Many cinephiles consider 1939 to be the best year for
movies, though that largely depends on your tolerance for Gone with the Wind (I have none). Last year, Brian Rafferty made a
pretty good case for 1999 despite that being the year of American Pie and The Phantom
Menace. Now Stephen Farber and Michael McCellan are tossing another year’s
hat into the ring with their new book Cinema
’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies.
Ultimately, arguing that a particular year is cinema’s best
is so subjective that it’s pointless (for what it’s worth, I’d choose 1968).
Yet, I still love books like Raferty’s Best. Movie. Year. Ever. and Cinema ’62
because they provide compelling snapshots of particular years in film. With
such a focus, you could probably argue that any year is an important one for
movies, so it is best to just move past the subjective preferences to the
objective history, and there’s plenty of interesting history in Cinema ’62. 1962 was the final year that
a majority of new releases were shot in black and white and the first year that
foreign film got a strong foothold in American cinemas. A few of the year’s films reflected a growing social conscience, dealing with themes of race and sexuality more frankly and empathetically than ever before. 1962 is also the year of
some really great movies, including To
Kill a Mockingbird, Lawrence of
Arabia, Lolita, Cape Fear, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, The Manchurian Candidate, Carnival
of Souls, and Roger Corman’s criminally underrated The Intruder (Really great! Maybe not as great a line up as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Producers, Planet of the Apes, Kuroneko,
Romeo and Juliet, Yellow Submarine, Rosemary’s Baby, Head, and
Night of the Living Dead, though). Farber
and McCellan bop from film to film with details about each one’s development,
making, release, and influence.
No, they did not convince me that ’62 was the greatest year
at the movies. Many of the most interesting films they discuss were foreign
films produced prior to 1962 and only released in the U.S. that year. Officious
censorship comprised many of the year’s most potentially interesting American pictures.
A lot of the 1962’s films feel more like products of the fifties than the new
decade, and a strong contender for cinema’s best year should probably produce a
good deal of work that feels like a significant bound forward (like ’68!). But
that’s just my opinion, just as Farber and McCellan’s opinion is that 1962 was
the top of the top. I personally disagree but still dug their book and am
totally game to read any other in-depth argument that any other year (1968) is
cinema’s best.
