The Tower of Film: My Top 25 of 1964

For those who might think it is in poor taste for me to use the word "tower" so blithely in an article title on September 11, my answer to anything negative you might have to say about it is a deeply cold "Fuck you, it's my goddamned birthday."

Also, this tower is still standing. (And please don't cue the Elton song...) This tower stands as long as I do (or at least as long as I can breathe, if in fact standing ever becomes a true difficulty, then I shall watch sitting down). The Tower of Film is my term for the figurative monstrosity that has arisen out of the 12,000-plus feature films that I have watched in my now fifty-two years on this spheroid, with the very cream of the crop occupying the higher, more exalted positions on that tower.

The Tower of Film started out a few years ago as a different project which slowly evolved into its current state, once I realized the enormous breadth of the project and just how much I had underestimated its original potential. That first intent was merely to make sure that I watched the most important films that had been released within each year of my lifespan, but then went far beyond that I started accumulating an enormous database of films, which ultimately spanned over 6,000 films before I stopped pulling it together about three years back. (I have yet to update it to account for those last three years.)

Early on in the project, I decided to start going through the list and concentrated on the very first year within it, that naturally being 1964, the year of my birth. Using the website Flickchart to rank all of my films (to date, I have ranked 12,040 feature films – that I have views from start to finish, a prime criteria for candidacy on my part – on that site), I've discovered that I have watched 164 films from 1964. (Not every film that I have seen is on Flickchart yet, so there are some titles left out each year.)

After several years of ranking my films one against the other on Flickchart (I highly recommend it for movie buffs if you are at all interested in determining your favorite films of all time), I present now on this celebration of my 52nd year my Top 25 films of 1964:

[# | title | director | my ranking overall on Flickchart out of 12,040 films as of 9/11/2016]

#25 | The Pawnbroker | Sidney Lumet | Flickchart: 1,447
#24 | Nothing but a Man | Michael Roemer | Flickchart: 1,340
#23 | Fail-Safe | Dir.: Sidney Lumet | Flickchart: 1,336
#22 | World without Sun | Jacques-Yves Cousteau | Flickchart: 1,306
#21 | The Gospel According to St. Matthew | Pier Paolo Pasolini | Flickchart: 1,300

#20 | Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster | Ishirô Honda | Flickchart: 1,299
Some of you might be surprised that I am able to have a big, stupid, Japanese monster film appear on the list slightly higher than a far more sober and intellectually demanding Pasolini film (as well as a trio of steady, sharp dramas). I have two answers to that: 1) I am an atheist, and if I do have a god, it is only Godzilla, not the Jesus (though he seemed like such a nice boy...); and 2) Welcome to the world as occupied by my brothers and I, the world of Silly and Serious, where equal weight is given to items in both camps at the same time. I am deathly serious about my silliness, and can be most silly when it comes to matters of great seriousness. For me, Pasolini sits alongside Toho quite easily, and I can jump from one to the other in seconds. And my love for the Ghidrah film (though I prefer it to be spelled Ghidorah) is high enough where I could have placed this even further up on the list given my druthers. However, no one has given me any druthers in a good while, so the film sits in the list where it is for the moment.

#19 | Seance on a Wet Afternoon | Bryan Forbes | Flickchart: 1,162
#18 | The Masque of the Red Death | Roger Corman | Flickchart: 1,033

#17 | The Train | John Frankenheimer | Flickchart: 1,032
If I had been exposed to this Burt Lancaster film a few years earlier than I actually was it would probably rank even higher on this list than it does. I have always been a sucker for Lancaster, and this would have made me crazy had I seen it at twelve or thirteen.

#16 | Une femme mariée | Jean-Luc Godard | Flickchart: 1,004
#15 | Seven Faces of Dr. Lao | George Pal | Flickchart: 1,003
#14 | Gate of Flesh | Seijun Suzuki | Flickchart: 961

#13 | The Umbrellas of Cherbourg | Jacques Demy | Flickchart: 927
This might as well be called The Umbrellas of Charm-bourg, because once I saw it a few years ago, I knew that it was just so perfect. Where had it been all my life? (Though it is likely I would have hated it as a child...) This film has the greatest chance of moving straight up the charts for me on subsequent showings. It already has a tad.

