas Rain, was cast as the voice of HAL.

…background artist Douglas Trumbull..created storyboards for the space flight sequences in 2001. Trumbull became a special effects supervisor on 2001. Although Trumbull's association with Kubrick was a huge boost for his career, he swore afterwards that he would "never work for someone else again", in part because Kubrick "was a hell of a taskmaster ... his level of quality-control bordered on perfectionism."
The film would eventually earn an Oscar for best special effects, but the award went solely to Kubrick, with Trumbull receiving none of the accolade for his work. This led to threats of legal action and the two men did not speak for a decade. Trumbull said after Kubrick's death that he "was a genius", someone whom Trumbull missed terribly…
Writing

…Searching for a collaborator in the science fiction community for the writing of the script, Kubrick was advised by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staff member Roger Caras, to talk to writer Arthur C. Clarke, who lived in Ceylon. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick allowed Caras to cable the film proposal to Clarke.
Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with [that] enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?"
Meeting for the first time at Trader Vic's in New York on 22 April 1964, the two began discussing the project that would take up the next four years of their lives. Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001. Kubrick told Clarke he wanted to make a film about "Man's relationship to the universe", and was, in Clarke's words, "determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe ... even, if appropriate, terror".
Clarke offered Kubrick six of his short stories, and by May 1964, Kubrick had chosen "The Sentinel" as the source material for the film. In search of more material to expand the film's plot, the two spent the rest of 1964 reading books on science and anthropology, screening science fiction films, and brainstorming ideas.
They created the plot for 2001 by integrating several different short story plots written by Clarke, along with new plot segments requested by Kubrick for the film development, and then combined them all into a single script for 2001.
Kubrick and Clarke privately referred to the project as How the Solar System Was Won, a reference to how it was a follow-on to MGM's Cinerama epic How the West Was Won. On 23 February 1965, Kubrick issued a press release announcing the title as Journey Beyond The Stars…in April 1965, eleven months after they began working on the project, Kubrick selected 2001: A Space Odyssey; Clarke said the title was "entirely" Kubrick's idea.
Intending to set the film apart from the "monsters-and-sex" type of science-fiction films of the time, Kubrick used Homer's The Odyssey as both a model of literary merit and a source of inspiration for the title. Kubrick said, "It occurred to us that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation."
…Kubrick made the film more cryptic by minimising dialogue and explanation. Kubrick said the film is "basically a visual, nonverbal experience" that "hits the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does, or painting"…Kubrick hinted at the nature of the mysterious unseen alien race in 2001 by suggesting that given millions of years of evolution, they progressed from biological beings to "immortal machine entities" and then into "beings of pure energy and spirit" with "limitless capabilities and ungraspable intelligence".
In a 1980 interview (not released during Kubrick's lifetime), Kubrick explains one of the film's closing scenes, where Bowman is depicted in old age after his journey through the Star Gate:
“The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by godlike entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. ... When they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made some kind of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.”
…
Kubrick made further changes to make the film more nonverbal, to communicate on a visual and visceral level rather than through conventional narrative. By the time shooting began, Kubrick had removed much of the dialogue and narration. Long periods without dialogue permeate the film: the film has no dialogue for roughly the first and last twenty minutes, as well as for the 10 minutes from Floyd's Moonbus landing near the monolith until Poole watches a BBC newscast on Discovery. What dialogue remains is notable for its banality (making the computer HAL seem to have more emotion than the humans) when juxtaposed with the epic space scenes.

