Best Films - 1963
by Andre Soares
After Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), Robert Wise’s The Haunting is the best haunted house story ever filmed. But is the house really haunted or is everything taking place inside the head of sexless, neurotic spinster Julie Harris? The stage-trained Harris (East of Eden, The Member of the Wedding) delivers a phenomenal tour de force, creating a woman in whose mind sexual repression and sexual desire co-inhabit with ferocious animosity. The result, of course, is death, mayhem, plus a frightening supernatural appearance. Claire Bloom provides first-rate support as Harris’s lesbian — sort-of — friend. Spooks aside, The Haunting, an adaptation (by Nelson Gidding) of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House, is a solid morality tale: No sex = lots of dangerous neuroses. (See The Innocents for that same lesson.) From the director of The Sound of Music, who would believe it?
FILM
The Haunting
Charade
From Russia with Love
Hud
8½ / Federico Fellini’s 8½
The Prize
The Thrill of It All
Vidas Secas / Barren Lives
DIRECTOR
Robert Wise (The Haunting)
Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life)
Stanley Donen (Charade)
Nélson Pereira dos Santos (Vidas Secas / Barren Lives)
Federico Fellini (8½ / Federico Fellini’s 8½)
Norman Jewison (The Thrill of It All)
Otto Preminger (The Cardinal)
Martin Ritt (Hud)
Mark Robson (The Prize)
Terence Young (From Russia with Love)
ACTOR
Melvyn Douglas (Hud)
Dirk Bogarde (The Servant)
James Garner (The Thrill of It All)
Cary Grant (Charade)
Richard Harris (This Sporting Life)
Burt Lancaster (Il Gattopardo / The Leopard)
Steve McQueen (Love with the Proper Stranger)
ACTRESS
Julie Harris (The Haunting)
Claire Bloom (The Haunting)
Judy Garland (A Child Is Waiting)
Judy Garland (I Could Go on Singing)
Audrey Hepburn (Charade)
Shirley MacLaine (Irma la Douce)
Maria Ribeiro (Vidas Secas / Barren Lives)
Geraldine Page (Toys in the Attic)
Simone Signoret (Le Jour et l’heure / The Day and the Hour)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Bruce Ritchey (A Child Is Waiting)
Edgar Buchanan (Move Over, Darling)
Lou Jacobi (Irma la Douce)
Folco Lulli (I Compagni / The Organizer)
Walter Matthau (Charade)
Claude Rains (Twilight of Honor)
Robert Shaw (From Russia with Love)
David Tomlinson (Tom Jones)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Patricia Neal (Hud)
Julie Christie (Billy Liar)
Diane Cilento (Tom Jones)
Lotte Lenya (From Russia with Love)
Rachel Roberts (This Sporting Life)
Margaret Rutherford (The V.I.P.s)
Ethel Merman (It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World)
Sarah Miles (The Servant)
Joyce Redman (Tom Jones)
Elvira Tonelli (I Compagni / The Organizer)
SCREENPLAY
Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank, Jr. (Hud)
Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Enrico Medioli, Massimo Franciosa & Luchino Visconti (Il Gattopardo / The Leopard)
Nélson Pereira dos Santos (Vidas Secas / Barren Lives)
Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano & Brunello Rondi (8½ / Federico Fellini’s 8½)
Nelson Gidding (The Haunting)
Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli & Mario Monicelli (I Compagni / The Organizer)
Ernest Lehman (The Prize)
Harold Pinter (The Servant)
Peter Stone (Charade)
Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond (Irma la Douce)
CINEMATOGRAPHY
David Boulton (The Haunting)
Henri Decaë (Le Jour et l’heure / The Day and the Hour)
Gianni Di Venanzo (8½ / Federico Fellini’s 8½)
Gianni Di Venanzo (Le Mani sulla città / Hands Over the City)
Ernest Haller (Lilies of the Field)
James Wong Howe (Hud)
Jan Lindeström ( Kvarteret korpen / Raven’s End)
Giuseppe Rotunno (I Compagni / The Organizer)
Leon Shamroy (The Cardinal)
Haskell Wexler (America, America)
ORIGINAL SCORE
Nino Rota (8½ / Federico Fellini’s 8½)
Georges Delerue (Le Mépris / Contempt)
Svatopluk Havelka (Az prijde kocour / That Cat)
Henry Mancini (Charade)
Nino Rota (Il Gattopardo / The Leopard)
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