The stories behind the best film lists of 1967 | Little White Lies

The sto­ries behind the best film lists of 1967

20 Dec 2017

Words by Justine Smith

Two people, a woman with blonde hair and a man in a flat cap, standing by a wooden structure in a rural setting.
Two people, a woman with blonde hair and a man in a flat cap, standing by a wooden structure in a rural setting.
We’ve delved into the archives to find out which films were top­ping crit­ics’ charts 50 years ago.

Every list tells a sto­ry. Famed Ital­ian art crit­ic Umber­to Eco, who wrote a book on lists, once remarked, We like lists because we don’t want to die.” We write lists to make sense of the infin­i­ty of the uni­verse, to make it con­sum­able and under­stand­able but lists promise more than they can deliv­er. Why is it, that at the end of the year we feel a sense of com­pul­sion to sum up our expe­ri­ence in the form of a top 10?

Tak­ing a look back 50 years to 1967, one of the most influ­en­tial years in film­mak­ing, the end-of-year list obses­sion was just tak­ing off. Around the world, peo­ple put togeth­er their list of the most impor­tant films of the year. They includ­ed movies we still talk about today, like The Grad­u­ate, Cool Hand Luke and In the Heat of the Night (which would also win Best Pic­ture), but also movies that seemed to be lost in time, such as Joseph Strick’s adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses’, which was select­ed as one of the best films of the year by the New York Times, Roger Ebert and the Nation­al Board of Review.

Look­ing back at 1967, a year of change, pat­terns emerge and new voic­es rise to the sur­face. What will our lists of 2017 reflect on our writ­ing, tastes and obses­sions years from now?

This was the last end of year list writ­ten by New York Times head film crit­ic Bosley Crowther, as he retired after 27 years at the paper. Writ­ing about the year’s best he said, This was the year in which Hol­ly­wood – or the home-grown film, if you please – made a remark­able emer­gence from the shad­ow of eclipse into which it had been cast by for­eign imports and the weak­ness of its own ener­gies.” Through­out his career, Crowther was known in equal mea­sure for his taste in mid­dling Amer­i­can cin­e­ma (he includ­ed Around the World in 80 Days among his 100 Essen­tial films’ of film his­to­ry) but also sup­port­ing for­eign film­mak­ers like Felli­ni, Resnais and De Sica.

To this day, many point to Crowther’s scathing review of Bon­nie and Clyde as a turn­ing point in the divide between an old guard of film crit­ics and a new one. He called the ground­break­ing film, a cheap piece of bald-faced slap­stick com­e­dy that treats the hideous depre­da­tions of that sleazy, moron­ic pair as though they were as full of fun and frol­ic as the jazz-age cutups in Thor­ough­ly Mod­ern Mil­lie.” Bon­nie and Clyde, unsur­pris­ing­ly, is miss­ing from his list of the best of the year.

1. La guerre est finie (Alain Resnais)
2. Ulysses (Joseph Strick)
3. The Hunt (Car­los Saura)
4. In the Heat of the Night (Nor­man Jew­i­son)
5. Father (Ist­van Szabo)
6. Elvi­ra Madi­gan (Bo Wider­berg)
7. Close­ly Watched Trains (Jiri Men­zel)
8. Cool Hand Luke (Stu­art Rosen­berg)
9. In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks)
10. The Grad­u­ate (Mike Nichols)

As part of their reflec­tion on the pre­vi­ous year in movies, on Christ­mas Eve, along with Bosley Crowther’s list, The New York Times asked some nota­bles” to share their favourite films of the year. That list includ­ed, among oth­ers, Bus­by Berke­ley, Ingrid Bergman, Glo­ria Swan­son and Allen Gins­berg. Their choic­es ran the gamut from Camelot to The Bat­tle of Algiers.

