In 1969:
Rupert Murdoch bought The News of the World;
The New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III,
The Beatles performed for the last time together on the rooftop of Apple Studios;
The Stonewall Riots took place in New York City;
The United States withdrew the $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills from circulation;
Apollo 11 landed on the moon;
Members of the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate;
Wal-Mart was incorporated;
The Woodstock Musical Festival took place;
Scooby Doo, The Brady Bunch, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Sesame Street premiered;
Verne Troyer, Marilyn Manson, Dave Grohl, Naveen Andrews, Dave Bautista, Patton Oswalt, Andrew Breitbart, Bobby Brown, Michael Sheen, Jennifer Aniston, Robert Sean Leonard, Javier Bardem, Terrence Howard, Jake Tapper, Alexander McQueen, Mariah Carey, Pauley Perrette, Paul Rudd, Renee Zellwegger, Corey Booker, Wes Anderson, Cate Blanchett, Emmit Smith, Tucker Carlson, Peter Dinklage, Steffi Graf, Ice Cube, Ken Jeong, Josh Holloway, Jennifer Lopez. Triple H, Christian Laettner, Edward Norton, Christian Slater, Matthew Perry, Jack Black, Jason Priestley, Dweezil Zappa, Tyler Perry, Bill Simmons, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Zack Galifinakis, PJ Harvey, Steve McQueen, Brett Favre, Nancy Kerrigan, Wyclef Jean, Trey Parker, Spike Jonze, Samantha Bee, Puff Daddy, Matthew McConaughey, Gerard Butler, Dabo Swinney, Ken Griffey Jr., Mariano Rivera, Jay-Z, Chuck Liddell, Laurie Holden, Kristy Swanson, Julie Delpy, and Chyna were born;
While Irene Castle, Allen Dulles, Boris Karloff, Thelma Ritter, Conrad Hilton Jr., Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robert Taylor, Judy Garland, Brian Jones, Leo McCarey, Mary Jo Kopechne, Rocky Marciano, Walter Hagen, Jack Keuroac, and Joseph Kennedy Sr. died.
The following is a list of my ten favorite films released in 1969:
This slightly updated adaptation of Jean Giraudoux’s post World War II satire stars Katharine Hepburn as the titular madwoman who uncovers a plot to drill for oil under her beloved Paris.
With the help of her eccentric friends, including the The Ragpicker (Danny Kaye), she thwarts their plans, culminating in a fanciful cellar trial.
Yul Brynner, Paul Henreid, Charles Boyer, Donald Pleasance round out the splendid cast.
It’s a tad stilted and too idealistic, but my love of Hepburn blinds me to the film’s flaws.
In the late 1960s, the Walt Disney Company granted permission for a Soviet adaptation of A.A. Milne’s beloved character. This short (the first part of a trilogy) is based in the first chapter of Milne’s book.
Director Fyodor Khitruk removed Christopher Robin from the story because he felt the character was too superior. In his version, the story shifts focus from the imaginary friends of a boy to the adventures of the fantastic animals in the wood who live independent of human civilization.
The artwork isn’t as polished as the Disney version, but may have more in common with the original teddy bear which inspired Milne’s work.
This short reminds us the ideas behind the iconic bear (friendship, innocence, etc.) are universal and adaptable to different cultural contexts.
This unlikely lending of a profitable intellectual profitable to the Soviets produced a truly original take on the character.
When Charlie Croker (Michael Caine), a thief recently released from prison, learns from the widow of a former associate about an ambitious plan to steal four million dollars in gold, he enlists the help of imprisoned crime lord, Mr. Bridger (Noel Coward) to steal the gold for himself. The plan: manipulate Turin’s traffic control system and an armored convoy during the ensuing traffic jam.
The mob attempts to thwart the plan and, in a climatic end on an icy mountain road, Croker’s car loses control. As the gold is about to slide out the back of the vehicle over a cliff, Charlie pronounces to his accomplices, “Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea.” Whether or not they retrieved the gold is a question often debated by film buffs.
Caine was at the height of his charm, the wonderful Noel Coward rises to the occasion for a memorable performance near the end of his life., Benny Hill is surprisingly competent, and the car chases in the Italian countryside are wonderfully fun in this purse escapist fantasy.
The fourth film in Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales is an intimate portrait of the relationship between men and women. Jean-Louis falls in love with Françoise, but doesn’t know how to approach her.
