An evolving list of ★★★★ / ★★★★★ films released during the 1960’s. The following are my awards (as they currently stand):

Hutch d’Or (Best Film): 
2001: A Space Odyssey (Director: Stanley Kubrick)

Best Director (tied):
Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr Strangelove, and
Andrei Tarkovsky for Andrei Rublev and Ivan’s Childhood

Best Actor (tied):
Peter Sellers for Dr Strangelove and
Jack Lemmon for The Apartment

Best Actress (tied):
Corinne Marchand for Cleo from 5 to 7 and
Shirley MacLaine for The Apartment

Best Screenplay (tied):
Peter George, Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick for Dr Strangelove and
Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond for The Apartment

Best Cinematography:
Vadim Yusov for Andrei Rublev and Ivan’s Childhood

Best Original Score (tied):
Bernard Herrmann for Psycho and Dmitri Shostakovich for Hamlet and
Georges Delerue for Le Mépris 

Best Soundtrack:
2001: A Space Odyssey (Director: Stanley Kubrick)

Best Short:
La Jetee (Director: Chris Marker)

Best Documentary:
Love Meetings (Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini)

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A Brief Review of the Decade:

Sixteen ★★★★★ films, around the highest of any decade, and a best of list of bona-fide heavyweights. The 60’s for me is my classic decade: the one I look back on as being the apex of pre-modern cinema. It was also a watershed decade during which the formal classicism of the past met the desire to break all of the rules and explode the form. So we get the exuberance of the French new wave, the formal elegance of the new Japanese masters, the lavish riches of Italian cinema (both urban and spaghetti), the poetic brilliance of Soviet cinema, and some of the most iconic films in the history of Hollywood. And in my opinion above all else, there’s Stanley Kubrick’s vision and technical mastery lifting us beyond the spectacular and into the future and outer space. 

2001: A Space Odyssey was unlike anything that had ever been seen or heard before, and despite its vintage, it still towers above other films for its technical and imaginative audacity. As well as providing one of the most visually astonishing films ever made it delivered the greatest soundtrack of all time. But if that wasn’t enough, Stanley Kubrick preceded it with another masterpiece in Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Whereas 2001 was open-ended and abstract in its aims, Dr Strangelove was as taut and effective a satire as there has ever been. The differences between the films are night and day, and yet they both show the remarkably precise and controlled hand of Kubrick’s almost unparalleled direction. 

I say almost unparalleled, because there was also Andrei Tarkovsky, in many ways the poetic foil to Kubrick’s precision. Tarkovsky gave us his beautiful debut, Ivan’s Childhood, and then delivered what I believe to be the greatest historical epic ever made in Andrei Rublev. Both films were shot by Vadim Yusov and the camerawork is simply sensational, like its own character, dreamy, soaring, and staggering in its range. 

Something of Tarkovsky’s formal elegance and poetic eye could be found in compatriot Grigori Kozintsev’s highly cinematic version of Hamlet, which still stands as one of, if not the greatest of film versions of a Shakespeare play. It was boosted by a brilliant score by the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

From Shakespeare to Psycho, great film was also made of lesser literary stuff, and again music was instrumental in its success. Bernard Herrmann provided Alfred Hitchcock with one of the greatest and most iconic scores of all time. 

There were many great performances by actors over the course of the decade. Peter Sellars stands out for his three-part role in Dr Strangelove, a landmark in comic acting. And Corinne Marchand was unforgettably vain and vulnerable as Cleo in Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7. Billy Wilder’s masterpiece The Apartment gave us a pair of lead performances for the ages, with Jack Lemmon giving a gently comic and touching performance and Shirley MacLaine a brittle and moving one. Both actors made the most of a superb screenplay. 

Alongside the larger scale experimentation of Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Godard, Truffaut and others, Chris Marker directed a small innovative gem with La Jetee. In less than half an hour, using still images and a spare sound design, we witness humanity’s survival teetering on the edge alongside an intimate meditation on a single man’s life and love. Blink and you miss it.

The 60’s meant that the future of cinema was assured. The infinite sky was now the limit and the technical means to show it was at the disposal of the great directors. Cinema as art was a thing. But it could still shock and entertain and it could rise up and rage alongside the great political movements of the time. The 70’s would have a lot to live up to.

Best of the 1950’s <<< >>> Best of the 1970's