Film History of the 1960s Part 6

Film History of the 1960s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Two other less effective Hitchcock films toward the end of the decade were routine Cold War espionage-spy thrillers:

• Torn Curtain (1966), Hitchcock's 50th film that featured the unlikely pairing of Julie Andrews and Paul Newman
• Topaz (1969), with lesser-known stars Frederick Stafford, John Forsythe, John Vernon, and Karin Dor, and notable for its various endings

The science-fiction horror thriller Village of the Damned (1960) (remade in 1995 by John Carpenter), set in the British village of Midwich, told of the community's terrorizing by twelve children (all blonde, super-intelligent and with supernatural powers, fast-aging, and extra-terrestrial) - all born simultaneously. The UK's The Day of the Triffids (1963), based on John Wyndham's classic alien invasion sci-fi novel, told of a meteor shower that brought spores to Earth which germinated and grew into carnivorous plants. Another classic ghost-horror movie was Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963), based on Shirley Jackson's novel and starring Julie Harris and Claire Bloom.

Two feuding legendary screen actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had their careers re-vitalized by playing two aged, ex-movie star sisters (Davis portrayed a former child star and Crawford a handicapped former movie star) in Robert Aldrich's chilling, campy and macabre What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), setting a trend in horror films for years to come. George Romero's low-budget horror masterpiece was Night of the Living Dead (1968) about flesh-eating zombies that rose from their graves because of radiation from a fallen satellite. It was filmed on a miniscule budget of $114,000 and became an instant horror classic, even though it contained scenes of cannibalism and patricide, and featured a lead black actor (Duane Jones). It was one of the most successful independent features ever made at the time, earning some $12 million in box-office rentals worldwide.

Changing Times in 60s Films:

Traditional genres, like the gangster, thriller, war, horror, and western film portrayed more graphic violence and adult content. Films that exemplified these trends included Arthur Penn's stylish, fictionalized account of two notorious, anti-establishment 1930s folk-hero criminals Bonnie and Clyde (1967) with two Oscar-nominated glamorous stars Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as bank robbers. It featured strong supporting roles by Gene Wilder (in his screen debut), Gene Hackman, and Oscar-winning Estelle Parsons. With a screenplay strongly influenced by the European art movies of the early 1960s, this film cleverly subverted the gangster genre and ultimately became one of the studio's biggest hits. It was advertised by the phrase: "They're young...they're in love...and they kill people." Co-produced by anti-hero star Beatty, it was filmed in color and wide-screen glory and combined psychological insight, slapstick comedy, romance, and a slow-motion, machine-gunned ballet of blood in its shocking, orgasmic finale of retribution.

By the end of the decade - a time of enormous social turbulence, anti-authoritarianism and establishment questioning, political assassination, youth protest, marches and demonstrations, permissive sexuality and nudity, and anti-Vietnam War attitudes, baby boomers had become a major movie-attending presence. Hollywood cautiously produced only a few films to answer these themes. One of the most successful films to focus on youthful alienation and 'coming of age' was Mike Nichols' extremely popular but unsettling sex comedy The Graduate (1967) - noted as actor Dustin Hoffman's debut film. The film was a satire about a hapless, recent college graduate named Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) who was "worried about his future," while experiencing a relationship-affair with a middle-aged Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) and her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). The box-office champ film of 1968 [the film was released in late 1967] was accompanied by an equally-popular Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, and the memorable quote: "Plastics". With this film, Nichols became the first director to earn a million dollars.

The Lucrative Youth-Cult Market:

Studios capitalized on the expanding youth market by embodying the changing 60s values, and by showcasing and reflecting the loss of innocence and the onset of disillusionment in the waning decade's films.

Director Roger Vadim's campy sexploitation science-fiction comedy-fantasy Barbarella (1968) also became a cult film due to Jane Fonda's revealing strip-tease in the film's opening credits. It also set a trend for vinyl knee-high boots, and shocked some with its kinky storyline (including a literal sex 'organ').

