Best 1969 movies

• Stacker score: 57.8
• IMDb user rating: 6.7 (votes: 11,000)
• Metascore: 37
• Director: J. Lee Thompson
• Actors: Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas
• Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes
• Rating: M

 

Mackenna's Gold flopped in North America. Then it became a major success in the Soviet Union and the Indian subcontinent. (It was first shown at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1973.) Gregory Peck leads an ensemble cast, including Omar Sharif and Telly Savalas, in a story about how the lure of gold corrupts everyone who chases it. The novel behind it drew on the legend of the Lost Adams Diggings. Quincy Jones wrote the score, and it was shot in Super Panavision 70.

• Stacker score: 63.3
• IMDb user rating: 7.0 (votes: 27,000)
• Metascore: 44
• Director: Guy Hamilton
• Actors: Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Harry Andrews
• Runtime: 2 hours 12 minutes
• Rating: G

 

The producers tracked down 109 Spitfires in the U.K. Only 12 could be made to fly. Battle of Britain recreates the summer of 1940, when the Royal Air Force beat back the Luftwaffe and forced Hitler to cancel his invasion plans. Laurence Olivier plays Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, while Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer and Robert Shaw play squadron leaders. The flying sequences were staged on a scale never seen on film before or since, which made it a very expensive production.

• Stacker score: 64.4
• IMDb user rating: 6.6 (votes: 16,000)
• Metascore: 50
• Director: Joshua Logan
• Actors: Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, Jean Seberg
• Runtime: 2 hours 44 minutes
• Rating: M

 

Paint Your Wagon grossed $31.6 million and became Paramount's sixth-largest hit up to that point. It still lost money. Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood star in Alan Jay Lerner's adaptation of his own stage musical (a love triangle in a Gold Rush mining camp). Eastwood was so frustrated by the production delays that he said the experience strengthened his resolve to direct. It was the last film Joshua Logan directed. Paramount wanted a G rating. The MPAA gave it an M.

• Stacker score: 67.8
• IMDb user rating: 7.1 (votes: 19,000)
• Metascore: 51
• Director: Gene Kelly
• Actors: Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, Michael Crawford
• Runtime: 2 hours 26 minutes
• Rating: G

 

Hello, Dolly! cost nearly as much to make as Cleopatra. It grossed $33.2 million in the U.S., ranked among the top five films of its season, and still lost money. Barbra Streisand plays matchmaker Dolly Levi opposite Walter Matthau's miserly Horace Vandergelder, with Gene Kelly directing. Louis Armstrong appears, five years after his recording of the title song hit No. 1. The film won three Oscars and was nominated for best picture. Its reputation as a turkey stuck anyway.

• Stacker score: 68.3
• IMDb user rating: 6.2 (votes: 21,000)
• Metascore: 61
• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Actors: Frederick Stafford, Dany Robin, John Vernon
• Runtime: 2 hours 23 minutes
• Rating: M/PG

 

Topaz is late Hitchcock, and it shows. Adapted from Leon Uris' novel, the Cold War thriller follows a French intelligence agent tangled up in the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, loosely based on the real 1962 Sapphire Affair. Some scenes were written only hours before they were shot. Hitchcock filmed more than one ending (his first cut closed with a duel in a football stadium). It was a commercial disappointment. The National Board of Review still named Hitchcock best director.

• Stacker score: 71.1
• IMDb user rating: 6.7 (votes: 110,000)
• Metascore: 61
• Director: Peter R. Hunt
• Actors: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas
• Runtime: 2 hours 22 minutes
• Rating: PG

 

George Lazenby was a model with no acting credits when he replaced Sean Connery as James Bond. During filming, he announced he would play the role only once. He did. On Her Majesty's Secret Service sticks closely to Ian Fleming's novel: Bond hunts Telly Savalas' Blofeld through the Swiss Alps and marries Diana Rigg's Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo. It was editor Peter R. Hunt's first and only Bond film as director. Reviews were mixed in 1969. It's now considered one of the strongest films in the series.

