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The Greatest Film of Each Decade, 1880s-Today
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items Your portable complete course in film history, so you can sound supercool at fancy parties. Looking cool not included.
The first motion picture. Even though we've been making spectacles since the first cave art danced on the walls under firelight. Extra credit: Go visit The Museum of the Moving Image to see the ancestors of film.
1888 - Roundhay Garden Scene by Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince
The first tickets sold to an audience of 33 people for a cramped basement with a projector. You'll need to sound excited about images of a factory letting out, a baby's first meal, the panic caused by the arrival of a train (and your skepticism over ...
1895 - Everything by the Lumiere brothers
The Western that put America on the cinematic map. The first significant use of pans, on location shots, matte effects, simultaneous action in two locations, and a gun pointed at the audience.
1903 - The Great Train Robbery by Edwin S Porter
Avoid any mention of “Birth of a Nation” and go right to this grand 2000 year epic historical meditation on institutional cruelty, women's rights, and the brutal cycles of history. Give examples of how American filmmakers adopted the Kuleshov effect ...
1916 - Intolerance by DW Griffith
Don't allow conversation to stray from the Weimar films of pre-war Germany. Fritz Lang and Josef von Sternberg are easy digressions that everyone will have opinions about. As a last resort, bring up the Belgian Dadaist movement that spread all over E...
1920 - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by FW Murnau
Capra corn at his corniest. Fast chatter, a down on his luck drunken journalist, a runaway heiress, and the story of the decade. Great advice for hitchhiking.
1934 - It Happened One Night by Frank Capra
Yeah, everybody puts it on their lists, but it really is that good a film. It was written in a fever dream by a last-minute replacement writer with no experience, based on character sketches and a play nobody had seen. The director filmed script page... Bonus trivia: The evil Nazi bad guy is the same actor (still creepy without his makeup) as the sleepwalker in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”.
1942 - Casablanca by Michel Curtiz
This film shattered Western cinema, winning the Venice Golden Lion in 1951. Kurosawa had no idea he was nominated. The film shows us the same incident four times, told in conflicting stories from four witnesses, only some of which are alive. It's act...
1950 - Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa
A modern fairy tale of an indomitable woman's odyssey from one kind of hell to another, intercut across decades and continents, proved that sub-Saharan African filmmakers were way ahead of the curve. In Europe, young film critics had grabbed cameras ...
1966 - La Noire De...
The inevitable collapse of the optimism of the 1960s created the tortured antihero protagonist who still dominates cinema half a century later. The film is the spiritual godfather of films like “Good Will Hunting,” as it paints a period portrait of a...
1970 - Five Easy Pieces by Bob Rafaelson
The toughest neighborhood in Brooklyn, with the best pizza, on the hottest day of the year. Somebody had to do something. But what is the right thing? Film can do lots of different things in a society, but the most important thing it can do is start ...
1989 - Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee
What is even real anymore? Postmodernism was all about the madness of trying to live without any source of reliable truth about anything. Corruption exposed the criminally selfish motives of politicians, religion couldn't answer questions anymore, sc...
1990 - Close-Up by Abbas Kiarostami
“When you make enough mistakes, they call it a style.” Almodovar brings together all the strands of his earlier films here. The bizarre fantasy of Buñuel's influence, the shock of things unmentionable in civilized society, a woman's view of love, kindness extended to those in extreme pain, beauty inside tragedy, and the inevitable flashe...
2002 - Talk to Her by Pedro Almodovar
It's the end of the world. And they don't feel fine. A rogue planet, just a tiny star in the night sky at first, is hurtling toward the Earth. A bride is harassed during her wedding because her boss wants her to come up with a clever advertising slog...
2011 - Melancholia by Lars Von Trier
Inspired by Hanuman, a boy in rural India spends his life learning to fight, seeking revenge for the brutal murder of his mother. Half Shakespearean political commentary, half Bollywood/Hong Kong martial arts action with improvised weapons, half cult...
2024 - Monkey Man by Dev Patel
Shhhh. Here's the secret. Don't tell anyone. There is no list of greatest films. It's not possible, not even theoretically. Films are meals. Some are prepared exquisitely by world class chefs and plenty are greasy diner rejects, but only your hunger ...
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