Of the lists, Cass Mama’ Elliot from the Mamas & The Papas feels the most per­ti­nent. Elliot was near the height of her fame and her list reflects a com­bi­na­tion of youth­ful rev­er­ence and coun­ter­cul­tur­al pow­er. In the tra­di­tions of the Flower chil­dren, ani­mals and the envi­ron­ment seem to dom­i­nate her list, though there is cer­tain­ly an anti-war, psy­che­del­ic trip qual­i­ty to many of her oth­er choic­es. While, tra­di­tion­al­ly, we look to film crit­ics for the year’s best, but there is some­thing rich and reward­ing about turn­ing to pop cul­tur­al icons for their choic­es. Let’s be real, most of us look for­ward to John Waters’ best of list more than we do most critics.

1. The Jun­gle Book (Wolf­gang Rei­ther­man)
2. Char­lie and the Lone­some Cougar (Win­ston Hibler)
3. Water­hole No’ 3 (William A Gra­ham)
4. A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch)
5. How I Won the War (Richard Lester)
6. Mod­esty Blaise (Joseph Losey)
7. The Trip (Roger Cor­man)
8. Blow-Up (Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni)
9. Bon­nie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)

One of the old­est crit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions, The Nation­al Board of Review first announced their best films of the year list in 1930. Its mem­ber­ship is com­prised of mem­bers of the film com­mu­ni­ty, rang­ing from pro­fes­sion­al film crit­ics, film­mak­ers to pas­sion­ate film fans locat­ed in and around the New York met­ro­pol­i­tan area. The list reflects a more pop­ulist per­spec­tive than most of the oth­er lists, fea­tur­ing two films star­ring Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor and Richard Bur­ton, as well as one of the few lists to include the Dr Dolit­tle musical.

1. Far from Madding Crowd (John Schlesinger)
2. The Whis­per­ers (Bryan Forbes)
3. Ulysses (Joseph Strick)
4. In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks)
5. The Fam­i­ly Way (John & Roy Boult­ing)
6. The Tam­ing of the Shrew (Fran­co Zef­firelli)
7. Dr Dolit­tle (Richard Fleis­ch­er)
8. The Grad­u­ate (Mike Nichols)
9. The Come­di­ans (Peter Glenville)
10. Acci­dent (Joseph Losey)

1967 rep­re­sent­ed the begin­ning of Roger Ebert’s career. He had only just start­ed writ­ing for The Chica­go Sun and this would be his first year-end list for the paper. Like oth­er young, emerg­ing crit­ics of the era Ebert upheld Bon­nie and Clyde as not only the year’s best movie but a chang­ing force in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. He wrote, This was the year when Hol­ly­wood was redis­cov­ered, after a decade in which the most inter­est­ing films came from Europe.” Bon­nie and Clyde rep­re­sent­ing a chang­ing tide in the Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, which would ush­er in a new era of ground­break­ing film­mak­ing in the com­ing decade.

Ebert’s list reflects both pop­u­lar films of the era, but also a cer­tain idio­syn­crasy. His most pecu­liar choic­es are Reflec­tions in a Gold­en Eye, Huston’s ambi­tious gold-tint­ed South­ern dra­ma set at an army base, which was a box-office and crit­i­cal fail­ure, and The War Game, Watkin’s docu­d­ra­ma which images Britain in the after­math of a Nuclear war.

1. Bon­nie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
2. Ulysses (Joseph Strick)
3. Blow-Up (Michae­lan­ge­lo Anto­nioni)
4. The Grad­u­ate (Mike Nichols)
5. A Man for All Sea­sons (Fred Zin­ne­mann)
6. The War Game (Peter Watkins)
7. Reflec­tions in a Gold­en Eye (John Hus­ton)
8. Cool Hand Luke (Arthur Hiller)
9. Elvi­ra Madi­gan (Bo Wider­berg)
10. In the Heat of the Night (Nor­man Jewison)

Arguably the most impor­tant non-Eng­lish film mag­a­zine in the world, it should come as no sur­prise Cahiers du cinema’s list feels the most con­tem­po­rary. The mag­a­zine was at its influ­en­tial peak in 1967, thanks to the glob­al promi­nence of the French New Wave, and showed its rel­e­vance by sup­port­ing the likes of Jacques Tati, Věra Chytilová and many of pre-emi­nent film­mak­ers of that era. Many French New Wave direc­tors – includ­ing Jean-Luc Godard – were still writ­ing for the mag­a­zine in 1967.

