Starting a Conversation

There are many debates in the world of useless distractions...and I'm starting one here: what might be the best year for movies?

In what year has the stable of movies been of the highest quality, the most commercial and artistic endeavors, in the history of the motion picture?

I only bring this up because I saw a collection of movies that all came out the same year and it got me thinking. I started thinking was that the greatest year for cinema? What other years could offer such artistic films that were also mainstream films? I'll post about different years in the future, as new years come to my attention, but let me start the debate with my first entry:

1967.

It's easy to look up the list of movies from 1967 on Wikipedia and peruse it. Let me rattle off some of the classics that I'll use to make the first case: Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, and Melville's classic Le Samourai.

Movies from that era, the late sixties into the mid seventies all let audience get it. The end of The French Connection would never get green-lit today; the end of Bullitt seems out of place if watched with eyes that line up to see Transformers 3. Neither of those movies came from 1967, but the era's the same, and besides, Paul Newman doesn't end up starting a fishing venture with George Kennedy in Mexico. Alain doesn't load the gun, and the cops plug Warren and Faye's corpses a few extra times after they've already convincingly done the job.

How about breaking up a wedding and looking that sad sack on a bus in 2011?

Films were more daring in 1967; more was expected of them, and more was expected of audiences. A fatalism was present that seems to have morphed into cynicism by studio executives...maybe that's what happens when the cool people win out in history.

Mad magazine becomes full of ads and less relevant, the trajectory of popular movies finally arcs back to a mindless action sequences, and the only way to rebel is to be a square republican.

Forget it; it's Chinatown.