MOVIES!
Bande à part (1964)
Ennui, anarchy and jump cuts—that was Godard at his influential best in the 60s. And this film, about some slackers who drop out of a dubious language school and retreat to the suburbs for a lazy frolic that turns into absurdist murder, is among his most weirdly entertaining efforts to rewrite not just the grammar of cinema, but its ruling narrative conventions as well.
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
They didn't have enough time to make an ordinary pop musical. A month or two for Alun Owen to write situations and dialogue for a quartet of non-actors, and for Lester to prepare his on-the-fly shoot; then four months from first day of filming to premiere. It's a surprise the picture isn't a mess, a miracle it's so funny, expert and joyous. A Hard Day's Night captures a moment, maybe the last, when rock stars didn't take themselves seriously and could unaffectedly enjoy the pleasure of being rich (yeah!), famous (yeah!), adored (yeah!). Pretty good songs, too.
Charade (1963)
he great movie-star man, Cary Grant, meets thegreat movie-star lady, Audrey Hepburn, in a souffle-light thriller-romance-comedy whipped up by Donen, who did blithe American elegance as well as anyone, and writers Marc Behm and Peter Stone. Audrey is a Parisian thief's widow, now in ignorant possession of his loot, and Cary is a mystery man with a protective or pernicious interest in her. Walter Matthau plays an avuncular type over at the U.S. Treasury office, and James Coburn, George Kennedy and Ned Glass are bad guys whose consecutive demises were considered quite violent for the time. If Charade doesn't allow the divine Audrey to reveal the aristocratic ache on sublime display in Sabrina (and, frankly, that film is missing from this list only because it would have meant a third Billy Wilder film), it exhibits the seemingly effortless buoyancy that, by the 60s, Hollywood had almost forgotten how to radiate
Psycho (1960)
The nut case managing the motel, the not-so innocent woman who takes refuge there one dark and stormy night, the inevitable murder and the deeply weird explanation of the crime that follows left TIME cold; it called the film "stomach churning." History is less shocked by the doings at the old Bates place, appreciating Hitch's masterful technique, the formal elegance of his style and, above all, the way he toys with some of his favorite themes—guilt, obsession and the wayward ways they drive us all.
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