J j a0g6a

Freda Bruce Lockhart says it was not a vintage year for the cinema
ONE could hardly call 1965 a vintage year for movies. Changing the metaphor, on the main front of the battle with the box, the question has been one of digging in, of trying not to lose ground.
Meanwhile, on television—if my colleague in the adjoining column will forgive me—more and more of our pleasurable entertainment continues to come from movies, whether by the revival of old classics looking so much better than today's epics, or the chance to see rarities like Denis Sanders' fascinating film about the founder of Texas.
Making the annual list of ten best films is a different question. Critics are expected to track down movies and subjects which would not have been so stated in any other medium. On this basis the year 1965 more than holds its own, in quality and diversity if not in quantity.
When I came to make my list. without hesitation I wrote down seven titles about which there seemed no doubt. They were as good as any year's winners. I could fill in the first seven titles w:thout hesitation before beginning to chew on a ballpen. When it came to the alsorans, three more went down dictated by personal taste.
No such list of ten best is governed by absolute objectivity. I could with a clear conscience change them by three new awards for each one. All sorts of circumstances affect one's reactions. One is the arbitrary choice of the time of year when, by common consent, the film is declared of age.
Still under the impact of Battle of the Bulge, shown at the end of the year, it is impossible not to think of it as potentially the film of the year. Whether it will look as good a year hence I cannot be sure. Nor can I arrange these in any particular order of merit. They are too various.
At present it certainly seems far and away the finest Cinerama example yet: the only straightforward narrative to he designed in and for Cinerama (much as I loved "How the West Was Won", that was a contrived vehicle built by many hands). Battle of the Bulge is a natural, a great slice of living history, directed by Ken Annakin, reared in documentary tradition but here getting his great subject off the ground, much as the great semi-circle of panzers, advancing over the horizon looks ready any moment to take off and soar.
The others of my original seven were: Parapiuies de Cherbourg, a wholly original, charmmg and homogeneous musical: My Fair Lady, film of the play indeed. but a priceless record in close-up of Rex Harrison's marvellous performance as Higgins; Red Desert, Antonioni's difficult, controversial but immensely rewarding first colour movie: The Americanisation of Emily, the fascinating, sardonic war comedy about which I felt no certainty until I saw it for the second time; Tokyo Olympiad and the Dialogue des Carmelites.
This last-named, of course, was strictly last year's picture but took an unusual time to reach us, another possibility of falsification of values. Those seven seem to represent as outstanding an output as any of recent years.
For my final three I first of all put Loma, the Polish lyrical requiem for the cavalry of 1939 and Lady L for my pleasure and for David Niven's wonderful performance as the English duke. Last of all I included Agnes Varda s Le Bonheur, which although it almost earns inclusion in the group of major disappointments, was a very pretty picture.
I realise these three were a purely personal preference, leaving among the very reluctantly omitted: the Russian Hamlet, The Iperess File and The Sound of Music, Those Magnificent Men in theiFlying Machines, What's New Pussycat?, Yoyo and Cat Ballou. The most overrated pictures of the year I found The Hill and Darling, the most disappointing Repulsion, and the two most shameless The Sandpiper and Harlow—shameless self-exposures of commercial cinema.