Yojimbo
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1961 · Japan
Leone took it wholesale for A Fistful of Dollars and Toho forced a settlement out of court: Kurosawa's samurai playing two gangs against each other is the template everyone still uses.
★ 8.4
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1961
Showing 6 films from 1961
West Side Story
Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins
1961
Romeo and Juliet moved to two New York gangs, and the dancing spills out of the theater into real streets: nothing on film snaps like Robbins's choreography.
★ 7.3
The Hustler
Directed by Robert Rossen
1961
Nobody has filmed a game better: Newman's pool hustler wants to be great and cannot get out of his own way, and the smoke never leaves the room.
★ 7.0
The Innocents
Directed by Jack Clayton
1961 · United Kingdom
Freddie Francis lit it so the corners of every frame stay dark and you keep looking into them: a governess with two children in a huge house becomes certain they are being visited.
★ 5.8
Judgment at Nuremberg
Directed by Stanley Kramer
1961
Stanley Kramer put real concentration camp footage into a Hollywood film in 1961 and made audiences sit with it: the trial is of judges, which makes the question about everybody.
★ 4.2
El Cid
Directed by Anthony Mann
1961
Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren in the last great historical epic before the genre collapsed: real castles in Spain, thousands of extras on horseback, and Miklos Rozsa's score doing the heavy lifting.
★ 2.8