L’Avventura, France-Italy, 1960, 145 min. Starring Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti, Lea Massari. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. When her friend goes missing during a holiday trip, a young woman and the man the friend was seeing search for her, but the girl isn't the only one who's lost. Antonioni burst on to the international scene with this, the first of a trilogy of films examining a particularly European brand of ennui.

Psycho, USA, 1960, 109 min. Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Leigh goes on the lam with some embezzled money, but if she had known what was waiting for her ahead she might have thought twice. The film is so ingrained in the collective pop psyche, one can only imagine what it must have been like to see it on its first release without any prior knowledge of what to expect, which does not, of course, prevent it from being a truly terrifying film experience in the present day as well.

Last Year In Marienbad, France-Italy, 1961, 93 min. Starring Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff. Directed by Alain Resnais. Extremely enigmatic film about a man who meets up with a woman claiming to have made a date with her to do so a year before. Only problem is she doesn't remember. Or does she? Endlessly debated puzzle of a movie that we may never truly be able to figure out, though we will continue to have fun trying.

Viridiana, Spain, 1961, 90 min. Starring Sylvia Pinal, Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal. Directed by Luis Buñuel. A student nun finds out more about sin than she had ever wanted to when she's sent to visit her lasciviously-minded uncle. To atone she attempts to help the local unfortunates, but they're not as grateful as you might think. Religion and class, two of the director's favorite targets, get mercilessly skewered, Pinal is wonderful in the title role and Rey is reliably sleazy as the uncle, playing an archetypal role he would reprise for Buñuel on several occasions.

Jules & Jim, France, 1961, 104 min. Starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre. Directed by Francois Truffaut. Truffaut's story of a love triangle beginning at the turn of the century and spanning several decades. Moreau's ebullient performance as the eccentric woman caught between the two men anchors this story of loyalty, friendship, politics and love.