#12 | Topkapi | Dir.: Jules Dassin | Flickchart: 883

#11 | Goldfinger | Dir.: Guy Hamilton | Flickchart: 645
I am going to admit here and now that as they age and as I do too, some of the older Bond films are slipping for me. Maybe it is because I am becoming ever more progressive in my attitudes with each passing year, but attitudes that I once either accepted, shrugged off, or embraced are harder for me to simply let pass. Still, I love the early Bond thug as portrayed by Connery (and still the best Bond for my money) and it is hard to ignore the famous set pieces, villains, punchlines, and hardware that have been ingrained in my head since youth. It has come down my list a bit in recent years, but it is still hanging in there. I do not expect Mr. Bond to die.

#10 | Zulu | Cy Endfield | Flickchart: 618
#9 | Becket | Peter Glenville | Flickchart: 542

#8 | Band of Outsiders aka Bande à part | Jean-Luc Godard | Flickchart: 370 
Only the second director to land on the 1964 list twice (the other being Lumet), I expect this Godard classic will bring the most debate from my fellow film buffs for being this far down in my Top 10. My defense is simple: I did not see it until after the age of thirty, I like other Godard films of that era better (Contempt, Week-End), and my Top 3, maybe 5 are almost impossible to surpass in my mind on a nostalgic level, being a child of 1964 (though, of course, I did not see any of them until I was a good bit older than a mere baby).

#7 | Woman in the Dunes | Hiroshi Teshigahara | Flickchart: 338
I bought the Criterion triple-movie box set of Teshigahara's films sight unseen just because Woman in the Dunes came highly recommended to me from about four thousand different corners, and the substandard print I found on YouTube was too fuzzy to understand. A most stunning film, though I liked his film The Face of Another even more. Just discovering Teshigahara for myself made the entire effort of spending months creating my database entirely worth it. If all of this had only brought me to discover his films, I would have been content. But I have found so much more.

#6 | Kwaidan | Masaki Kobayashi | Flickchart: 311
#5 | Mary Poppins | Robert Stevenson | Flickchart: 261
#4 | A Fistful of Dollars | Sergio Leone | Flickchart: 195

#3 | A Shot in the Dark | Blake Edwards | Flickchart: 136
While my love for Blake Edwards comes down to The Great Race from 1965, my esteem for Peter Sellers is built initially from my early exposure to this quite silly Inspector Clouseau film, the best of The Pink Panther series. It is only in the #3 spot for 1964 because two greater comedies were released in the same exact year...

#2 | A Hard Day's Night | Richard Lester | Flickchart: 15
I will never get this film out of my system, no matter what I do. Richard Lester is absolutely underestimated as a director and needs a serious career reevaluation. Entirely too influential, sometimes in ways that people who have never even seen this film will never know. Plus, the Beatles were great natural actors, and hilarious as well. That it is all wrapped about live (though staged) footage of the boys in their prime makes it even better, giving us a real time capsule glimpse of history in the making, while also making us laugh with pre-MTV video antics and trademark Lester wackiness.

And for me, though it is sometimes a close swap with the #2 in the list, there really is only one film that could possibly top my Top Films of 1964 list:

#1 | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | Stanley Kubrick | Flickchart: 8
The film that I watch on my birthday more than any other (probably about twenty times or so, though I am skipping it this time). In my all-time Top Ten, my favorite Kubrick film, and my favorite Sellers film. Eminently quotable, endlessly ridiculous, and ultimately vital in the times in which we find ourselves. Quite simply the sharpest, wittiest, most dead on satire ever created.

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Well, that's it. I am sure many of you will have disputes about favorite films left off MY list. See, that the gist of it... this is MY list. These are films that have either influenced me quite young, as many of the movies higher up on the list did, or that have come into my life later of which I have grown an abiding fondness. However they got there, they are my treasures, and on this birthday, it is likely that I will choose at least one or two of them to revisit to make my day brighter. I hope you do the same, especially if there are films that you haven't seen yet on here. You could do far worse (and probably will at some point, just as I do...)

Hell, I started the day watching The Crawling Eye...

Where could Rik Tod be? Why isn't he at the Cinema 4 Pylon?

Hmmm... sorry I can't be here at the Pylon on my birthday, or even at my normally scheduled appointment with corporate slavery.

I have a date with a certain exposition called D23 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Might even be seeing an exclusive preview of the new Tron movie, along with watching the original film. Might even get to see a screening of the new Walt and El Grupo documentary, or sift through 85-plus years of Disney-related ephemera and original drawings and the like.

Or I might be banging Daisy Duck. She does have that tail action going...

