This is a big year for Hollywood diversity. Sidney Poitier, who had won an Oscar 3 years earlier, had a big year in 1967, starring in 3 releases, including two of the best films of the year. Poitier’s presence helps elevate an already strong year into arguably the best movie year of the decade.
Mel Brooks mocking Broadway (read: Hollywood)? With Gene Wilder by his side? This movie probably wrote itself for Brooks, letting him run wild with ideas for the worst Broadway play in history.
Lee Marvin plays a con man who gets double crossed by his partner (John Vernon), so Marvin goes on the hunt for the guy in a quest for revenge. Sounds like a thrilling beginning heist, and a revenge journey filled with gunfire and plot twists aplenty.
Jean Luc Godard really has problems with older generations. His movie here, about radical French students who get into the teaching of Mao Tse Tung, is on the student’s side of questioning what came before…but also about empathizing with the radical nature of youth.
It’s easy to simply admire the well meaning of this movie, where a couple’s (Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn) younger daughter brings home her future husband, a black man, Sidney Poitier. The amazement of this movie is how light and frothy it is, when it seems ripe to fall into the trap of melodrama. Probably because of the excellent cast methinks.
Thank you Luis Brunel and France for introducing the US to the erotic thriller. You know what’s a great idea? Take one of the most beautiful women alive who can really act too (Catherine Deneuve), make her desire for sexual thrills, and have her get into issues related to those desires. France’s sexually progressive attitude makes this movie a fascinating study of the differences between love, fantasy, and carnal desire.
In a career of great performances, this might be Paul Newman’s best. The great actor buries himself into Luke, a malcontent actively choosing not to bend to society’s will, but not in a violent way, just an affront to authority way. The script keeps the story zigging when it should be zagging, allowing Newman, George Kennedy, and the rest of the stellar cast to dig their teeth into their juicy parts.
Mike Nichols was fortunate enough to capture the movie of a generation of the young. Dustin Hoffman became a star after this film, as Benjamin Braddock, the man who hooks up with the milf of the century (Anne Bancroft), but turns out to be in love with her daughter (Katharine Ross). Nichols captures the malaise of not wanting to grow up despite what the world says, and the consequences of being an impulsive youth, while unleashing Simon and Garfunkel on the world.
One of the great war movie premises: Lee Marvin, a Major on the wrong side of his superiors, gets tasked with a suicide mission, forced to only use military convicts to carry out the job (Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland among others). This movie is just a rollicking ball of fun, showing how these dozen characters know how to bend rules to their advantage, all leading to the final raid on a castle. Because there are a dozen, you’re perpetually in suspense of who is going to live or die from this mission while the spectacle of explosions and gunfire goes on around you.
Mr. Tibbs himself Sidney Poitier plays a Philadelphia police officer visiting family in the deep South who ends up stuck helping in a murder investigation with race averse Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger). What follows is Norman Jewison’s best film: a murder mystery that also doubles as a smart study of race relations in the United States. Poitier’s dignity and wit clearly make him the smartest guy in the room; Rod Steiger’s role is more complex and interesting: a cop who isn’t exactly fond of black people but finds himself respecting the one he’s working with because of his skills.
An American story for the ages. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway play the married leaders of the Barrow gang, going on killing and robbing sprees across the Midwest of the United States, and doing it with style. While the movie has fun with shootouts and car chases, it also becomes a classic American tale of greed, fame, and freedom.
