Fifty Years Ago in Film

The Regular Guy goes to a lot of movies, lately mostly with the Regular Son.   I'm always looking for really good movies to see with him, on the theory that being exposed to good movies will raise his tastes and awareness above the Call of Duty/slasher film/juvenile comedy level of most high-school boys.   So we've seen Margin Call, Moneyball, The Descendants, Tinger Tailor Soldier Spy, as well as great old movies on the big screen at a local bijou that runs them on Saturdays at noon.   But when you look back fifty years at the movies that were out in 1962, you realize that the Golden Age for film is probably over.   Consider the films we could have seen that year:

• Advise and Consent
• Billy Budd
• Birdman of Alcatraz
• Cape Fear
• Days of Wine and Roses
• Dr. No
• Gypsy
• Hell is for Heroes
• How the West Was Won
• Jules et Jim
• Last Year at Marienbad
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Lolita
• Lonely are the Brave
• Long Day's Journey into Night
• The Longest Day
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
• The Manchurian Candidate
• Merrill's Marauders
• Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
• The Music Man
• Mutiny on the Bounty
• Requiem for a Heavyweight
• Ride the High Country
• Sweet Bird of Youth
• To Kill a Mockingbird,
• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

There are at least five movies here that would win the Academy Award this year:  Days of Wine and Roses, Lawrence of Arabia (which would win any year it was up), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Manchurian Candidate, and To Kill a Mockingbird.   Instead, we have a lot of movies based on TV shows that baby-boomers watched when they were kids, or action movies based on kids' toys (like Transformers).   Yuck!

Oh, and notice anything about that list above from 1962.... not a single movie is a sequel.