The Best of the 1960s

For better - but paving the way for worse - the modern cinema continues to emerge.

By Harry Kloman

Especially in American cinema, the 1960s became a decade that mixed energy, youth and some degree of visual experimentation, building upon trends that began the decade before, when directors like Elia Kazan and actors like Marlon Brando brought a striking new dramatic social realism to the screen. By injecting the Method into filmmaking, they created a move psychological, introspective American cinema. At the same time, just as the 1950s ended, the French New Wave exploded into European - and very soon American - movie theaters. These French artists would continue to make intriguing films, and by the middle of the 1960s, New Wave style would find its way to Hollywood.

Thanks to the gradual growth of independent filmmaking the decade before, the 1960s saw the increasing dominance of strong new voices who felt no allegiance to the slowly dying Hollywood style and system. Foreign-language films and directors - another taste that began to develop in the 1950s, with films by Kurosawa, Bergman, Rossellini and others - continued to find their way to America, influencing styles and tastes. It was a decade of wonderful internationalism, and by the time it ended, a new and provocative American cinema had passed through its genesis on the way to high noon.

The best films of the 1960s are diverse in their cultures, subject matter and visual styles, and unified by the way they probed the human psyche and the changing times. Often based on literature, they took on lives of their own. But if there's one American film of the decade that would be embraced and eventually exploited by the 1970s, it would have to be that tale of two outlaws whose passion, frustration and ennui woke up audiences - and the American cinema.

1. Bonnie and Clyde (American-1967), directed by Arthur Penn, written by David Newman and Robert Benton. "How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on?" So wrote Pauline Kael in her review of this landmark movie, which exploded with energy and violence in a way American audiences had never seen. She was speaking of the widespread negative (even shocked) critical reaction to the film, but within a fear years, the movie was recognized by all as a turning point. It's the story of the two famous outlaws, portrayed by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, although it pays no allegiance to trivialities like "facts." It perfectly captured what Civil Rights- and Vietnam-era America felt, and it was produced by its leading man, thus giving new clout to actors who dared to make their own movies when the Hollywood system would not.

2. Dr. Strangelove; or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (American/British-1963), directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George. Kubrick began his career in the 1950s, and as the millennium draws to a close, he's still a revered American director (who has lived in England for the past four decades). Despite the influential 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he would make five years later, Dr. Strangelove is surely his most significant and satisfying film of the decade. He began adapting the novel Red Alert as a serious film about nuclear annihilation but soon found the thought so horrifing that he turned it into a stunning black comedy, with Peter Sellers in three roles (including the title one). It's a furious, hilarious, unforgettable work.

3. Easy Rider (American-1969), directed by Dennis Hopper, written by Peter Fonda, Terry Southern and Dennis Hopper. Decades after its release, this counter-culture road movie seems somewhat dated, and even in its time nobody tried to argue that it was too skillfully made. But as the 1960s drew to a close, Hopper and his friends made a movie that summed up so much of the decade that it became an instant classic and an important movie. It also made a star of Jack Nicholson, whose acting and persona would dominate cinema for the next 30-plus years. Nicholson plays an adventure-seeking lawyer who hooks up with two bikers (Hopper and Fonda) for a journey across a conflicted, divided America. They're rebels with a cause - sex, drugs and pleasure - and their story serves as a fittingly tragic denouement to the decade.

4. The Graduate (American-1967), directed by Mike Nichols, written by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. There's much more to this movie's "one word" - "plastics" - than meets the eye. Nichols' great social comedy is about the suburbanization of culture and thought, and a youth culture struggling to keep its head above water in a bizarre, self-centered world. The final image is unforgettable, disturbing and complex, and the Simon & Garfunkle songs that underscore the action might well have invented the modern soundtrack. This movie also established its star, Dustin Hoffman, as an important American actor whose chameleon-like talent transcended his appearance and physical stature.

