BLACHEFAN
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Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Director George A. Romero's debut ushered in an entire entertainment industry – the zombie film. Starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea are among a small group of survivors holed up in an abandoned farmhouse struggling to fend off a zombie attack. With tight editing and an unapologetically matter-of-fact approach to its violence and gore, the film subtly and surprisingly injects sociopolitical commentary into what most initially saw as a superficial exploitation film. Romero made the picture for a little more than $100,000, and it recouped tens of millions domestically and overseas.
The expanded essay is below this description.
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The Inner World of Aphasia (1968)
This empathic and often poetic medical-training film features a powerful performance by co-director Naomi Feil as a nurse who learns to cope with aphasia, the inability to speak as a result of a brain injury. Feil, a social worker whose career has focused on communicating with language-impaired patients, produced this film and dozens more with her husband Edward Feil. In the film, the patient's inner thoughts are heard through voice-over as she struggles in frustration to overcome her disability and to connect with her caregivers. The Council on International Non-theatrical Events (CINE) awarded "Inner World" its top honor, the Golden Eagle. More than 47 years later, the film is still being screened by media artists and independent filmmakers who appreciate its innovative artistic qualities.
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Faces (1968)
Writer-director John Cassavetes described "Faces," considered by many to be his first mature work, as "a barrage of attack on contemporary middle-class America." The film depicts a married couple, "safe in their suburban home, narrow in their thinking," he wrote, who experience a break up that "releases them from the conformity of their existence, forces them into a different context, when all barriers are down." An example of cinematic excess, "Faces" places its viewers inside intense lengthy scenes to allow them to discover within its relentless confrontations emotions and relations of power between men and women that rarely emerge in more conventionally structured films. In provoking remarkable performances by Lynn Carlin, John Marley and Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes has created a style of independent filmmaking that has inspired filmmakers around the world.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/faces.pdf
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David Holzman's Diary (1968)
A satire on cinema verite, this "fake documentary" was shot in only five days on a $2500 budget. L. M. Kit Carson plays Holzman, a young New York filmmaker who decides to get a handle on his life by putting it all down on celluloid. Written, directed and produced by Jim McBride, later a maintream film and television director, captures the essence of the filmmaker as artist while skewering it with its own devices: grainy black-and-white 16mm film, wobbly handheld camerawork, bizarre angles and lenses. "Diary" led the way to popular mockumentaries like Rob Reiner's "This is Spinal Tap" and Christopher Guest's "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show."
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Bullitt (1968)
The winding streets and stunning vistas of San Francisco, backed by a superb Lalo Schifrin score, play a central role in British director Peter Yates' film renowned for its exhilarating 11-minute car chase, arguably the finest in cinema history. In one of his most famous roles, Steve McQueen stars as tough-guy police detective Frank Bullitt. The story, based on Robert L. Pike's crime novel "Mute Witness," begins with Bullitt assigned to a seemingly routine detail, protecting mafia informant Johnny Ross (Pat Renella), who is scheduled to testify against his cronies before a Senate subcommittee. But when two hitmen ambush their secret location, fatally wounding Ross, things don't add up for Bullitt, so he decides to investigate the case on his own. Unfortunately for him, ambitious senator Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn), the head of the aforementioned subcommittee, wants to shut his investigation down, interfering with Bullitt's plan to bring the killers to justice but discover who's behind the ambush.
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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick's landmark epic pushed the envelope of narrative and special effects to create an introspective look at technology and humanity. Arthur C. Clarke adapted his story "The Sentinel" for the screen version and his odyssey follows two astronauts, played by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, on a voyage to Jupiter accompanied by HAL 9000, an unnervingly humanesque computer running the entire ship. With assistance from special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent more than two years creating his vision of outer space. Despite some initial critical misgivings, "2001" became one of the most popular films of 1968. Billed as "the ultimate trip," the film quickly caught on with a counterculture audience that embraced the contemplative experience that many older audiences found tedious and lacking substance.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/2001.pdf
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Funny Girl (1968)
Reprising her Tony-nominated performance as legendary singer-comedienne Fanny Brice, Barbra Streisand's impressive vocal talent and understated acting, as guided by distinguished veteran director William Wyler, earned her an Academy Award for her screen debut. The film retains most of the stage show's Jule Styne-Bob Merrill musical numbers including "People," "I'm the Greatest Star" and "Don't Rain on My Parade." Streisand plays Brice as a plain-looking, fast-talking dynamo who yearns for the stage, and gets her chance when she's hired by impresario Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Pidgeon) and becomes the toast of Broadway. She meets and marries big-time gambler Nick Arnstein (Omar Sharif), but their idyllic romance crumbles as he grows to resent her fame. Produced by Ray Stark, Brice's real-life son-in-law, "Funny Girl" was among the last of the successful big-budget musicals.
