Studio Era
Hollywood's factory system. Genre cinema — gangster, musical, noir, Western — defined and refined. Welles, Wilder, Hitchcock, Hawks. The Italian neorealists and Japanese masters reshape the world's sense of what films can do.
Part of Films
46 moments in this segment.
- — Un Chien Andalou. Luis Buñuel + Salvador Dalí. 16 minutes of dream logic, including the eyeball cut. The original surrealist film; the model for every avant-garde short that followed.
- — M. Fritz Lang. Peter Lorre as a child murderer hunted by Berlin's underworld. First major film to use leitmotifs in sound (Lorre's whistled "Hall of the Mountain King"). The first serial-killer film.
- — King Kong. Cooper + Schoedsack. Willis O'Brien's stop-motion gorilla. The first film to make audiences feel sorry for the monster. "It was beauty killed the beast."
- — King Kong (1933) Official 1938 Re-Release Trailer - King Kong Movie. · 00:01:32
- — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Walt Disney. First feature-length animated film. People said no one would sit through 83 minutes of cartoons. It made $8M on a $1.5M budget and built Disney.
- — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:01:25
- — The Rules of the Game. Jean Renoir. Released on the eve of WWII to a French audience that hated it. Re-released after the war and immediately recognised as one of the greatest films ever made. The template for every ensemble-comedy-of-manners since.
- — The Wizard of Oz. Victor Fleming. Sepia Kansas, Technicolor Oz — the shift is still one of the most famous moments in cinema. "Over the Rainbow" was nearly cut for being too slow.
- — The Wizard of Oz (1939) Original Trailer - Judy Garland Movie. · 00:02:29
- — Gone with the Wind. Victor Fleming. Highest-grossing film of all time adjusted for inflation. Hattie McDaniel won the first Oscar for a Black performer — and had to sit at a segregated table at the ceremony. Its mythology of the Lost Cause has aged badly.
- — Gone with the Wind (1939) Official Trailer - Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh Movie HD. · 00:02:37
- — Citizen Kane. Orson Welles, 25 years old. Deep focus, narrative misdirection, the long shadow of William Randolph Hearst (who tried to suppress it). The film that the rest of cinema would spend 80 years trying to surpass.
- — Citizen Kane (1941) Official Trailer #1 - Orson Welles Movie. · 00:03:45
- — The Maltese Falcon. John Huston's directorial debut. Bogart as Sam Spade. The film that announced film noir as a genre and turned hard-boiled detective fiction into the dominant American style.
- — Maltese Falcon (1941) Official Trailer - Humphrey Bogart Movie. · 00:02:43
- — Casablanca. Michael Curtiz. Shot during WWII without a finished script — they wrote each day's pages overnight. Bogart, Bergman, "We'll always have Paris." The reference text for romantic Hollywood.
- — Casablanca (1942) Official Trailer - Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman Movie HD. · 00:02:09
- — Double Indemnity. Billy Wilder, from a James M. Cain story Raymond Chandler rewrote. The noir blueprint — venetian-blind shadows, doomed lovers, insurance fraud, voiceover narration. Wilder taught Chandler to script and Chandler taught Wilder to drink.
- — Double Indemnity Official Trailer #1 - Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck Movie (1944) HD. · 00:02:15
- — Bicycle Thieves. Vittorio De Sica. The defining film of Italian Neorealism — non-professional cast, real locations, postwar Rome. Father and son search for a stolen bicycle. The blueprint for every social-realist film since.
- — Bicycle Thieves (1948) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:02:00
- — The Third Man. Carol Reed. Postwar Vienna in tilted angles and chiaroscuro. Orson Welles's Harry Lime delivers the cuckoo-clock speech (which Welles wrote himself). One of the great noirs.
- — The Third Man | Official Trailer. · 00:01:34
- — Sunset Boulevard. Billy Wilder. Hollywood's greatest film about itself — narrated by a dead screenwriter in a pool. Gloria Swanson, herself a faded silent star, as Norma Desmond. "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
- — Sunset Boulevard (1950) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:03:13
- — Rashomon. Akira Kurosawa. Four contradictory accounts of the same crime. Won the Venice Golden Lion and introduced Japanese cinema to the West. Coined the "Rashomon effect" — the term every social scientist would later steal.
- — Singin' in the Rain. Stanley Donen + Gene Kelly. The transition to sound, satirised by the people who lived through it. Considered by many the greatest movie musical ever made.
- — Singin' in the Rain (1952) Official Trailer - Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds Movie HD. · 00:04:03
- — Tokyo Story. Yasujirō Ozu. Elderly parents visit their adult children in Tokyo and find no one has time. Static cameras, tatami-mat angles, devastating quiet. Sight & Sound's greatest film of all time in the 2012 directors' poll.
- — Seven Samurai. Akira Kurosawa. Village hires seven masterless samurai to defend it from bandits. The template for every "team of misfits assembled for a mission" film ever since. Three and a half hours; not a minute too long.
- — Seven Samurai (1954) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:03:59
- — On the Waterfront. Elia Kazan. Brando: "I could've been a contender." Kazan made it as a defence of his own HUAC testimony — a justification for ratting on his communist friends. Won 8 Oscars.
- — On the Waterfront (1954) ORIGINAL TRAILER [FHD]. ] · 00:02:43
- — The Seventh Seal. Ingmar Bergman. A knight plays chess with Death during the Black Plague. One of the most-parodied images in cinema. Made Bergman an international name.
- — The Seventh Seal (1957) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p]. ] · 00:02:38
- — Vertigo. Alfred Hitchcock. Kim Novak twice; James Stewart's obsession with both. The dolly-zoom — invented for this film — became the visual shorthand for psychological vertigo. Now the canonical Sight & Sound #1.
- — Vertigo Official Trailer #1 - (1958) HD. · 00:02:52
- — Some Like It Hot. Billy Wilder. Lemmon and Curtis dress as women to escape the mob; Marilyn Monroe. "Nobody's perfect." Routinely voted the greatest American comedy.
- — Some Like It Hot (1959) Trailer | MGM Studios. · 00:02:20
- — The 400 Blows. François Truffaut. The 12-year-old Antoine Doinel's freeze-frame run to the sea. The film that launched the French New Wave at Cannes and made Truffaut a star at 27.
- — The 400 Blows (1959) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:03:57
- — Rules of the Game Trailer (Jean Renoir, 1939). ) · 00:01:34
- — Rashomon Trailer (Akira Kurosawa, 1950). ) · 00:01:49
- — M (1931) - Fritz Lang (Trailer) | BFI release. · 00:02:05
- — Tokyo Story - Official Trailer. · 00:01:22
- — An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) (1929) | trailer. · 00:02:18
