Where to watch 1965 movies before the next Smackdown
Saturday, September 19, 2020 at 9:00AM 
Maggie Smith's first Oscar nominationAs we keep promising you, the Smackdowns are much more fun if you play along at home. Up next is 1965 and there are only four movies to watch (all of which received multiple Oscar nominations) to prepare for the discussion on October 9th.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS NOMINEES OF 1965
• Ruth Gordon from Inside Daisy Clover (3 Oscar noms) - Amazon
• Maggie Smith and Joyce Redman from Othello (4 Oscar noms) - YouTube
• Shelley Winters from A Patch of Blue (5 Oscar noms)- Amazon
• Peggy Wood from The Sound of Music (10 Oscar noms) - Disney+
Once you're done watching those, send in your votes (1 to 5 hearts for each lady) by October 8th. Easy! You're then part of the Smackdown!
If you REALLY wanna dive into the cinema of 1965 before the event, here are key 1965 movies that are currently streaming for free (provided you have the corresponding services, of course).
OSCAR NOMINATED 1965 TITLES CURRENTLY STREAMING...
CAT BALLOU (Elliot Silverstein, US) on Roku with ads or on Hoopla without ads
This western comedy starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin was up for 5 Oscars and won Best Actor for Marvin.
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (David Lean, US) on HBOMax
This blockbuster romantic epic, set against The Great War and the October Revolution, was then one of the most successful films of all time, and The Sound of Music 's biggest competition on Oscar night; they each scored 10 noms and took home 5 Oscars. It was probably close, all told, since Julie Christie won Best Actress for Darling but spiritually that win was surely partially due to her success in Doctor Zhivago.
KWAIDAN (Masaki Kobayashi, Japan) on Criterion Channel
An extreme rarity in that it's a horror film that was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. We've seen a few be submitted over the years but they're never actually nominated. We discussed this one a few years ago.
PAWNBROKER (Sidney Lumet, US) on Amazon Prime
A Best Actor nomination for Rod Steiger as a disillusioned pawnbroker who survived the Nazi death camps
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (Martin Ritt, US) on Amazon Prime
This espionage drama starring Richard Burton was nominated for 2 Oscars: Best Actor and Best Art Direction
THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos, Czechoslovakia) on Criterion Channel
A Slovakian man is appointed "Aryan Controller" of a Jewish widow's store during WW II. This won Best Foreign Language Film that year at the Oscars. The Academy was very into Czech films in the 1960s.
THE TRAIN (John Frankenheimer, US) on Amazon Prime
Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, and Jeanne Moreau star in this war drama which was nominated for Best Original Screenplay
WOMAN IN THE DUNES (Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japan) on Criterion Channel
This 1964 film was nominated in two consecutive Oscar years since the Oscars hadn't yet ruled against that happening with foreign-language titles. In 1964 it was up for Best Foreign-Language Film and in 1965 when it was released in the US, it received a lone nomination for Best Director. If we recall correctly (having seen it once 20 years ago, it's very good.
If you're willing to spend a little money, the cheapest non-free Oscar-nominated options to rent are The Great Race ($1.99 on Amazon) an adventure comedy starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Natalie Wood which scored 5 oscar nominations (winning for Sound Effects) or the Liz & Dick picture The Sandpiper ($1.99 on Amazon) which won Best Original Song. As with most years, you can find other Oscar nominated titles for the more usual rental prices of $3 or $4 dollars.