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Monterey Pop (1968)
Courtesy of Leacock Pennebaker
This seminal music-festival film captures the culture of the time and performances from iconic musical talent. "Monterey Pop" also established the template for multi-camera documentary productions of this kind, predating both "Woodstock" and "Gimme Shelter." In addition to director D. A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles and others provided the superb camerawork. Performers include Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Hugh Masekela, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Simon and Garfunkel, and Ravi Shankar. As he recalled in a 2006 Washington Post article, Pennebaker decided to shoot and record the film using five portable 16mm cameras equipped with synchronized sound recording devices, while producers Lou Adler and John Phillips (Mamas and Papas) sagely had the whole concert filmed and recorded, and further enhanced the sound by hiring Wally Heider and his state-of-the-art mobile recording studio.
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Portrait of Jason (1967)
Courtesy Milestone Films
In one of the first LGBT films widely accepted by general audiences, Shirley Clarke explored the blurred lines between fact and fiction, allowing her subject, Jason Holliday (né Aaron Payne), a gay hustler and nightclub entertainer, to talk about his life with candor, pathos and humor in one 12-hour shoot. Clarke originally envisioned Jason as the only character, but she subsequently revealed: "When I saw the rushes I knew the real story of what happened that night in my living room had to include all of us [the off-screen voices. her crew and herself], and so our question-reaction probes, our irritations and angers, as well as our laughter remain part of the film." Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" described it as a "curious and fascinating example of cinéma vérité, all the ramifications of which cannot be immediately known." Legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman called it "the most extraordinary film I've seen in my life." Thought to have been lost, a 16 mm print of the film was discovered at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in 2013 and has since been restored by the Academy Film Archive, Milestone Films and Modern Videofilm.
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The Jungle (1967)
With the guidance of Temple University social worker Harold Haskins, a group of African-American teenage boys in Philadelphia made this hybrid documentary/dramatization of their lives in the 12th and Oxford Street gang. Shot in an original and natural style, this 22-minute film was recognized with festival awards, but was never theatrically released. In 1968, Churchill Films distributed the film in 16mm for the educational market. The production led several of the gang members to earn high school diplomas and college degrees.
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In the Heat of the Night (1967)
While traveling in the Deep South, Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a black Philadelphia homicide detective, becomes unwittingly embroiled in the murder investigation of a prominent businessman when he is first accused of the crime and then asked to solve it. Finding the killer proves to be difficult, however, especially when his efforts are constantly thwarted by the bigoted town sheriff (Rod Steiger). But neither man can solve the case alone. Putting aside their differences and prejudices, they join forces in a desperate race against time to discover the shocking truth. Director Norman Jewison stages their confrontations for effectively flashy, immediate effect. The film also stars Lee Grant and Warren Oates.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/heat_night.pdf
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In Cold Blood (1967)
In 1959 two men brutally murdered four members of a Holcomb, Kan., family. Truman Capote reported on the infamous incident, first in a series of New Yorker articles and later in his non-fiction novel, "In Cold Blood." With an unsparing neo-realism, director Richard Brooks adapted Capote's novel, focusing on the motivations, backgrounds, and relationship of the killers, society's failure to spot potential murderers, and their eventual execution on death row. Filmed in striking black-and-white documentary style by cinematographer Conrad Hall, the film starred then-unknown actors Robert Blake and Scott Wilson, both of whom bore a close physical resemblance to the real-life murderers. Blake, in particular, provides a sensational, multi-layered portrayal. The chilling ending depicts Blake climbing to the gallows to be hanged as we hear his heartbeat slowly come to a stop as the screen fades to black.
