100 Films from the 1960s to watch today

A listicle, a guide, and an ethos.

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Watch old movies. They’re good for you.

The films of the 1960s aren’t particularly old in art history terms, but when I talk to non-cinephiles about film, anything from before the 21st century is practically geriatric. This cuts deeper than you could possibly imagine. As a film critic with an independent podcast and blog, my aim has never been to steer my readership/listenership to a particular room at the multiplex on any given weekend. That type of film criticism exists in spades, and always will. Instead, I aim to elucidate that to love film is not simply to surround yourself with new releases amidst their hype trains of corporate origin, but to look back at history in order to understand and properly evaluate the present.

We are in post-modern times, cinematically. Post-post-modern times, even. The glut of the remake, the remix, and the reimagining has been more than covered. Serialized films are now called franchises, as if they were McDonalds locations, and people who only go to the movies five times a year are saying the phrase “original intellectual property” like it actually means something. This is not all doom-and-gloom, however, and I’ll always search high and low for the greatest new releases. But as NYFF and TIFF coverage started to roll in on top of the wider fall slate’s promotion, I started to dread the discussions. Why should we give Jay Kelly the time of day when the Woody Allen filmography exists? Edgar Wright is joining the remake chorus with The Reddit Man which I don’t actually care about, but others will. Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (a film by a director I love about another director I love) looks like a cinematic war crime, and probably wouldn’t exist if the collective we was more cine-literate. Even my beloved David Fincher, whose work is often characterized by adapting low-class source material into pop classics, is following up Tarantino’s nostalgia-fest with a sequel due next year. If so many of these films are looking back, what is stopping audiences from doing the same? Are these period pieces, aesthetic homages, and long-gap sequels just substitutes for film fans actually diving into the medium’s history?

Why the 1960s?

It is of my opinion that the 1960s are the greatest decade for cinema, not by virtue of pure quality, but through a confluence of historic trends. Let’s start stateside. The Classic Hollywood studio system was reaching its point of grandeur and decadence before the fall of an empire. Great directors like Vincente Minnelli were sent to Europe to make epics. A clown from the 50s’ greatest duo goes solo and became an artist in his own right, a cause-celebre of French auteurism. Then, the downfall, leading to that great boom of an American cinema that represented narrative, aesthetic, and ideological challenges to the medium known as New Hollywood. Meanwhile, the truly independent American cinema emerges out of the shadows of exploitation, while the old heads of Hollywood either fight against or roll with the changing cultural tides.

In Europe, Asia, and South America, a decade and a half had passed since WW2, and the general senses of morality and aesthetics had radically shifted. New Waves spread throughout France, Japan, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, and more, with their aesthetic and ideological influences eventually making their way stateside — particularly the visual stylings of the French as well as a few pre-wave Japanese masters. Genre cinema, particularly horror, took a leap in the 1960s as well, with some grandiose British productions as well as the Italian sleaze that would eventually influence the slasher wave. Westerns were revised, sci-fi began to think for itself, Hong Kong martial artists took a cinematic leap, and the traditional modes of audiovisual storytelling were mocked as much as they were revered. The 1960s is a cinematic decade of infinite possibilities, infinite rabbit-holes, infinite pleasure for a viewer who has not yet discovered the medium’s history. A viewer can work backwards or forwards from the 1960s, whether they want to see what Kurosawa and Ford were up to before High and Low and Liberty Valance, or where Truffaut went after Jules et Jim. These movies are not “old” [pejorative], they are “good” [time-based].

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100. The Brides of Dracula

Terence Fisher, 1960

My favorite Hammer horror film that I’ve seen, the grandeur of the gothic sets are matched by the film’s bizarre sense of the psychosexual.

99. The Apartment

Billy Wilder, 1960

A film about letting your boss use your apartment to copulate with secretaries. On corporate culture, being a funny incel, and the effortless charm of Shirley MacClaine.

98. Spartacus

Stanley Kubrick, 1960

A tease at the idea of Kubrick as a studio director, he accomplishes the epic with ease.

