Top Films of the Decade - The 1960s

[LMP]

Hey all, welcome to the last Films of the Decade voting thread. You'll submit your Top 15 picks of what in your opinion were the best movies of said decade, instead of strictly favorites (personally, I do a composite of favorites and best, so a good share of films get listed). You're more than welcome to revise your list as many times as you want as long as you tell me which one you want me to count; you can also put more than 15 movies on your list, I'll only count the Top 15. The films will be assigned a point value according to their placement on the list (15 points for #1, 14 points for #2, etc...). Films have to be on at least 2 lists to be considered for the final list.

The main purpose of this thread is to provoke discussion about these films and each others' tastes... and most importantly for fun. The more lists submitted, the better the overall list becomes, so please submit when you can.

Please submit your list in the format provided below, it makes compiling and adding up votes 100x easier, trust me. No awkward spaces or reverse order lists, please. I cannot stress this enough:

Example:
1. 2001: A Spacy Odyssey
2. Psycho
3. Dr. Strangelove...

This is the last decade list, so when submissions start stopping for this list and any of the other decades, the voting period will end and I'll compile the final lists for everyone to see.

Here are the links to the other voting threads:

The 1970s: http://forum.interference.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=180975
The 1980s: http://forum.interference.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=180755
The 1990s: http://forum.interference.com/t180590.html
The 2000s: http://forum.interference.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=180273

The more lists people submit, the more variety goes into the final list. Cool beans.

 

[phanan]

1. Lawrence Of Arabia
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. To Kill A Mockingbird
4. Psycho
5. The Manchurian Candidate
6. A Hard Day's Night
7. The Graduate
8. Dr. Strangelove
9. Midnight Cowboy
10. Once Upon A Time In The West
11. Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
12. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
13. Bonnie And Clyde
14. Planet Of The Apes
15. Goldfinger

Too bad Ben Hur was released in 1959...

 

[lazarus]

This is the last decade list, so when submissions start stopping for this list and any of the other decades, the voting period will end and I'll compile the final lists for everyone to see.

Hell no it ain't the last decade.

50's gonna get ya! I'll run it myself!

And you've probably seen more from that decade then you think.

anyway...la 60's:


1. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968)
2. The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962)
3. The Trial (WELLES, 1962)
4. Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 1962)
5. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)
6. Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964)
7. The Naked Kiss (Fuller, 1964)
8. The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
9. Band of Outsiders (Godard, 1964)
10. Two for the Road (Donen, 1967)
11. Doctor Zhivago (Lean, 1965)
12. Home From The Hill (Minnelli, 1960)
13. 8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)
14. The Americanization of Emily (Hiller, 1964)
15. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)

Man, 1964 was a good year! 5 films? With 3 of my Top 4 from 1962? Clearly my bias was on the first half of the decade, as only 2 films were from the other end. I left off big names like Bonnie & Clyde, 2001, and The Graduate off, partially because I've become enchanted more recently by other newly-seen films, and partially because I'm bored of seeing them listed all the time. Would have loved to have made room for Welles's Chimes At Midnight, Frankenheimer's Seconds, My Fair Lady, and Fellini's La Dolce Vita, and Persona.

Also, monkeyskin, don't ask why I have Zhivago here instead of Lawrence. I'm not sure I have a response at this moment.

The more I look at it, the more I'm beginning to think this decade may have been even better than the 70's. Maybe.

 

[Lancemc]

I'm going to abstain from submitting a list for this decade as well.

I could probably list more amazing films that I haven't seen yet from the 60's than ones I have...and I've probably seen a lot.

 

[No spoken words]

No 2001 for Laz.

 

[Lancemc]

No 2001 for Laz.

 

[No spoken words]

Oh, I'd rank Strangelove ahead of 2001 too. Is Laz just listing one director only?

 

[lazarus]

No. See my statements below my list.

It's one of those great films I never feel like watching.

 

[No spoken words]

I read your comments but my eyes skipped past 2001, somehow...

 

[lazarus]

Maybe monkeyskin's too lazy to repost:

Best of the 1960s
1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Once Upon a Time in the West
3. The Battle of Algiers
4. Persona
5. Dr Strangelove
6. The Apartment
7. Kes
8. To Kill a Mockingbird
9. Pyscho
10. Hud
11. Rosemary's Baby
12. The Graduate
13. High and Low
14. Jules et Jim
15. 8 1/2

 

[monkeyskin]

Monkeyskin was fast asleep in England when this thread popped up (at 3.20 am)

And I won't ask about Dr Zhivago beating out Lawrence laz. I wasn't too keen on it myself though, with only the climatic scene on the bus resonating with me. It looked pretty though.

And damn straight this ain't the last list, 1950s is one of my best lists!