More and more young people were attracted - in huge numbers - to theaters in the years 1967-1969, due to the release of previously-mentioned films in the decade:

• Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
• Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967)
• Stanley Kubrick's ambitious 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Peckinpah's unapologetically-violent The Wild Bunch (1969)

The pop singing group The Monkees starred in Bob Rafelson's self-indulgent, psychedelic, patch-work classic Head (1968), co-written by Jack Nicholson. Columbia's revolutionary, soundtrack-driven 'outlaw' road film Easy Rider (1969), a modern-day, youth-oriented tale made independently, cheaply, and informally, starred co-writer/director Dennis Hopper (as Billy) and second-generation star Peter Fonda (as Wyatt) on a surrealistic hippie odyssey that crossed paths with a boozy lawyer (Jack Nicholson). Earlier in the mid 1960s, Roger Corman (and his studio AIP) produced one of his most successful B-movies - the outlaw biker film The Wild Angels (1966), with Peter Fonda as one of its stars.

The documentary-style grandfather of all rock-concert films, Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock (1970), filmed on-location in upstate New York, chronicled the counter-cultural "happening" at the now-legendary 1969 concert. One little-known fact: it was edited by future film-maker Martin Scorsese. [David and Albert Maysles' disturbing, R-rated documentary Gimme Shelter (1970) of the free 1969 Altamont (California) Rolling Stones concert presented the violent underbelly of the youth culture and rock concert phenomenon.] These films illustrated the influence of counter-cultural younger audiences on changing tastes and reflected the strength of the youth movement.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) was a top-notch adaptation of Harper Lee's novel about a 1930s small-town, widowed southern lawyer (Oscar-winning Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch), with two children (Scout and Jem), who defended a falsely-accused black man against charges of the rape of a white woman - mixing two controversial topics (racism and rape). Two films in 1962 pushed for more explicit themes: Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962) dealt with the sensitive topic of pedophilia, and producer/director Otto Preminger's political-courtroom drama Advise and Consent (1962) involved homosexuality.

Sidney Lumet's mainstream, socially-conscious melodrama about a Spanish Harlem Jewish shop owner - The Pawnbroker (1965) included a landmark scene of a woman undressing and baring her breasts - an integral component of the plot. The film was granted a Production Code seal, the first for a mainstream film containing nudity, beginning a trend toward nudity in other 60s American films. In 1967, a number of mainstream films helped spur the development of a ratings system, with their excessive amounts of explicit profanity and sexuality. Two films claimed to be the first film to use the four-letter F word: director Joseph Strick's Ulysses (1967) and Michael Winner's I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967, UK) (i.e., "Get out of here, you f--king bastard!", spoken by actress Marianne Faithfull as Josie) The latter also included a scene that implied oral sex between Oliver Reed and Carol White, as did Charlie Bubbles (1967).

The disturbing crime drama The Boston Strangler (1968) told the grisly story of violent, self-confessed mass murderer Anthony DeSalvo (Tony Curtis). Ken Russell's version of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love (1969) (with a Best Actress Oscar win for Glenda Jackson as Gudrun Brangwen), set in a mining community in Nottinghamshire, was infamous for its nude wrestling match between stars Oliver Reed and Alan Bates.

(See Sexual and Erotic Films summary for more on challenges that led to the establishment of the ratings system).

The New Ratings System:

By the late 1940s, the organization known as the MPPDA (Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America) to administer the motion picture Production Code then became known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). In 1966, the Production Code Administration (and its Motion Picture Production Code) that had set moral standards in films for almost 30 years since its establishment in the early 1930s, was curtailed. Due to pressures emerging against the archaic censorship body, its new president Jack Valenti (appointed in 1966) abolished the Hays Code in 1967. It had become very obvious that the code was outdated and unnecessarily restrictive.

