The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Huston's 1941 directorial debut. The film that established American film noir as a coherent style.
Tag: Black and White (Page 7)
1920sMan with a Movie Camera (1929)
Vertov's 1929 Soviet city-symphony documentary. The film that invented half the techniques modern documentary takes for granted.
1950s
1960sThe Exterminating Angel (1962)
Buñuel's 1962 surrealist drama. The Catholic Church, capitalism, ritual.
1940sThe Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Ford's 1940 Steinbeck adaptation. The film that established American social-realist cinema.
1920sThe Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Dreyer's 1928 silent French religious drama. Considered by many the greatest performance ever filmed.
1930sLittle Caesar (1931)
LeRoy's 1931 pre-Code gangster film. The film that established the rise-and-fall gangster template.
1960sDr. Strangelove (1964)
Kubrick's 1964 Cold War satire. Sellers in three roles, Scott as Buck Turgidson.
1960sBirdman of Alcatraz (1962)
Frankenheimer's 1962 prison biopic. Burt Lancaster as Robert Stroud.
1950sHigh Noon (1952)
Fred Zinnemann's 1952 western shot in real time. The clock is the antagonist.
1930sStagecoach (1939)
Nine strangers in a coach, each a study in social position. Stagecoach is the John Ford-directed western that revived the genre after a decade of decline and established the template that the next half-century of American westerns would follow.
1950sRashomon (1950)
Kurosawa's 1950 film that gave English the word for unreliable narrative. Four versions of one crime, each true, each false.