• Stacker score: 72.2
• IMDb user rating: 7.4 (votes: 15,000)
• Metascore: 56
• Director: Burt Kennedy
• Actors: James Garner, Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan
• Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes
• Rating: G

 

Support Your Local Sheriff! was James Garner's first film as a producer, made for $750,000. United Artists nearly pulled it after a slow first week. The comedy sends up the Western's favorite hero (the selfless stranger who tames a lawless town), with Garner, Joan Hackett and Walter Brennan. Its title riffs on the 1960s slogan "Support Your Local Police." Paramount threatened to sue before production, claiming the opening gold-strike scene was lifted from Paint Your Wagon, which also made this list.

• Stacker score: 77.2
• IMDb user rating: 7.2 (votes: 14,000)
• Metascore: 67
• Director: Gene Saks
• Actors: Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, Goldie Hawn
• Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes
• Rating: M

Goldie Hawn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Cactus Flower, holding her own opposite Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman. I.A.L. Diamond adapted the screwball comedy from Abe Burrows' Broadway play, which was itself based on the French play Fleur de cactus by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy. Gene Saks directed. It was the 10th highest-grossing film of 1969.

• Stacker score: 77.2
• IMDb user rating: 7.2 (votes: 33,000)
• Metascore: 67
• Director: Woody Allen
• Actors: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire
• Runtime: 1 hour 25 minutes
• Rating: M/PG

Woody Allen directed, co-wrote, and starred in Take the Money and Run, a mockumentary about Virgil Starkwell, a bank robber with no talent for robbing banks. Allen said the documentary idea had been with him from his first day making movies (he perfected it years later in Zelig). It was filmed in San Francisco and inside San Quentin State Prison. It set a house record in its first week in New York. After costs, it still reported a $610,000 loss.

• Stacker score: 78.9
• IMDb user rating: 7.2 (votes: 55,000)
• Metascore: 70
• Director: Peter Collinson
• Actors: Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill
• Runtime: 1 hour 39 minutes
• Rating: G

"You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off." Michael Caine's line was voted the favorite film one-liner in a 2003 poll of 1,000 film fans. Caine plays Cockney criminal Charlie Croker, fresh out of prison and planning to steal a gold shipment in Turin, which leads to the Mini Cooper car chase the film is known for. It was Noël Coward's last film before he retired from acting. Quincy Jones wrote the score. It wasn't a success in the U.S., and it ends on a cliffhanger that is never resolved.

• Stacker score: 81.1
• IMDb user rating: 8.0 (votes: 240,000)
• Metascore: 66
• Director: George Roy Hill
• Actors: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
• Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
• Rating: PG

William Goldman researched Butch Cassidy for eight years before writing the screenplay. At first, only one studio wanted it, and only if the outlaws didn't flee to South America. In the finished film, they flee to Bolivia. Paul Newman and Robert Redford play train robbers Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh, on the run from a crack posse, with Katharine Ross as Etta Place. Initial reviews were lukewarm. The American Film Institute later ranked it the seventh-greatest Western of all time.

• Stacker score: 81.7
• IMDb user rating: 7.1 (votes: 18,000)
• Metascore: 76
• Director: Jacques Deray
• Actors: Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet
• Runtime: 2 hours 2 minutes
• Rating: 16+

La Piscine was made twice, in a sense. Its stars performed their scenes in English for the international release, an unusual move at a time when foreign films were dubbed or subtitled. Alain Delon and Romy Schneider lead a summer drama of sexual jealousy on the French Riviera, with Maurice Ronet and Jane Birkin. It was the first of nine films Delon made with director Jacques Deray, and the only one Delon didn't produce. In France, it sold more than 3 million tickets.

• Stacker score: 83.3
• IMDb user rating: 7.8 (votes: 22,000)
• Metascore: 72
• Director: Sydney Pollack
• Actors: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York
• Runtime: 2 hours 9 minutes
• Rating: M

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? earned nine Oscar nominations, which, as of 2025, is still the record for a film not nominated for best picture. Sydney Pollack's drama follows desperate contestants in a Depression-era dance marathon, egged on by an opportunistic emcee. Gig Young won best supporting actor. Jane Fonda was nominated for best actress and later said it was the first time a director had asked for her input on a character. Chic's 1977 hit "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" was inspired by the film.

