Critics Poll: Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Tops Our 1960s Critics Poll

We’ve already covered the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Now we have the results for the Best Films of the 1960s.

It was a closer race than anticipated, but Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” topped our ’60s poll, filled with critics and filmmakers, besting Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” by just two votes.

In fact, Kubrick had two films in the top 3 — the other one being “Dr. Strangelove” (#3). The only other Hitchcock in the top 50 was “The Birds” at #38.

The highest-rated foreign-language film was Bergman’s “Persona,” (#7) one of the most beguiling movies of the decade. Almost half of the top 40 was composed of films not in the English language.

Because this was such a rich period in film history, especially with the total boom of foreign filmmakers entering the fray, I expect a rich variety of titles to make it and that’s just what happened.

Meanwhile, no director had more than two films listed in the top 40. Tied with a pair of films were Kubrick, Hitchcock, Nichols, Leone, Kurosawa, Antonioni and Fellini.

A list of the critics who participated – with hundreds of individual ballots.

RESULTS:

1) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick) 55 votes
2) Psycho (Hitchcock) 52
3) Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick) 37
4) Lawrence of Arabia (Lean) 37
5) The Graduate (Nichols) 29
6) Persona (Bergman) 28
7) Bonnie and Clyde (Penn) 27
8) Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski) 25
9) The Apartment (Wilder) 23
10) 8 1/2 (Fellini) 22

11) The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah) 22
12) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone) 18
13) The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer) 16
14) L’Avventura (Antonioni) 16
15) Night of the Living Dead (Romero) 16
16) High and Low (Kurosawa) 15
17) Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger) 15
18) Blow-Up (Antonioni) 15
19) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford) 15
20) La Dolce Vita (Fellini) 15

21) Jules et Jim (Truffaut) 15
22) Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson) 14
23) Playtime (Tati) 14
24) A Hard Days Night (Lester) 12
25) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy) 12
26) Cleo 5 a 7 (Varda) 11
27) Chimes at Midnight (Wells) 10
28) Contempt (Godard) 10
29) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill) 10
30) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols) 9

31) The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo) 9
32) In the Heat of the Night (Jewison) 9
33) West Side Story (Robbins/Wise) 9
34) Breathless (Godard) 9
35) The Birds (Hitchcock) 9
36) Once Upon A Time in the West (Leone) 8
37) The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel) 8
38) La Jetee (Marker) 7
39) Yojimbo (Kurosawa) 7
40) The Great Escape (Sturges) 7

41) Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson) 7
42) Lolita (Stanley Kubrick) 6
43) Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer) 6
44) The Hustler (Robert Rossen) 6
45) Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner) 6
46) The Leopard (Luchino Visconti) 6
47) The Sound of Music (Robert Wise) 6
48) To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan) 6
49) Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper) 6
50) If … (Lindsay Anderson) 6
51) Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais) 6
52) Point Blank (John Boorman) 5