Category Archives: 1969

The Olympics in Mexico (Olympiada en Mexico)
Directed by Alberto Isaac
Written by Alberto Isaac and Fernando Macotela
1969/Mexico
IMDb link
First viewing/Criterion Channel

“If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight.” – Tommie Smith, Gold Medalist 200-meter sprint 1968 Mexico City Olympics

Well, we can’t see the Tokyo Olympics so I settled for this nicely made documentary on the Mexico City Olympics

This has everything you would expect from a straight-forward Olympics documentary – highlights, athletic feats, culture and scenery.  Oh, and one very memorable award ceremony …

Back when we had idealism, live sports, and a regularly scheduled Olympic Games, Mexico City recorded its days in the sun with this very nice documentary.  It isn’t Olympia (1938) or anything.  I believe the Criterion Channel has all the films from Criterion’s huge Olympics box set available for streaming.

The Olympics in Mexico was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Features.

Horrors of Malformed Men (Kyôfu kikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû)
Directed by Teruo Ishii
Written by Teruo Ishii and Masahiro Kakefuda from a novel by Rampu Edogawa
1969/Japan
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Instant
They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?

“I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world”
― H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

This one didn’t wow me.

The plot has a lot of the feeling of Island of Lost Souls (1932) although it derives from different source material. A medical doctor begins to have hallucinations and is eventually committed to an insane asylum. He becomes acquainted with his apparent doppelganger, a dead man. He is lured to an island run by a mad scientist who has surgically deformed men and women with plans of creating a super-race.  The doctor goes on to experience various horrific and sexual adventures.

This is apparently something of a cult classic.  It is indeed sufficiently weird and inept to merit that status.  I was looking for decent creatures and a few scares.  The film failed to deliver in this regard.  It does feature a lot of bare breasts for connoisseurs of that kind of thing.  The below trailer represents the movie pretty well.

Sweet Charity
Directed by Bob Fosse
Written by Peter Stone from the Broadway musical (book by Neil Simon) and the film “Nights of Cabiria” by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Faiano
1969/US
IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Vittorio: Without love, life would have no purpose.

Bob Fosse’s directorial debut is an entertaining way to spend a Lockdown afternoon.

The plot is borrowed from Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957).  Gulieta Massina’s plucky Roman prostitute is replaced with a New York taxi dancer named Charity Hope Valentine (Shirley MacLaine).  Her name catalogs her general outlook.  She is famous for her series of ill-chosen boyfriends who usually run away with her money.

As the movie begins, Charity is dumped (literally) by her worthless boyfriend Charlie, who also steals her purse.  Charity returns to work at the dance hall, where she has to admit yet another failure to her cynical friends.  Her life grows increasingly distasteful to her and she tries her luck getting an office job.  This doesn’t go well either and she gets stuck in an elevator.

Fortunately, she is stuck with Oscar (John McMartin), a cute claustrophobic actuary.  He is a complete square and Charity lets him think she works in a bank.  Can this odd couple make a go of it? With Stubby Kaye as the dance hall owner, Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly as Charity’s chums, Ricardo Montalban as a film star, and Sammy Davis Jr. as Big Daddy, founder of a hippie church.

I worked on a junior college production of this and have a lot of affection for the songs and the story.  Bob Fosse does an okay job with his debut directing effort.  The dances are fabulous but other elements seem gimmicky and dated.  For example the numerous examples of slow motion or stop action frolicking to indicate joy just scream late 60’s.  The musical numbers are strong enough to overcome any such small niggles.

Sweet Charity was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Art Direction – Set Decoration; Best Costumes; and Best Music, Score of a Musical Pictures (Original or Adapted).

Take the Money and Run
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen and Mickey Rose
1969/US
IMDb link
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Virgil: After fifteen minutes I wanted to marry her, and after half an hour I completely gave up the idea of stealing her purse.[/box]

Way before he was sophisticated, Woody Allen was ridiculous … and hilarious.  This, his directorial debut, is classic early Allen.

