Jonathan Rosenbaum’s 1000 Essential Films: 1960s

Originally published in Essential Cinema, copyright 2004 Jonathan Rosenbaum

Below are Rosenbaum's 132 favorite films from the 1960s:

1960 
The Bellboy (Jerry Lewis) 
Bells are Ringing (Minnelli) 
Les bonnes femmes (Claude Chabrol)
The Cloud-Capped Star (Ghatak)
Devi (Satyajit Ray)
Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks)
The False Student (Masumura)
Let's Make Love (Cukor)
Psycho (Hitchcock)
The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray)
Shadows (Cassavetes)
Spartacus (Kubrick)
The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Lang)
Tirez sur la pianiste (Truffaut)
Wild River (Kazan)
The Young One (Bunuel)
Zazie dans le metro (Louis Malle)

1961
Accatone (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Chronicle of a Summer (Rouch/ Edgar Morin)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda)
The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie)
The Hustler (Robert Rossen)
The Ladies' Man (Jerry Lewis)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
Lola (Jacques Demy)
Paris nous appartient (Jacques Rivette)
Viridiana (Bunuel)
A Wife Confesses (Masumura)

1962
An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa)
Confessions of an Opium Eater (Albert Zugsmith)
Eclipse (Antonioni)
The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel)
The House is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
Le rendez-vous de minuit (Roger Leenhardt)
Too Late Blues (Cassavetes)

1963
About Something Else (Vera Chytilova)
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
Contempt (Godard)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
The Leopard (Visconti)
Mediterranee (Jean-Daniel Pollet)
Muriel (Resnais)
The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis)
La ricotta (Pasolini)
Shock Corridor (Fuller)
The Trial (Welles)

1964
Band of Outsiders (Godard)
The Battle of Culloden (Peter Watkins)
Before the Revolution (Bernardo Bertolucci)
Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha)
The Disorderly Orderly (Tashlin)
Gertrud (Dreyer)
A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester)
I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov)
La jetee (Chris Marker)
The Married Woman (Godard)
Noviciat (Noel Burch)
La peau douce (Truffaut)
Point of Order! (Emilie De Antonio)
Red Desert (Antonioni)
Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov)
Zulu (Endfield)

1965
Alphaville (Godard)
Brick and Mirror (Ebrahim Golestan)
The Enchanted Desna (Julia Solntseva)
Masculine Feminine (Godard)
Not Reconciled (Jean-Marie Straub / Daniele Huillet)
Red Line 7000 (Hawks)
Report (Bruce Conner)
Vinyl (Andy Warhol)

1966
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
Black Girl (La noire de) (Ousmane Sembene)
Daisies (Chytilova)
Hawks and Sparrows (Pasolini)
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger)
Lord Love a Duck (George Axelrod)
Made in USA (Godard)
Oedipus Rex (Pasolini)
Persona (Bergman)
Red Angel (Masumura)
Two or Three Things I Know about Her (Godard)
The War Game (Watkins)
What's Up, Tiger Lily? (Woody Allen)

1967
Anticipation (Godard)
Belle de jour (Bunuel)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
China Is Near (Marco Bellochio)
La chinoise (Godard)
David Holzman's Diary (Jim McBride)
Le horla (Pollet)
Love Affair (Dusan Makavejev)
Mouchette (Bresson)
Playtime (Tati)
Point Blank (John Boorman)
La prise de pouvoir de Louis XIV (Rossellini)
Privilege (Watkins)
The Red and the White (Miklos Jancso)
The Shooting (Monte Hellman)
Wavelength (Michael Snow)
Weekend (Godard)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (Demy)

1968
The Bridegroom, the Comedienne, and the Pimp (Straub/Huillet)
Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima)
Faces (Cassavetes)
Je t'aime, je t'aime (Resnais)
The Party (Blake Edwards)
Petulia (Lester)
The Plot against Harry (Michael Roemer)
Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)
Sayat Nova (Paradjanov)
The 17th Parallel (Joris Ivens/ Marceline Loridan)
Stolen Kisses (Truffaut)
Targets (Peter Bogdanovich)
Teorema (Pasolini)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

1969
L'amour fou (Rivette)
Back and Forth (Snow)
The Bed Sitting Room (Lester) Boy (Oshima)
La femme infidele (Chabrol)
Fuck (Blue Movie) (Warhol)
The Grandmother (David Lynch)
Ice (Robert Kramer)
Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Ma nuit chez Maud (Eric Rohmer)
Mister Freedom (William Klein)
A Time for Dying (Budd Boetticher)
Tom Tom the Piper's Son (Ken Jacobs)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)

So who ruled the '60s? Rosenbaum's auteur scorecard:

Godard - 10 Pasolini - 5 Bunuel - 3 Lester- 3 Lewis - 3 Masumura - 3 Resnais - 3 Watkins - 3 Antonioni - 2 Bresson - 2 Cassavetes - 2 Chabrol - 2 Chytilova - 2 Demy - 2 Kubrick - 2 Oshima - 2 Paradjanov - 2 Rivette - 2 Snow - 2 Straub/Huillet - 2 Truffaut - 2 Warhol - 2