The Best Movies of the 1960s

The 1960s ranked by our composite score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — not one critic's opinion, but the weight of the whole canon.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) leads with a composite score of 7.71.

1
Lawrence of Arabia1962 · David Lean
7.71
Oscar Best Picture winner 1962 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1963 #1 · BFI Top 100 British films #3
2
2001: A Space Odyssey1968 · Stanley Kubrick
6.65
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #6 · BAFTA Best Film nominee 1969
3
Dr. Strangelove1964 · Stanley Kubrick
5.25
BAFTA Best Film winner 1965 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1964 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #46
4
La Dolce Vita1960 · Federico Fellini
5.21
Palme d'Or winner 1960 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1960 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #35
5
Midnight Cowboy1969 · John Schlesinger
4.85
Oscar Best Picture winner 1969 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1969 #2 · AFI 100 (2007) #43
6
The Battle of Algiers1966 · Gillo Pontecorvo
4.80
Venice Golden Lion winner 1965 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22
7
The Apartment1960 · Billy Wilder
4.70
Oscar Best Picture winner 1960 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #54 · AFI 100 (2007) #80
8
West Side Story1961 · Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins
4.42
Oscar Best Picture winner 1961 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1961 #4 · AFI 100 (2007) #51
9
Blowup1966 · Michelangelo Antonioni
4.41
Palme d'Or winner 1967 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #2 · BFI Top 100 British films #60
10
The Sound of Music1965 · Robert Wise
4.35
Oscar Best Picture winner 1965 · AFI 100 (2007) #40 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1965 #9
11
Viridiana1961 · Luis Buñuel
4.25
Palme d'Or winner 1961 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #52 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1962 #4
12
In the Heat of the Night1967 · Norman Jewison
4.20
Oscar Best Picture winner 1967 · AFI 100 (2007) #75 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #8
13
The Long Absence1961 · Henri Colpi
4.18
Palme d'Or winner 1961 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1964 #1 · Kurosawa's 100 favorite films
14
If....1968 · Lindsay Anderson
4.07
Palme d'Or winner 1969 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1969 #3 · BFI Top 100 British films #12
15
The Leopard1963 · Luchino Visconti
3.97
Palme d'Or winner 1963 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #90 · Vatican film list
16
A Man for All Seasons1966 · Fred Zinnemann
3.92
Oscar Best Picture winner 1966 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #4 · BFI Top 100 British films #43
17
Tom Jones1963 · Tony Richardson
3.74
Oscar Best Picture winner 1963 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1964 #8 · BFI Top 100 British films #51
18
Last Year at Marienbad1961 · Alain Resnais
3.69
Venice Golden Lion winner 1961 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1964 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #169
19
8½1963 · Federico Fellini
3.67
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1965 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #31
20
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg1964 · Jacques Demy
3.59
Palme d'Or winner 1964 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #122 · Criterion Collection spine #716
21
My Fair Lady1964 · George Cukor
3.59
Oscar Best Picture winner 1964 · AFI 100 (1998) #91 · National Film Registry (inducted 2018)
22
The Hustler1961 · Robert Rossen
3.56
BAFTA Best Film winner 1962 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1961 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1962 #9
23
A Man and a Woman1966 · Claude Lelouch
3.55
Palme d'Or winner 1966 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1966 #5 · Criterion Collection spine #1304
24
La Notte1961 · Michelangelo Antonioni
3.53
Berlin Golden Bear winner 1961 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #52 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1961 #7
25
Persona1966 · Ingmar Bergman
3.47
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1967 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #9 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #18
26
Red Desert1964 · Michelangelo Antonioni
3.41
Venice Golden Lion winner 1964 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #169 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1964 #6
27
Oliver!1968 · Carol Reed
3.24
Oscar Best Picture winner 1968 · BFI Top 100 British films #77
28
Bonnie and Clyde1967 · Arthur Penn
3.12
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1968 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1967 · AFI 100 (2007) #42
29
O Pagador de Promessas1962 · Anselmo Duarte
3.00
Palme d'Or winner 1962
30
The Knack ...and How to Get It1965 · Richard Lester
3.00
Palme d'Or winner 1965

Old system, new waves

The 1960s is the hinge decade of film history: it opens inside the old studio order — big roadshow musicals, epics shot on 70mm — and closes with that order in ruins. The French New Wave detonated first: between 1959 and 1962, Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Resnais and Demy proved you could make world-class cinema with handheld cameras, natural light, jump cuts and borrowed apartments. The shockwave was global. Britain got its kitchen-sink realists, Italy pushed into modernism with Fellini and Antonioni, Japan and Eastern Europe produced their own new waves, and by mid-decade "art cinema" was a parallel industry with its own stars, festivals and economics.

Hollywood spent the decade caught between the two worlds, and the tension shows in the canon. The early years belong to the last flowering of classical craft — Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is arguably the studio epic's perfection — and to blockbuster musicals like West Side Story and The Sound of Music, which won Best Pictures and broke box-office records even as the culture shifted under them. The Production Code, unenforceable after a decade of erosion, was formally replaced by the ratings system in 1968. That same year Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film financed by a major studio that behaves like an avant-garde installation — the clearest possible signal that the audience, and the definition of a "big" film, had changed for good.

What the lists remember

Cross-referencing the canon-making sources shows an interesting split personality for this decade. The critics' polls are dominated by the European modernists — 8½, the New Wave films, late Buñuel — while the awards record and the institutional canons preserve the big English-language productions. Both memories are accurate; they simply measure different rooms of the same decade. Our composite score holds them in one frame: Kubrick and Fellini, Demy's candy-colored musical tragedy and Leone's dust-blown Westerns (Italian-made, and the decade's most influential export to Hollywood's own genre).

If you want one path through the sixties, follow the collapse of certainty: start with the confident craftsmanship of 1962, detour through the New Wave's cheerful demolition of film grammar, and end at 1968–69, when the failures of expensive musicals and the success of cheap, personal films convinced the studios to hand the keys to a new generation. The 1970s were signed into existence by the 1960s' account books.