97. Who Killed Teddy Bear

Joseph Cates, 1965

A genuine cult article, Sal Mineo plays a traumatized romeo-dialer in Joseph Cates’ seedy exploitation drama.

96. Don’t Look Back

D.A. Pennebaker, 1967

Watch D.A. Pennebaker capture the greatest American artist at the peak of his powers, visiting the UK.

95. Monterey Pop

D.A. Pennebaker, 1968

Watch D.A Pennebaker capture psychedelia reaching its mainstream peak, only to be outshone by Otis Redding and Ravi Shankar.

94. The Trial of Joan of Arc

Robert Bresson, 1962

Zagging from the expressionist close-up affect images of Dreyer’s silent film on the same topic, Bresson turns Joan of Arc’s story into a legal procedural.

93. West Side Story

Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, 1961

An advertisement for the Technicolor Group that, frankly, works on me every time.

92. La Femme de 1000 têtes

Eric Duviver, 1968

The kind of object whose obscurity always surprises me. A lyrical 20 minutes of raw surrealist imagery set to a Max Ernst poem.

91. Black Girl

Ousmane Sembene, 1966

On colonialism, servitude, individuality, and the gaze of the settler. Its French New Wave-adjacent style (as well as its locations) calls into the viewer’s mind the nation of artist’s sins in Africa.

90. The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964

The story of Christ, told through a combination of neorealist and new-wave-adjacent expressive means.

89. In Cold Blood

Richard Brooks, 1967

A terse thriller with quasi-modest ambitions between an elevated b-picture and a great literary adaptation.

88. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Stanley Kubrick, 1964

I used to be a comedy snob and think that Dr. Strangelove wasn’t very funny. Then the world started ending and the powers that be in the United States couldn’t stop giving involuntary Nazi salutes and it all made sense. Funny until it’s not, which is when it’s best.

87. Masculin Féminin

Jean-Luc Godard, 1966

With his usual New Wave verve, Godard makes a perverse version of the Doinel saga with the face of the movement and pop singer Chantal Goya.

86. The Hustler

Robert Rossen, 1961

Elevated delinquency. Newman is, of course, wonderful, and his relationship with Piper Laurie is shocking in how deeply felt is its tragedy.

85. La Chinoise

Jean-Luc Godard, 1967

One of two major transitional works from his early New Wave period to the Dziga Vertov Group, a hyper-stylized comedy about the malleable ideology of youth.

84. Head

Bob Rafelson, 1968

The “so what?” response to the ‘ol “aren’t the Monkees a fake band?” question. An encapsulation of the mainstreaming of the counterculture and all of the contradictory pleasures therein.

83. Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics

King Vidor, 1964

King Vidor went from making socialist films (Our Daily Bread) to adapting Ayn Rand to eventually realizing that cinema wasn’t about left or right, but the molecules within. I’m not sure I agree, but I love hearing the old master wax poetic. The closest we’ll ever get to the late (fictional) works of one Jim Orin Incandenza.

82. Charade

Stanley Donen, 1963

More than anything else, this is proto-De Palma, in using the visual language of Hitchcock as a genre into itself. Utterly charming.

81. The Nun

Jacques Rivette, 1966

Like all Rivette that I’ve seen, there are chunks of this film that seem to be about their own length, but nobody in their right mind would ever complain about seeing too much Anna Karina on screen.

80. Le Bonheur

Agnes Varda, 1965

One of the most French films of all time, in that it is a gorgeous looking film full of gorgeous people about why we cheat on our perfect lovers. The royal “we”, of course, for I am not a disgusting Frenchman who fumbles the most other-wordily beautiful actresses/girlfriends imaginable.

79. Bunny Lake Is Missing

Otto Preminger, 1965

A stylish thriller that gets more disturbing with every pull of the yarn. Economic in its storytelling, stark in its visual design, a surefire influence on David Fincher.

78. Breathless

Jean-Luc Godard, 1960

Belmondo imitates Bogart, Godard imitates nobody. One of the most impactful films of all time, its auteur was very clearly learning as he went, but displays an unrivaled passion for the medium.

77. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Russ Meyer, 1965

To quote Elaine on Seinfeld, “he’s obsessed! obsessed with breasts!” Meyer is as sleazy as all get-out, but he is notably an artist rather than a pornographer. A vengeful, furious, hilarious action-exploitation picture.

76. Point Blank

John Boorman, 1967

Truly new filmmaking, with the face of an old star at the helm. The footsteps as a ticking clock, and the real Los Angeles, not the studio one.

75. The Exterminating Angel

Luis Buñuel, 1962

The bourgeoisie gather for a dinner, but are unable to leave. The surrealist comedy has puzzled audiences for six decades.

74. The Bellboy

Jerry Lewis, 1960

The first film by Jerry Lewis The Director, made on a minuscule budget at a Florida hotel where Lewis was performing his nightclub routine after shoot days wrapped. An inspiration, one that plays by as few rules as Godard’s debut from the same year.

73. Repulsion

Roman Polanski, 1965

Roman Polanski’s horror film about what happens every fucking time I move into a new apartment.

72. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Jacques Demy, 1964

It makes your heart hurt. Demy’s love for Hollywood schmaltz knows no bounds, but his classing-up of the joint through new wave sensibilities and an all-time downer of a romance elevate this to top flight.

71. Branded to Kill

Seijun Suzuki, 1967

A yakuza thriller about hitman incompetency, with more style than substance, but also more substance than you’d think.

70. Shoot the Piano Player

Francois Truffaut, 1960

An early tour de force from Truffaut – if 400 Blows was the film he’d waited all his life to make and Jules and Jim his first “grown up” film, Piano comes in between as he discovers the boundaries (or lack thereof) in film style. It’s pure fun.

69. The Bride Wore Black

Francois Truffaut, 1968

I think filmmakers should be allowed to lie in interviews to bolster their origin story or whatever, but Tarantino saying that he never watched this before making Kill Bill is the tallest tale he’s ever woven.

68. Teorema

Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968

Terence Stamp represents the sexual revolution as he fucks his way through a greatly symbolic Italian family.

67. Peeping Tom

Michael Powell, 1960

You guys ever notice how the camera is kinda like a penis?

66. Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero, 1968

While the fact that most people have watched this on an awful, mega-duped public domain DVD (or VHS) is unfortunate, but that such a large amount of people saw and were influenced by the film is an obvious godsend for the genre.

65. The Trial

Orson Welles, 1962

Billy, I’ll see your office set from The Apartment and raise you one quantity of The Kafaesque.

64. The Great Silence

Sergio Corbucci, 1968

Often referred to as “the other Sergio” or “the best director of Spaghetti Westerns not named Sergio Leone”, Sergio Corbucci’s snowbound western-actioner is filled to the brim with political subtext ripe for its era.

63. Donovan’s Reef

John Ford, 1963

A completely absurd-in-premise hangout film that sees the Duke and Lee Marvin doing their best/worst to the island of Hawaii. Marvin is a model train enthusiast.

62. Golden Swallow

Chang Cheh, 1968

A Jimmy Wang-Yu and Chang Pei-Pei co-starring fighter, this is a great example of the Shaw Bros studio films of the late 60s coming into their own standard of quality.

61. Come Drink with Me

King Hu, 1966

Hu would eventually leave behind the strict regiments of the Shaw Bros and the HK cinema for Taiwan, but this is arguably his early peak in its narrative economy and physical feats. Chang Pei-Pei plays Golden Sparrow in this one, not to be confused with Golden Swallow. Although, frankly, that could just be a bad translation, and they are the same person. Nonetheless, she’s a badass.

60. The Patsy

Jerry Lewis, 1964

A seemingly contradictory phrase – the most dramatically compelling and successful Jerry Lewis movie, but far from his funniest. That being said, it has the best example of the “maybe we could get it weaved” runner.

59. Hatari!

Howard Hawks, 1962

The longest movie ever made (compliment). Time doesn’t exist in Hatari!, only men in trucks hunting animals. There’s a bunch of monkeys in that tree with the net over it.

