1961

1. West Side Story- Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise
2. The Hustler- Robert Rossen
3. Lola- Jacques Demy
4. Yojimbo- Akira Kurosawa
5. One, Two, Three- Billy Wilder
6. Viridiana- Luis Buñuel
7. Last Year at Marienbad- Alain Resnais
8. The Ladies' Man- Jerry Lewis
9. A Woman Is a Woman- Jean-Luc Godard
10. The Gleiwitz Case- Gerhard Klein
11. Through a Glass Darkly- Ingmar Bergman
12. Shadows- John Cassavetes
13. The Innocents- Jack Clayton
14. Victim- Joseph Losey
15. Judgment at Nuremberg- Stanley Kramer

Ripe for re-appraisal: El Cid (Anthony Mann), King of Kings (Nicholas Ray), Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan), Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)

Need to see: Accatone (Pier Paolo Pasolini), Alyonka (Boris Barnet), Blast of Silence (Allen Baron), Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch), Cosmic Ray (Bruce Conner), Divorce Italian Style (Pietro Germi), Early Autumn (Yasujiro Ozu), The End of Summer (Yasujiro Ozu), Les Godelureaux (Claude Chabrol), The Human Condition, Part III (Masaki Kobayashi), Homicidal (William Castle), Leon Morin, Priest (Jean-Pierre Melville), An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Robert Enrico), One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando), Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura), Placido (Luis Garcia Berlanga), Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi), Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi), A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson), Ten Dark Women (Kon Ichikawa), Two Rode Together (John Ford), Underworld USA (Sam Fuller), Vanina Vanini (Roberto Rossellini), Very Nice, Very Nice (Arthur Lipsett), Viva l’Italia! (Roberto Rossellini), Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes)

Academy Awards (USA), Best Picture: West Side Story
BAFTA Film Awards, Best Film: Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukhrai)
Cannes, Palme d’Or: (tie) The Long Absence (Henri Colpi) and Viridiana
Venice, Golden Lion: Last Year at Marienbad
Berlin, Golden Bear: La notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)