Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Shame had its premiere on September 29, 1968. In the U.S., the National Society of Film Critics would name it the best film of the year, and Liv Ullmann as best actress. A visceral film about a terrifying war with harrowing action on-screen, it is unlike any other Bergman film, in both…
Petulia, a relatively overlooked New Hollywood gem, had its premiere on June 10, 1968. Shot on location in San Francisco, the film, diving into the sexual revolution, could be mistaken today for a period piece/counterculture curio. And certainly it is of that time and place: the production features performances by Bay Area locals Janis Joplin…
The 1968 Cannes Film Festival opened on May 10 for what was supposed to be a two week run, with twenty-eight films screening in competition. It only made it through eight days and eleven of those entries, before shutting down on May 18. Jury President Louis Malle, along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard (with…
Claude Chabrol’s first “comeback” film, Les Biches, opened on March 22, 1968. One of our favorite directors here at Mid Century Cinema (dedicated subscribers will recall that we’ve written about him repeatedly, with our top ten list, some words about The Line of Demarcation (a notable obscurity), an essay about that astonishing run of films…
One of the great Americans of the 1970s, Lieutenant Columbo, made his first television appearance on February 20, 1968, in the made-for-TV movie “Prescription Murder.” Sure, he was a tad disheveled, and didn’t have a first name—but his understated intelligence, basic decency, and indelible but lightly-worn second-generation ethnicity made him an exemplar of the best…
On February 8 1968, Planet of the Apes premiered in New York City. The film, starring Charlton Heston, was a hit, and spawned four sequels of increasing dystopia and decreasing budget—but at least the unloved fifth installment, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) gave us John Huston as the lawgiver, which works for us….
In Cold Blood, an adaptation of Truman Capote’s critically acclaimed and wildly successful book, premiered in New York City on December 14 1967. The book, a milestone in the “true crime” genre (and, even more important, in the accomplished narrative non-fiction genre of the period that includes Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer-prize winning Armies of the Night),…
November 15, 1967 marked another milestone for the emerging New Hollywood—the premiere of Martin Scorsese’s first feature film at the 1967 Chicago International Film Festival. Not that this was obvious at the time. The movie, then with the title I Call First, had been shooting in fits and starts over several years as its not-quite-shoestring budget…
Le Samouraï, the tenth feature film of Mid Century Cinema favorite Jean Pierre Melville, had its premiere in France on October 25, 1967. Over the years it has come to be seen as the representative Melville film, and for many, their favorite of his thirteen movies. It is indeed a masterpiece; and one that is…
On August 30, 1967 John Boorman’s Point Blank premiered in San Francisco. It was a fitting choice for a movie that begins and ends at the abandoned island prison of Alcatraz, even though Boorman, in an inspired move, shifted most of the film’s action from tie-dyed, summer-of-love San-Francisco to the cold, impersonal monochromes of Los…