58. Skidoo

Otto Preminger, 1968

The year is 1968 and Old Man Otto Preminger makes an Acid Comedy with Jackie Gleason, his co-stars on Batman (TV), and Groucho Marx as God. Watch it.

57. I Am Cuba

Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964

The USSR sends one of its top propagandists to Cuba with hopes of showing the Soviet-Latino nation in all its glory. Ideological effectiveness aside, it ended up being one of the most important stylistic exercises in the medium’s history.

56. The One-Armed Swordsman

Chang Cheh, 1967

The most dramatically rewarding Shaw Bros film, even if its fight choreography isn’t quite as top-flight as it would be a few years later.

55. Ivan’s Childhood

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962

The incongruity of childhood dreams and life during wartime.

54. Madigan

Don Siegel, 1968

A cop-loses-gun tale that spins into a treatise on urban crime in the late sixties and the changing aesthetics of cops versus robbers.

53. The Graduate

Mike Nichols, 1967

A perfect sex comedy of anxiety, one that reflects a changing sexual sensibility (post-Goodbye Columbus!) and the sulking indifference of a generation.

52. Red Desert

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964

Alienated by the cityscape, it turns out the industrial landscape that powers it is just as barren and hopeless. An artist discovers color.

51. Shock Corridor

Sam Fuller, 1963

Sam Fuller uses the mental hospital setting to take the temperature on American culture and all of its anxieties.

50. Shame

Ingmar Bergman, 1968

Perhaps penance for Bergman’s fascist sympathies decades earlier, this is a very harsh film about apolitical artists during wartime.

49. Death by Hanging

Nagisa Oshima, 1968

Despite the near-dozen Godard films on this list, Oshima’s is the most Brechtian. A kangaroo court trial for an alleged sexual assault eventually puts the entire nation on trial.

48. Le petit soldat

Jean-Luc Godard, 1968

I’ve long been surprised by this film’s reputation as minor within the Godard canon. His first political film, on the Algerian liberation struggle, with all of the shadow-ops and double-crossing that secret wars contain. It’s rough around the edges in the way Breathless was, and was intended as its follow up, but was shelved due to censorship for three years.

47. Wavelength

Michael Snow, 1967

It zooms in and changes colors. Just try it.

46. Dog Star Man

Stan Brakhage, 1965

A truly epic experimental work, which seems contradictory in concept. Made (and shown) in pieces, Brakhages non-narrative shows a man and his dog climb a hill, with the textural possibilities expanding on each frame.

45. The Enchanting Shadow

Li Han-Hsiang, 1960

The most unconventional Hong Kong pick on this list, a Chinese Opera that was later re-adapted as A Chinese Ghost Story, produced by the great Tsui Hark. This one takes full advantage of the inherent spooky and otherworldly qualities of the Shaw Bros sets on which we’ve seen so many men die.

44. Blood and Black Lace

Mario Bava, 1964

An early giallo that anticipates the (well-warranted) criticism of the genre’s treatment of women’s bodies. Objectification takes a step up when the female bodies become interchangable with those of mannequins.

43. The Innocents

Jack Clayton, 1961

On the creepiness of British children. Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw” in all its gothic glory.

42. Two Weeks in Another Town

Vincente Minnelli, 1962

Hollywood on the Thames, the glut of the system before it collapsed in on itself, shown warts and all by musical maestro turned master of melodrama, Vincente Minnelli.

41. Planet of the Apes

Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968

On…humanity. Science fiction at its finest, demonstrating all the tools that the genre had acquired over its six decades in the cinema.

40. L’Eclisse

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962

Filmed Monica Vitti’s face again award. The most deeply abstracted and fleeting of the black and white Antonioni-Vitti trilogy, with a montage toward the end sure to make any architectural fetishist reach their finish line.

39. The Nutty Professor

Jerry Lewis, 1963

A candy-colored mad-science experiment about having swag.

38. Jules and Jim

Francois Truffaut, 1962

A love triangle with the energy of a highly-attended orgy. Imagine how many film studies dweebs in the sixties made their girlfriends put on a little fake mustache and pretend to be a silly French girl to chase around the city’s bridges. Well, it’s probably only one or two, but man, what a fucking sight.

