Every year, audiences get swept up in a handful of hit movies. The true test of their quality is whether they stand the test of time. It’s a very good sign when audiences are still enjoying a movie after six decades, like The Longest Day or To Kill a Mockingbird or How the West Was Won.
Some of the timeless 1962 classics turning 60 this year – from the original Cape Fear to the original Manchurian Candidate to the very first James Bond movie, Dr. No – are just as thrilling and entertaining today as they were when they first arrived on the big screen over half a century ago.
Cape Fear
Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear – starring his go-to leading man Robert De Niro as vengeful ex-con Max Cady – was one of the most acclaimed horror films of the ‘90s. It was so successful that it managed to overshadow J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 original.
But that original movie – starring Robert Mitchum as Cady and Gregory Peck as the lawyer who sent him to prison – still holds up as a brilliantly crafted suspense thriller.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
John Ford, the director of many seminal westerns ranging from Stagecoach to The Searchers, is one of the most prolific filmmakers in Hollywood history. He helmed over 100 movies throughout his career and many of them – like 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – are revered classics.
Lee Marvin plays Liberty Valance, while John Wayne and James Stewart star as an experienced gunfighter and a peaceful tenderfoot who team up to face a common enemy.
The Longest Day
Charting the events of D-Day on a massive scale, The Longest Day is one of the most critically lauded World War II epics of all time. It took three directors – Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki – to pull it off.
The sprawling star-studded ensemble includes such legendary actors as John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, and Rod Steiger.
The Manchurian Candidate
As the dark tale of a brainwashed assassin who carries out government-sanctioned killings, John Frankenheimer’s iconic political thriller The Manchurian Candidate was a precursor to Marvel’s Winter Soldier stories.
“Manchurian Candidate” is even one of Tony Stark’s classic pop-culture-referencing character nicknames. The original 1962 movie stars Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury.
Lolita
Unlike many Hollywood adaptations of challenging literature, Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita doesn’t water down the problematic premise of Vladimir Nabokov’s source novel. The title character’s age was raised from 12 to her early teens to appease the MPAA, but it’s still the tale of a grown man falling in love with an underage girl.
Unsurprisingly, the movie quickly became as wildly controversial as the novel. Since the controversy was expected, the poster tagline made an overt reference to it: “How did they ever make a movie out of Lolita?”
How The West Was Won
One of the most acclaimed epics in Hollywood history, How the West Was Won is a family saga covering several decades and historical events. The mega-sized movie was a collaboration between directors John Ford, Henry Hathaway (who directed three of the film’s five chapters), and George Marshall.
The movie was a huge box office draw, because its cast has A-listers in spades: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Debbie Reynolds, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, Eli Wallach – the list goes on.
Dr. No
The James Bond franchise turns 60 this year. Dr. No, the first Bond movie, is still one of the series’ best entries. Sean Connery and director Terence Young nailed 007’s characterization right out of the gate and reinvigorated the spy genre with a much-needed sense of fun.
Last year, Daniel Craig wrapped up the most recent incarnation of the Bond franchise with one of its most acclaimed movies to date. And since the end credits promised as usual that “James Bond will return,” it’s clear that the producers are far from done with the character.
Lawrence Of Arabia
David Lean helmed some of the most breathtaking landscape photography in cinema history for his 1962 historical epic Lawrence of Arabia. The movie chronicles the wartime experiences of T.E. Lawrence, played by the iconic Peter O’Toole.
The supporting cast features such screen legends as Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, and Alec Guinness, and Maurice Jarre’s Oscar-winning score is one of the most instantly recognizable film scores ever composed.
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?
Robert Aldrich kicked off a wave of “psycho biddy” thrillers with his game-changing psychological horror gem What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as aging sisters wrapped up in a bitter rivalry.
Davis received her tenth and final Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her turn as Baby Jane Hudson. The AFI included the iconic character on their “50 Best Villains of American Cinema” list.
To Kill A Mockingbird
Robert Mulligan’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s seminal novel To Kill a Mockingbird perfectly captures the themes of the source material. And just like the book it was based on, the film holds up today because those themes of injustice and inequality are sadly still as relevant as ever.
To Kill a Mockingbird features the film debut of Robert Duvall in the role of Boo Radley, but the star of the movie is undeniably Gregory Peck, who embodies the morally upright icon of Atticus Finch.
