Films of my life – 1965

Films of my life – 1965

I have to be honest and say that 1965 is not a vintage year. That said, it did produce 2 of my all time favourite films and enough quality to fill a weekend of binge viewing.

I have no real memories of 1965 (I was 2 in the October of that year), so again, the films I like were mostly discovered on TV. One or two should be on telly more often (“The Hill” for one, in which a wig-less Sean Connery endures bullying and pain in a desert military prison ) and others, such as the sumptuous Doctor Zhivago have become staples of holiday viewing (there is nothing better than watching this movie on a snowy day at Christmas).

The Ipcress File – the “anti-establishment Bond”

Notable releases this year were “Thunderball” (Connery’s Underwater-Bond, complete with wig). In fact, it was a big year for spy movies, with the first movie version of a John Le Carré  book – “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” with Richard Burton. This was a grittier, humourless spy movie, much more real-life and bleak. Very much a product of the Cold War. Similarly, one of my 2 favourite movies from this year, was an antidote to Bond, but this one was produced by Harry Saltzman, one of the Bond producers! “The Ipcress File” starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer has lot of the grit of Le Carré, but author Len Deighton added in 2 elements that make it even more appealing; Palmer is a working class spy and he has a real attitude; if Bond is establishment, then Palmer is the very definition of anti-establishment. As such, the character tapped into the blossoming youth culture and “kitchen sink dramas” from a few years previously. The fact that it is set at the dawn of “swinging London” gives it an added sense of time and place. Then there is the outstanding score (by another Bond veteran, John Barry). Check out the main theme, it is sublime!

I have to say that every time I come across this movie on TV, I can’t resist watching it.

Other top movies released in 1965:

• For a Few Dollars More
• Help (good soundtrack, not as good a movie as “A Hard Day’s Night”
• Dr Who and the Daleks (Peter Cushing[!], Technicolour Daleks[!])
• Ten Little Indians (one of the best Agatha Christie’s, recently done on TV as “And then there were none”)

As I said, not  a vintage year. However, my other favourite movie of this year also has a great soundtrack, and is still a regular for holiday TV. “The Sound of Music” is hard to resist, with many well known songs (“Climb Every Mountain”, “My Favourite Things”, “Do-Re-Mi” to name but a few) and a surprisingly gritty story. It was another film that I saw for the first time at the cinema, in the mid 1970s at the Queen’s Theatre in 70 mm.

I’m not sure which of these 2 movies I love most, so I’ll choose both of them as my films of the year.