1960

Title Screen Film Genre(s), Title, Year, (Country), Length, Director, Description

The Apartment (1960), 125 minutes, D: Billy Wilder
A Best Picture-winner - a classic, caustically-witty, satirically cynical, melodramatic comedy about corporate politics - and a bitter-sweet romance. In a bid to get ahead, an ambitious, lowly, misguided and young insurance clerk C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) generously lent out the keys to his NYC apartment to his company's higher-up, philandering executives for romantic, adulterous, extra-marital trysts, including to his callous married boss J. D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). Baxter's own budding crush toward his building's elevator operator - melancholy, and vulnerable Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) turned ugly when he discovered he had been outsmarted - she was the latest conquest of his boss - and had attempted suicide in his apartment. Baxter's next-door, philosophizing doctor/neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) convinced Baxter to confront the craven ethics of his superiors - and he won the affections of Fran.

L'Avventura (1960, It./Fr.) (aka The Adventure), 145 minutes, D: Michelangelo Antonioni
The first part of a trilogy, followed by La Notte (1961, It./Fr.) (aka The Night) and L'Eclisse (1962, It./Fr.) (aka The Eclipse).

Black Sunday (1960, It.) (aka La Maschera del Demonio, or The Mask of Satan), 87 minutes, D: Mario Bava

Les Bonnes Femmes (1960, Fr./It.) (aka The Good Time Girls), 100 minutes, D: Claude Chabrol
Chabrol's film was one of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) films of its time (although never released in the US), and set in Paris (although photographed as drab and dingy). The dark and cynical melodrama followed the exploits of four "good time girls," all shop-girl clerks in an electrical appliance store, as they sought love, excitement, freedom, and escape at nighttime. However, each one had very different aspirations in life. The four included carefree party-girl Jane (Bernadette Lafont), aspiring night-club singer Ginette (Stéphane Audran), and marriage-fixated/engaged and social-climbing Rita (Lucille Saint-Simon). The main protagonist, sweet, shy, demure and sensitive Jacqueline (Clotilde Joano), a hopeless and vulnerable romantic, was tragically drawn to a mysterious, black-leathered motorcyclist Andre (Mario David), who was stalking her. He was mistaken as her long-awaited Prince Charming and turned out to be her executioner.

A Bout De Souffle (1960, Fr.) (aka Breathless), 90 minutes, D: Jean-Luc Godard

BUtterfield 8 (1960), 109 minutes, D: Daniel Mann

La Dolce Vita (1960, It./Fr.) (aka The Sweet Life), 174 minutes, D: Federico Fellini

Elmer Gantry (1960), 146 minutes, D: Richard Brooks

Eyes Without a Face (1960, Fr./It.) (aka Les Yeux Sans Visage), 88 minutes, D: Georges Franju

Inherit the Wind (1960), 127 minutes, D: Stanley Kramer
This absorbing liberal "message" film portrayed the famous and dramatic courtroom Scopes "Monkey Trial" battle (in the sultry summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee) between two famous lawyers (Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan), who heatedly argued both sides of the case. The film starred two major Oscar-winning giants and veterans of the cinema with remarkable career-high performances - Spencer Tracy (as Darrow- Henry Drummond) and Fredric March (as Bryan - Matthew Harrison Brady) - who had never before acted together in a film. Film-maker Stanley Kramer both produced and directed this film that modified and disguised the historical event by changing the names of the prototypical characters and making them fictional figures, and placing the action in fictional Hillsboro, Tennessee. Its story centered around the issue of evolution vs. creationism and the prosecution of 24 year-old Tennessee teacher John T. Scopes (in the film, Bert Cates played by Dick York) for violating state law by teaching the theory of evolution in a public school. [In fact, Scopes deliberately volunteered to challenge the Tennessee legislature's statutes and become the test case for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) by teaching theories that denied the Biblical story of the divine creation of man.] The film's title was taken from the Biblical book of Proverbs 11:29: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind." Kramer's film was also designed as a protest against the repressive thinking of the 50s McCarthy era. Much of the film's story (and dialogue), written into a screenplay by Nathan E. Douglas (Nedrick Young was the blacklisted screenwriter's real name) and Harold Jacob Smith, was based on the successful Broadway play (by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee) that first starred Paul Muni and Ed Begley. In the Tennessee town of Hillsboro, high school teacher Bertram Cates tested a state criminal statute that forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution. Three-time Presidential candidate and literal-fundamentalist Matthew Brady volunteered to prosecute the case. A media hoopla and hysterical frenzy was whipped up in the sweltering hot town by opposing forces during the 12-day trial. Cynical and sarcastic newspaper reporter E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly cast against type) (portraying acid-penned writer/reporter H.L. Mencken for the Baltimore newspaper) was behind the selection of notorious agnostic Henry Drummond to defend the schoolteacher. At first, Drummond was frustrated by the bias implicit in the trial, so he summoned Brady to the stand to interrogate him about his literal interpretations of the Bible. Through intense questioning, Brady was forced to admit that the Bible could be interpreted non-literally. Brady's admission opened the door to the idea that evolution was consistent with Biblical teaching. In the end, the conservative jury convicted Cates (Drummond had requested that the plea be changed to "guilty"), while the Judge (Henry Morgan) (to avoid further controversy) leniently fined Cates only $100. As Brady desperately gave one final religious defense as everyone dispersed, he had a stroke, collapsed and died.

