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Tag Archives: 1960s
Vrazda po nasem / Murder Czech Style (1967) Jirí Weiss, Rudolf Hrusínský, Kveta Fialová, Václav Voska, Comedy, Crime

The protagonist (Rudolf Hrusinsky) is a dull, fat, shy government clerk indulging in voyuerism and ego fantasies. In love with another clerk (Kveta Fiolova), he is urged on in his pursuit by a commiserate executive. The story is told in a flashback sequence as the cuckolded Hrusinsky attempts suicide by gassing himself in his bathtub. The “Murder” of the title is not a murder as such, rather the murder that Hrusinsky remembers planning upon discovering his wife’s unfaithfulness with his supposed friend and advisor. Both plots failing in his mind, he loses himself in fantastic reveries of his funeral and of hypocritical mourners. ‘ Deciding (perhaps) that this is not the way out either, he gives up the attempt and imagines a life of reconciliation and eventual affluence.
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Die endlose Nacht / The Endless Night (1963) Will Tremper, Karin Hübner, Louise Martini, Harald Leipnitz, Drama

A few hours at Berlin-Tempelhof airport. The thick fog force the travelers to persevere on the ground. Among them is a businessman who is facing ruin and not shy away, throwing his girlfriend to another man’s neck in order to save himself. A young actress has spent her last penny at the hairdresser and is stranded in a strange city. A farmer from Kenya falls spontaneously in love with a woman and offers her a new life.
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Zabitá nedele / Squandered Sunday (1969) Drahomíra Vihanová, Irena Boleslavská, Vladislav Drazdák, Alexandra Haskovcová, Drama

It’s Sunday morning. The church bells call people to the Mass, but the army officer Arnost is still sleeping in his austere and shabby room in the barracks. He wakes slowly, and attunes himself step by step to the world and what to do this arid Sunday. He loads his pistol and puts it to his head and in his mouth, without firing it off. While he turns around, he is now and then interrupted by short flashbacks in his memory of situations with frivolous women and much drinking, as well as some daydreams about enforced weddings. He has a relationship with three blond women. Two of them are adult. One is willowy and a bit aloof, the other voluptuous and possessive. The third is a little girl, who he likes to talk with. He goes to the gatekeeper of the barracks, and starts a chat. Through a spyglass he suddenly sees two young women sunbathing topless. As it is within the military area, he orders the gatekeeper to arrest them. The women don’t take him seriously, but he writes a report.
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Death of a Gunfighter (1969) Don Siegel, Richard Widmark, Lena Horne, Carroll O’Connor, Western

In the turn-of-the century Texas town of Cottownwood Springs, marshal Frank Patch is an old-style lawman in a town determined to become modern. When he kills drunken Luke Mills in self-defense, the town leaders decide it’s time for a change. They ask for Patch’s resignation, but he refuses on the basis that the town on hiring him had promised him the job for as long as he wanted it. Afraid for the town’s future and even more afraid of the fact that Marshal Patch knows all the town’s dark secrets, the city fathers decide that old-style violence is the only way to rid themselves of the unwanted lawman.
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Satan’s Sadists (1969) Al Adamson, Russ Tamblyn, Scott Brady, John ‘Bud’ Cardos, Action, Horror, Drama, Erotic

The “Satans” are a very cruel biker gang led by Anchor. The gang goes to a diner in the middle of nowhere in the California desert where they begin to terrorize Lew and his patrons and his waitress, Tracy. After a little killing, one of the patrons named Johnny manages to escape from the bikers into the desert. They need to reach a town before the Satans catch up to them and kill them.
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Vedo nudo / I See Naked (1969) Dino Risi, Nino Manfredi, Sylva Koscina, Véronique Vendell, Comedy

A classic Risi of the late 60s. This time his biting humor doesn’t deal with social or political issues but seven situations leaning on absurdity.
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Shonen / Le Petit Garcon / Boy (1969) Nagisa Ôshima, Fumio Watanabe, Akiko Koyama, Tetsuo Abe, Drama

Based on real events reported in Japanese newspapers in 1966 “Boy” follows the title character, Toshio Omura, across Japan, as he is forced to participate in a dangerous scam to support his dysfunctional family. Toshio’s father, Takeo Omura, is an abusive, lazy veteran, who forces his wife, the boy’s stepmother, Takeko Tamiguchi, to feign being hit by cars in order to shake down the motorists. When his wife is unable to perform the scam, Toshio is enlisted…
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The Young Girls of Rochefort / Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) Jacques Demy, Catherine Deneuve, George Chakiris, Françoise Dorléac, Comedy, Drama, Musical

Jacques Demy followed up The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and a music teacher (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac), long for big-city life; when a fair comes through their quiet port town, so does the possibility of escape. With its jazzy Michel Legrand score, pastel paradise of costumes, and divine supporting cast (George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, and Gene Kelly), The Young Girls of Rochefort is a tribute to Hollywood optimism from sixties French cinema’s preeminent dreamer.
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Bakuto Kaisan-shiki / Gambler’s Farewell (1968) Kinji Fukasaku, Kôji Tsuruta, Fumio Watanabe, Tetsurô Tanba, Action, Crime

The story of men devoted to the yakuza lifestyle and their struggles during a time of fading yakuza power.
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