Happy Birthday to Me!

Recently Rated Movies #9: Birthday Drums but a Non-Drumstick Thanksgiving in Santa Rosa

"This is exactly the sort of music that could get me pregnant!" - J-Men Forever (1979)

Every time that I travel somewhere, whether a new city or a town which I have visited numerous times (such as Santa Rosa), and no matter what I am doing and how much I am enjoying it, my eye is always automatically drawn towards every movie theatre that I pass. We could be passing through the schlumpiest village, with no intentions on ever stopping in the accursed hole, and if I see even the most bedraggled movie-house, invariably trapped in between some antique store and some Mom and Pop Hardware Stop, my heart will immediately yearn to stop for a look-see at the joint and, if time permits, a movie. But my love for the movies doesn't merely end at viewing a film. 

I enjoy collecting visits to movie theatres nearly as much as I enjoy going to museums and zoos and the other touristy things that I tend to do on vacations. Especially older theatres from the early or middle part of the 20th century, but I even find a thrill in hitting modern cineplexes, if only to gather extra fuel on how much I continue to despise the postage stamping of the cinema (though I fully acknowledge the upsides of cineplexes, too, minor though they may be). In any hobby, collectors set their own standards: philatelists may prefer to only gather materials from a certain area or era of stamp collecting, or they can try out stamps from any and all eras, countries and types. Such is the way it is for myself and movie theatres. I wish to check out any theatre, and by proxy, any movie, anywhere that I can find one.

Unfortunately, we were so busy that we were unable to hit any theatres on this past weekend's trip up to my brother's house, especially with most of the time taken up with preparing and pulling off my nephew Aerin's (also known as Rupert or the Rupe) awesome fifth birthday party. There was talk of a visit to the Rialto in Santa Rosa to see a midnight show revival of Young Frankenstein, talk which only served to drive me mad: happily insane at first at the possibility of such an occurrence, which then switched to despondency once we discovered that the Brooks-Wilder classic had actually shown two weeks earlier. Drat... and double drat.

Despite this horrid setback, I did manage to view a near handful of DVDs while happily ensconced at The M'Otis Arms (and pick up two interesting discs on our travels into San Francisco). An inaugural viewing of The Princess Bride for the Rupe was nearly as much of an adventure as the film itself. Armed with shield and wooden sword, the self-proclaimed "fearless" five year-old found himself much tested on the field of battle. My brother Otis and I spent the majority of the film calming his anxieties regarding bad guys that start out looking like good guys, good guys that start out looking like bad guys, a hero who dresses in the garb of a masked pirate, the torture machine in the Pit of Despaiiiirrrrr, and especially, the R.O.U.S.'s in the Fire-Swamp.

Refreshingly, though not for the Rupe, the scene that was most upsetting was the savage bit of violence involving Count Rugan's throwing of the dagger into Inigo Montoya's stomach. I recalled my bad dreams after I saw Flynn's Captain Blood at an early (though slightly older) age, even though the film led me to a love for swashbucklers. Of course, despite his fears, the Rupe wouldn't let us turn off the film. And, of course, I spent the majority of the rest of the weekend being lassoed and dispatched in my new role as an avuncular R.O.U.S., though I was often joined in my monstrous service by my Brother Rodent of Unusual Size. As for the film itself, seeing it alongside a much younger pair of eyes that thrilled to its every turn of plot, reminded me of just how nearly perfect Rob Reiner got the original book's tone, and also of what a grand adventure The Princess Bride remains to this day.

Later on Thanksgiving evening came time for the adults (ha!) to watch Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Un long dimanche de fiancailles (A Very Long Engagement), which I missed in the theatres because I was too deeply involved in my move to So Cal, and which I was really pissed off about missing because I adore Audrey Tautou. Marci (my sister-in-law) said that she had heard that Ms. Tautou wasn't really the sweet thing that she portrayed in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (also Jeunet), and that she was supposedly a twat. I answered "Precisely..." 

I enjoyed A Very Long Engagement, as much as I can enjoy a film that immerses itself in the human misery that was World War I so deeply and savagely. I get upset by war pictures (as any sane human should) in much the same way that the Rupe was upset by the dagger scene mentioned above, so much so that much of the film was extremely rough going for me. But I enjoyed the mystery in the film, there were some gorgeously filmed set pieces, and there was some well-played dark humor, as well. As with other Jeunet joints, I will definitely get my own copy at a later date.