5 & 6. Hitchcock's Psycho (American-1960) and The Birds (American-1963), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by (respectively) Joseph Stefano and Evan Hunter. After a series of films in the 1950s that solidified his dark romantic sensibility, Hitchcock's work in the 1960s took him in a new direction. First in Psycho, where science at least tries to explain the madness, and then in The Birds, where nothing can explain it, Hitchcock's two masterpieces take us to places where there's no relief from the horrors of life on earth. He laid the groundwork for trends and images in movies that still echo today (often exploited and cheapened). These movies are not so much "of their time" as they are of their creator, who used the language of cinema like nobody else.

7. Jules and Jim (French-1961), directed by Francois Truffaut, written by Francios Truffaut and Jean Gruault. As the 1960s rolled on, the themes, moods and styles of the French New Wave became familiar and eventually commonplace (though still often a pleasure to watch). Here is Truffaut's 1960s masterpiece, a film with a star (Jeanne Moreau) whose face would haunt moviegoers for decades. It's a story of three friends, and it's all about the tragic malaise of love and loss. A sad, profound, disturbing film.

8. La Dolce Vita (Italian-1960), directed and co-written by Federico Fellini. After mostly sticking to the Neo-Realist Italian tradition in his films of the 1950s, Fellini took a turn here that he would lavish on his subsequent work. Whether or not you actually "like" this long film about the bacchanal of shallow, self-gratifying life in modern Rome, its influence was enormous, and its title entered the language. Marcello Mastroianni, who starred, began his long collaboration with Fellini in La Dolce Vita, another reason to qualify it as one of the decade's touchstone works.

9. Midnight Cowboy (American-1969), directed by John Schlesinger, written by Waldo Salt. Schlesinger established a reputation with Darling in his native England and then came to America to make this emotionally brutal movie about a country boy who seeks his destiny in the big city and discovers the mad, endless tragedy of contemporary life. It was the first (and still only) X-rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, who demonstrates how deeply it affected even the staid members of the Hollywood film industry. Once again, as the decade closes, Dustin Hoffman appears in a movie that will mark the era.

10. Persona (Swedish-1966), written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The peerless Swedish director holds a unique place in world cinema, and this movie - with its post-modern references to art and artistry - is one of his masterpieces. Ostensibly the story of actress (Liv Ullman) who goes mute and the nurse (Bibi Andersson) who looks after her, its tells a psychological - almost hallucinogenic - story of identify and cinema. Many others would imitate and even parody Bergman's intense, personal style.

11. Viridiana (Spanish-1961), directed by Luis Bunuel, written by Luis Bunuel and Julio Alajandro. After years in exile from his native Spain, the great surrealist director returned home to make this black comedy about a young nun (Silvia Pinal) who loses her innocence to her lecherous uncle (Fernando Rey), and then tries to run a home for beggars, only to be further jaded by the people she tries to save from the streets. The final scene sums up Bunuel's ironic and sinister world view in a movie that begins a rich creative period in the director's unparallelled career.

12. Women in Love (British-1969), directed by Ken Russell, written by Larry Kramer. Infamous now for his frantic movies that followed his seminal work in the 1960s, Russell adapted the D.H. Lawrence novel faithfully and provocatively in a decade that saw a lot of challenging literary adaptations. Working from a script by the playwright Larry Kramer, who would become a significant cultural figure in the 1980s, Russell fully realized the erotic potential of the book, taking advantage of the new freedom that had emerged in the cinema. His movie is filled with breathtaking emotions and images: The dead lovers on the beach, the nude wrestling scene, and the quiet, introspective ending. For this film alone, Russell wins himself a place on the pantheon platform of the decade.

Decide for yourself what unified themes winnow through this list of wonderful films that demonstrate all the diversity and seriousness of a flourishing modern art form. New directors like Kubrick and Nichols came to the surface, yet established directors continued to make some of their finest films. Other directors - Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese - made seminal films, poised to effect the cinema of the '70s. And two actors - Nicholson and Hoffman - created a new kind of movie star.

The French critics at Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s began to talk about movies in fresh and intelligent ways. The film critic Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker continued that dialogue and brought film criticism up to the standard of film art, popularizing an aggressive, personal voice that dominates the way we talk about films today. It was an exciting decade in cinema.