When the Motion Picture Academy looked at 1964, it gave its Best Picture award to My Fair Lady, a movie that takes on new dimensions if you assume that Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering are having sex. The film's reputation has suffered somewhat since '64, but I like it. It isn't in the top 10, though:
1. Dr. Strangelove
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern, from a novel by George
"Mein führer! I can walk!"
2. Woman in the Dunes
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Written by Kobo Abe, from his novel
Spooky and beautiful. The book is good, but the movie is perfect.
3. Diary of a Chambermaid
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carriere, from a novel by Octave Mirbeau
I love Renoir as much as the next cineaste, but this is so much better than the Renoir version.
4. The Killers
Directed by Don Siegel
Written by Gene L. Coon, from a story by Ernest Hemingway
In which Ronald Reagan delivers the immortal line: "I approve of larceny. Homicide is against my principles."
5. Kwaidan
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Written by Yoko Mizuki, from a book by Lafcadio Hearn
Four Japanese ghost stories. The first is mediocre, but the rest are riveting—especially "Hoichi the Earless," which feels like an epic medieval poem but bears no resemblance to Hollywood's "epics" at all.
6. The World of Henry Orient
Directed by George Roy Hill
Written by Nora and Nunnally Johnson, from Nora's novel
Two children make a magical dérive through New York, then are initiated into adulthood. Between this and The Manchurian Candidate, Angela Lansbury was clearly going through the "bad mom" phase of her career.
7. Onibaba
Written and directed by Kaneto Shindo
This, Kwaidan, Woman in the Dunes—what an amazing year for Japanese horror pictures.
8. A Shot in the Dark
Directed by Blake Edwards
Written by Edwards and William Peter Blatty, from plays by Marcel Achard and Harry Kurnitz
Not every Pink Panther movie holds up, but I watched this again with one of my kids a few months ago and I think it's a goddamn piece of art.
9. The Americanization of Emily
Directed by Arthur Hiller
Written by Paddy Chayefsky, from a novel by William Bradford Huie
Reminds me a bit of Stalag 17, except it has the courage of its convictions.
10. A Fistful of Dollars
Directed by Sergio Leone
Written by Leone, Víctor Andrés Catena, and Jaime Comas, from a novel by Dashiell Hammett
In the days since Hammett started to write Red Harvest, his story has taken the form of a great hardboiled detective novel, a great samurai movie, and a great spaghetti western. It would make a great Bugs Bunny short too, but y'all ain't ready for that conversation.
Honorable mentions:
11. Kiss Me, Stupid (Billy Wilder)
12. Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Robert Aldrich)
13. I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov)
14. Séance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes)
15. Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer)
16. Mermaid (Osamu Tezuka)
17. The Train (John Frankenheimer)
18. Culloden (Peter Watkins)
19. Becket (Peter Glenville)
20. Evil of Frankenstein (Freddie Francis)
Of the films of 1964 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Topkapi.