37. Law and Order

Frederick Wiseman, 1968

America’s greatest chronicler of its institutions turns his camera toward one of his nation’s most shameful stains: a fascist police force.

36. Mothlight

Stan Brakhage, 1963

I’m not using a screenshot of the film here, because the concept is perhaps more important. An impoverished filmmaker with no stock to shoot instead took found materials and jammed them through a projector. The result is absolutely glorious, inspirational.

35. Au Hasard Balthazar

Robert Bresson, 1966

On humanity, through the eyes of the animal. It’s not pretty, but it’s quite recognizable.

34. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Sergio Leone, 1966

Expanding the Dollars trilogy from a Kurosawa reskin to a cross between Stroheim’s Greed and America’s civil war with all its implications, Leone uses the landscape and the faces in equal measure.

33. High School

Frederick Wiseman, 1968

Another institutional study by Frederick Wiseman, this one on the reason we are what we are as adults: our upbringing and education.

32. The Swimmer

Frank Perry, 1968

A modernist parable about one’s sins surpassing the potential symbolic cleansing of water.

31. The Immortal Story

Orson Welles, 1968

Orson Welles hires a young man and woman to fulfill an ancient sailor’s prophecy that involves him listening to them fuck through the walls, making the above face. Immaculate.

30. Dragon Inn

King Hu, 1967

It might be the best “traditional” martial arts film that I’ve seen. It’s a somewhat simple premise – a location protected by a tyrant’s secret police is laid siege by freedom fighters – but the execution is anything but. Balletic choreography is matched by exploratory camera movement, and the narrative action is somehow always rising, right up until the credits roll.

29. Lolita

Stanley Kubrick, 1962

A hilarious film about the evilest of male impulses, in which James Mason is funnier than Peter Sellars.

28. Cléo from 5 to 7

Agnes Varda, 1962

One of the great New Wave films, Varda’s stylistically playful but heartbreakingly morose portrait of an afternoon.

27. Man’s Favorite Sport?

Howard Hawks, 1964

The geriatric retread of the screwball comedies that Howard Hawks had so clearly mastered in decades past. A bear rides a motorcycle, what’s not to like?

26. Yearning

Mikio Naruse, 1964

The final film by Japanese master Mikio Naruse, a fantastic weepie about a taboo romance not meant to be.

25. Marnie

Alfred Hitchcock, 1964

On the criminal female brain, and how male zoologists can tame them. True psycho shit, the most deranged Hitchcock film.

24. La Jetée

Chris Marker, 1962

A sci-fi photomontage about the inability to escape one’s own desires.

23. Rosemary’s Baby

Roman Polanski, 1968

Between The Ghost Writer, Repulsion, Chinatown, and this, there is no filmmaker in the history of the medium who can portray undefinable and insurmountable evil like Roman Polanski.

22. The Errand Boy

Jerry Lewis, 1961

Jerry unleashed – he plays a PA at not-paramount and messes up everybody’s shoot before getting emotional with a puppet. A masterpiece.

21. Pierrot le Fou

Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

A breaking point for New Wave Godard, surpassing the filmic ideas of his peers and into the realm of larger art criticism.

20. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her

Jean-Luc Godard, 1967

The final step in the transition between New Wave Godard and Mao Propagandist Godard, 2 or 3 Things is a deeply internal film about the external forces that drive us to depression, depravity, and eventually death.

19. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

Fritz Lang, 1960

After an expressionist silent masterpiece and a groundbreaking early sound film, Fritz Lang took nearly 3 decades off of the Mabuse series while working outside of Germany. He then came back and finished off the trilogy/his career with this stripped down, barebones, essentialist surveillance film.

18. Contempt

Jean-Luc Godard, 1963

The odyssey of creation – is the grandest story of them all simply that of a breakup?

