1961's Best Movies: 60 Years Later

In keeping with previous polls, I've gone with the contenders in the top 2,000 films, but they now offer the entire starting spreadsheet. Here are the titles that carry through through the top 5,000 films ever.

Victim	Dearden, Basil	UK	2060
Connection, The	Clarke, Shirley	USA	2108
Two Rode Together	Ford, John	USA	2213
Bandits of Orgosolo	De Seta, Vittorio	Italy	2214
Taste of Honey, A	Richardson, Tony	UK	2380
One Hundred and One Dalmatians	Geronimi, Clyde/Hamilton Luske/Wolfgang Reitherman	USA	2494
El Cid	Mann, Anthony	USA	2611
Night Tide	Harrington, Curtis	USA	2673
Allures	Belson, Jordan	USA	2742
Human Condition III, The	Kobayashi, Masaki	Japan	2887
Fire in Castilla (Tactilvision from the Moor of the Fright)	Val del Omar, José	Spain	3223
Whistle Down the Wind	Forbes, Bryan	UK	3363
Blast of Silence	Baron, Allen	USA	3413
Exiles, The	MacKenzie, Kent	USA	3527
Wife Confesses, A	Masumura, Yasuzo	Japan	3636
Pigs and Battleships	Imamura, Shohei	Japan	3701
Underworld, U.S.A.	Fuller, Samuel	USA	3801
Girl with a Suitcase	Zurlini, Valerio	Italy	3920
On the Tiger's Back	Comencini, Luigi	Italy	3943
Guns of Navarone, The	Thompson, J. Lee	UK	4136
Day the Earth Caught Fire, The	Guest, Val	UK	4137
Léon Morin, Priest	Melville, Jean-Pierre	France	4287
Too Late Blues	Cassavetes, John	USA	4396
Acarino galaico (De barro)	Val del Omar, José	Spain	4483
Hercules and the Captive Women	Cottafavi, Vittorio	Italy	4534
Invasion of the Neptune Men	Ohta, Koji	Japan	4784
Clear Skies	Chukhraj, Grigori	USSR	4813
Judgment at Nuremberg	Kramer, Stanley	USA	4830
Stray Bullet, The	Yoo Hyun Mok	South Korea	4883
Hermanos Del Hierro, Los	Rodríguez, Ismael	Mexico	4928

The Hustler and Breakfast at Tiffany's are among my favorite American films between '60 and '67, but Il Posto, which I had on my all-time ballot.

Year feels like maybe the thinnest of the entirety of the '60s, excepting possibly '69?

Of the twelve on the main list, I've always loved Accattone, which has so much detail and atmosphere, it feels like a novel in my memory when I think of it.
Of the three I've seen on the lower list, I know I liked Girl With a Suitcase a lot, though I couldn't tell you anything about except that it was very emotionally delicate and she did, in fact, have a suitcase.

Lola.

My list:

Lola (Jacques Demy)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton)
Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman)
Victim (Basil Dearden)
The End of Summer (Yasujiro Ozu)
Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
The Absent-Minded Professor (Robert Stevenson)
Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)
La Notte (Michaelangelo Antonioni)

I feel that this has to be Last Year at Marienbad, though I consider Through a Glass Darkly one of Bergman's most perfectly realized films and I'm really surprised it's so low on the list (#1579). Also I've somehow not seen Il Posto, evidently.

I've recently seen seen several from the supplemental list that I thought were great, e.g. Night Tide and Whistle Down the Wind. Too Late Blues is also a favorite.

Voting The Ladies Man, over Marienbad and Chronicle of a Summer.

La Notte and Through a Glass Darkly are the weakest parts of their respective informal trilogies.

La Notte is neck in neck with L'Avventura on the strength of its opening sequence.

Winter Light and L'eclisse are the best. No discussion.

Agree.

Dis

Also, Divorce Italian Style is excruciating.

It's popular enough to get overlooked here, but just a reminder that Yojimbo is killer, and way superior to Leone's simplified (but still fine) A Fistful Of Dollars.