Filming
Principal photography began on 29 December 1965, in Stage H at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England….Filming of actors was completed in September 1967,[63] and from June 1966 until March 1968, Kubrick spent most of his time working on the 205 special-effects shots in the film.
He ordered the special-effects technicians to use the painstaking process of creating all visual effects seen in the film "in camera", avoiding degraded picture quality from the use of blue screen and travelling matte techniques. Although this technique, known as "held takes", resulted in a much better image, it meant exposed film would be stored for long periods of time between shots, sometimes as long as a year. In March 1968, Kubrick finished the "pre-premiere" editing of the film, making his final cuts just days before the film's general release in April 1968.
The film was announced in 1965 as a "Cinerama"[65] film and was photographed in Super Panavision 70 (which uses a 65 mm negative combined with spherical lenses to create an aspect ratio of 2.20:1). It would eventually be released in a "roadshow" 70 mm version and a later general release 35 mm version. Colour processing and 35 mm release prints were done using Technicolor's dye transfer process. The 70 mm prints were made by MGM Laboratories, Inc. on Metrocolor. The production was $4.5 million over the initial $6 million budget and 16 months behind schedule….
…
Music
From early in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily nonverbal experience that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during scenes with dialogue. The film is notable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Most feature films, then and now, are typically accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written specially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production, Kubrick commissioned a score for 2001 from Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also had worked on Dr. Strangelove. During post-production, Kubrick chose to abandon North's music in favour of the classical pieces which he had earlier chosen to guide North's score. North did not know that his score had been abandoned in favour of the temporary music pieces until he saw the film at its premiere.
Design and visual effects
…The film features an extensive use of Eurostile Bold Extended, Futura and other sans serif typefaces as design elements of the 2001 world. Computer displays show high-resolution fonts, colour, and graphics that were far in advance of what most computers were capable of in the 1960s, when the film was made.
…Models
To heighten the reality of the film, intricate models of the various spacecraft and locations were built. Their sizes ranged from about two-foot-long models of satellites and the Aries translunar shuttle up to the 55-foot (17 m)-long model of the Discovery One spacecraft. "In-camera" techniques were again used as much as possible to combine models and background shots together to prevent degradation of the image through duplication.
…Rotating sets
For spacecraft interior shots, ostensibly containing a giant centrifuge that produces artificial gravity, Kubrick had a 30-short-ton (27 t) rotating "ferris wheel…Various scenes in the Discovery centrifuge were shot by securing set pieces within the wheel, then rotating it while the actor walked or ran in sync with its motion, keeping him at the bottom of the wheel as it turned. The camera could be fixed to the inside of the rotating wheel to show the actor walking completely "around" the set, or mounted in such a way that the wheel rotated independently of the stationary camera, as in the jogging scene where the camera appears to alternately precede and follow the running actor.
The shots where the actors appear on opposite sides of the wheel required one of the actors to be strapped securely into place at the "top" of the wheel as it moved to allow the other actor to walk to the "bottom" of the wheel to join him….
Zero-gravity effects
The realistic-looking effects of the astronauts floating weightless in space and inside the spacecraft were accomplished by suspending the actors from wires attached to the top of the set and placing the camera beneath them. The actors' bodies blocked the camera's view of the wires and appeared to float. For the shot of Poole floating into the pod's arms during Bowman's recovery of him, a stuntman on a wire portrayed the movements of an unconscious man and was shot in slow motion to enhance the illusion of drifting through space…
….
Theatrical run and post-premiere cuts