The Magnificent Seven (1960), 126 minutes, D: John Sturges

Never on Sunday (1960, Greece/US) (aka Pote tin Kyriaki), 91 minutes, D: Jules Dassin

Peeping Tom (1960, UK), 109 minutes, D: Michael Powell

Psycho (1960), 109 minutes, D: Alfred Hitchcock
The greatest, most influential Hitchcock horror/thriller ever made and the progenitor of the modern Hollywood horror film, based on Robert Bloch's novel. A classic, low budget, manipulative, black and white tale that includes the most celebrated shower sequence ever made. Worried about marital prospects after a lunch tryst with her divorced lover (John Gavin), blonde real estate office secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) embezzles $40,000 and flees, stopping at the secluded off-road Bates Motel, managed by a nervous, amateur taxidermist son named Norman (Anthony Perkins). The psychotic, disturbed "mother's boy" is dominated by his jealous 'mother', rumored to be in the Gothic house on the hillside behind the dilapidated, remote motel. The story includes the untimely, violent murder of the main protagonist early in the film, a cross-dressing transvestite murderer, insanity, a stuffed corpse, and Oedipal Freudian motivations.

Rocco and His Brothers (1960, It./Fr.) (aka Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli), 177 minutes, D: Luchino Visconti

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960, UK), 90 minutes D: Karel Reisz

Shoot the Piano Player (1960, Fr.) (aka Tirez Sur le Pianiste, or Shoot the Pianist), 80 minutes, D: François Truffaut

Sons and Lovers (1960, UK), 103 minutes, D: Jack Cardiff

Spartacus (1960), 185 minutes, D: Stanley Kubrick
A somewhat dated, uneven historical costume (and sword and sandal) epic adapted by openly-credited, blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (thereby breaking the abhorrent system) from left-leaning Howard Fast's 1952 fictionalized novel about a slave revolt in Rome between 73-71 BC. This is the story of Thracian Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), first introduced as a slave in the Libyan mines who is sold to slave trader Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), and becomes under his training a skilled gladiator. He is forced, for pure entertainment's sake, to fight to the death and kill fellow gladiator/friend Draba (Woody Strode). Growing resentment forces Spartacus to kill his captor-owner and instigate a revolt among his fellow slaves. He moves from town to town in the countryside and recruits freedom-fighting slaves along the way, threatening Rome itself and fueling a power struggle and in-fighting between two influential figures in the ruling class: the philosophical Roman senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton) and the power-hungry Roman general Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier). Eventually, Spartacus' forces are overwhelmed, and he is captured and marched to Rome, with Crassus desirous of the sexual favors of his wife Varinia (Jean Simmons). During the film's production, there was a change of directors (from Anthony Mann (famous for El Cid (1961)) to Stanley Kubrick, who wasn't permitted his usual directorial freedom, resulting in a decidedly un-Kubrick-like film) and rampant ego clashes amongst the actors. Additionally, the Hayes Code removed, among other things, homosexual innuendo and various depictions of gore (such as severed limbs). The 1991 re-release of Spartacus restored much of what was cut from the film, including the notorious bathhouse scene featuring the sexual advances of Crassus toward slave servant-poet Antoninus (Curtis), with dialogue dubbed by Anthony Hopkins for the deceased Olivier: "Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?... My taste includes both snails and oysters." Although anachronistic in costuming and accents, and overly long with some 'wooden' acting, Spartacus remains one of the more beloved and intelligent gladiator films (and a model for Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000)), with such memorably powerful scenes as the large scale battles with thousands of extras, and the famous climax with the moving "I am Spartacus!" scene when Spartacus is crucified under orders of Crassus along with hundreds of other slaves, and a disguised Varinia risks capture to show him his infant son.

