"60"

Just as the British once showed Americans how to reinvent rock music, so it was with the French and the crime film. Many of the top French directors of the ‘50s and ‘60s turned out memorable, enduring gangster films, and we are all the better for it. Though critics dubbed these young filmmakers as "The French New Wave," they may as well have called them "The French Crime Wave."  A key turning point was when an American director, Jules Dassin, found himself exiled to Europe during the McCarthy era, and directed French actors in the classic "Rififi" (1955). American film noir (ironically, a French term) was on the wane by this point, and France not only picked up the torch, they practically yanked it out of our tired hands. French directors did more than create rehashes of American crime movies. True, they borrowed many techniques and stories that were already familiar from Hollywood films, but they seasoned them with distinctly French flavorings, whether it was Jean Luc Godard's jump-cut editing technique, or the way existentialism seemed to crop up even in plots about car thieves.

Ralph Fiennes, while recently chatting about his part in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” let it slip that’s he’s set to play M, replacing Dame Judi Dench as the head of British Secret Service, in the upcoming Daniel Craig Bond film. Shooting is set to begin in October, in time for the 2015 release of “Bond 24” (a working title, we hope).   Why should this announcement from Ralph get us all worked up? Well, in addition to the fact that he seems an excellent choice to succeed Dame J., confirmation of a new Bond movie means... new Bond Girls!   Whether these ladies start out on Bond’s side or against him, they all succumb to his charms eventually (except the really bad ones who just use him for rough sex and then still try to kill him – you just can’t trust some women.)

Cities are like people, in that some periods represent career peaks, and there are plenty of examples of golden ages to go around: Paris in the 1920s, Los Angeles in the 1940s, and New York in the 1950s all brim with romance in the popular imagination. But no scene was quite as explosive in sheer energy and style as London was in the 1960s. A nation finally emerging from Blitz mentality and the rationing of World War II, England was primed for a major cultural earthquake, thanks to the crumbling of centuries-old social constriction, and the emergence of the Baby Boomers's youth culture. And when that earthquake, or “youthquake,” came, it was the movies that registered its shockwaves. “Swinging” London was its epicenter, as bands like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks created a danceable soundtrack for the era, and pioneering hair stylist Vidal Sassoon snipped girls’ hair into a bob, perfect for bouncing along to the beat (and of course, boys’ hair grew down past their collars).