The film was originally scheduled for a Christmas 1966 release, but was later delayed to early 1967, then later to October 1967. The film's world premiere was on 2 April 1968…
…The general release of the film in its 35 mm anamorphic format took place in autumn 1968…
…As was typical of many high-budget films of the era, it was released both in a "roadshow" 70 mm version and a later 35 mm general release version.
…
Critical response
...
2001: A Space Odyssey polarised critical opinion, receiving both praise and derision, with many New York–based critics being especially harsh… Keir Dullea says that during the New York premiere, 250 people walked out; in L.A., Rock Hudson not only left early but "was heard to mutter, 'What is this bullshit?'" "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?" "But a few months into the release, they realised a lot of people were watching it while smoking funny cigarettes. Someone in San Francisco even ran right through the screen screaming: 'It's God!'”
…Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future ... it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film." …The Boston Globe's review called it "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere ... The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life." Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, saying the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale".
Time…magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."
…
Interpretations
…
Audiences vs. critics
A spectrum of diverse interpretative opinions would form after the film's release, appearing to divide theatre audiences from the opinions of critics. Krämer writes: "Many people sent letters to Kubrick to tell him about their responses to 2001, most of them regarding the film—in particular the ending—as an optimistic statement about humanity, which is seen to be born and reborn. The film's reviewers and academic critics, by contrast, have tended to understand the film as a pessimistic account of human nature and humanity's future. The most extreme of these interpretations state that the foetus floating above the Earth will destroy it."…
Regarding the film as a whole, Kubrick encouraged people to make their own interpretations and refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened". In a 1968 interview with Playboy, he said:
You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point
In a subsequent discussion of the film with Joseph Gelmis, Kubrick said his main aim was to avoid "intellectual verbalization" and reach "the viewer's subconscious". But he said he did not strive for ambiguity—it was simply an inevitable outcome of making the film nonverbal. Still, he acknowledged this ambiguity was an invaluable asset to the film. He was willing then to give a fairly straightforward explanation of the plot on what he called the "simplest level", but unwilling to discuss the film's metaphysical interpretation, which he felt should be left up to viewers.
Meaning of the monolith
…Humanity's first and second encounters with the monolith have visual elements in common; both the apes, and later the astronauts, touch it gingerly with their hands, and both sequences conclude with near-identical images of the Sun appearing directly over it (the first with a crescent moon adjacent to it in the sky, the second with a near-identical crescent Earth in the same position), echoing the Sun–Earth–Moon alignment seen in the film's opening.[209] The second encounter also suggests the triggering of the monolith's radio signal to Jupiter by the presence of humans, echoing the premise of Clarke's source story "The Sentinel".
The monolith is the subject of the film's final line of dialogue (spoken at the end of the "Jupiter Mission" segment): "Its origin and purpose still a total mystery."…
According to other scholars, "the monolith is a representation of the actual wideframe cinema screen, rotated 90 degrees ... a symbolic cinema screen". "It is at once a screen and the opposite of a screen, since its black surface only absorbs, and sends nothing out. ... and leads us ... to project ourselves, our emotions."
"A new heaven"
Clarke indicated his preferred reading of the ending of 2001 as oriented toward the creation of "a new heaven" provided by the Star Child. His view was corroborated in a posthumously released interview with Kubrick. Kubrick says that Bowman is elevated to a higher level of being that represents the next stage of human evolution.
…HAL's breakdown
The reasons for HAL's malfunction and subsequent malignant behaviour have elicited much discussion….In an interview with Joseph Gelmis in 1969, Kubrick said that HAL "had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility".

