The 40 most popular 1960s drama movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


High and Low
1963 · 2h 22m · JP
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.


Harakiri
1962 · 2h 15m · JP
Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.


The Sound of Music
1965 · 2h 54m · US
In the years before World War II, a tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey is hired as a governess in the home of a widowed naval captain with seven children and brings a new love of life and music into the home.


Once Upon a Time in the West
1968 · 2h 46m · IT
As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.


Planet of the Apes
1968 · 1h 52m · US
Astronaut Taylor crash lands on a distant planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist.


Rosemary's Baby
1968 · 2h 18m · US
A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, moves into an infamous New York apartment building, known by frightening legends and mysterious events, with the purpose of starting a family.


Red Beard
1965 · 3h 5m · JP
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.


The Graduate
1967 · 1h 47m · US
A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.


The Great Escape
1963 · 2h 53m · US
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.


Spartacus
1960 · 3h 17m · US
The rebellious Thracian Spartacus, born and raised a slave, is sold to Gladiator trainer Batiatus. After weeks of being trained to kill for the arena, Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in rebellion. As the rebels move from town to town, their numbers swell as escaped slaves join their ranks. Under the leadership of Spartacus, they make their way to southern Italy, where they will cross the sea and return to their homes.


Breakfast at Tiffany's
1961 · 1h 55m · US
Holly Golightly is an eccentric New York City playgirl determined to marry a Brazilian millionaire. But when young writer Paul Varjak moves into her apartment building, her past threatens to get in their way.


The Apartment
1960 · 2h 6m · US
Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.


Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1969 · 1h 51m · US
As the west rapidly becomes civilized, a pair of outlaws in 1890s Wyoming find themselves pursued by a posse and decide to flee to South America in hopes of evading the law.


My Fair Lady
1964 · 2h 53m · US
A snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.


Woman in the Dunes
1964 · 2h 27m · JP
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.


To Kill a Mockingbird
1962 · 2h 9m · US
Scout Finch, 6, and her older brother Jem live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama, spending much of their time with their friend Dill and spying on their reclusive and mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangent events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.


Lolita
1962 · 2h 34m · UK
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
Engel im Fegefeuer
Engel im Fegefeuer
1965 · 1h 17m · DE
The Ruhr area in November of 1918. 13-year old Achim Wolters and his friends get their hands on some potatoes on the market. They want to surprise Achim′s father, who works on a mine sweeper boat, with a decent meal. But Achim′s father does not show up – an informer at the train station has betrayed him for his left-wing beliefs and has turned him over to the police. The priest tells Achim the sad news and advises him to pray for the release of his father. But when carpenter Stelzebein stresses that everybody has to take actions for himself, the devout boy at first does not believe in Stelzebein′s words. But then Achim witnesses in the prison how brutally the imperial police treat his father and the other inmates. Together with his loyal friends, Achim takes Stelzebein′s side. When the revolution starts, they stand together on the barricades.


Bonnie and Clyde
1967 · 1h 51m · US
In the 1930s, bored waitress Bonnie Parker falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow, and together they start a violent crime spree throughout the country, stealing cars and robbing banks.


The Guns of Navarone
1961 · 2h 40m · UK
A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.


Cucurrucucú Paloma
1965 · 1h 39m
Biography of a fictional ranchera singer whose career trajectory seems to parallel that of the actress performing the role.


The Longest Day
1962 · 2h 58m · US
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"


West Side Story
1961 · 2h 33m · US
In Manhattan’s Upper West Side, rival gangs of Polish-Americans and newly arrived Puerto Ricans clash for control of the neighborhood, even as two young members from opposite sides fall dangerously in love.


8½
1963 · 2h 19m · IT
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.


María Rosa
1965 · 1h 37m · ES
In order to get María Rosa, the woman he is deeply in love with, Marsal murders a moneylender hated by all the people and casts suspicion on his friend Andrés, the husband of his beloved María Rosa. After being imprisoned Andrés, Marsal becomes the protector of María Rosa while waiting for the development of events.


Cleopatra
1963 · 4h 11m · UK
Determined to hold on to the throne, Cleopatra seduces the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. When Caesar is murdered, she redirects her attentions to his general, Marc Antony, who vows to take power—but Caesar’s successor has other plans.


Crónica cubana
1963 · 1h 51m · CU
After the triumph of the Revolution, the construction of a new society reshapes the lives of a group of characters, forcing each of them to confront a transformed future. Luis, a young, poor Black man; Fernando, an exiled professor returning to his homeland; Rafael, a labor leader, and his daughter Niurka; and Ricardo, a young bourgeois who fought against the tyranny but now resists the loss of his former social status. Each will be pushed to extreme situations that compel them to redefine themselves in relation to the new meaning the Revolution has given to their lives.


Cool Hand Luke
1967 · 2h 7m · US
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.


Breathless
1960 · 1h 30m · FR
A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.


The Swimming Pool
1969 · 2h 3m · FR
Set in a magnificent villa near a sun-drenched St. Tropez, lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne are spending a happy, lazy summer holiday. Their only concern is to gratify their mutual passion - until the day when Marianne invites her former lover and his beautiful teenage daughter to spend a few days with them. From the first moment, a certain uneasiness and tension begin to develop between the four, which soon escalates in a dangerous love-game.


Yojimbo
1961 · 1h 50m · JP
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.


Happiness
1965 · 1h 20m · FR
Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse, young husband and father François finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker.


Shame
1968 · 1h 44m · SE
In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.


L'etreinte
1969 · 1h 43m · BE
L’Étreinte (1969) is a sharp, provocative Franco-Belgian psychological drama that masterfully subverts power dynamics through an erotic lens. Heavily inspired by The Story of O, the film tracks Gisèle, an innocent runaway who becomes a housemaid—and subsequent sex slave—to Michel, a wealthy playboy. What begins as a classic tale of bourgeois exploitation takes a radical turn when a visiting friend awakens Gisèle to her own alienation. In a striking third-act shift, the film flips the master-servant dynamic, leaving the oppressor completely subjugated by his former victim..


Midnight Cowboy
1969 · 1h 53m · US
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.


The Young One
1960 · 1h 35m · MX
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.


True Grit
1969 · 2h 8m · US
The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy on a mission of 'justice', which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, 'Rooster' Cogburn because he has 'true grit', and a reputation of getting the job done.


Lola
1961 · 1h 29m · FR
A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.


Romeo and Juliet
1968 · 2h 18m · IT
Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love against the wishes of their feuding families. Driven by their passion, the young lovers defy their destiny and elope, only to suffer the ultimate tragedy.


Vivre Sa Vie
1962 · 1h 24m · FR
Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.
The 1960s broke the old rules everywhere at once — the French New Wave, the collapse of the Hollywood Production Code, and new waves across Europe and Japan reshaping what a film could show and say.
Drama is cinema's widest category and its default setting — character, conflict, and consequence without genre machinery. It's where most awards conversation lives, and where directors go when the story is the effect.