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Related: sixties
Film: Diary of a Chambermaid (1965) - I, A Woman (1965) - Repulsion (1965) - Andy Warhol's Camp (1965)
Anna Karina and Eddie Constantine in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville
image sourced here.Deaths: T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965) - Le Corbusier (1887 - 1965) - Edogawa Rampo (1894 - 1965)
Births: Eva Ionesco
Trends: the term hippie coined
Literature: On Style (1965) - Susan Sontag
RADIO/PHONOGRAPH RR 126 (1965) - Achille and P.G.Castiglioni
Image sourced here.
Cosmos collection (1965) - Pierre Cardin
Hippie coined [...]
San Francisco writer Michael Fallon applies the term "hippie" to the SF counterculture in an article about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse where LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) & the Sexual Freedom League meet, & hippie houses.Allen Ginsberg visits London
In the summer of 1965 Ginsberg made a seminal trip to London with several other Beat figures. Their reading at the Royal Albert Hall signalled the beginning of the London underground scene, based at the UFO Club, from which bands like Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine would emerge. --Levi Asher, litkicks.comMore films
- The Loved One (1965) - Tony Richardson [Amazon US]
Brilliant. Disturbing. Perplexing. Hilarious. Neglected.
Screenwriter Terry Southern (with the equally brilliant Christopher Isherwood) are the true stars here, having drafted and crafted a movie that's both truly disturbing and hilarious. One of Southern's finest film scripts (a worthy equal to his Dr Strangelove and Easy Rider scripts), The Loved One is an unjustly ignored and forgotten gem from a time when smart comedies were not only critically lauded but publically applauded. - Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (1965) - Russ Meyer [1 VHS, Amazon US]
Atypical Russ Meyer movie that features none of his exploitive trademarks but actually concentrates on characterizations of his three stars---the incomparable Tura Satana, sultry Haji, and way-out California girl Lori Williams. Great b&w photography as the girls(go-go dancers in a sleazy club) head out in wild sports cars into the desert in search of thrills. Well, they get 'em when Satana kills a guy and they abduct his screaming idiot girlfriend. They hide out at a desert ranch headed by a VERY weird father/son clan. Satana believes there's a lot of moola on the property somewhere and she aims to find it one way or another. Acting is above-average for a Meyer piece and the film is consistently watchable throughout. No nudity(except for some tasteful bare-back shots as they bathe after the desert incident) and the women are not stupid but tired of being used. This is a first-rate bona-fide cult classic right here and deserves a pristine transfer to DVD. mark norvell for amazon.com [...] - The Collector (1965) - William Wyler
[Amazon US]
As one of the greatest directors of Hollywood's golden age, William Wyler had a long and distinguished roster of films to his credit, among them a number of classics (including Wuthering Heights and The Heiress) that rank among the finest literary adaptations to emerge from the studio system. Near the end of his career, Wyler focused his veteran skills on John Fowles's novel The Collector, and it's easy to see how Wyler would be drawn to the story's resonant psychological underpinnings. It's conceivable that the director was also fascinated by the cinematic precedents set by Alfred Hitchock's Psycho and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom; like those films, Wyler's 1965 production of The Collector focuses on the obsessions of a young man whose need for a woman's affection leads him to desperate measures at the expense of his object of desire.Terence Stamp was a fine choice for the role of Freddie Clegg, a young, nondescript bank clerk who wins a fortune in a sports pool and is financially liberated to pursue his psychological fixation--specifically a lovely London art student named Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar) whom Freddie captures in the comfortably furnished cellar of his remote, newly purchased Tudor farmhouse. In many respects she is just another addition to Freddie's impressive and meticulously catalogued collection of butterflies--delicate and beautiful, and kept against her will. Freddie genuinely loves her and treats her with utmost respect, but she is his prisoner. Having been subdued by Freddie's use of chloroform, she later observes that he is responsible for "so much death," and of course she could never return his affection. Or could she?
