On August 3, 1965 Darling hit the big screen. It was a huge commercial success and took home Academy Awards for actress and screenplay—but it is one of those “you had to be there” movies; no need to track it down if you haven’t seen it. (Borderline scandalous at the time, both MGM and Columbia…
Category: 50 Years Ago This Week
50 Years Ago This Week – Dylan Plugs In
On July 25th at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, folk hero Bob Dylan, backed by a band that included Paul Butterfield and Al Kooper, plugged in, played three loud rock songs, and was essentially booed off the stage. (Many people booed. He left fifteen minutes into a scheduled one hour set. We can argue about…
50 Years Ago This Week – Adlai Stevenson Leaves the Building
Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois and two-time Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party (he lost to Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956), died on July 14, 1965. He succumbed to a heart attack while walking in London with the actress and politically active socialite (and occasional paramour of director John Huston) Marietta Tree. An overview of…
50 Years Ago This Week – Godard’s Alphaville in Berlin
The favorite filmmaker of many a young, hip cinephile, John-Luc Godard was at the apogee of his movie-god status in 1965 when Alphaville, his dystopian sci-fi noir took home the Golden Bear at the fifteenth Berlin film festival. The New Wave legend made an astonishing fifteen feature films from 1960 through 1967 (and eight shorts…
50 Years Ago This Week – Woody Allen’s First Screenplay
What’s New Pussycat? premiered on June 22, 1965, and despite its very promising cast – including Peter Sellers, Peter O’Toole, and Romy Schneider – we at Mid Century Cinema are Not recommending it. It was never very good and has not aged well. (Even the venerable Andrew Sarris, then purportedly rallying to Pussycat’s defense against…
50 Years Ago This Week – Claude Sautet’s Second Try
In 1960, Director Claude Sautet released Classe Tous Risques, an outstanding escaped-killer-on-the-run drama featuring Lino Ventura and an unknown Jean-Paul Belmondo. For his efforts he won the enormous respect of his peers (Jean Pierre Melville grabbed a hold of Ventura and made a similarly themed if very different picture, Le Deuxieme Souffle) but not much…
50 Years Ago This Week – Cannes 1965
The 2015 Cannes film festival is currently in full swing (as I write this, Woody Allen’s upcoming Irrational Man is screening out of competition—it will open in the U.S. in July). On May 16, 1965, the eighteenth Cannes festival drew to a close, with the top prize going to Richard Lester’s The Knack . ….
50 Years Ago This Week – Alfred Hitchcock’s Last “Hour”
On May 10, 1965, “Off Season” the last episode of season three of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour was broadcast on NBC. Not what you would call “must-see-TV,” nevertheless, for a number of reasons the fairly routine, thinly-motivated, and at times only tenuously credible drama effectively holds one’s attention throughout. The first few minutes offer a…
50 Years Ago This Week – Landmarks and Locations
New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Law went into effect on April 19, 1965. The collective, astonished reaction heard after the razing of old Penn Station in 1964: “you mean they can do that?” contributed to a movement that ultimately led to the measure. It was not enough to save the majestic Singer Building from the…
50 Years Ago This Week – Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee
Major Dundee, Sam Peckinpah’s ill-fated Western starring Charlton Heston and Richard Harris, opened in New York City on April 7, 1965—or at least some version of it did. Taken out of the director’s hands and cut by almost a third (an “extended version” DVD release restores some of the lost material), the movie was a…