When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1960, it gave its Best Picture award to Billy Wilder's The Apartment. I don't often say this, but the Academy got it exactly right.
1. The Apartment
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
A comic drama—or dramatic comedy?—about the corrupting effects of hierarchy, and what it means to actually assert your freedom. The best American director's best film.
2. Cruel Story of Youth
Written and directed by Nagisa Oshima
The Japanese Rebel Without a Cause, which I actually like better than the original Rebel Without a Cause.
3. Psycho
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Joseph Stefano, from a novel by Robert Bloch
It's a revered classic now, but back in the day this was widely condemned in terms now reserved for films like Saw.
4. La Dolce Vita
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, from a story by Fellini, Flaiano, and Pinelli
"Don't be like me. Salvation doesn't lie within four walls."
5. The Little Shop of Horrors
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Charles B. Griffith
There's a lot to like in this low-budget horror-comedy, including a very young Jack Nicholson in the role Bill Murray would play in the musical remake. But my favorite bit is the pair of cops on loan from Dragnet and their deadpan conversations. "How are the kids?" "Lost one yesterday." "How'd that happen?" "Playing with matches." "Well, those are the breaks."
6. Le Trou
Directed by Jacques Becker
Written by Jacques Becker, José Giovanni, and Jean Aurel, from a novel by Giovanni
A prison-break procedural.
7. Peeping Tom
Directed by Michael Powell
Wirtten by Leo Marks
Like Psycho, this was widely condemned in terms now reserved for films like Saw. But while Psycho was a huge hit for Hitchcock, Peeping Tom practically destroyed Powell's career.
8. The Virgin Spring
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ulla Isaksson
Unlike Psycho and Peeping Tom, this highbrow revenge flick was not widely condemned in terms now reserved for films like Saw. But this is the one that was remade as The Last House on the Left.
9. The Young One
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel and Hugo Butler, from a story by Peter Matthiessen
Much more complicated than the typical racial message-movie.
10. The Housemaid
Written and directed by Kim Ki-young
This Korean thriller progresses steadily from film noir to horror before revealing it belonged all along to a larger genre: the male fantasy disguised as a nightmare.
Honorable mentions:
11. Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau)
12. Shoot the Piano Player (François Truffaut)
13. Comanche Station (Budd Boetticher)
14. Purple Noon (René Clément)
15. Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla)
16. Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti)
17. Tunes of Glory (Ronald Neame)
18. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
19. Jigoku (Nobuo Nakagawa)
20. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
Footnote: Someone really ought to remake Tunes of Glory as a catty backstage musical with an all-girl cast.
Of the films of 1960 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Cloud-Clapped Star.
