A Pictorial History of the Movies: 1963 – 8½
1963 is a tough year to choose from. Because what exactly is the focal point?
I thought about choosing Cleopatra, as an example of the crumbling institution of classical Hollywood filmmaking, but there were a couple of epic films over the past few years, and why focus on that?
Plus, 1963 has a couple of holdovers from 1962 in it, like Dr. No and How the West Was Won, which makes it difficult. Which year do they count for?
Then, there’s a movie like The Cardinal, which deals with a lot of social issues, like abortion, bigotry, and racism, in a very frank way, which was just one of the final death knells to the production code. But I talked about that a lot as well.
And there are other great movies I could have chosen as well, for various reasons.
But instead, I’m completely copping out and choosing 8½, and the rest of this article is basically going to consist of, “Look at it. Look how great this is.”
Though aren’t they all like that? (more…)