Year feels like maybe the thinnest of the entirety of the '60s, excepting possibly '69?

I don't know, looks pretty good to me.

Also, Divorce Italian Style is excruciating.

― i carry the torch for disco inauthenticity (Eric H.), Wednesday, June 9, 2021 4:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This. When I rented it at Blockbuster, like, 25 years ago I wondered how the fuck this coarse shit became such a hit.

Voted for the Bergman just ahead of Marienbad.

voted Yojimbo because Kurosawa is eternal but almost voted Viridiana.

Didn't realize that I had put two 1961 films in the top 25 on my all-time films ballot - Marienbad and Viridiana

Haven't seen Il Posto yet, but I really liked The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Too many canonical things here I still need to see; might go with either Buñuel or Kurosawa, but I have to say (controversially?) that this is one year where I actually have no quarrel with the Best Picture winner.

Can't decide which arthouse cliche I prefer right now. Therefore I will write in The Connection.

I have to say (controversially?) that this is one year where I actually have no quarrel with the Best Picture winner

It's probably my favorite of the decade's BPs also, maybe just behind In the Heat of the Night.

I've read auteurists defending El Cid.

Chronicle Of A Summer. Docs that centre on ordinary ppl talking about their lives are catnip to me, cf the Up series and Place de La Republique.

xp I mean, I've read auteurists defending My Son John.

I haven't seen Divorce Italian Style but Seduced & Abandoned is one of the most harrowing films that I've ever seen billed as a comedy; Germi seems more interested in calling bullshit on Italian masculinity than any of his contemporaries.

DIS is some cute bullshit, though, and I realized re-watching La Dolce Vita for the sake of my film class that Mastroianni's charms are lost on me.

Il Posto is a perfect small movie in its way.

It is. I sometimes wonder if it gets confused with Il Postino (not crazy about the English title, The Sound of Trumpets).

i have seen one film on this list so i guess i’ll vote for it (the godard, which i’ve seen many times and probably would still really love if i watched it again)

I still haven't watched Il Posto.

Olmi's work has a range that you wouldn't know if you only saw Il Posto (which is good) and Tree of Wooden Clogs (pretty dull). I really liked a couple of mid-career films that are neither gentle social observation or blunt realism: One Fine Day from 1969 and The Circumstance from 1973. They take place in a middle class environment and they're like a less-arty Antonioni.

see I find Tree of Wooden Clogs soothing: his ambient Eno fiflm.

These are the 5 masterpieces I've seen from this year:

The Ladies’ Man (Jerry Lewis, USA)
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, France)
Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, France)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, UK)
Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, Spain)

Tho if I'm to be honest, I probably rate Viridiana toward the bottom of the '60s Buñuel list. (Still a masterpiece.)

Me too. It gets too slow in the second third.

In the best Buñuel films, it feels like he's challenging his own assumptions as well as the audience's. Viridiana feels like he's already proved his points, I don't feel he's weighing any of the issues.

that's a shrewd point

Somebody said that Buñuel didn't really understand her character, which explains why the film becomes more inert once the uncle dies.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I've only seen a few of these, but The Hustler is a really dark and fucked-up movie, so that.

Don’t want to have to pick.

But I did

The problem with The Hustler is it's so damn literary and Newman's still besotted with the Method. I wish the performance he gave in The Color of Money was the one he'd given then.

It's not Newman's best work, but everyone around him (Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott, Piper Laurie, Murray Hamilton) is great.

It is very method-y, but I'd say it's about as great as that kind of thing ever gets, this side of On the Waterfront. And yes, the supporting cast is amazing, Scott and Laurie especially. Keep an eye peeled for Jake LaMotta as a bartender.

I loved the cynicism in Viridiana, the mirror images of the end and the beginning and its criticism of Franco's Spain. immediately following it The Exterminating Angel was another amazing film

voted for Last Year at Marienbad a very strange film

Scott is by far the best thing in it.

George C. Scott in his "blink-and-you-miss-it" role in Last Year at Marienbad.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.