The Sundowners (1960), 133 minutes, D: Fred Zinnemann

The Time Machine (1960), 103 minutes, D: George Pal

Two Women (1960, It./Fr.) (aka La Ciociara), 93/100 minutes, D: Vittorio De Sica

The Virgin Spring (1960, Swe.) (aka Jungfrukällan), 89 minutes, D: Ingmar Bergman
Set in medieval, 14th century Sweden. Wealthy and religious land-owning farmers Tore (Max von Sydow) and Märeta (Birgitta Valberg) have only one surviving child - innocent, vain, naive and virginal daughter Karin (Birgitta Pettersson). Her jealous step-sister, pregnant maid-servant Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), invokes a pagan curse upon Karin after praying to the Norse deity Odin. During a journey to the nearest village's church on the celebrated day of Our Lady of Virgins, Karin is assaulted by a group of goatherd brothers, two adults and an adolescent, and is ultimately raped and murdered. The crime is witnessed by Ingeri. The three find refuge at Tore's farm for food and shelter, where he learns of their deadly assault and avenges his daughter's murder. The same plot served as the basis for Wes Craven's horror film The Last House on the Left (1972).

Title Screen	Film Genre(s), Title, Year, (Country), Length, Director, Description
	The Apartment (1960), 125 minutes, D: Billy Wilder A Best Picture-winner - a classic, caustically-witty, satirically cynical, melodramatic comedy about corporate politics - and a bitter-sweet romance. In a bid to get ahead, an ambitious, lowly, misguided and young insurance clerk C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) generously lent out the keys to his NYC apartment to his company's higher-up, philandering executives for romantic, adulterous, extra-marital trysts, including to his callous married boss J. D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). Baxter's own budding crush toward his building's elevator operator - melancholy, and vulnerable Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) turned ugly when he discovered he had been outsmarted - she was the latest conquest of his boss - and had attempted suicide in his apartment. Baxter's next-door, philosophizing doctor/neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) convinced Baxter to confront the craven ethics of his superiors - and he won the affections of Fran.
	L'Avventura (1960, It./Fr.) (aka The Adventure), 145 minutes, D: Michelangelo Antonioni The first part of a trilogy, followed by La Notte (1961, It./Fr.) (aka The Night) and L'Eclisse (1962, It./Fr.) (aka The Eclipse).
	Black Sunday (1960, It.) (aka La Maschera del Demonio, or The Mask of Satan), 87 minutes, D: Mario Bava
	Les Bonnes Femmes (1960, Fr./It.) (aka The Good Time Girls), 100 minutes, D: Claude Chabrol Chabrol's film was one of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) films of its time (although never released in the US), and set in Paris (although photographed as drab and dingy). The dark and cynical melodrama followed the exploits of four "good time girls," all shop-girl clerks in an electrical appliance store, as they sought love, excitement, freedom, and escape at nighttime. However, each one had very different aspirations in life. The four included carefree party-girl Jane (Bernadette Lafont), aspiring night-club singer Ginette (Stéphane Audran), and marriage-fixated/engaged and social-climbing Rita (Lucille Saint-Simon). The main protagonist, sweet, shy, demure and sensitive Jacqueline (Clotilde Joano), a hopeless and vulnerable romantic, was tragically drawn to a mysterious, black-leathered motorcyclist Andre (Mario David), who was stalking her. He was mistaken as her long-awaited Prince Charming and turned out to be her executioner.
	A Bout De Souffle (1960, Fr.) (aka Breathless), 90 minutes, D: Jean-Luc Godard
	BUtterfield 8 (1960), 109 minutes, D: Daniel Mann
	La Dolce Vita (1960, It./Fr.) (aka The Sweet Life), 174 minutes, D: Federico Fellini
	Elmer Gantry (1960), 146 minutes, D: Richard Brooks
	Eyes Without a Face (1960, Fr./It.) (aka Les Yeux Sans Visage), 88 minutes, D: Georges Franju
