Best Films Of 1961

A substantial insurance payment could mean either financial salvation or personal ruin for a poor black family.

During the Civil War a group of Union soldiers, a Confederate and a civilian escape the stockade using a hot-air balloon and end up on a strange Pacific island.

An up-and-coming pool player plays a long-time champion in a single high-stakes match.

A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town.

Bursting with big dreams and plans, an Italian teen goes to Milan to work in a big impersonal corporate office, where he becomes disillusioned and drained of all his individualism.

Governor Pontius Pilate gave the populace a choice to spare either Barabbas, a criminal, or Jesus, condemned as a heretic, from crucifixion. The masses chose Barrabas, and he is haunted by the image of Jesus for the rest of his life.

When the U.S. and Russia unwittingly test atomic bombs at the same time, it alters the nutation (axis of rotation) of the Earth.

Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.

In West Berlin during the Cold War, a Coca-Cola executive is given the task of taking care of his boss' socialite daughter.

A college professor invents an anti-gravity substance which a corrupt businessman wants for himself.

Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. is a versatile man who gets his kicks out of impersonating a marine, a monk, a navy surgeon and a prison warden, eventually getting in trouble with the law for it.

A teenager who witnesses the murder of his father vows to exact revenge on the four mobsters involved in the killing.