OTHER 1965 TITLES TO STREAM FOR FREE
CRITERION CHANNEL
- Adventures of a Dentist (Elem Klimov, Soviet Union)
- Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, France)
- Color Me Blood Red (Herschell Gordon Lewis, US)
- The Coward (Satyajit Ray, India)
- Diary of Yunbogi (Nagisa Oshima, Japan)
- Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellochio, Italy)
- The Holy Man (Satyajit Ray, India)
- I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli, Italy)
- An Innocent Witch (Heinosuke Gosho, Japan)
- Interlude in the Marshland (Jan Troell, Sweden)
- Intimate Lighting (Ivan Passer, Czechoslovakia)
- Invasion of Astro-Monster (Ishiro Honda, Japan)
- Ironfinger (Jun Fukuda, Japan)
- Juliet of the Spirits (Federico Fellini, Italy) on Criterion Channel..a 1965 title nominated for two Oscars in 1966 (costumes & art direction)
- The Junk Shop (Juraj Herz, Czechoslovakia)
- Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia) on Criterion Channel... another 1965 title nominated for the following year's Oscars but in Best Foreign Film
- Man is Not a Bird (Dusan Makavejev, Yugoslavia)
- The Moment of Truth (Francesco Rosi, Italy)
- My Home is Copacabana (Arne Sucksdorff, Sweden)
- Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, France)
- Pleasures of the Flesh (Nagisa Oshima, Japan)
- Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa, Japan) RECENTLY DISCUSSED HERE
- Samurai Spy (Masahiro Shinoda, Japan)
- Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)
- Story of a Prostitute (Seijun Suzuki, Japan)
- Sword of the Beast (Hideo Gosha, Japan)
- Les Temps Morts (René Laloux, France)
- Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa, Japan)
- With Beauty and Sorrow (Masahiro Shinoda, Japan)
- Women of the Resistance (Liliana Cavani, Italy)
- Yoyo (Pierre Etaix, France)
- Zatoichi and the Chess Expert (Kenji Misumi, Japan)
- Zatoichi and the Doomed Man (Kazuo Mori, Japan)
- Zatoichi's Vengeance (Tokuzo Tanaka, Japan)
DISNEY+
(strangely they don't have the adventure comedy Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines despite owning it now)
- That Darn Cat! (Robert Stevenson, US) Caper comedy with Hayley Mills
- Those Calloways (Norman Tokar, US) Family adventure with Brian Keith
AMAZON PRIME
(as usual they mostly have B movies available though we've highlighted the most famous films they're streaming)
- 10th Victim (Elio Petri, Italy) Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress star in this sci-fi thriller
- Assassination in Rome (Silvio Amadio, Italy) Hugh O'Brian and Cyd Charisse star in this crime drama
- The Camp Followers (Valerio Zurlini, Italy/France) War drama
- Cinderella (Charles S Dubin, US) TV musical starring Lesley Ann Warren
- Day of the Nightmare (John A Bushelman, US) Horror
- Devils of Darkness (Lance Comfort, UK) Vampire horror
- Die Monster Die (Robert Haller, UK) Boris Karloff horror
- Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (Norman Tauroq, US) sci-fi comedy starring Frankie Avalon and Vincent Price
- For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, Italy) Clint Eastwood spaghetti western though it didn't hit the US until 1967
- The High Bright Sun (Ralph Thomas, UK) war drama
- Hot Skin Cold Cash (Barry Mahon, US) Hooker drama
- How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (William Asher, US) Comedy starring Annette Funicello
- The Long Hair of Death (Antonio Margherita, Italy) Horror starring Barbara Steele
- One Way Pendulum (Peter Yates, UK) comedy
- The Restless Ones (Dick Ross, US) Troubled youth drama
- Sands of the Kalahari (Cy Endfield, UK/US) Adventure drama with Stuart Whitman
- The Sons of Katie Elder (Henry Hathaway, US) Western with John Wayne
- Veerabhimanyu (V. Madhusudan Rao, India) Bollywood war drama
- Waqt (Yash Chopra, India) Bollywood epic drama
1965, Oscars (60s), streaming
Reader Comments (19)
Looking forward as always, though I don't know that I can make myself sit through that "Othello".
I did some 1965 titles already. "Inside Daisy Clover" is a deranged camp classic and should be required viewing for anyone who's seen "Valley of the Dolls" too many times and needs a new fix. Those songs! So many monochromatic white sets!
I thought "The Sandpiper" was surprisingly decent. Overblown, sure, but the premise of a single mother fighting for home-schooling while also sleeping with a school's headmaster would be a passable C-story on "Big Little Lies".
And "Cat Ballou" holds up - I wish it stayed as anarchic as it begins, but even for a non-Western fan there's enough in the performances and weird touches to stay engaging.
Yeah, I don't know that I can do Othello either. But a number of these - Cat Ballou, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Woman in the Dunes - are on my watchlist. I'm curious about Kwaidan and The Shop on Main Street, too.
Cat Ballou is on hoopla (ad-free), for those of us who have it via our libraries.
I LOVE Cat Ballou in all its crazy silliness. Jane Fonda is just so frisky and spunky in it.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Shop on Main Street aren't relaxing fun watches like Cat Ballou but both are brilliant films.
Woman in the Dunes and Kwaidan are two big blind spots for me but Asian cinema is one of my weakest areas.
I think Othello is going to be a struggle (hope I'm wrong) but it's been so long since I've seen it that my memory of it is almost nil. With it containing two of the nominated performances it seems like an essential rewatch in order to be able to participate fully.