Sar­ris, who had only been writ­ing for The Vil­lage Voice for a few years, had begun edit­ing an Eng­lish ver­sion. You can read the May 1967 edi­tion online, which includes the lists of the Best Films of 1966 – both the reader’s and crit­ics list – as well as indi­vid­ual bal­lots from Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci, Claude Chabrol, Jean Eustache and Jacques Riv­ette. Around this time Sar­ris was also be devel­op­ing his own ver­sion of Truffaut’s auteur the­o­ry, and a year lat­er he released his sem­i­nal work The Amer­i­can Cin­e­ma: Direc­tors and Direc­tions 1929 – 1968’.

1. Per­sona (Ing­mar Bergman)
2. Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel)
3. Week­end (Jean-Luc Godard)
4. La Chas­se Au Lion D’Arc (Jean Rouch)
5. Play­time (Jacques Tati)
6. The Big Mouth (Jer­ry Lewis)
7. Daisies (Věra Chytilová)
8. The Nun (Jacques Riv­ette)
9. 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard)
10. La Chi­noise (Jean-Luc Godard)

For The Har­vard Crim­son (Harvard’s Uni­ver­si­ty paper), Tim Hunter put togeth­er what is a per­son­al list, where objec­tiv­i­ty breaks down and is replaced by whim.” His movie reflects a youth­ful embrace of a new kind of cin­e­ma. Even the old-guard Amer­i­can film­mak­ers he selects, Hawks, Pre­minger, and Welles, rep­re­sent icon­o­clasts rather than traditionalists.

He also has a ten­den­cy out­sider cin­e­ma, with choic­es like the most­ly-for­got­ten Con­rad Rooks film Chap­paqua, a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film about the ear­ly days of psy­che­delia in San Fran­cis­co, as well as the works of Andy Warhol. Hunter’s list is just as inter­est­ing for the film’s he thinks are over­rat­ed. He calls The Grad­u­ate, mediocre,” Per­sona, an illus­tra­tion of uncin­e­mat­ic ideas,” and he accus­es Godard of increas­ing­ly pedan­tic seriousness.”

1. El Dora­do (Howard Hawks)
2. Fal­staff (Orson Welles)
3. Bon­nie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
4. La guerre est finie (Alain Resnais)
5. Hur­ry Sun­down (Otto Pre­minger)
6. L’Etranger (Luchi­no Vis­con­ti)
7. Bike Boy, The Nude Restau­rant, and oth­er 1967 films by Andy Warhol.
8. Chap­paqua (Con­rad Rooks)
9. Acci­dent (Joseph Losey)
10. Bil­lion Dol­lar Brain (Ken Russell)

As one of the most influ­en­tial voic­es in Amer­i­can film crit­i­cism, Andrew Sar­ris does not pull any punch­es in his list. He obeys the New York release sched­ule with such rigid­ness, that his sec­ond best film of the year was ini­tial­ly released in France in 1932. Sar­ris, whose com­mit­ment to auteurism earned him the scorn of Pauline Kael, stands by auteurist icons like Chap­lin, while many oth­er crit­ics of the era dis­missed his lat­est effort; for the NYT’s, Crowther wrote that it was an embar­rass­ment” and a numb­ing­ly archa­ic farce”.

1. Per­sona (Ing­mar Bergman)
2. Boudu Saved from Drown­ing (Jean Renoir)
3. El Dora­do (Howard Hawks)
4. Point Blank (John Boor­man)
5. Gunn (Blake Edwards)
6. Fal­staff (Orson Welles)
7. A Count­ess from Hong Kong (Charles Chap­lin)
8. The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel (Luis Buñuel)
9. La Guerre Est Finie (Alain Resnais)
10. Acci­dent (Joseph Losey)

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