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The Graduate (1967)
The coming-of-age story at the heart of "The Graduate" at times feels dated, but the character of Mrs. Robinson—deftly portrayed by Anne Bancroft—seems timeless. In hindsight, the film doesn't capture the '60s as well as the edgier "Easy Rider," but director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry, aided by Dustin Hoffman as the clueless Benjamin, manage to concoct a funny and satirical look at a certain slice of Americana and the generation gap that pervaded the era.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/graduate.pdf
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Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)
This 15-minute film, produced by George Lucas while a student at the University of Southern California, won the 1968 United States National Student Film Festival drama award and inspired Warner Bros. studio to sign Lucas to produce the expanded feature length "THX 1138" under the tutelage of Francis Ford Coppola. This film has evoked comparisons to George Orwell's "1984" and impressed audiences with its technical inventiveness and cautionary view of a future filled with security cameras and omnipresent scrutiny.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/THX.pdf
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Don't Look Back (1967)
This feature-length documentary directed by D.A. Pennebaker ("The War Room") chronicles the days and nights of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan while on a 1965 concert tour of England. Shot in black and white, deliberately paced, and exhibiting a freeform style, "Dont Look Back" has endured because of Pennebaker's engrossing "Direct Cinema" documentary style and because of its fascinating subject. While it does show Dylan performing on stage, the documentary is not a "concert film" in the vein of "Woodstock," but it captures the enigma of Dylan—already considered the musical "voice of his generation"—as eloquent but immature, guileless but surprisingly savvy, in short, as flawed as the average man.
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Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Paul Newman, who was nominated for an Oscar, portrays the classic antihero loner Luke: a prisoner on a Southern chain-gang who refuses to give in to the guards' efforts to break his spirit. As Luke becomes a symbol of hope and resilience to the other inmates, prison captain Strother Martin drawls sadistically, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate." George Kennedy received an Oscar as the unofficial leader of the cons who yields first place to Luke.
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Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Setting filmmaking and style trends that linger today, "Bonnie and Clyde" veered from comedy to social commentary to melodrama and caught audiences unaware, especially with its graphic ending. The violence spawned many detractors, but others saw the artistry beyond the blood and it earned not only critical succes which eventually showed at thebox office. Arthur Penn deftly directs David Newman and Robert Benton's script, aided by the film's star and producer Warren Beatty, who was always eager to push the envelope. Faye Dunaway captures the Depression-era yearning for glamour and escape from poverty and hopelessness.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/bonnie_clyde.pdf
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Point Blank (1967)
If ever there is a Mount Rushmore for tough guys, the face of Lee Marvin should be sculpted there in bold relief. He definitely upholds that reputation in the relentless crime drama "Point Blank." Based on a novel by Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark), this tense, stylish thriller from director John Boorman opens with Walker (Lee Marvin) getting double-crossed by mobster friend John Vernon while conducting a crime on Alcatraz Island. Shot, left for dead, and now missing $93,000, Marvin soon learns that his wife was also romantically involved with Vernon. Writing for Slant in 2003, critic Nick Schager frames the film as a reworking of traditional noir: "Boorman set out to make a thriller that looked and felt like nothing else before it, using widescreen Panavision cinematography, explosive colors, and a multi-layered soundtrack to re-envision the noir picture as highbrow Euro-art film." "Point Blank" has come to be recognized as a seminal film of the 1960s.
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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Though it would be Spencer Tracy's last film and the second film for which Katharine Hepburn would win an Academy Award for best actress, even these movie milestones are somewhat overshadowed by the then-novel plot of the 1967 "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." Hepburn and Tracy play an older married couple whose progressiveness is challenged when their daughter (Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's real-life niece) brings home a new fiancé, who happens to be black. Celebrated actor Sidney Poitier plays the young man with his customary on-screen charisma, fire and grace.
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Edward Albee's 1962 stage triumph made a successful transfer to the screen in this adaption written by Ernest Lehman. The story of two warring couples and their alcohol-soaked evening of anger and exposed resentments stunned audiences with its frank, code-busting language and depictions of middle-class malaise-****-rage. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—who were both Academy Award nominees for their work (with Taylor winning)—each achieved career high-points in their respective roles as Martha and George, an older couple who share their explosive evening opposite a younger husband and wife, portrayed by George Segal and Sandy Dennis. "Woolf's" claustrophobic staging and stark black-and-white cinematography, created by Haskell Wexler, echoed its characters' rawness and emotionalism. Mike Nichols began his auspicious screen directing career with this film, in which he was already examining the absurdities and brutality of modern life, themes that would become two of his career hallmarks.
