Years & Movies: 1960

 Henri-Georges Clouzot's "La vérité (The Truth)" was recognized as the best film of world cinema of 1960 according to FilmGourmand. This is the second time when Henri-Georges Clouzot's movie is recognized by Filmgourmand as the best film of the year. The first time it was the 1953 film "Le salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear)".

The premiere of the film "La vérité (The Truth)" was held in France on November 2, 1960. By this time, all the film festivals of 1960 or their programs were completed. This is why, the festival success hit the film in the next, 1961, year. First, the film won the American Golden Globe award (along with Ingmar Bergman's "Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring)") in the Best foreign language film category.

A little later, "La vérité (The Truth)" received an Oscar nomination, again in the Best Foreign Language Film category. But the American Film Academy was not as generous as the Foreign Press Association, and it awarded not both great films, but only one of them. And this movie turned out to be the same "Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring)". 

Then the Italian David di Donatello Prize was awarded to Brigitte Bardot for Best Actress. And finally, at the international film festival in the Argentine city of Mar del Plata, Henri-Georges Clouzot won the award for Best Director. The main award for Best film at this festival was won by the British film "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by Czechoslovak Director Karel Reisz.

As for the reviews of film critics on this film, then, if you believe the site Rotten Tomatoes, positive reviews a little more than half. True, it is necessary to clarify that this site analyzes mainly the Anglo-Saxon critical press. In addition, critics of far from the first order got into the analysis of this site.

We were naturally interested in the review on this film from Bosley Crowther. As we remember, the New York Times film reviewer wrote a review for the film "Le salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear)", which can not be called anything other than devastating (see here.) But there it could be explained by a very unpleasant image in the film of an American oil company. In "La vérité (The Truth)" there is no talk about the Americans, and therefore the review of Crowther is not devastating, but rather condescending and pejorative.

"THE truth about a so-called "crime of passion" is what French director Henri-Georges Clouzot is supposedly trying to fathom in his new film. "The Truth" ("La Verité"). But a viewer might easily get the notion that what he is really out to do is crowd the screen with the scorching sensuality of his star performer, Brigitte Bardot.For never has this famous Gallic siren been so frankly and ferociously employed as a symbol of sexual intemperance and rebellion as she is in this film, which had a dual presentation at the Paris and the Forum yesterday.  ... As for the truth that is discovered—well, it seems to be that love is a human condition that has to be handled delicately. That is the way it isn't handled by the characters in this film—and they're not very subtle characters, either. It is all rather obvious, we would say." 

59% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users worldwide rated the film 8 to 10.

Based on the foregoing, the rating of the film "La vérité (The Truth)" according to FilmGourmand was 9.396, which made it the 91st Rank in the Golden Thousand.

In addition to the film "La vérité (The Truth)" by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the following films were included in the "top ten" of world cinema in 1960 according to Filmgourmand:

- Jungfrukällan (the Virgin Spring). Director Ingmar Bergman, Sweden. Movie's Rating - 9,244; 115th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers). Director Luchino Visconti, Italy. Movie's Rating - 9,227; 120th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- The Apartment. Director Billy Wilder, USA. Movie's Rating - 9,144; 136th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Hadaka no shima  裸の島   (The Naked Island). Director Kaneto Shindô, Japan. Movie's Rating - 8,605; 279th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Le trou (The Hole (The Night Watch)). Director Jacques Becker, France. Movie's Rating - 8,595; 281st Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Серёжа (A Summer to Remember (Splendid Days)). Directors Georgiy Daneliya, Igor Talankin, USSR. Movie's Rating - 8,522; 319th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- La ciociara (Two Women). Director Vittorio De Sica, Italy. Movie's Rating - 8,429; 355th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- À bout de souffle (Breathless). Director Jean-Luc Godard, France. Movie's Rating - 8,415; 360th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Psycho. Director Alfred Hitchcock, USA. Movie's Rating - 8,388; 375th Rank in the Golden Thousand.

10 most "cinegenic"*, in our opinion, events of 1960:

- Dive "Trieste". Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh on the Trieste submersible dived into the Mariana Trench to a depth of 10,919 m, which was an absolute depth record for manned and unmanned vehicles.
- The Colebrook mine disaster. In the South African city of Sasolburg, 100 kilometers from Johannesburg, the Coalbrook coal mine collapsed. Of the 438 miners in the mine, only one survived. This collapse was the largest man-made disaster in the mining industry in South Africa.
- Destruction of U-2. In the area of Sverdlovsk (USSR) an American spy plane with Francis Powers on board was shot down. By the Supreme Court of the USSR, Powers was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
- The tragedy of Baikonur. In the USSR, a crash occurred at the Baikonur cosmodrome, causing the death of 92 people, including the commander of the strategic missile forces, Chief Marshal of Artillery Nedelin. The disaster occurred due to the fact that the party leadership demanded to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile by the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, all conceivable safety guidelines were violated.
- The Great Chilean Earthquake. In Chile, the strongest earthquake in history has occurred. As a result of the earthquake and the tsunami that followed it, more than 6 thousand people died.
- Abduction of Eichmann. In Buenos Aires, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and taken to Israel by four agents of the Israeli intelligence Mossad. Argentina accused Israel of gross violation of its sovereignty. But forty years later, Argentina made an official apology to the victims of the Holocaust for granting asylum to the Nazis.
- The beginning of the deterioration of relations between China and the USSR. Mao Zedong rejected an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, articles criticizing the CPSU were published in the central press organ of the CPC Renming Daily.
- Khrushchev and boots. During a meeting of the UN General Assembly, N. Khrushchev, as a sign of lack of interest in the discussed issue of the 1956 uprising in Hungary, took off his shoe and put it on the table in front of him to shake out a pebble that had fallen out of there. Subsequently, American photographers drew this shoe to Khrushchev's hand in a photograph at the time of his speech at the Assembly rostrum.
- Kennedy's victory. In the United States, in a tough competition with the Republican candidate, 47-year-old Richard Nixon, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy won the US presidential election.
- Bloodless coup d'etat in Turkey. A group of 27 officers toppled the country's legitimately elected President Mahmut Celâl Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who advocated developing relations with the Soviet Union, and brought the US-backed Cemal Gürsel to power. Gürsel appointed himself acting president, prime minister and defense minister without holding an election.

Besides Richard Linklater, Julianne Moore, Tatyana Drubich, Ia Ninidze were born.

 
* -With "cinematic" in the present context, we mean events that either have already found their reflection in world cinema, or deserve to become the basis of the plot of a future film.