…Influence
See also: 2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture
considered one of the major artistic works of the 20th century, with many critics and filmmakers considering it Kubrick's masterpiece.
…The influence of 2001 on subsequent filmmakers is considerable. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and others—including many special effects technicians—discuss the impact the film has had on them in a featurette titled Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001, included in the 2007 DVD release of the film….
At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott said he believed 2001 was the unbeatable film that in a sense killed the science fiction genre.
Others credit 2001 with opening up a market for films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, Contact, and Interstellar, proving that big-budget "serious" science-fiction films can be commercially successful, and establishing the "sci-fi blockbuster" as a Hollywood staple.
Science magazine Discover's blogger Stephen Cass, discussing the film's considerable impact on subsequent science fiction, writes that "the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000 and the ultimate alien artefact, the monolith, have all become enduring cultural icons in their own right."

Runtime: 2 hours 19 minutes
Trailer:

Huge fan of Kubrick. For me, however, A Clockwork Orange will for ever be my favorite of his.

58. Kes 1969 UK Ken Loach

An intimate/personal and often visually gorgeous film. The scene in which Billy discusses taking a Kestrel with the farmer, in the lush green field with the dilapidated barn in the background is one of the most beautiful film images I can think of. In parts very funny, in others moving.

Wikipedia:
“
Kes is a 1969 British coming-of-age drama film directed by Ken Loach…based on the 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave…Kes follows the story of Billy, who comes from a dysfunctional working-class family and is a no-hoper at school, but discovers his own private means of fulfilment when he adopts a fledgling kestrel and proceeds to train it in the art of falconry.
The film has been much praised, especially for the performance of the teenage David Bradley, who had never acted before, in the lead role, and for Loach's compassionate treatment of his working-class subject; it remains a biting indictment of the British educational system of the time as well as of the limited career options then available to lower-class, unskilled workers in regional Britain.
…Background
The film (and the book upon which it was based, by Barry Hines) were semi-autobiographical, Hines having been a teacher in the school in which it was set, and wishing to critique the education system of the time. His younger brother Richard had found a new life after his student experiences at the local secondary modern school by training the original bird "Kes", the inspiration for the movie. Richard assisted the movie production by acting as the handler for the birds in the film. Both brothers grew up in the area shown in the film, and their father was a worker in the local coal mine, though he was a kind man in contrast to the absentee father in the film. Both the film and the book provide a portrait of life in the mining areas of Yorkshire of the time; reportedly, the miners in the area were then the lowest-paid workers in a developed country…
Production
Set in and around Barnsley, the film was one of the first of several collaborations between Ken Loach and Barry Hines that used authentic Yorkshire dialect. The extras were all hired from in and around Barnsley…In a 2013 interview, director Ken Loach said that, upon its release, United Artists organised a screening of the film for some American executives and they said that they could understand Hungarian better than the dialect in the film.
…Textual themes
Much of the film's content has been discussed as a critique of the British education system of the time, known as the Tripartite System, which sorted children into different types of schools depending on their academic ability. The view of the creators is that such a system was harmful both to the children involved and to wider society. In his 2006 book, Life After Kes, Simon Golding commented that "Billy Casper, unlike the author [Golding], was a victim of the 11-plus, a government directive that turned out, for those who passed the exam, prospective white-collar workers, fresh from grammar schools, into jobs that were safe and well paid. The failures, housed in secondary modern schools, could only look forward to unskilled manual labour or the dangers of the coal face. Kes protests at this educational void that does not take into account individual skills, and suggests this is a consequence of capitalist society, which demands a steady supply of unskilled labour." Golding also quoted director Ken Loach who stated that, "It [the film] should be dedicated to all the lads who had failed their 11-plus. There's a colossal waste of people and talent, often through schools where full potential is not brought out."
…The film has also been noted for its themes around familial bonds during childhood and the effect their absence can have on children.
Actor Andrew Garfield, who played Billy in a stage adaptation of Kes early in his career, commented that, "... I think that Kes represents to Billy the ideal relationship that he finds so difficult to have with the people around him. Billy trusts, protects and is supported by Kes. He spends all of his time thinking of Kes and day dreaming about her. Billy looks up to Kes and feels privileged to be her friend. Kes has everything that Billy desires: freedom, pride, respect and independence."
…Certification
The certificate given to the film has occasionally been reviewed by the British Board of Film Classification, as there is a small amount of swearing, including more than one instance of the word twat."

Runtime: 1 hour 52 minutes
Trailer:

DROPPED

And that's a wrap on the 60s.
What a decade for film making and cinema!

