By Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood is out in the UK in less than a month, and to make sure you're on top of the cinematic geography of California in 1969, the director has put together a list of 10 films you should watch to fully grasp where Leo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth sprang from.
All 10 played a big part in Tarantino's development of the story, script and characters, and they'll play on the Sony Movie Channel in the run-up to the Once Upon A Time's American release date (well, in America - in the UK we won't get The Battle of the Coral Sea) from 5 August. Taken together, they set up a Hollywood film industry not just on the brink of change from one set of aesthetics and mores to another but still going through spasms and trying to work out what it needed to do next.
Gunman's Walk (1958)
Rick Dalton's a faded Western star of the small screen who's tried and largely failed to get a foothold in Hollywood, and is on the brink of heading to Italy to make Spaghetti Westerns. This one - a CinemaScope Technicolor Western about a cattle drive and a love triangle - is exactly the kind of thing he'd have hoped he'd be able to make his name in. It's all on YouTube.
The Battle of the Coral Sea (1959)
Another one that sets up Rick's career, this war thriller about American submariners captured by the Japanese in World War Two stars Cliff Robertson, another actor who straddled both film and TV.
Arizona Raiders (1965)
Audie Murphy plays the lead in this tale of Confederate renegades who get captured by the law and have to break out of the county jail. Like Rick, Murphy wanted to expand his range outside of Westerns but felt pretty tightly typecast, and, like Rick, struggled with addiction.
The Wrecking Crew (1968)
This was the last Sharon Tate film released while she was still alive - it's a slightly mad and campy spy-fi mostly remembered for the Tate connection and as the first screen appearance of Chuck Norris. Tate's role in it as Danish tourism bureau rep Freya Carlson is worth more than that though. Watch it to get a feel for her vibrant screen presence.
Hammerhead (1968)
Bit of a curveball here - this is a British thriller about a mercenary taken on by the British government to stop NATO secrets being stolen. Its star, Vince Edwards, was another would-be TV-to-film graduate, making him another point of reference for Rick.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)
This comedy helps to set up the shifting cultural mores of late-60s America. It's a clash-of-cultures comedy - Bob and Carol Sanders have a revelation and become loved-up, freewheelin' flower children, and want their buttoned-up friends Ted and Alice Henderson. It's a look at the enticements and responsibilities of sexual freedom, with an acerbic edge.
Model Shop (1969)
In French director Jacques Demy's film, a 26-year-old layabout in Los Angeles is trying to get together enough cash to keep the bailiffs from the door when he sees a beautiful woman and follows her to her house in the hills. At the same time, he learns his Vietnam draft papers have arrived. It all pans out in a very, very French way, with lots of longeurs and foiled ambitions.
Cactus Flower (1969)
Another comedy, this time with an all-star cast of Walter Matthau, Goldie Hawn and Ingrid Bergman. From 2019, this love triangle's meet-cute - a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from a suicide attempt which turns into a kiss - is quite bogglingly strange. It shares a cinematographer (Charles Lang) with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, though so may give some stylistic clues to Once Upon A Time.
Easy Rider (1969)
The Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda classic, along with films like The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde, helped to usher in the New Hollywood era. In came a counter-cultural outlook and influences from Europe and Asia; out went simple stories with a happy ending, narrative simplicity and many of the stars who'd dominated before. This represents the world that's leaving Rick and Cliff behind.
Getting Straight (1970)
Another New Hollywood gem, which sees a grad student return to university and find himself caught up in student protests and general counter-cultural shenanigans which touch on the deeper malaise within mid-Vietnam American youth culture. Harrison Ford has a minor role too.
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