The film takes the form of a mockumentary, some say the first, to tell the life story of Virgil Starkwell (Allen), world’s most inept criminal, through gags and voice-over narration.  Virgil grew up in the inner city where he was bullied mercilessly.  Unfit for employment, he begins a life of crime.  Along the way, he falls in love with Louise (Janet Margolin), a laundress.

Virgil becomes inspired to carry off a bank robbery.  Louise waits for him to serve his prison sentence.  He then escapes chained together with a number of other men.  Louise and Virgil marry and have a child.  One entertaining bit follows another.

I have remembered the bits where Woody tries to play cello in the marching band and with the poorly written bank robbery note from 1969 to now.  They are still funny as are many other gags.  Perfect for Lockdown.

The Steve Miller Band had a hit with this in 1969.  Coincidence?

The Italian Job
Directed by Peter Collinson
Written by Troy Kennedy Martin
1969/UK
IMDb link
First viewing/Criterion Channel

[box] Charlie Croker: It’s a very difficult job and the only way to get through it is we all work together as a team. And that means you do everything I say.[/box]

This was a very fun caper flick, absolutely perfect for Lock Down.

Charismatic Cockney criminal Charlie Coker (Michael Caine) is released from prison.  He is immediately on the hunt for next new job.  The mob murdered one of his cronies but his widow was left with an elaborate plan for robbing the Fiat payroll in Turin, Italy.  Coker breaks back into prison to get the backing of Mr. Bridger (Noel Coward), a gang leader that lives in palatial luxury there.  Bridger refuses, then changes his mind when he learns the Chinese are sending a large amount in gold to invest in a new plant.

This is not one of those movies where you get the planning stage or successful version before witnessing the flawed execution.  Instead, we get all of it as it happens.  The mob does not get any fonder of the revised edition.  The movie concludes with a spectacular chase scene in which all and sundry pursue red, white, and blue Mini Coopers through Turin and the Italian countryside.  With Benny Hill as a mad computer expert with an unquenchable lust for “big women”.

This has Caine at his most gorgeous and charismatic and showing his talent for comedy.  It also contains beautiful scenery, good jokes, and that exciting car chase.  It’s just a very, solid entertaining picture.  Recommended.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
Directed by Peter R. Hunt
Written by Richard Maibaum and Simon Raven from a novel by Ian Fleming
1969/UK
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] James Bond: [to the camera] This never happened to the other fellow.[/box]

Well Diana Rigg is the ultimate Bond girl so there is that, plus pretty Alpine scenery and some good action.  The movie kind of goes downhill from there.

While on vacation, James Bond (George Lazenby) saves beautiful Tracy Draco (Rigg) from suicide by drowning.  Her father, Marc-Ange, is a mob boss.  He wants Bond to continue to protect his daughter by marrying her. He says he will repay by revealing the location of Ernst Blofeld (Telly Savalas)  Bond of course is the world’s most marriageable bachelor and both he and Tracy are tentative at the start but they gradually fall in love.

In the meantime, Bond journeys to Blofeld’s alpine lair.  He learns that Blofeld plans to achieve world domination through experiments on beautiful women in his “allergy clinic”. Blofeld kidnaps Tracy and uses her as a pawn in the inevitable conflict to come.  All the regulars at MI6 are on the job.

George Lazenby has absolutely no twinkle in his eye, takes himself much too seriously, and has minimal acting talent.  A Bond film rises or falls on its Bond and this one was a dud.  The film is also at least 30 minutes too long for this kind of thing.  Still I’ve spent 2 1/2 hours in worse ways during Lockdown,

The song for the movie, “We Have All the Time in the World”, is the only one that does not share its name with the movie. It was the last thing Louis Armstrong ever recorded. He died a couple of years later. RIP Louis, the world is a poorer place without you.