At dinner with his friend Vidal, he meets Maude, a recent divorcee, who convinces Jean-Louis to spend the night and tries to seduce him. He doesn’t sleep with her, but this experience encourages him to reach out to Françoise.
Years later, the now married pair have a child. After they run into Maude, a guilt-stricken Jean-Louis tells his wife about the earlier experience and she, in turn, admits to an affair with Maud’s ex-husband.
It’s a contemplative, sweet film about the difficulties in finding intimacy; the type of film people think of when they they read about French films: no action, little plot, and lots of existential discussion.
It’s not for everyone, but I loved it.
James Hilton’s story of how hard nosed, no-nonsense Arthur Chipping fell in love and softened into a beloved headmaster was first adapted into a film and won Robert Donat the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1939.
This time, it’s been retooled as a musical and updated into a post World War II setting. In this version, Chips’ beloved wife is killed in the war effort instead of dying during childbirth.
Peter O’Toole is wonderful as the titular Chips and Petulia Clark gives a more than competent performance as Katherine, the love of his life.
The music is never intrusive and serves as a showcase for Ms. Clark, dovetailing with her character’s altered backstory as a dance hall singer.
I love Peter O’Toole and he did not disappoint. A year after his phenomenal turn in The Lion in Winter, he delivered another homerun.
Max Ophüls’s documentary about the Vichy government’s collaboration with the Nazis is a searing look at humanity’s capacity to turn a blind eye and accommodate evil.
It’s a damning account of the slippery slope of rationalization. “I didn’t directly murder those people, so it doesn’t matter if I gave material support to the people who did.”
Using Pierre Mends France and Christian de la Mazière as examples, the film contrasts moral courage and cowardice. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to look back with astonishment at the cavalier attitude of the French to the atrocities committed under their watch, but this goes a long way towards demonstrating how we delude ourselves into acceptance of what should be unthinkable.
4) Salesman
Documenting the tribulations of a group of Bible salesman, brothers Albert and David Maysles create a compelling real life version of Death of a Salesman, a dirge for the postwar way of life.
There’s a beautiful, noble desperation as these idiosyncratic men in a dying profession cling to their dignity.
If you want to understand the anxieties and neuroses of early twenty first century America, see this movie.
3) They Shoot Horses, Don’t They
Sidney Pollack’s breakout movie uses the dance marathon craze to examine the desperation of the Great Depression. Emcee Rocky (Gig Young) cynically manipulates the desperate competitors: middle aged sailor Harry Kline (Red Buttons), poor farm hand James (Bruce Dern), his pregnant wife Rube (Bonnie Bedalia), cynical Gloria (Jane Fonda), and down on his luck Robert (Michael Sarazin).
Rocky promises the participants everything, but it’s a sleazy trick which feels eerily similar to the promises of reality television.
Gig Young deservedly won an Oscar, and Jane Fonda began her ascendancy from under her father’s formidable shadow. Bruce Dern is great, and Red Buttons is an underrated dramatic actor.
Fifty years later, the movie stands as a fascinating example of the ways we repurpose the struggles of previous generations to understand our own.
Woody Allen’s second film is an early mockumentary about incompetent bank robber Virgil Starkwell (played by Allen), a genre he would later perfect in Zelig.
One of the funniest things I’ve seen: Virgil plays the bass in a marching band. He sits to play three notes, then takes his chair with him as he races to his spot to perform his next notes.
Allen’s humor and point of view is perfectly aligned with mine and I find his work to be among the very best cinema has to offer.
Secrets were the lifeblood of the French Resistance; the leaders of the movement routinely killed those suspected of betrayal with little regard for the legitimacy of the accusation. The highest imperative was to keep France from falling under the control of the Nazis. Everything else, including allegiances, morality, and friendship was subservient.
The movie depicts the men who risked (and often lost) their lives to protect France from Nazism, but refuses to whitewash their actions. Jean-Pierre Melville knew their actions were justified and didn’t feel the need to persuade anyone.
This sort of moral complicity has been explored in American television shows, but while we enjoyed living vicariously through the misdeeds of Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, and Walter White, we never forgot they were bad people.
In this movie, it’s the good guys who have little regard for the lives of their friends and compatriots. It’s uncomfortable, but speaks important truths: we believe in living by a strict moral code in theory, but in practice this is more difficult than it seems, and we’re more lenient than we want to believe.