1971's Ten Best

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Stanley Kubrick's demoniacal satire on a future of violence, brutal sex and demagogic politics.

THE CLOWNS. An autobiographical essay in which Federico Fellini employs his favorite metaphor (the circus) to pursue the phantoms of memory and fantasy.

THE CONFORMIST. Bernardo Bertolucci's flamboyant threnody to Italian Fascism featuring a superbly saturnine Jean-Louis Trintignant and an exotic Dominique Sanda.

DIRTY HARRY. A superb piece of genre film making by Don Siegel about a cop (Clint Eastwood) as renegade.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION. With the narcs in old Manhattan. Frenetic, resolutely naturalistic, with a car chase that is already a classic. Gene Hackman is memorable as a tough detective named Popeye.

GLEN AND RANDA. Post-atomic desolation in the U.S., with hippies as the new cavemen. Melancholy, inventive sci-fi by young Film Maker Jim McBride.

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. Peter Bogdanovich subtly and precisely evokes the paralysis of the 1950s in the microcosm of a dying Texas town called Anarene.

MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ. A love story by John Cassavetes, poignant and sometimes hilarious, with stunning performances by Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel.

STRAW DOGS. Sam Peckinpah's harrowing portrait of heroism turned to animalism as a shy mathematician (Dustin Hoffman) fights off thugs besieging his house.

SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY. A low-key, painfully believable contemporary love story, intelligently written by Penelope Gilliatt and flawlessly acted by Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson.

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