Having recently viewed Othello in anticipation for this smackdown it has to be one of the worst films I ever seen that actually received such a higher number of oscar nominations.
For people who are interested in watching some of the best 65 features I'd recommend:
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (features my pick for the supporting actress of the year. Anne Vernon)
Repulsion
Onibaba
The Hill
The Cincinnati Kid (brilliant supporting turn by the always relable Joan Blondell)
King and Country
Help!
Mamma Roma
The 60's are such a great decade for non American films and most of what I could recommend for this year are by non American artists.
So far, I’ve really loved My Home Is Copacabana and Alphaville.
It’s is a shame the acting and script of That Darn Cat are so horrific. Best cat is cinema, and I lol’d at his antics the whole time.
I’m going to use this1965 smackdown as a reminder to rewatch umbrellas of Cherbourg
One of the greatest movies of all time.
I was never interested in watching cat ballou given the bad reputation of marvin’s oscar until now that I saw this photo of jane fonda! I’m going to watch it very soon!
Don't forget Repulsion, and on a totally non-Oscar note there's Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! Along with The Sandpiper, the funniest movies of 1965, better than any Hollywood "comedies".
Juliet of the Spirits was not nominated for Best Foreign Film in 1966. It was nominated for Color Art Direction and Costumes, though. Italy's entry was Battle of Algiers, which ended up being nominated, and then was nominated for Director and Original Screenplay - in 1968! Curiously enough, Italy's 1965 nominee was Marriage - Italian Style, which had already been nominated in 1964 for Best Actress, Sophia Loren
"Kwdain" is an true work of cinema art- the photography and production design are gorgeous . The horror stories are unique.
The 60s feel so modern compared to everything else that came before it.
ken s-- you are correct. fixed on Juliet. Alas, Faster Pussycat is not streaming anywhere for free
joel 6 -- AND FOUR ACTING NOMINATIONS.Four of the five principals were nominated for acting. Only Derek Jacobi (in his film debut) was left out.
Smith and Gordon's careers and more plentiful underrated/unrewarded works might bolster the want to give them this Smackdown win, but it's surely got to be Winter's perfect embodiment of the book and mostly faithful screenplay adaptation's role that correctly snags the win.
Cat Ballou is great fun and I can never truly begrudge a win by an actor/actress in a comedy film. I would have loved to see it win for Original song as it and I Will Wait For You (the Connie Francis rendition most of all might color my view) are fantastic and better than my initial opinion of The Shadow of Your Smile from The Sandpiper, although I've only just put that song into regular rotation and it's really growing on me.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold feels a little overlong even at under two hours. There's a masterpiece that would still be vocally lauded today in the cutting room, but oh well. Oskar Werner definitely should have won Supporting Actor, and maybe be like the recently mentioned Fay Bainter: Very deserving Supporting win and deserving Lead nomination that is unfortunately outclassed by most of the other nominees.
I should have mentioned this in my earlier post... Loves of a Blonde is great (and fewer than 90 minutes to boot). It manages to combine both humor and pathos and feels very modern in its naturalism.
My advice to everyone exhibiting trepidation to sitting through Othello: if you don't know the story well read the synopsis on Wikipedia or something like that (I've always found I enjoy Shakespeare more if I go in with a good sense of the plot and all of the character's motivations)—then watch it in little 20 or 30-minute chunks. I'm already down to under 100 minutes left and it's not so bad. Frank Finlay (who was nominated for supporting actor) is very good as Iago. But Laurence Olivier in blackface is hard to take. I read that Patrick Stewart once appeared in an unusual production of the play as Othello as a white man, with all the rest of the cast being black. That sounds like a clever, interesting spin on the material and a way for a good white actor to assay the role without being offensive.
Woman in the Dunes is indeed really good.
Also:
Othello is available for FREE (truly free) on Kanopy if your local library uses that service.
Othello: I have seen a short clip with Maggie Smith and Olivier. My god! She was so good in that clip!
My first experience with Othello was with Fishburne, Irene Jacob and Branagh. And I was floored!
1965 will always be remembered as the year of Julie Christie.
Both screenplay and costume design Oscars are for her movies as well.
It felt so crazy that her rise as the literal Best Actress was beyond meteoric.
Having never seen Othello be performed, I'll get to that one, and Rob, thank you for the Advice!
I was going to stay away but I just have to say that ‘65 is one of my completed years. I don’t vote though. Ta ta.