My Fair Lady (1964)

The “classic” musical turns out to be a huge disappointment. 

A conceited professor of phonetics (Rex Harrison) tasks himself with taking a working-class girl named Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) and educating her sufficiently so that she can pose as a member of high society. 

Hepburn and Harrison have plenty of charisma and charm, but pretty much everything else falls flat. Elisa’s dustman father (Stanley Holloway) is an embarrassing disaster. The “chorus” scenes don’t really work, either, and the rather abusive treatment of Elisa is played for laughs in a way that you can’t imagine happening in a modern film. In narrative terms, the two transformative moments – Elisa learning to enunciate and the pair realising they are in love – are both completely thrown away, buried in pointless filler set pieces and side plots that drag out the running time. 

I liked Harrison’s talk-sing delivery of his song lyrics. The style almost approaches rap. But beyond a couple of memorable songs, all you’re left with is two talented actors struggling to rise above a drab and tiresome mess.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Cold War black comedy.

Apparently losing his mind, a US Air Force general (Sterling Hayden) orders a nuclear attack on the Soviets. This, we learn, will trigger a “doomsday machine” response so vast that will render Earth uninhabitable. With the clock ticking to call off the strike, we follow the story in three related threads – the struggle to retract the order from within the air base where the general is stationed, the progress of the B-52 plane that’s on the way to drop its bombs, and the discussions in the war room where the US president considers the options. 

Stanley Kubrick directs, and there’s a beauty to some of the black and white shots. Unfortunately, the film is constructed around Peter Sellers, who – for no apparent reason – plays three different roles. If you don’t find him hilarious (I don’t), you’re in trouble. Some of the satire hits the spot (a British RAF exchange officer not being able to call the president and avoid Armageddon because he doesn’t have sufficient spare change in his pocket), but a lot of it falls flat. It taps into a potentially rich seam of material regarding the futility of war and mutually assured destruction, but it’s too uneven and simply not funny enough to make those points in a satisfactory manner.

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

Spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone and with music by Ennio Morricone. Clint Eastwood, the “man with no name”, rolls into town and discovers two warring family factions. He cleverly plays them off against each other, initiating a cycle of escalating violence.

The film is entertaining and enjoyable, despite the major distraction of all the dialogue (including Clint’s) being dubbed on afterwards. It’s visually striking and surprisingly gory for the time. Eastwood is effortlessly stylish as the poncho-wearing gunslinger, even after being badly beaten up.

Zulu (1964)

Fascinating war film documenting the Battle of Rorke’s Drift between British soldiers and the native Zulu warriors in 1879. Michael Caine and Stanley Baker are superb as the rival lieutenants co-ordinating the defence.

It’s a quirky tale with unusual humour and extremely well-drawn characters. Shot using the Super Technirama 70, it certainly has an unusually vivid quality. The most affecting scene shows a Zulu war chant competing with a Welsh choir in a battle not only of armies but also of cultures.

For a film in which so many people die, it’s surprisingly ungory. But despite the “clean” killings, it doesn’t in any way cheapen the loss of life. And while it doesn’t moralise, it does raise issues of the ethics of war.

Goldfinger (1964)

Third James Bond film. Lots to enjoy this time around, not least a strong storyline with a clear narrative arc. The Aston Martin DB5 is iconic and looks stunning on those winding mountain roads. Shirley Eaton’s death by gold paint remains memorable. There are convincing villains in the form of the hat-throwing OddJob (Harold Sakata) and the blandly evil Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe). There’s an amusingly extended golfing scene that seems more about macho one-upmanship than anything else. There’s the absurdly named Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) leading a daft flying circus of glamorous girls who drop poison gas from tiny planes above Fort Knox.

This line from Sean Connery stood out as jarring and extraordinary: “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs!” Clearly Bond was pitched at the parents, and not at the kids. He was still part of the old order.