34. The Naked Island 1960 Japan Kaneto Shindô (silent) b/w ESSENTIAL
35. Psycho 1960 UK Alfred Hitchcock b/w
36. La Notte 1961 Italy Michelangelo Antonioni b/w ESSENTIAL
37. Last Year at Marienbad 1961 France Alain Resnais b/w
??? Lola 1961 France Jacques Demy ???
38. La Jetee 1962 France Chris Marker (silent) b/w ESSENTIAL
39. L'Eclisse 1962 Italy Michelangelo Antonioni b/w
40. Lawrence of Arabia 1962 UK David Lean ESSENTIAL
41. Le Mepris / Contempt 1963 France Jean Luc Godard
42. High and Low 1963 Japan Akira Kurosawa b/w
43. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 1964 France Jacques Demy b/w
44. Onibaba 1964 Japan Kaneto Shindô b/w
45. For A Few Dollars More 1965 Italy Sergio Leone??
46. Alphaville 1965 France Jean-Luc Godard b/w
47. Le Bonheur 1965 France Agnès Varda
48. Pierrot Le Fou 1965 France Jean-Luc Godard
49. The Sound of Music 1965 USA Robert Wise
50. Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 France Robert Bresson b/w
51. Blow Up 1966 UK Michelangelo Antonioni
52. Bonnie and Clyde 1967 USA Arthur Penn
53. The Graduate 1967 USA Mike Nichols
54. Stolen Kisses 1968 France François Truffaut
55. 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 UK Stanley Kubrick ESSENTIAL
56. Kes 1969 UK Ken Loach
57. The Color of Pomegranates 1969 USSR/Armenia Sergey Paradzhanov

Color of Pomegranates is amazing to watch. Need to see more of Parajanov.

I liked Kes, but I prefer Hidden Agenda, Raining Stones, I, Daniel Blake, The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Riff Raff more by Loach.

It would be a shame if the vast amount of work I have put into this incredible compilation, would be responded to merely with inferences about films I might not have watched.

On the other hand, I recognise the value of bona fide discussion of movies not on the list as well as those on them, and I welcome good faith contributions.

I think another reason why my own reviews are so bad, is that I haven't watched the films recently.
This makes it so much harder to provide detailed insights.
Hopefully the edited information from Wiki provides an adequate alternative, and something a little different.

You should check out Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as well.

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

I prefer Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

Same, though it's been awhile since I've seen Pomegranates.

First one was meant to say “I” need to see more Parajanov. That’s my mistake.
Second was really mentioning other films I felt are stronger, for me, when it comes to Loach. Nothing was meant or implied it towards you.

OK, apologies, and thanks for taking an interest in the thread.

Does nobody (not limited to people who have already interacted with the thread in some way) have anything at all to say about any of the information abstracted from the Wikipedia profiles of these films?

Is there nothing which anybody did not already know, and which is of interest?

I have added For A Few Dollars More.

I've also today added 2 films in the 90s, after I finalised my ballot.

1 from the 90s dropped out, as well sadly as 2 French films from the 1980s.

60. A Touch of Zen 1971 Taiwan King Hu

As a story I think the film’s complete rubbish and I find it much too long. But it is undeniably a work of art. Some of the shots are simply stunning. Not so much landscapes, but clothing (crimsons and whites), and the use of light in interiors. There's also technical development in action sequences. Aside from Hu’s Dragon Inn (1967) this is the pioneer in Chinese action films (Bruce Lee's first lead role was also 1971), and surely remains the most visually beautiful. It’s in by the skin of its teeth.

Wikipedia:

“A Touch of Zen (Chinese: 俠女; pinyin: Xiá Nǚ; lit. 'Chivalrous woman') is a two-part wuxia film written, co-edited and directed by King Hu, originally released in 1970 and 1971. Its screenplay is based on a classic Chinese story "Xianü" in the book Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling. The film is set in the Ming dynasty under the dominance of eunuchs and explores a variety of themes including the transcendence of dichotomies, Zen Buddhism, feminism, conservative female roles, and the ghost story.
…Although filming began in 1968, A Touch of Zen was not fully completed until 1971. The original Taiwanese release was in two parts in 1970 and 1971 (filming was still ongoing when the first part was released) with the bamboo forest sequence that concludes Part 1 reprised at the beginning of Part 2; this version has a combined runtime of 200 minutes. In November 1971, both parts of the film were combined into one for the Hong Kong market with a runtime of 187 minutes.
…
Production
…
With Hu's idea of invoking traditional Chinese culture in his films, A Touch of Zen contains Beijing opera scores and references to Chinese poetry…
The bamboo forest sword fight, a ten-minute confrontation, is said to have taken twenty-five days to shoot. It is choreographed by Han Yingjie, a former Beijing opera actor and the action director of A Touch of Zen. Hu explained proudly of the trial and error he went through in the creative process and concluded that he had put together many scenes in less than eight frames challenging the "golden rule" of cinema.
…Cinematography
Director Hu adopted the classic techniques of montages, including eye-line matches and shot-reverse-shot. He also used jump cuts to create the speed of motions in action effects and applied blocked shots as his signature on evacuating the space before actions take place. Hu also creates "the glimpsing effect" (also called point-of-view shot) to provide a new perspective to audiences. "The glimpsing effect" allows the audience to see the perspective of Gu.
…Reception
Box office
A Touch of Zen failed at the box-office when it was released in two parts in Taiwan in 1970 and 1971. The film only ran one week in the cinema and failed because of its themes of ambiguous sexuality and feminist sensibility. In 1971, the film again failed to receive recognition with its release in Hong Kong due to the overwhelming success of Bruce Lee's movie The Big Boss…It was not until the full three-hour version was revived for a screening at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival that A Touch of Zen gained wide attention.