• Stacker score: 87.2
• IMDb user rating: 7.4 (votes: 55,000)
• Metascore: 83
• Director: Henry Hathaway
• Actors: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell
• Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes
• Rating: G

John Wayne won his only competitive Oscar playing U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn. On accepting it, he said that if he'd known, he'd have put on the patch 35 years earlier. A young girl, Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), hires Cogburn and a Texas Ranger (Glen Campbell) to catch the outlaw who killed her father. Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper are also in the cast. It was first rated M. The filmmakers cut some four-letter words to get a G rating. A 1975 sequel followed, and then the Coen brothers remade it in 2010.

• Stacker score: 87.2
• IMDb user rating: 7.2 (votes: 124,000)
• Metascore: 85
• Director: Dennis Hopper
• Actors: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson
• Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
• Rating: R

Easy Rider cost about $400,000 to make and earned $60 million worldwide. Dennis Hopper directed, Peter Fonda produced, and the two play bikers riding through the American Southwest and the South with money from a cocaine deal. Much of it was shot without a finished screenplay. Jack Nicholson earned his first Oscar nomination. The film became a counterculture touchstone and helped launch the New Hollywood era. The studios noticed the math.

• Stacker score: 87.2
• IMDb user rating: 7.8 (votes: 133,000)
• Metascore: 79
• Director: John Schlesinger
• Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles
• Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes
• Rating: X (re-rated R in 1971)

Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film to win Best Picture, and the only X-rated film ever to win an Academy Award. It also won Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. John Schlesinger's drama pairs Jon Voight's naive hustler Joe Buck with Dustin Hoffman's ailing con man Ratso Rizzo in New York City. Hoffman's "I'm walkin' here!" made AFI's list of the 100 greatest movie quotes. The MPAA changed the film's rating to R in 1971. It joined the National Film Registry in 1994.

• Stacker score: 92.8
• IMDb user rating: 8.1 (votes: 35,000)
• Metascore: 86
• Director: Costa-Gavras
• Actors: Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis Trintignant
• Runtime: 2 hours 7 minutes
• Rating: M/PG

Z was the first non-English-language film nominated for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film. It won the second. Costa-Gavras' thriller is a thinly fictionalized account of the 1963 assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis, made while a military junta ruled Greece. Jean-Louis Trintignant won Best Actor at Cannes as the investigating magistrate (his real-life counterpart became president of Greece). The title comes from a Greek protest slogan meaning "he lives." It grossed $17.3 million in the U.S.

• Stacker score: 98.3
• IMDb user rating: 7.9 (votes: 95,000)
• Metascore: 98
• Director: Sam Peckinpah
• Actors: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan
• Runtime: 2 hours 15 minutes
• Rating: R

Sam Peckinpah cut The Wild Bunch to fit the brand-new R rating. The violence still caused a controversy. The Western follows an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico-U.S. border in 1913, struggling to adapt to a modern world, with William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Ryan. Its quick-cut, multi-angle editing mixed normal speed with slow motion, a revolutionary technique in 1969. It earned Oscar nominations for screenplay and score, joined the National Film Registry in 1999, and ranks sixth on AFI's list of the greatest Westerns.

• Stacker score: 100.0
• IMDb user rating: 8.1 (votes: 30,000)
• Metascore: 99
• Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
• Actors: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel
• Runtime: 2 hours 25 minutes
• Rating: Not Rated

French critics turned on Army of Shadows in 1969. In the wake of May 1968, they accused it of glorifying Charles de Gaulle, and American art-house programmers followed their lead. The film didn't open in the U.S. until 2006. Then it landed at No. 1 on several critics' year-end lists. Jean-Pierre Melville's drama follows a Resistance cell moving between safe houses, killing informers and waiting for the capture they know is coming.