Friday night was spent putting together an awesome drum set for the Rupe (and seeing the Keith Moonisms erupt at the party the next day -- by which I mean on the drums -- was the high point of the trip, though the music jam that took hold of the party was pretty sweet, too), but I had spent two nights swearing that Mark and I were going to stay up late some night and watch his copy of J-Men Forever, a spoof of Republic serials and conservative mores that two members of the Firesign Theatre contrived in the late '70s. It says quite proudly on the case that it was a staple of USA's Night Flight lineup throughout the '80s and, sure enough, that is exactly the last place that I saw it myself, around 20 years ago, and I was not going to leave Santa Rosa without watching the goddamn thing. So, our path was clear and, tired as we were from the day's travels and travails, we set ourselves down to view it. 

Luckily, for our sleep-deprived heads, J-Men Forever is only 75 minutes long, though Otis zonked for the last 20 minutes of it. Of course, he had already seen it several times recently. I am most happy to report that J-Men Forever holds up beautifully. Only a few of the jokes are truly dated, and most of the film had me howling with nostalgic delight. It also spawned a small civil skirmish in my brain, with one side laughing uproariously at the screen antics and the other side seeking to heroically defend the '40s serials that were being mocked. But merriment reigned supreme in this battle, and I set aside my outrage and simply enjoyed the experience.

Late Saturday night, my brother Chris, flung down from the boondocks of some wilderness village known as Seattle, joined us for a small reunion which we ended with an early a.m. viewing of a DVD from an issue of The Believer, a literary magazine much in vogue at this point in time. 6 short films of varying genre, style, attitude and length, ranging from less than a couple of minutes to over 20, all joined together at the hip in brother/sisterhood due to the fact that they are merely different from the mainstream mindset. 

Chief amongst these films for me was a hilarious short by Guy Maddin (he of The Saddest Music in the World fame) called Sombra Dolorosa, in which Mexican wrestling, voodoo and cannibalism are combined in an odd-tasting but satisfying stew (much like most of the Maddin that I have seen). The longest short, and equally satisfying as a film, was Squash, where the cutthroat business world finds its way onto a racquetball court, and everything is on the line for a much put-upon employee and his hissable villain of a superior. Ethics schmethics! The briefest film, and the one that I have been thinking about most since I viewed the disc, was Sweeter As the Years Roll By (Pt. 3). It consists of a single static shot of an escalator (it could even be from a surveillance camera), and while the escalator continues to roll ceaselessly, a hand holds a white marker down over the safety grip of the device, drawing one long white line that eventually connects once the track is played out completely. I, for one, have never considered just how much track there was in an escalator, and really have never given escalators much thought in general. That has changed.

On our trip into San Francisco to see the De Young Museum, we did take a side trip over to Haight-Ashbury, where we not only ate our fill of neo-Cuban cuisine at Cha Cha Cha's, but I also managed to hit the Giant Robot store across the street. As much as I would have liked to purchase nearly everything in the joint, I only walked out with a box which could have held any number of figures from Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai), but which turned out, happily for me, to contain Kurosawa-san himself (or, rather, a tiny plastic molded figurine of the director). He even has a change of swell hats! 

At Amoeba Records, I made off (legally) with a copy of The Archers' The Tales of Hoffman, a film which I have never seen but has consistently remained on my "To See" list for much of my life. Additionally, while at the gift shop at the De Young, I purchased, at the passionate behest of Otis, a DVD of In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger. Henry Darger was an artist of whom I have read a several retrospective articles, though I have only seen his art in those same magazines. I was even inspired enough by the little that I had seen and by his story to construct a brief poem in which he is a central figure. I am looking forward to viewing the disc given just how ecstatic both of my brothers are about it.

So, to sum up, while I didn't get to any new (or rather, old) movie theatres, I did manage to see or collect a few things on my travels.

And I am still mad about the Young Frankenstein debacle, though...

The List:

The Princess Bride (1987) DVD - 8
A Very Long Engagement (2004) DVD - 7
J-Men Forever (1979) DVD - 6
Deformer (2000) Believer DVD - 5
Is A Woman (unknown) Believer DVD - n/r
Tortured By Joy (unknown) Believer DVD - n/r
Sombra Dolorosa (2004) Believer DVD - 7
Sweeter As the Years Roll By (Pt. 3) (unknown) Believer DVD - n/r
Squash (2002) Believer DVD - 7