Since the start of cinema, international movies have produced some of the best films in history. From the early German Expressionist cinema of the ’20s where Nosferatu was unleashed onto the world to Fritz Lang’s M in 1931 and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai in 1954, international movies influenced Hollywood in more ways than many fans will ever truly understand.
By the ’60s, there was a new era of fantastic international filmmakers from Japan and France to Italy and Sweden, and everywhere in between. These filmmakers had a considerable influence on the men who came later, with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and more championing the filmmakers from around the world who influenced them. If you want a quick start guide to international movies from the 1960s, here is a look at 10 of the best of that decade.
ARMY OF SHADOWS (1969)
Released at the end of the decade, Jean-Pierre Melville directed Army of Shadows in 1969. Melville was long considered the father of the French New Wave, and he has two movies on this list. When it comes to Army of Shadows, Melville left the genre of gangster and heist movies he specialized in for a tale about French Resistance fighters.
Melville presented a bleak and dark look at the resistance itself. The film was released to great controversy due to the civil unrest following May 68. The U.S. did not offer the movie anywhere until 2006, almost 40 years later.
THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)
Ingmar Bergman has a list of masterpieces longer than most people’s entire filmography. From The Seventh Seal and Summer Interlude to Wild Strawberries and Sawdust and Tinsel, he entered the ’60s as one of the world’s greatest living directors.
Bergman started the decade in style too. In 1960, he directed The Virgin Spring. The film tells the story of a father who seeks revenge against the men who raped and murdered his daughter. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and Wes Craven remade it as his debut film, The Last House on the Left.
BREATHLESS (1960)
Jean-Luc Godard is a name Steven Spielberg mentioned a lot when talking about his heroes and influences. He also influenced Quentin Tarantino, who has mentioned Breathless as one of his favorite films. The film follows a criminal who idolizes movie gangsters on the run from the police with his American girlfriend.
Breathless, which is originally titled À Bout de Souffle, helped popularize the French New Wave in America and turned Godard into a star, as this was his debut film.
LA DOLCE VITA (1960)
Federico Fellini is one of the most significant international filmmakers in cinema history. He picked up 12 Oscar nominations over his career, including winning four for Best Foreign Language Film. No other international filmmaker won as many. The interesting thing about his 1960 film, La Dolce Vita, is that it won an award, but it was for Best Costume Design: Black-and-White.
La Dolce Vita also won the Palme d’Or at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. The film is about a gossip journalist who wants to experience the sweet life of Rome while searching for love.
8 1/2 (1963)
Federico Fellini is back with his second movie on the list, his most misunderstood masterpiece. In 8 1/2, Fellini made a surreal comedy about a famous Italian director who has a creative block and sets out to find his next story.
The film was almost autobiographical, with Fellini fighting against the idea that studios wanted him to make one type of film. 8 1/2 won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and Costume Design.
LE SAMOURAI (1967)
The second Jean-Pierre Melville on this list is from 1967 with Le Samourai. Despite the title, this is about a gangster — more specifically, an assassin who works for a mob boss. When his boss betrays him and sends an assassin out to kill him, he seeks revenge against the men who betrayed him.
The film stars Alain Delon, one of the biggest heartthrobs of the ’60s. His role in Le Samourai was a change of pace for him, with the film containing minimal dialogue and long cuts. Over the years, the film has influenced everyone from John Woo (The Killer) to Jim Jarmusch (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) and Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive).
HARAKIRI (1962)
Masaki Kobayashi had a couple of great international films in the ’60s, including the horror movie Kwaidan and this movie — Harakiri. This is a samurai movie that takes place during the Edo period. It focuses on the idea of a masterless ronin committing seppuku, with an older samurai using the threat to bring war against a powerful and unstable Lord.
Harakiri received a U.S. release one year later and impressed critics all over the world. Rotten Tomatoes lists it with a 100% fresh rating. It also screened in competition at Cannes in 1963, where it lost out to Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard.
HIGH AND LOW (1963)
It is impossible to talk about the best international movies in history without mentioning Akira Kurosawa, and he had masterpieces stretching from the 40s to the 80s. In the ’60s, he released the film High and Low in 1963.
This was one of his modern-day films, a Film Noir about a wealthy man who is targeted by a kidnapper who kidnaps his chauffeur’s son. While many of Kurosawa’s samurai epics were based on classics by playwrights like Shakespeare, this was based on a novel by mystery writer Ed McBain.
YOJIMBO (1961)
The best Akira Kurosawa film released in the 1960s was a samurai epic known as Yojimbo. The film also received a sequel known as Sanjuro, and the two films remain highly influential to filmmakers to this day. Yojimbo is about a samurai who arrives in a small town where there is a war between two crime families.
The samurai then decides he will play both sides without each knowing that he is not on either Lord’s side, but is there to save the town. Remakes of this include American movies such as Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis and the Italian classic A Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone.
THE DOLLARS TRILOGY (1964, 1965, 1966)
As mentioned, A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and came out just three short years later. Sergio Leone took the samurai story and moved it to the spaghetti western genre. By casting Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name, the trilogy was a massive success.
A Fistful of Dollars was followed by For a Few Dollars More and then finally by the most popular film in the trilogy, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. These films helped revolutionize the spaghetti westerns and remain some of the best western movies of all-time.