 

[monkeyskin]

Thread must not die after only three lists posted and one page so far. So here’s a film from 1964 that I enjoyed recently:

The Pawnbroker
From Sidney Lumet comes this story of a Jewish Holocaust survivor now running a pawn shop in a New York ghetto. After witnessing horror after horror at the hands of the Nazis and losing so much to them, he has become cold and detached from his fellow man. He believes he is surviving by ‘playing the system’ and operates on a basis of every man for himself. After all, no one helped him back in the concentration camp. Contrasting life in the ghetto with imprisonment by the Nazis with extremely effective cuts, shows how inhumanity can warp and destroy a person’s soul and the cost of trying to reclaim it. Whilst still a powerful film, I cannot imagine the impact this must have had forty years ago, when it was among the first major films to deal with the Holocaust and its victims.

 

[LMP]

Let's at least get 2 more lists, more than that would be excellent.

 

[Lila64]

 

[hardyharhar]

Haven't been around much lately, but had this done a while ago. I'll just wing the order now

1. Dr. Strangelove
2. West Side Story
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. The Wild Bunch
5. The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai in English)
6. The Sound of Music
7. 2001
8. A Hard Day's Night
9. Jason & the Argonauts (top notch Harryhausen)
10. What's Up, Tiger Lily? (japanese spy film dubbed by Woody Allen)
11. Destroy All Monsters (Godzilla, Mothra, Gammera & more)
12. The Dirty Dozen
13. Billy Budd (first film to bum me out)
14. Bye Bye Birdie
15. 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (stranger, T. Randall, comes to town & shakes things up. Cool effects)

And all these belong in my top 15 also: Midnight Cowboy, Psycho, The Birds, Night of the Living Dead, Horror Express, Wait Until Dark, Mary Poppins, Lawrence of Arabia, The Great Escape, Son of Godzilla, Mysterious Island, Any Jerry Lewis comedy (Cinderfella, Disorderly Orderly, etc..), Father Goose, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, To Sir With Love, All Sergio Leone (Good, Bad & Ugly, Fistful of $, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon..), The Apartment, The Incredible Journey, 3 Lives of Thomasina, Camelot, In the Heat of the Night, most of the Bond films, any Burt Lancaster.

Some are pretty lame, but were faves as a kid And since I use these threads (ZS, Bang & Clatter) to find current entertainment for myself, maybe you young-uns will find something here in my list you may be unaware of but might enjoy.

I think a 50's list would be pretty cool

 

[monkeyskin]

I think a 50's list would be pretty cool

Well that's three of us at least. LMP, u betta git bizza soon!

And also Hardyharhar, nice to see some Audrey Hepburn love in your runner's up list, I just couldn't find space in either my main 60s or 50s lists for any of her films and it killed me

There's also a bunch I haven't seen from your lists so I'll be sure to check them out at some point. Thanks

 

[LMP]

You want to just post the '50s lists in here, too? I don't see there being a problem with that.

 

[phanan]

2. West Side Story

Damn. Forgot about that one.

 

[hardyharhar]

Damn. Forgot about that one.

So did I: Strait Jacket w/ Joan Crawford (cheesy but effective thriller/horror), and Captain Newman, MD with Gregory Peck (semi-comedy with great support from Tony Curtis, Angie Dickinson, Bobby Darin, Eddie Albert & a young Robert Duvall)
And I forgot another too: The Great Race with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon & Natalie Wood. Another screwball comedy my sister would make me watch, but some funny stuff with Tony Curtis as the good guy in white and Jack Lemmon as evil Professor Fate. A New York to Paris auto race in early 1900's. Blake Edwards.

What the heck, just thought I'd throw those out there.


I'll do a 50's list here LMP. It'll take a few days cuz it's hard to remember,as I'm still finding out with the 60's list, but it should be a wacky list filled with B sci fi (a la Ed Wood) & horror. But there's plenty of really great films I'll make room for Hopefully Phanan does a list too (Ben Hur )

 

[lazarus]

Well that's three of us at least. LMP, u betta git bizza soon!

And also Hardyharhar, nice to see some Audrey Hepburn love in your runner's up list, I just couldn't find space in either my main 60s or 50s lists for any of her films and it killed me

Ironically I also had an Audrey film come very close to making my list; Two for the Road with her & Albert Finney. Great film written by Eyes Wide Shut's screenwriter Frederick Raphael and directed by Stanley Donen, which flashes back and forward in time to illustrate the dissolution of a couple's marriage over a span of 10 years or so, all with scenes from vacations they've taken together.

 

[phanan]

Perhaps instead of doing a 50's list, you do one final one that is pre-1960. That would be a nice list.

 

[lazarus]

Perhaps instead of doing a 50's list, you do one final one that is pre-1960. That would be a nice list.