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A Time for Burning (1966)
Hailed by Fred Friendly as "the best civil rights film ever made," this documentary by Bill Jersey chronicles the ultimately unsuccessful attempts of a Nebraska Lutheran minister to integrate his church. Contains some of the best observational "fly on the wall" footage ever filmed, filled with incisive scenes showing people struggling with their prejudices, anger, disillusionment, changing social times and hopes for the future.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/time_for_burning.pdf
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They Call It Pro Football (1966)
Before "They Call It Pro Football" premiered, football films were little more than highlight reels set to the oom-pah of a marching band. In 1964, National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle agreed to the formation of NFL Films. With a background in public relations, he recognized that the success of the league depended on its image on television, which required creating a mystique. "They Call It Pro Football," the first feature of NFL Films, looked at the game "in dramaturgical terms," capturing the struggle, not merely the outcome, of games played on the field. Written and produced by Steve Sabol, directed by John Hentz and featuring the commanding cadence of narrator John Facenda and the music of Sam Spence, the film presented football on an epic scale and in a way rarely seen by the spectator. Telephoto lenses brought close-ups of players' faces into viewers' living rooms. Slow motion revealed surprising intricacy and grace. Sweeping ground-to-sky shots imparted a "heroic angle." Coaches and players wearing microphones let the audience in on strategy and emotion. "They Call It Pro Football" established a mold for subsequent productions by NFL Films and has well earned its characterization as the "Citizen Kane" of sports movies.
The expanded essay is below this description.
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Seconds (1966)
Two staples of 1960s cinema—evil organizations and the wasteland of suburbia—combine to drive this sinister tale about the perils of seeking a second chance, a life do-over. Bored with his banal marriage and unexciting daily grind, banker John Randolph meets the representative for a mysterious company offering the "too-good-to-be-true" opportunity to erase his current Scarsdale existence for a makeover in the guise of Malibu painter Rock Hudson. Headed by grandfatherly scion Will Geer and master-of-the-hard-sell executive Jeff Corey, "The Company" takes care of everything surrounding Randolph (in his new Hudsonesque persona) with business reps and human "seconds," in order to smooth his transition to a new life and keep him from spilling the lucrative-but-dark corporate secret. His new identify seems idyllic, but Randolph chafes with unease and demands a return to his now fondly remembered past average life. With no intention of imperiling its advertising message and humming assembly-line template for reborn humans, the company has a "third chance" plan in mind for Randolph: he learns "you can't go home again," in the wry words of a New York Times reviewer quoting Thomas Wolfe. Director John Frankenheimer crafts a memorably creepy sense of foreboding in "Seconds," aided immensely by the black-and-white cinematography, disorienting camera angles and lenses of cameraman James Wong Howe, as well as Jerry Goldsmith's eerie score. Critic David Sterritt lauds "Seconds" as "the third and crowning chapter of what's now known as Frankenheimer's paranoia trilogy" following "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Seven Days in May."
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Navajo Film Themselves [aka Through Navajo Eyes] (1966)
In a project that incorporated both anthropological and communications theory, university professors Sol Worth and John Adair taught a group of Navajo students in Pine Springs, Arizona to make documentary films. The researchers wanted to know if it was possible to teach filmmaking to members of a different culture, and how films made by Navajos might differ from films made by outsiders. The research team met with their students for eight hours a day, five days a week for two months. They gave their students basic instructions, while emphasizing that the students should make a film about whatever was important to them. At the end of the project, the students had completed seven films, some of which featured traditional artisans such as weavers, silversmiths and sand painters. Other students created more poetically abstract films depicting Navajo culture as a whole. The films originally shown in the local community, but have since gained a wider audience through outside screenings and DVD release.
National Film Registry Year by Year
in General Discussions
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OffOn (1968)
This landmark work from California filmmaker Scott Bartlett is the first avant-garde title to fully marry video with film. The film combines masterful usage of optical printing, superimposing images, color saturation and hand-dying of the film strip, making abstractions from natural images.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/offon.pdf