Here are the best films of the 1960s that I have seen:

     1.  Rachel, Rachel is directed by the late actor Paul Newman and its message is to keep your head up and stay focused.  A young man offers someone a flower, church services are held, and two great performances by Joanne Woodward and Estelle Parsons infuse the picture with clarity, insight, and intelligence.  Rachel, Rachel is marvelous.

     2.  2001: A Space Odyssey is an hallucinatory head trip from beginning to end.  Stanley Kubrick's film is an enveloping experience from the first images of primates studying a giant monolith to the light show at the end.  It is restrained, mostly silent, and textured with shots of stunning beauty.

     3.  Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb delivers quirky, sardonic laughs and is a black-and-white masterpiece filled to the brim with masterful actors studied in the art of joyous performance.  It even has multiple roles for the brilliant Peter Sellers and nuanced work from George C. Scott.  It is a master class in acting and is laced with dark social satire and comedy.  The film is about the possibility of nuclear war. 

     4.  The Wild Bunch is Sam Peckinpah's magnum opus, a briskly edited western in the great tradition of expansive epics.  The beginning scenes show children torturing a scorpion being devoured by ants.  Brilliant set piece after set piece give way to a fusion of adroit filmmaking and wise storytelling.

     5.  Fellini's 8 1/2 is an allegory about filmmaking and anxiety.

     6.  La Dolce Vita is Federico Fellini's excursion into the sweet life a la Rome in the 1950s.  The picture is about a newspaperman who tours underground culture.  The furtive glances of a young girl at the end are indelible.    

     7.  Easy Rider.  Two hippies hit the road on motorcycles stashed with drugs, making friends along the way with a young Jack Nicholson who dons a goofy helmet.  A scene where the characters "trip" on illegal L.S.D. is an epic auditory and visual hallucination.  In a word, brilliant.  Ideas of life, death, and experience are captured on film for everyone to see.    

     8.  Bonnie and Clyde.  Two star-crossed lovers rob banks and that will eventually lead to their demise.  A classic quote occurs when a mother says "You're not going to move but one mile away from me."    

     9.  Lawrence of Arabia.  A grainy, gorgeous epic about an accomplished man who perished in a tragic motorcycle accident.

     10.  Z.  A political expose of biting wit about a coup d'etat, from director Costa-Gavras.  Exciting, bold filmmaking.

Tags: Film Decade '60s

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