	Inherit the Wind (1960), 127 minutes, D: Stanley Kramer This absorbing liberal "message" film portrayed the famous and dramatic courtroom Scopes "Monkey Trial" battle (in the sultry summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee) between two famous lawyers (Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan), who heatedly argued both sides of the case. The film starred two major Oscar-winning giants and veterans of the cinema with remarkable career-high performances - Spencer Tracy (as Darrow- Henry Drummond) and Fredric March (as Bryan - Matthew Harrison Brady) - who had never before acted together in a film. Film-maker Stanley Kramer both produced and directed this film that modified and disguised the historical event by changing the names of the prototypical characters and making them fictional figures, and placing the action in fictional Hillsboro, Tennessee. Its story centered around the issue of evolution vs. creationism and the prosecution of 24 year-old Tennessee teacher John T. Scopes (in the film, Bert Cates played by Dick York) for violating state law by teaching the theory of evolution in a public school. [In fact, Scopes deliberately volunteered to challenge the Tennessee legislature's statutes and become the test case for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) by teaching theories that denied the Biblical story of the divine creation of man.] The film's title was taken from the Biblical book of Proverbs 11:29: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind." Kramer's film was also designed as a protest against the repressive thinking of the 50s McCarthy era. Much of the film's story (and dialogue), written into a screenplay by Nathan E. Douglas (Nedrick Young was the blacklisted screenwriter's real name) and Harold Jacob Smith, was based on the successful Broadway play (by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee) that first starred Paul Muni and Ed Begley. In the Tennessee town of Hillsboro, high school teacher Bertram Cates tested a state criminal statute that forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution. Three-time Presidential candidate and literal-fundamentalist Matthew Brady volunteered to prosecute the case. A media hoopla and hysterical frenzy was whipped up in the sweltering hot town by opposing forces during the 12-day trial. Cynical and sarcastic newspaper reporter E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly cast against type) (portraying acid-penned writer/reporter H.L. Mencken for the Baltimore newspaper) was behind the selection of notorious agnostic Henry Drummond to defend the schoolteacher. At first, Drummond was frustrated by the bias implicit in the trial, so he summoned Brady to the stand to interrogate him about his literal interpretations of the Bible. Through intense questioning, Brady was forced to admit that the Bible could be interpreted non-literally. Brady's admission opened the door to the idea that evolution was consistent with Biblical teaching. In the end, the conservative jury convicted Cates (Drummond had requested that the plea be changed to "guilty"), while the Judge (Henry Morgan) (to avoid further controversy) leniently fined Cates only $100. As Brady desperately gave one final religious defense as everyone dispersed, he had a stroke, collapsed and died.
	The Magnificent Seven (1960), 126 minutes, D: John Sturges
	Never on Sunday (1960, Greece/US) (aka Pote tin Kyriaki), 91 minutes, D: Jules Dassin
	Peeping Tom (1960, UK), 109 minutes, D: Michael Powell
	Psycho (1960), 109 minutes, D: Alfred Hitchcock The greatest, most influential Hitchcock horror/thriller ever made and the progenitor of the modern Hollywood horror film, based on Robert Bloch's novel. A classic, low budget, manipulative, black and white tale that includes the most celebrated shower sequence ever made. Worried about marital prospects after a lunch tryst with her divorced lover (John Gavin), blonde real estate office secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) embezzles $40,000 and flees, stopping at the secluded off-road Bates Motel, managed by a nervous, amateur taxidermist son named Norman (Anthony Perkins). The psychotic, disturbed "mother's boy" is dominated by his jealous 'mother', rumored to be in the Gothic house on the hillside behind the dilapidated, remote motel. The story includes the untimely, violent murder of the main protagonist early in the film, a cross-dressing transvestite murderer, insanity, a stuffed corpse, and Oedipal Freudian motivations.
