Bob Dylan sang that the “times they are a changin” and he could not have been more accurate. The sixties were filled with turmoil on American soil, beginning with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, followed by his assassin’s murder on live television. Four years later the leader of the Civil Rights movement Martin Luther King was gunned down, and just a year later, destined for the US Presidency, Robert Kennedy was murdered after speaking to a crowd in California, ending the hope that seemed possible for America. Angry at the deaths of their leaders, of the men who had inspired them, the youth of the time lashed back in protesting the war in Viet Nam, making clear their mistrust of their leaders, of anyone over thirty.
All forms of art changed in the decade, yet oddly film was the last one to do so. The studios held onto the business with a death grip that finally was eased in 1967 with the success of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Graduate (1967) two films which spoke to the American youth metaphorically. This would signal a new movement in American film that spilled over into the seventies, the single most exciting decade in movie history, a time when films mattered, when films more than any other time held a mirror up to society. t was a time teeming with creativity. Read more on Best of the Decades: 1960s…
Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Best of the Decades, Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Hud, Lawrence of Arabia, Midnight Cowboy, Peter O’Toole, planet of the apes, Psycho, The Apartment, The Graduate, The Hustler, To Kill a Mockingbird, West Side Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