I don't know about that. There are so many great films from the 50's and 40's it's going to be hard enough to make the individual lists as it is. Between Orson Welles and Hitchcock alone I could fill up 15 spots.

 

[INDY500]

[11. Destroy All Monsters (Godzilla, Mothra, Gammera & more)
[/B]

Gammera wasn't a Toho monster so isn't in Destroy All Monsters.

That's like saying the "Great Escape" starred James Garner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and...Don Rickles, because he was in some war movies too.

 

[monkeyskin]

Perhaps instead of doing a 50's list, you do one final one that is pre-1960. That would be a nice list.

Originally posted by lazarus
I don't know about that. There are so many great films from the 50's and 40's it's going to be hard enough to make the individual lists as it is. Between Orson Welles and Hitchcock alone I could fill up 15 spots.

What laz said. Even limiting myself to one film per director I've had to leave some great films out. The 30s was easier though as I haven't seen as much

But seeing as how this might be pretty much the end of this decades series, I'll just post the rest of my lists in this thread:

Best of the 1950s
Rear Window
Ikiru
The Searchers
The 400 Blows
12 Angry Men
Wild Strawberries
Touch of Evil
Some Like It Hot
Umberto D
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Les Diaboliques
All About Eve
Rio Bravo
The Night of the Hunter
Paths of Glory

I'm not happy with the order, but try as I might I can't rank these any better. I went for Rear Window as my Hitchcock entry as it came down to that, Vertigo and North By North west as his best of the decade. NBNW while great fun and expertly made is a bit on the light side and I just can't seem to like Vertigo. Some Like It Hot beat Sunset Blvd. and Witness for the Prosecution in the Wilder category for the same reason NBNW lost out. Yes it's a bit on the frothy side but it's just so hysterically funny and memorable it merits inclusion. Also, I've got enough film noir without adding Sunset Blvd. to the mix. Finally, Ikiru just beat out Rashomon as my Kurosawa film. Yes I know I only just saw it, but it strikes me as a much deeper and thought provoking film than Rashomon or even The Seven Samurai. I guess we'll see if I still feel that way next time I do this list.

Those that didn't quite make it include Anatomy of a Murder, The Big Heat, Roman Holiday (shame to leave out Audrey again), Winchester '73 and The Asphalt Jungle.

I'll post my 40s list in a few days.

 

[lazarus]

Here's some advice for those unsure if they could put together a 50's list; as in, you've seen a good deal of older films but don't know the years, directors, titles, etc:

1. Pull up the Academy Awards from 1950 and work your way forward (easiest way to get there is search for All About Eve, click on Awards, then click on the year next to the list of noms & wins). This doesn't necessarily represent all the best of the decade, but does contain many top films, and is a great starting point.

2. Also search for these directors and scroll through their filmographies to see if there's anything you recognize:

John Ford
Vincente Minnelli
Alfred Hitchcock
John Huston
Fritz Lang
Samuel Fuller
Anthony Mann
Stanley Kubrick
David Lean
Joseph Mankiewicz
Orson Welles
Billy Wilder
Stanley Donen

3. And of course there are a handful of Disney films from the decade that are worth considering.

 

[phanan]

I made the suggestion based on the hopes that it would involve more people in submitting lists, as there weren't too many people involved with this one. I myself can easily do each decade still.

 

[monkeyskin]

The 50s seems to be a turning point in cinema as far as the acting talent goes. On the one hand you've got Hollywood royalty from the 40s and 30s such as:

Cary Grant
Jimmy Stewart
Humphrey Bogart
Bette Davis
Henry Fonda
Katherine Hepburn
Ingrid Bergman
Gregory Peck

etc, all starting to show their age and jostling for space with a host of exciting new talent such as:

Marlon Brando
James Dean
Audrey Hepburn
Marilyn Monroe
Jack Lemmon
Grace Kelly

 

[monkeyskin]

I made the suggestion based on the hopes that it would involve more people in submitting lists, as there weren't too many people involved with this one. I myself can easily do each decade still.

Oh OK, that sounds like a good idea then. Maybe even make it pre-1970s if it gets more lists posted.

 

[lazarus]

I'm going to start a new thread, as I'd rather see them separated from the 60's list, even if we don't get many entries...

 

[hardyharhar]

Gammera wasn't a Toho monster so isn't in Destroy All Monsters.

That's like saying the "Great Escape" starred James Garner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and...Don Rickles, because he was in some war movies too.

Your right Indy. Me dum dum

It's been so long since I've seen it, I just assumed all the usual suspects (Rodan, Ghidrah, Mothra.....)were in this epic battle. And I never actually knew them by studio. But I know Don Rickles wasn't in Great Escape


Now, how 'bout you submitting a list. We could use the input And it's fun.