Review and criticism
Gina Marchetti considers that the genre of the film as wuxia is a new emergence in the Hong Kong New Wave and writes, "although produced in Taiwan after Hu had left Hong Kong, the international accolades for this film brought the "new" cinema of Hong Kong much greater visibility, while providing an art house alternative to the enormous international popularity of Bruce Lee."
…Writing for the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, academic Héctor Rodríguez noted of the film, "In that film...the director's use of elliptical cuts, diegetic insert shots, and other strategies of visual fragmentation allows characters to float magically through the air across long distances, to reach impossibly high altitudes in a single superhuman leap, and to change direction miraculously in midair.”
In his book, King Hu's A Touch of Zen, academic Stephen Teo wrote that, "this final reduction of the mythical female knight-errant figure into human status is meant to provoke us into a philosophical understanding of ourselves. The subject of Buddhist transcendence is Hu’s way of delivering the ultimate critique of the genre’s raison d’être which is the audience’s wish-fulfilment for heroes to save them from their own vulnerability."

Run time: 3 hours
Trailer:

61. McCabe and Mrs Miller 1971 USA Robert Altman

Oh how I love this film. Beatty and Christie are fantastic individually and as a pair. It’s a western like you’ve never seen before. A hint of humour, some beautiful filming, and a score by Leonard Cohen which is reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel. The final 30 minutes or so is as riveting as cinema gets, and it looks great as well.

Wikipedia:

“McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a 1971 American revisionist Western film directed by Robert Altman and starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie…Altman referred to it as an "anti-Western" film because it ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions. It was filmed in British Columbia, Canada in the fall and winter of 1970…..

Plot summary
In 1902, a mysterious gambler named John McCabe arrives in the unincorporated boomtown of Presbyterian Church, Washington, named after its only substantial building, a tall but mostly unused chapel. McCabe quickly takes a dominant position over the town's simple-minded and lethargic inhabitants, thanks to his aggressive personality and persistent rumors that he is actually a notorious gunfighter known as "Pudgy" McCabe.
To support himself, McCabe establishes a makeshift brothel, consisting of three prostitutes purchased for $200 from a pimp in the nearby town of Bearpaw. British cockney madam Constance Miller arrives and persuades McCabe to let her manage his brothel while he focuses on running a gambling hall. The two become financially successful business partners, turning their small business into the largest in town, and a romantic relationship develops between the two, though she charges him for sex.
As the town becomes richer, Sears and Hollander, a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy Mining Company in Bearpaw, arrive to buy out McCabe's business, as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Harrison Shaughnessy is notorious for having people killed when they refuse to sell….

