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Cinema · 1967 Ranked

Best Films of 1967, Ranked by IQ Score

The single year New Hollywood broke. Films of 1967, ranked by IQ Score.

1967 is the year New Hollywood broke commercially. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn), The Graduate (Nichols), In the Heat of the Night (Jewison, Best Picture), Cool Hand Luke, Le Samouraï (Melville), all released within twelve months.

The structural argument for 1967-as-canonical-year: the simultaneous New Hollywood emergence (Penn, Nichols), the French neo-noir canonical entry (Le Samouraï), Hitchcock-Bergman's final work, and Buñuel's surrealist Belle de Jour. The decisive break from the studio-era cinema model.

4 titles · ranked by IQ Score

  1. 1
    The Graduate poster, IQ Score 165/200, Masterclass tier

    The Graduate

    Masterclass comedy, drama, romance

    1967 Best Picture nominee and cultural landmark. A directionless college graduate is seduced by an older woman, then falls for her daughter. High cognitive demands from the satirical layering and visual storytelling. Edu…

    165/200
  2. 2
    Bonnie and Clyde poster, IQ Score 164/200, Masterclass tier

    Bonnie and Clyde

    Masterclass crime, drama, biography

    1967's genre-redefining crime film that changed American cinema forever. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the Depression-era outlaws whose spree ends in the most violent sequence Hollywood had ever shown. High cognitive…

    164/200
  3. 3
    In the Heat of the Night poster, IQ Score 151/200, Stimulating tier

    In the Heat of the Night

    Stimulating crime, drama

    A Black Philadelphia detective is forced to work with a racist Mississippi sheriff to solve a murder. Norman Jewison's 1967 film won the Best Picture Oscar. Educational about racial dynamics in the American South and the…

    151/200
  4. 4
    Cool Hand Luke poster, IQ Score 144/200, Stimulating tier

    Cool Hand Luke

    Stimulating drama, crime

    Stuart Rosenberg builds Luke as a study in institutional resistance, the failure-to-communicate line naming how authority manufactures compliance. Paul Newman's refusal to break under the chain gang reads as secular mart…

    144/200
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Questions about this ranking

What is the best film of 1967?

By IQ Score on TV Intelligentsia, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night (Best Picture), and Le Samouraï anchor the year. Cool Hand Luke and Belle de Jour round out the canonical entries.

Why is 1967 considered New Hollywood's breakthrough year?

1967 saw the simultaneous commercial breakthrough of Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and Nichols's The Graduate, both films that explicitly rejected the studio-era cinematic vocabulary and signaled the New Hollywood era. The Best Picture went to In the Heat of the Night (an older-Hollywood-aesthetic film), making 1967 the precise inflection year.

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