Best of the 1960s

While continuing to postpone the inevitable, I find myself moving ever further backward in time with today's new post. I feel I am actually getting closer to a final Best of the 2000s list, as several important questions are resolved (like whether to put Eastern Promises ahead of A History of Violence, or vice versa). After this morning I do at least know for sure that Avatar isn't going to make the cut - but more on that later. At any rate, the number one choice for the 1960s was probably the easiest of any decade for me, as John Frankenheimer's glorious Seconds is one of those films that effortlessly leaps to the top of any list. I screened it for a large group of undergrad students last year, and was pleased to note that it was extremely well received, seemingly making as much sense to today's kids in their early twenties as it still does to me, and that it has lost none of its ability to creep its audience out.



1. Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966)
2. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
3. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
4. Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)
5. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
7. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
8. Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)
9. Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967)
10. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
11. In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks, 1967)
12. Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
13. The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
14. Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Hill, 1967)
15. The Night of the Iguana (John Huston, 1964)
16. Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)
17. West Side Story (Robert Wise, 1961)
18. The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
19. The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961)
20. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967)
21. Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
22. Carnival of Souls (Frank Harvey, 1962)
23. Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962)
24. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
25. Hud (Martin Ritt, ]1963)
26. The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
27. From Russia with Love (Terence Young, 1963)
28. Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960)
29. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
30. Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964)
31. Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964)
32. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965)
33. The Battle of Algiers (Guillermo Pontecorvo, 1965)
34. Fahrenheit 451 (François Truffaut, 1966)
35. One, Two, Three! (Billy Wilder, 1961)
36. Pretty Poison (Noel Black, 1968)
37. Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
38. Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968)
39. A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1963)
40. A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinneman, 1966)
42. Bob Dylan - Dont Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)
40. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969)
43. One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Geronimi, Luske & Reitherman 1961)
44. The Misfits (John Huston, 1961)
45. The Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Buñuel, 1964)
46. Sanjuro (Akira Kurosawa, 1962)
47. The Fortune Cookie (Billy Wilder, 1966)
48. Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg, 1967)
49. Faster, Pussycat... Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)
50. The Fall of the House of Usher (Roger Corman, 1960)