Many things started to happen in 1960. Rules were breaking. Censorship grew weaker. Movies got sexy and more violent. And the idea of a movie plot seemed stale.
The classical Hollywood system that had dominated America for decades was starting to get weaker. At the same time, international cinema, particularly Italian and French movies, became the new thing, breaking rules while introducing new formulas to a stagnated classical narrative language. Movies got bloodier, taboos were being violated and politics started to intervene. 1960 was truly the beginning of the sixties and the movies released that year set the template for what was to come in the later decade.
Two of Britain’s great filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell, rewrote the rules of the horror genre with Psycho and Peeping Tom. Despised upon release, these movies are now considered classics and revolutionary in that they brought a psychological complexity to an undervalued genre. The influence of these movies can be traced in numerous slasher horror movies as well as classics like Jaws (1975), Dressed to Kill (1980), Cape Fear (1991) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
The French New Wave may have begun in 1958-1959 but it really took course in 1960 when Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Francois Truffaut’s quirky thriller Shoot the Piano Player were released. Challenging and exhilarating, these two movies broke away from conventions of classical narration and imposed a bold visual style filled with jump cuts, character asides, extended voiceovers, out-of-sequence shots and ambiguous endings. Before these movies, no one would have dared to attempt an approach. After their release, nearly everyone was doing it.
Also in 1960, Italian directors Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni released La Dolce Vita and L’Avventura. Like the French movies above, La Dolce Vita and L’Avventura rewrote the language of continuity, narration and editing in film. There was no traditional plot, no character development, no resolution; In their place was a non-linear, fragmented plot structure, a series of unexplained events, emphasis on long takes and symbolism and visual compositions that engulfed the characters in oppressive, shallow and, in the case of L’Avventura, alienating worlds. But Fellini and Antonioni were not the only Italian directors that found great success that year. Italian neorealist veteran Vittorio de Sica made Two Women, a gut-wrenching melodrama dealing with the horrors of war. And Mario Bava, the auteur of Italian horror films, made an impressive debut with Black Sunday.
Even though international cinema grew increasingly popular, America still had a few great movies up their sleeves. Stalwart Hollywood director Billy Wilder gave us The Apartment, the Rat Pack showed how cool they were in Ocean’s 11 and John Sturges took Seven Samurai (1954) and turned it into an exhilarating Western with The Magnificent Seven. Also, two Hollywood spectacles, Spartacus and Exodus, proved that epics could be as every bit as intimate as a low-budget feature from France.
JOE L.
Many things started to happen in 1960. Rules were breaking. Censorship grew weaker. Movies got sexy and more violent. And the idea of a movie plot seemed stale.
The classical Hollywood system that had dominated America for decades was starting to get weaker. At the same time, international cinema, particularly Italian and French movies, became the new thing, breaking rules while introducing new formulas to a stagnated classical narrative language. Movies got bloodier, taboos were being violated and politics started to intervene. 1960 was truly the beginning of the sixties and the movies released that year set the template for what was to come in the later decade.
Two of Britain’s great filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell, rewrote the rules of the horror genre with Psycho and Peeping Tom. Despised upon release, these movies are now considered classics and revolutionary in that they brought a psychological complexity to an undervalued genre. The influence of these movies can be traced in numerous slasher horror movies as well as classics like Jaws (1975), Dressed to Kill (1980), Cape Fear (1991) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
The French New Wave may have begun in 1958-1959 but it really took course in 1960 when Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Francois Truffaut’s quirky thriller Shoot the Piano Player were released. Challenging and exhilarating, these two movies broke away from conventions of classical narration and imposed a bold visual style filled with jump cuts, character asides, extended voiceovers, out-of-sequence shots and ambiguous endings. Before these movies, no one would have dared to attempt an approach. After their release, nearly everyone was doing it.
Also in 1960, Italian directors Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni released La Dolce Vita and L’Avventura. Like the French movies above, La Dolce Vita and L’Avventura rewrote the language of continuity, narration and editing in film. There was no traditional plot, no character development, no resolution; In their place was a non-linear, fragmented plot structure, a series of unexplained events, emphasis on long takes and symbolism and visual compositions that engulfed the characters in oppressive, shallow and, in the case of L’Avventura, alienating worlds. But Fellini and Antonioni were not the only Italian directors that found great success that year. Italian neorealist veteran Vittorio de Sica made Two Women, a gut-wrenching melodrama dealing with the horrors of war. And Mario Bava, the auteur of Italian horror films, made an impressive debut with Black Sunday.
Even though international cinema grew increasingly popular, America still had a few great movies up their sleeves. Stalwart Hollywood director Billy Wilder gave us The Apartment, the Rat Pack showed how cool they were in Ocean’s 11 and John Sturges took Seven Samurai (1954) and turned it into an exhilarating Western with The Magnificent Seven. Also, two Hollywood spectacles, Spartacus and Exodus, proved that epics could be as every bit as intimate as a low-budget feature from France.
List of Important and Recommended Movies in 1960: