Movies that defined cinema as both an art form and a craft.

The title is a bit messy, but here’s the deal:
List some movies—and if you can, give me a quick one-sentence breakdown of why they made the cut—from the dawn of cinema up through 1990. Try NOT to be subjective (as dumb as that sounds) and instead focus on the essentials you'd actually study in an American film school. Sure, watching everything is better, but let's not get crazy... just the ones that shaped what "cinema" actually means today across all those decades.
I could go first, but I'm stuck on what to pick, so I figured I'd open this thread and let you experts weigh in. 😁

Let's start with Robert Siodmak—he's a personal favorite of mine🥳

plus the entire Mel Brooks filmography😬

I guess I’m being a bit of a nerd here, but this is just the first thing that pops into my head.

The birth of a nation, Citizen Kane, Triumph of the Will, First Man, the French New Wave (you know, all that poetic flair in Godard's intros), and Star Wars (no joke)...

As for the more modern stuff—hmmm... well, ever since Pulp Fiction came along, that non-linear storytelling style has become practically mandatory in any movie that actually wants to be taken seriously (I realize Quentin Tarantino didn't exactly invent it, but he certainly made it mainstream)

I still say Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is his absolute best.

Since Richard Hernandez13 brought up newer stuff—well, you really can't ignore Michael Mann's whole body of work, or anything by David Fincher.🙏

Spinal Tap 😬

Richard Hernandez13 said:Spinal Tap 😬

stuff like this usually gets hidden on this thread—just look at my very first post 😬

Everything from Jean-Claude Van Damme 😁

But seriously, when you look at Martin Scorsese and his body of work—Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino... the man is a straight-up genius

Richard Hernandez13 said:Regarding the more recent stuff—well, ever since Pulp Fiction, non-linear storytelling has become practically mandatory for any film even remotely aiming for ambition (I realize Tarantino didn't exactly invent it, but he certainly made it a staple).

True enough, though I would also throw The Usual Suspects into the ring as a seminal nineties film that kicked off the trend of self-reflexivity in mainstream productions. You have the unreliable narrator and that whole deconstruction of cinematic ontology.
As for the classics, we haven't even touched on Hitchcock yet—North by Northwest for its play on genre norms, Psycho for that same reason plus how it blurred the lines between art house and mainstream (much like The Birds), or Vertigo and Rear Window for how they force the spectator into the spotlight—and those are just the most obvious examples.

Richard Hernandez13 said:I guess I’d go the nerd route, just what pops into my head first.

The Birth of a Nation, Citizen Kane, Triumph of the Will, Moonwalk, how the French New Wave kicked off (kind of like Godard's intro style), Star Wars (no joke)...

I'm with you on this one.

Maybe I could make it even simpler, if I were being a total geek about it:

1.) The Birth of a Nation
2.) Citizen Kane
3.) Star Wars

hmmm, maybe:

Taxi Driver
Goodfellas
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Deer Hunter
The Godfather

idk... tough question. those might be my favorites, but who knows how much they actually count as "art" (except for the first one)😁

Maybe this list is a bit too ambitious for my taste—but honestly, they all hit:

Birth of a Nation
Battleship Potemkin
Sunrise
M
Citizen Kane
Rashomon
Hiroshima mon amour
Breathless
North by Northwest
Psycho
Nashville
Blind Chance
Blue Velvet (don't really get the 80s vibe, so I just threw this in)
Twin Peaks
Memento

Yeah, total nerd move, that’s exactly what I was thinking! 🙂 So you're basically playing professor, telling the kids what they need to watch to actually be called cinephiles. It’d be cool if this thread stayed alive, people dropping movies and then someone (like me, I'll do it) organizes them by year so we have a chronological guide to film history. We'd probably end up with a hundred movies eventually, but whatever. Nobody’s even mentioned the Italians yet? Or the Germans...
And I see everyone just ignored the "up to 1990" part from the start. 😁 Typical forum crowd, lol.

Let's try this instead, maybe it's easier: from the Lumière brothers up to the end of the 30s—so, through 1940. What's been filmed that belongs in our guide? And again, not just Hollywood, I mean global cinema.

So far we've got:

A Trip to the Moon 1902
The Birth of a Nation 1915
Battleship Potemkin 1925
Sunrise 1926
M 1931
Triumph of the Will 1935

We're missing Fritz Lang, Chaplin, a ton of silent films, basically. Maybe even Gone with the Wind. You guys agree that needs to go on the list?

So, getting ready for the Academy. Honestly, great idea. I could really use some😈

slyrider16 said:So far, we've got:

A Trip to the Moon (1902)
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Sunrise (1926)
M (1931)
Triumph of the Will (1935)

We're missing Fritz Lang

Errm, didn't you just mention M? 🤔

Maybe it'd be easier to just organize this by director—you know, look through the whole Fritz Lang filmography and call it a day? 🙂

That’s a massive stretch if we’re talking directors. You could easily pull a thousand movies out of a hat from the dawn of cinema until now. Plus, even the legends have their flops. Or sometimes a movie is decent, but only one or two people actually did something meaningful with it.

I didn't want to put a hard cap on it... but if I have to pick a number, let's say there are at least 100 essentials you gotta see (ignoring everything from the 90s onwards) just to actually grasp film as an art form and a craft.

Anyone else want to throw some titles onto the pre-1940 list before we move on to the 1941–1950 era? 😛

slyrider16 said:Counting directors would be overkill. You’d end up with a thousand movies easily if you tallied everything from the silent era to now. Plus, even the greats have their flops, or they make one masterpiece and spend the rest of their lives coasting on it.
I wasn't trying to pin down an exact number... but if we aren't doing counts, let's aim for 100 essential films (again, ignoring anything made after the 90s) just to get a real grasp of cinema as both art and craft.
Anyone want to throw some more suggestions for the pre-1940 era onto the list before we move on to the 1941–1950 stretch? 😛

The concept is fine, but isn't this just going to turn into a list of stuff everyone already knows? Most of these entries are pretty much set in stone anyway. :-)

The Dude said:Anyone want to throw in a few more movies from the early eras up to 1940 before we jump into the 1941–1950 stretch? 😛

Honestly, this is a much better way to handle it—if everyone just starts tossing titles in randomly, things are going to get messy fast. It’s probably easiest if we stick to grouping them by decade.👍

I also think we should make a distinction between fine art and craftsmanship.☕

milk said:The concept works—but won't it just end up being a list of things everyone already knows? Things are pretty clearly defined in this regard... :-)

Well then, why don't you give us that list? 🙂

😬

Quickly, a few more that definitely deserve a shoutout:

A Clockwork Orange—purely for the ultra-violence.
Jaws—just because of the sheer terror. I mean, after seeing that movie, you think twice before jumping into a pool, right?
Once Upon a Time in the Wild West—for that incredible score, those three legendary themes, and all the nods to other westerns...

Rocky Balboa—strictly because he snagged the Oscar instead of the Taxi Driver. 😁

Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vert🙏 Alright, let someone more of a nerd than me try to top this one🙏

It’s technically a documentary, but man, the way they handled the editing and cinematography... that sheer beauty😁 puts it lightyears away from Battleship Potemkin. And that's only four years later. I don't know if you can even call it a turning point in cinema when I've never seen anything quite this beautiful. It's pure experimentalism with a hint of socialist grit