
—Gene Tierney
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Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.
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We begin our survey our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s.
For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s, click here.
For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.
For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s click here.
For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1920s click here.
1. Psycho, 1960
At first glance Psycho looks like a cheap exploitation film. Hitchcock shot it with a television crew, not his standard, and very costly, feature crew. He filmed in black and white, and the $800,000, budget was low even by the standards of 1960. The Bates Motel and gothic style mansion were built on the back lot at Universal.
Hitch had just finished the hugely entertaining and successful North by Northwest, a glittering, all-star production. Psycho, on the other hand, looks like a sleazy production with B-list actors. Even the ad campaign—“Do not give away the ending”—feels like something cooked up by William Castle or some other schlockmeister.
But of course, Psycho has become the essential Hitchcock movie. It’s the film whose impact has been felt in almost every subsequent mainstream Hollywood movie.
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We continue our survey of the twenty greatest movies of the 1950s.
For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.
For a listing of the greatest movies of the 20s and 30s click here.
16. The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956
In François Truffaut’s 1967 ground-breaking interview with Alfred Hitchcock, on Hitch’s remake of his own 1934 production of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock stated: “Let’s say the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional.”
The original version races along at 75 minutes, a breathless pace. The film is completely dominated by Peter Lorre’s performance as the charming but creepy antagonist. In spite of the deadly serious plot, the 1934 version is leavened with lighter, almost comical moments, which, for some viewers, seem at odds with the general tone of the film. The British film stars Leslie Banks and Edna Best, and though they are competent performers, they fail to register onscreen as protagonists with whom an audience can easily identify.
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