17. My Night at Maud’s

Eric Rohmer, 1969

Talking through it. Rohmer’s relationship films are a genre into themselves, sharing little to no DNA with romantic film at large. Chastity is God’s grace in this particular film of atheists, catholics and philosophers.

16. The Naked Kiss

Sam Fuller, 1964

The greatest in punchy exploitation, Sam Fuller never shied away from controversial material, and this is as raunchy as it gets. A former prostitute attempts to start a new, wholesome life in a new town, but her man-about-town lover is not all that he seems…

15. Three on a Couch

Jerry Lewis, 1966

One of the most demented movies ever made. Jerry Lewis’ fiancée (Janet Leigh) is a therapist with three patients in crisis due to their recent relationships with men. Jerry disguises as suitors for the three women so that he can go on vacation without his girl worrying about her silly patients.

14. Pyscho

Alfred Hitchcock, 1960

Arbogast is a beautiful name for a baby detective.

13. Targets

Peter Bogdanovich, 1968

The ultimate text on the transition from Classic Hollywood to New, fittingly produced by Roger Corman for a very low budget. On the futures of horror nostalgia and mass shootings.

12. An Autumn Afternoon

Yasujiro Ozu, 1962

Ozu’s final film sees a slight twist of the Late Spring formula, with its protagonist and patriarch only marrying off his daughter when the daughter herself decides that she can no longer go on being her father’s caretaker and little else.

11. Vivre sa vie

Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

Anna Karina in two gestures: crying at Passion of Joan of Arc, and dancing around the pool table in the above screenshot. What else do you need? Comedy and tragedy.

10. La Notte

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961

If anybody can film a deteriorating relationship, it’s Michelangelo Antonioni. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau, unhappily married, go to a party where Monica Vitti is being insanely hot. It is in Antonioni’s use of time and the earthly elements of rain and wind that he elevates what could have been a wrote midcentury tale of infidelity into the sublime.

9. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

John Ford, 1962

John Ford’s acceptance of his role as an epic poet, commissioned to chronicle the history of America.

8. Andrei Rublev

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966

On the intersection of faith and art, initially banned by an atheist Soviet government. As a very far left-leaning atheist, I would never ban such a transcendent work.

7. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick, 1968

Speaking of transcendence, did you hear the news? Sci-fi has not only grown up, but passed onto the astral plane. It still befuddles new viewers and re-watchers alike, and always will.

6. Persona

Ingmar Bergman, 1966

Cinema and psychoanalysis were near-simultaneously invented toward the end of the 19th century in Europe. 70 years later, Persona.

5. Once Upon a Time in the West

Sergio Leone, 1968

The railroad tracks of progress. Sergio Leone elevates his craft from the exploitation stylings of the fantastic dollars trilogy to a Hollywood co-production that uses the American narrative and actors as more than novelty. Henry Fonda is Abraham Lincoln, right? No, he’s the cruelest villain you’ll ever see.

4. High and Low

Akira Kurosawa, 1963

The greatest blocking+staging I’ve ever seen. After a vacuum-sealed first half, the investigation takes over the second, defined by the child’s drawing of the hideout’s view. Ah yes, let’s figure out where you can see the sun set next to a view of Mt Fuji and... go from there.

3. The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock, 1963

Why? It’s the most basic question you can possibly ask, but why are the birds attacking this town? This woman? [Zizek voice] Pure ideology. The scene in the phone booth is as immersive and horrifying as anything Hitchcock ever filmed.

2. L’Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960

Depending on my mood, this is my favorite film. Things, people, nations, relationships fall apart and disappear, and the world doesn’t seem to care. There is no closure or The End in life, only being.

1. The Ladies Man

Jerry Lewis, 1961

My favorite film when I’m not in a horribly moody state. Jerry Lewis, post-graduation, wants to be a bachelor, traumatized by and horrified of women due to his heartbreak at the hands of his sweetheart. So, naturally, he inquires about a sign requesting the help of a single young man. He then lives in a dollhouse – the peak of Hollywood set design – full of beautiful women. Chaos ensues.

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I hope you enjoyed this list! Let me know if you end up watching any of these, I’d love to hear your thoughts!