This richly psychological situation is handled by Wyler with understated grace, but the weight of Freddie's psychosis is never keenly felt; the film's subdued quality ultimately works against the thriller aspects of the story. And yet, the performances of Stamp and Eggar remain sharp and mutually sympathetic, and when Wyler brings the story full circle to yet another "butterfly" for Freddie's collection, the stalker theme leaves the viewer with a considerable chill. Where another movie like 1967's Wait Until Dark relied on more explicit and effective shocks, The Collector works on a subtler level of disturbing but undeniably human behavior. --Jeff Shannon
- Pierrot Le Fou (1965) - Jean-Luc Godard [Amazon US]
Jean-Luc Godard has been called the most self-conscious, the most realistic, and the most modern of filmmakers. To his appreciators this means he owns up to the fact that a movie is a movie, that at any moment in one of his films you know you're watching a film by Jean-Luc Godard. His films are self-aware in a way that films never were before him. Pierrot le Fou achieves a rare spontaneity and naturalness, largely due to the presence of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, but also because of Godard's willingness to let go of any pretense to an illusionary or mimetic style, so-called "realism." What story there is has Pierrot (Belmondo) escaping from his boring life along with Marianne Renoir (Karina), who is chased by gangsters. But this is just an excuse to film a kind of essay to lost love, a poem to Karina that is delightful. If "Pierrot goes wild," then so does Godard, with Belmondo standing in for him in his pursuit of and journey with Karina. Godard is not for everyone, admittedly, but for those with the wherewithal to enjoy his films, they are receiving new life on DVD. Whatever coterie taste survives today has been distributed in multiple across the Internet and via the agency of video rental bins, perhaps all the more potent for that reach. Let's hope so. --Jim Gay for Amazon.com
Books
- The Painted Bird - Jerzy N. Kosinski[Amazon.com]
Semiautobiographical novel by Jerzy Kosinski, published in 1965 and revised in 1976. The ordeals of the central character parallel Kosinski's own experiences during World War II. A dark-haired Polish child who is taken for either a Gypsy or a Jew loses his parents in the mayhem of war and wanders through the countryside at the mercy of the brutal, thickheaded peasants he meets in the villages. He learns how to stay alive at any cost, turning survival into a moral imperative. Full of graphic scenes depicting rape, torture, and bestiality, the novel portrays evil in all its manifestations and speaks of human isolation as inevitable. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
The Flicker (1965) - Tony Conrad
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From the Film Makers Cooperative Catalogue No. 5 entry on The Flicker (1966): “The fullest measure of susceptibility is embodied in the victim of photogenic migraine and particularly in the one adult in 15,000 who suffers from photogenic epilepsy. To protect these few, special precautions should be taken at all screenings. Instruction for first aid of seizure cases are included with the film. A doctor should attend or be available. The film opens with a warning notice which should not cause undue concern, but will alert the one in thousands who could be injured. Danger to a normal person is no greater than that of any other hallucinatory film or of TV. The normal semi-hypnotic or hallucinatory state induced during the middle of the film slowly withdraws toward the end, leaving no appreciable residual effect.”
La Decima vittima / 10th Victim (1965) - Elio Petri
image sourced here.
La Decima vittima / 10th Victim (1965) - Elio Petri [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Amazon.com
Long before reality shows took over the TV airwaves and violent parodies like Series 7 and Battle Royale hit international screens, Elio Petri made this campy social satire of a future in which the bored, the ambitious, and the just plain violent can sign up for a deadly game of cat and mouse. "The Big Hunt is necessary as a social safety valve," explains one TV personality. "Why control births when we can control deaths?" Marcello Mastroianni, who plays the womanizing Italian media darling with a gift for ingenious assassinations, becomes the target of sexy champion Ursula Andress, a New York Amazon with a wardrobe as deadly as it is chic. She'll pocket $1 million if she can successfully kill Mastroianni, her 10th and last victim, but on the side she concocts a deal to do the deed in concert with a live song-and-dance extravaganza mounted by a tea company.
Directed with tongue firmly in cheek, Petri lampoons the whole media obsession with high-risk contests and games of chance with cool style, absurdly chic fashions, a bouncy score of organ riffs and funky lounge sounds, and a comically blasé performance by Mastroianni. It's like Fellini gone ballistic with a hint of Divorce, Italian Style: a battle of the sexes in a world where spontaneous shootouts are forever erupting in the fringes of the frame. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com