When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1969, it gave its Best Picture award to Midnight Cowboy. They should've given that a pair of Best Actor statuettes and reserved Best Picture for one of these:
1. The Wild Bunch
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Written by Peckinpah and Walon Green, from a story by Green and Roy Sickner
The best American western of the '60s.
2. The Passion of Anna
Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman
"Has it ever occurred to you that the worse off people are, the less they complain? Finally, they're silent even if they're living creatures with nerves, eyes, and hands. Vast armies of victims and hangmen. The sun rises and falls, heavily."
3. Goyokin
Directed by Hideo Gosha
Written by Gosha and Kei Tasaka
The ronin vs. the state.
4. The Milky Way
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière
The Contra Haereses of road movies.
5. Take the Money and Run
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Mickey Rose
"I think that if he'd been a successful criminal, he would have felt better. You know, he never made the '10 most wanted' list. It's very unfair voting—it's who you know."
6. Army of Shadows
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
Written by Melville, from a novel by Joseph Kessel
When it comes to films about the French resistance, this is Casablanca's cheerless cousin. There's no shortage of nobility here, but there is far more ruthlessness than romance.
7. The Sorrow and the Pity
Directed by Marcel Ophüls
Written by Ophüls and André Harris
Another film about the resistance. This one makes Army of Shadows look starry-eyed.
8. The Rain People
Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Of Mice and Men on mescaline.
9. Burn!
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Written by Franco Solinas and Giorgio Arlorio
Start with the storyline of a Zapata western, but move it from Mexico to the Caribbean. Remix your history, so William Walker is transformed from a Tennessee filibuster to a British covert agent. Marinate those ingredients in anti-imperial New Left politics, then season with one of Morricone's best scores. Serve with Molotov cocktails.
10. Z
Directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras
Written by Costa-Gavras and Jorge Semprún
This one has that '60s revolutionary spirit too, plus a conspiratorial ambiance that we're more likely these days to associate with the '70s.
Honorable mentions:
11. La Femme Infidèle (Claude Chabrol)
12. Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie)
13. My Night at Maud's (Éric Rohmer)
14. Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper)
15. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
16. The Sun's Gonna Shine (Les Blank, Skip Gerson)
17. Salesman (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin)
18. The Adding Machine (Jerome Epstein)
19. Invocation of My Demon Brother (Kenneth Anger)
20. Bambi Meets Godzilla (Marv Newland)
Of the films of 1969 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Swimming Pool and Blaumilch Canal.