In November of 1968, a major revision in the ratings systems helped to encourage artistic freedom rather than censorship, and avoid the threat of government censorship. It let Hollywood film-makers compete against adult-oriented foreign film productions, and it lessened restraint toward questionable themes (sex and nudity, violence, obscenity, etc.) A new voluntary ratings code was announced to replace the decades-old Production Code, and it was to be administered by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) (under the Classification and Rating Administration). Ratings were to be enforced by theaters, distributors and exhibitors. The four ratings were:

• "G" (general audiences or suitable for all ages)
• "M" (suggested for mature audiences - subsequently this was changed to GP and then PG for 'parental guidance' suggested)
• "R" (restricted audiences - no one under age 16 admitted without an accompanying adult)
• "X" (for those 16 years and older)

Soon afterwards in 1969, the M rating was changed to GP (General Patronage) and then to PG (meaning 'Parental Guidance Suggested') in 1970, and the age restriction was raised to 17 from 16. Rather than a form of pre-censorship or a restriction against pornography, the new system mainly offered advisory classification to exclude under-16s from X-rated films (later changed to 17), and categorized films according to their appropriateness for young viewers. Most filmmakers would subsequently try to avoid a G-rating (other than Disney's animations and true family fare) in order to raise their ratings to PG - and thereby increase their desirability by adult audiences. Many foreign film-makers chose to not submit their films to the ratings board, since their films didn't have widespread appeal anyway and would only play in arthouse venues.

The First Films To Be Rated With the New System:

The first two films granted an "M" rating were: Edward Albee's play (1) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), stage director Mike Nichols' first screen directorial assignment - a bold film with adult themes, feuding couple George and Martha (real-life married couple Burton and Taylor), and explicit four-letter language that challenged censors and was the first film to receive a Production Code seal; and (2) the sexually-frank British film Alfie (1966), starring Oscar-nominated Michael Caine (in a star-making role), that mentioned "abortion" on its soundtrack. Taylor won the second and last Best Actress Oscar of her career for this performance. The first major (commercially-released) US studio film to include the word 'shit' in its dialogue was Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood (1967). It was also said a year later in Boom! (1968, UK) (spoken by actress Elizabeth Taylor as Flora 'Sissy' Goforth: "S--t on your mother!" Note: Taylor was the first actress to say 's--t' in a major motion picture).

The bold and quirky British romantic comedy Georgy Girl (1966) set in swinging London (with a star-making role for Oscar-nominated Lynn Redgrave) was the first film in the US that carried a rating of M ("Suggested for Mature Audiences Only"). Brian De Palma's draft-dodger comedy Greetings (1968), (Robert DeNiro's debut film), was the first film in the US to receive an X rating by the MPAA for nudity and profanity (in its original release), although it was reduced to an R rating.

Cinematographer Haskell Wexler directed his feature debut film - the cinema-verite , non-exploitative adult film Medium Cool (1969), originally rated X due to full-frontal nudity and violence - about a television news cameraman covering the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Another controversy erupted over the inter-racial love scene between guerrilla leader Raquel Welch and deputy Jim Brown in 100 Rifles (1969) - rated R.

Both Robert Aldrich's lesbian film The Killing of Sister George (1968), and first-time director Paul Mazursky's successful sex comedy about swinging and group therapy, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), gave evidence that sexual permissiveness and a new liberalism about sexual mores had emerged in Hollywood. The title of the trashy melodramatic film Valley of the Dolls (1967), adapted from Jacqueline Susann's best-selling book and starring Barbara Perkins, Patty Duke, and Sharon Tate as three fame-seeking women, referred to 'uppers' and 'downers' - barbiturate pills.

The Best Picture Oscar in 1969 went to English director John Schlesinger's X-rated Midnight Cowboy (1969) with the Harry Nilsson theme song Everybody's Talking. This archetypal "New Hollywood" 70s film told the story of the close relationship between a naive Texan stud (Jon Voight) and a grizzled derelict (Dustin Hoffman), two men forced to live in marginalized American society. Its themes resonated with the countercultural audiences of the time: sex, drugs, anti-authoritarianism, and the search for freedom. It was the first major, commercial film so rated and the first X-rated film ever to win the Academy Award (although since then, it has been re-classified as R-rated).

Film History of the 1960s
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6