…Production…
Altman offered the lead to Elliott Gould who turned it down to make I Love My Wife. "Bob said, 'You're making the mistake of your life'," said Gould….
Foster called Warren Beatty in England, about the film; Beatty flew to New York City to see M*A*S*H and then flew to Los Angeles, California to sign for McCabe.
The film was originally called The Presbyterian Church Wager, after a bet placed among the church's few attendees, about whether McCabe would survive his refusal of the offer to buy his property. Altman reported that an official in the Presbyterian Church called Warner Bros., to complain about having its church mentioned in a film about brothels and gambling. The complaint prompted a name change to John MacCabe but it was released as McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Filming
…Mrs. Miller is brought into town on a J. I. Case 80 HP steam engine from 1912; the steam engine is genuine and functioning and the crew used it to power the lumbermill after its arrival. Carpenters for the film were locals and young men from the United States, fleeing conscription into the Vietnam War…

…It began snowing near the end of shooting, when the church fire and the standoff were the only scenes left. Beatty did not want to start shooting in the snow, as it was financially risky to do so: to preserve continuity, the rest of the film would have to be shot in snow. Altman countered that since those were the only scenes left to film, it was best to start since there was nothing else to do.

…The film, especially the final scene, is atypical of the western genre. The showdown between a reluctant protagonist and his enemies takes place ungracefully in the snow during the early hours, rather than at "high noon". Instead of hiding indoors and watching the battle unfold outside, the townsfolk are bustling in the streets and largely unaware of the gunfight taking place in their midst. For a distinctive look, Altman and Zsigmond chose to "flash" (pre-fog) the film negative before its eventual exposure, as well as use a number of filters on the cameras, rather than manipulate the film in post-production; in this way the studio could not force him to change the film's look to something less distinctive.

Editing
…Robert Altman was famous for using this style of layered dialogue cutting. The frontier barroom scene that opens his McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Louis Lombardo, editor) has snippets of conversations underlying the foreground action.
Leonard Cohen's songs
Other than the music occurring in the ordinary life of Presbyterian Church, the only music for the film is from three songs composed and performed by Leonard Cohen, a Canadian poet who had released his first album of songs in 1967….

Reception
Contemporary U.S. reviews
The film opened without advance screenings at the Criterion and Loew's Cine theaters in New York City and received mostly negative reviews from the New York daily newspapers including…by Rex Reed, who called it "an incoherent, amateurish, simple-minded, boring and totally worthless piece of garbage" and "an insult to the intelligence of anyone stupid or masochistic enough to sit through it" he added that "at the screening I attended Wednesday night, there were so many boos and hisses and programs thrown at the screen I thought the enraged audience was going to burn down the theater. I wouldn't have blamed them."
However, the weekly critics raved about the film including Judith Crist and Pauline Kael of The New Yorker who called it "a beautiful pipe dream of a movie—a fleeting, almost diaphanous vision of what frontier life might have been," adding, "The movie is so affecting it leaves one rather dazed."
…Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and wrote that it "is like no other Western ever made, and with it, Robert Altman earns his place as one of the best contemporary directors.”. He later added the film to his "Great Movies" list, where he said "Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)"
Gene Siskel also awarded it four stars and called it "a brilliant film, not because of the story, but because of the way in which it is told ... To construct such delicate scenes is the hallmark of fine film making and Altman is clearly a master."
…Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Once again Altman brings a special way of life casually but vibrantly alive. 'McCabe' is an imaginative triumph partly in a visible, technical sense—a meticulous, conventionally authentic reconstruction of a frontier town—but principally in an emotional sense—a deeply felt and stirring romantic vision of frontier society."[30]

…Theme
Film historian James Bernardoni in his book The New Hollywood (1991) locates the central theme of the picture within an inherent conflict between human individuality and the requirements of community in a capitalist society. Bernardoni maintains that Robert Altman delivers these personal and social struggles relentlessly — “in every sequence, virtually every frame”— through his handling of Mise-en-scène”…“a nuanced, compelling, iconoclastic meditation on the great western theme of the reconciliation of the individual and the community”.”


Runtime: 2 hours 1 minute
Full movie:

Walkabout (1971) UK Nicholas Roeg