Vintage Sand Episode 51B: Alternate Oscars: The 1960's Edition

Vintage Sand

Our Alternate Oscars episodes, based on Danny Peary’s fantastic 1992 book of the same name, have always been among our most popular. Over the course of the podcast, we’ve covered the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and the 2000’s. Comparing what films actually won Best Picture to what we believe should have won is always a fun challenge, and it has given us a chance over the years to open or reopen some doors for our listeners to movies that are overlooked and forgotten. When we came to the 1950’s episode, in an (eerily prophetic) split decision, we chose to include only English-language works, since the sheer volume of brilliant films from around the world in that decade would overwhelm both us and you, dear listeners. As we approached the 1960’s for this episode, however, we reasoned that the relative lack of great American films from the decade suggested that this time around, we should open our tent to the entire world. We could not stand idly by, for instance while "A Man for All Seasons", lovely though it is, walked away with Best Picture in the year of films like "Persona", "Masculin/Feminin" and "Blow-Up". Our worries about the length of the episode, however, turned out to be justified and then some; therefore, we needed to split the episode into two parts. So with that, we are thrilled to present our first episode(s) since our triumphant, celebratory live recording of Episode 50 in March: thus Episodes 51A (1960-1964) and 51B (1965-1969), Alternate Oscars: The 1960’s Edition. There were a couple of things that really hit us as we were creating this entry in the Vintage Sand catalogue. The first is that an unexpectedly high number of our choices were, in fact, American films, suggesting that while common wisdom avers that Hollywood suffered a creative decline in the 60’s, there were a lot of great things happening just below the surface that were, unwittingly perhaps, paving the way for the revolution of the American New Wave that would come in the early 1970’s. And the deeper we dove into the cinema of the 60’s, we came to really understand the fundamental difference between those works and film today. Simply put, it was a time when directors really seemed to trust their audience’s intelligence and imagination. This is most obvious in structurally elliptical puzzle films like Resnais’ "Last Year at Marienbad", Buñuel’s "The Exterminating Angel", Antonioni’s "L’Avventura" and "Blow-Up", Bergman’s "Persona" and even Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey". But in ways big and small, and in terms both of performance and filmmaking technique, there is in 60’s film a refreshing absence of rat-on-the-balcony-rail-at-the-end-of-"Departed" heavy-handedness that seems to be a common thread in the work of even our greatest directors today. So with all this in mind, strap in and join us for our odyssey through 60’s cinema. It promises to be highly irregular, Dave…