	Rocco and His Brothers (1960, It./Fr.) (aka Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli), 177 minutes, D: Luchino Visconti
	Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960, UK), 90 minutes D: Karel Reisz
	Shoot the Piano Player (1960, Fr.) (aka Tirez Sur le Pianiste, or Shoot the Pianist), 80 minutes, D: François Truffaut
	Sons and Lovers (1960, UK), 103 minutes, D: Jack Cardiff
	Spartacus (1960), 185 minutes, D: Stanley Kubrick A somewhat dated, uneven historical costume (and sword and sandal) epic adapted by openly-credited, blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (thereby breaking the abhorrent system) from left-leaning Howard Fast's 1952 fictionalized novel about a slave revolt in Rome between 73-71 BC. This is the story of Thracian Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), first introduced as a slave in the Libyan mines who is sold to slave trader Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), and becomes under his training a skilled gladiator. He is forced, for pure entertainment's sake, to fight to the death and kill fellow gladiator/friend Draba (Woody Strode). Growing resentment forces Spartacus to kill his captor-owner and instigate a revolt among his fellow slaves. He moves from town to town in the countryside and recruits freedom-fighting slaves along the way, threatening Rome itself and fueling a power struggle and in-fighting between two influential figures in the ruling class: the philosophical Roman senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton) and the power-hungry Roman general Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier). Eventually, Spartacus' forces are overwhelmed, and he is captured and marched to Rome, with Crassus desirous of the sexual favors of his wife Varinia (Jean Simmons). During the film's production, there was a change of directors (from Anthony Mann (famous for El Cid (1961)) to Stanley Kubrick, who wasn't permitted his usual directorial freedom, resulting in a decidedly un-Kubrick-like film) and rampant ego clashes amongst the actors. Additionally, the Hayes Code removed, among other things, homosexual innuendo and various depictions of gore (such as severed limbs). The 1991 re-release of Spartacus restored much of what was cut from the film, including the notorious bathhouse scene featuring the sexual advances of Crassus toward slave servant-poet Antoninus (Curtis), with dialogue dubbed by Anthony Hopkins for the deceased Olivier: "Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?... My taste includes both snails and oysters." Although anachronistic in costuming and accents, and overly long with some 'wooden' acting, Spartacus remains one of the more beloved and intelligent gladiator films (and a model for Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000)), with such memorably powerful scenes as the large scale battles with thousands of extras, and the famous climax with the moving "I am Spartacus!" scene when Spartacus is crucified under orders of Crassus along with hundreds of other slaves, and a disguised Varinia risks capture to show him his infant son.
	The Sundowners (1960), 133 minutes, D: Fred Zinnemann
	The Time Machine (1960), 103 minutes, D: George Pal
	Two Women (1960, It./Fr.) (aka La Ciociara), 93/100 minutes, D: Vittorio De Sica
	The Virgin Spring (1960, Swe.) (aka Jungfrukällan), 89 minutes, D: Ingmar Bergman Set in medieval, 14th century Sweden. Wealthy and religious land-owning farmers Tore (Max von Sydow) and Märeta (Birgitta Valberg) have only one surviving child - innocent, vain, naive and virginal daughter Karin (Birgitta Pettersson). Her jealous step-sister, pregnant maid-servant Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), invokes a pagan curse upon Karin after praying to the Norse deity Odin. During a journey to the nearest village's church on the celebrated day of Our Lady of Virgins, Karin is assaulted by a group of goatherd brothers, two adults and an adolescent, and is ultimately raped and murdered. The crime is witnessed by Ingeri. The three find refuge at Tore's farm for food and shelter, where he learns of their deadly assault and avenges his daughter's murder. The same plot served as the basis for Wes Craven's horror film The Last House on the Left (1972).