The 1960s

The 1960s achieved an unmatched global cinematic explosion, with the French New Wave, Japanese golden age, and Italian neorealism peaking simultaneously while Hollywood produced 2001: A Space Odyssey, Psycho, and The Graduate. Godard, Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bergman all released career-defining work in a single decade, including Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) and Bergman's Persona (1966)—films that pioneered modernist storytelling. This era is faster than the average decade in artistic risk-taking, but the 1990s overtakes it in global box-office reach by generating 40% more internationally distributed films. A concrete data point: 12 films from this decade appear on the British Film Institute's top 100 list.