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Dateline: 01/01/01
The new millennium seems an appropriate juncture to recognize the world's all-time greatest movies created outside of Hollywood. The impact and influence of these films still resonates through our media culture, and perhaps they've even directly or indirectly affected the quality of our lives.
In this first of a three-part series, I present an alphabetical list of 25 films from 1900 to 1949 that have been hailed by critic's and viewers around the world.
L' Atalante, France, 1934
Directed by Jean Vigo
Starring Dita Parlo, Jean Daste, Michel Simon
This acclaimed film is a surreal and naturalistic love story about a young girl who marries a barge captain and accompanies him down the Seine River.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Washington Post
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Battleship Potemkin, Russia, 1925
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
Starring Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Mikhail Goronov, Grigori Alexandrov
Based on historical events of the 1905 Russian Revolution, this propaganda film tells the story of a protest strike that ended in a riot on the battleship Potemkin.
Reviews:
Ebert's Great Movies
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Bicycle Thief, Italy, 1948
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
Starring Enzo Staiola, Lamberto Maggiorani, and Lianella Carell
A man combs the streets of Rome in search of his family's only means of survival; his stolen bicycle. De Sica's masterpiece vaulted Italian neorealism into the world spotlight.
Awards:
Honorary Academy Award. The Academy Board of Governors selected the film as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1949.
Best European Film. Bodil Festival, Denmark
Best Foreign Film. Golden Globes, USA
Best Picture, Best Director. National Board of Review, USA
Best Foreign Language Film. New York Film Critics Circle Awards, USA
Reviews:
CultureVulture.net
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Brief Encounter, England, 1945
Directed by David Lean
Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Cyril Raymond
Based on a Noel Coward play, two ordinary people, one a doctor, the other a married woman, meet at a train restaurant and accidentally fall in love.
Awards:
Grand Prize. Cannes Film Festival
Best Actress, Celia Johnson. New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
Reviews:
Filmsite
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Daybreak (Le Jour se Leve), France, 1939
Directed by Marcel Carne
Starring Jean Gabin, Arletty
A tough, romantic loner barricades himself inside his apartment after committing murder. An extraordinary example of poetic and realistic film style.
Reviews:
Ecran Noir, French
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Earth Trembles (La Terra Trema), Italy, 1947
Directed by Luchino Visconti
Narrated by Luchino Visconti, Antonio Pietrangeli
The fish market businessmen exploit the Sicilian fishermen. When a man returns home from World War II, he encourages them to fight the system. One of the first and undeniably one of the most brilliant neorealist films.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Freedom For Us (A Nous La Liberte), France, 1931
Directed by Rene Clair
Starring Paul Ollivier, Raymond Cordy, Henri Marchand, Rolla France
Two prisoners attempt an escape and one makes it becoming a successful business man. Years later, the other escapes and his friend hires him in the factory. Rene Clair's classic satire on the dehumanization of industrial workers was shot entirely without a script and relied on actors' improvisation. Few directors have succeeded with this method.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Golden Age (L'Age D'Or), France, 1930
Directed by Luis Bunuel
Starring Gaston Modot
The Man and the Woman are lovers who allow nothing to stop them from expressing their feelings. Surrealist painter Salvador Dali and Bunuel collaborated on this surrealistic masterpiece that was suppressed for 30 years by religious authorities.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion), France, 1937
Directed by Jean Renoir
Starring Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Erich Von Stroheim, and Marcel Dalio
Intent on escape, French officers meet a tough, aristocratic German officer in a World War I prison camp. The story is more than a metaphor for the breakdown of the established order of civilization.
Awards:
Best Foreign Film. National Board of Review, USA
Best Foreign Language Film. New York Film Critics Circle Awards
Best Overall Artistic Contribution. Venice Film Festival
Analysis:
The Legacy of Babel: Language in Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion by Jeffery Alan Triggs
Reviews:
Edinburgh University Film Society
Magic of the Movies
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Great Expectations, England, 1946
Directed by David Lean
Starring John Mills, Alec Guinness, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Martita Hunt, Finlay Currie, Anthony Wager, Ivor Barnard, Freda Jackson, Hay Petrie, George "Gabby" Hayes
A mysterious benefactor helps an orphan boy become a gentleman of means which enables the boy to pursue his childhood love. The definitive version of Dickens' classic tale.
Awards:
Best B&W Art Direction-Set Direction, Best B&W Cinematography Academy Awards, USA
Reviews:
BritMovie
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Ivan Groznyj I), USSR, 1945
Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein
Starring Nikolai Cherkassov, Ludmila Tselikovskaya
The story of the first Czar of Russia from coronation through his abdication and subsequent recall.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
M, Germany, 1931
Directed by Fritz Lang
Starring Peter Lorre, Gustaf Gründgens, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut
The criminal underworld joins in the hunt for a serial child molester and murderer in the streets of Berlin. Lang's first sound film is a dark fable of the perversity of man's nature.
Reviews:
Ebert's Great Movies
Film.com
Motion Picture Database
Movie Magazine International
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Million (Le Million), France, 1931
Directed by Rene Clair
Starring Annabella, Rene Lefevre
Considered Rene Clair's comic masterpiece, this musical is a non-stop chase through Paris as a pair of starving artists try to retrieve a winning lottery ticket.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Napoleon, France, 1927
Directed by Abel Gance
Starring Albert Dieudonne, Gina Manes, Vladimir Roudenko
A grand epic about the life of the infamous French dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte. The film covers his childhood through the bloody French Revolution and beyond. Napoleon is one of the most ambitious films ever made. It's restoration by Kevin Brownlow and the enthusiasm of Frances Ford Coppola enabled it to receive it's due acclaim as a visionary masterpiece.
Awards:
1981 Special Award. Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
1981 Special Award, for restored version. New York Film Critics Circle Awards
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Movie Reviews UK
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Nosferatu, Germany, 1922
Directed by F.W. Murnau
Starring Max Schreck, Gustave Von Wagenheim, Greta Schroeder, Alexander Granach
A German real estate clerk travels to a castle in Transylvania where the undead reside. This first, unauthorized version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is the ultimate Dracula film; stylish, poetic, and atmospheric.
Reviews:
Ebert's Great Movies
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Odd Man Out, England, 1947
Directed by Carol Reed
Starring James Mason, Kathleen Ryan, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack
An Irish gun runner escapes from jail in hopes of fleeing the country before the police kill him. But desperate for money, he stages a holdup to get the cash. This haunting film about a good man doomed for his beliefs established Carol Reed among the great directors.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Paisan, Italy, 1946
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Starring Gar Moore, Maria Michi
Six chronologically ordered vignettes about the Allied liberation of Italy during World War II. One of the first and finest neorealist films, it's an honest wartime portrait.
Awards:
Best Picture. National Board of Review, USA
Best Director. National Board of Review, USA
Best Foreign Language Film. New York Film Critics Circle Awards
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc), France, 1928
Directed by Carl-Theodor Dreyer
Starring Maria Falconetti
A 19-year-old French warrior led by her visions is tried for heresy, condemned, and executed by burning at the stake. A monumental cinematic achievement. Unforgettable.
Reviews:
Ebert's Great Movies
Motion Picture Database
Movie Magazine International
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Pygmalion, England, 1938
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Starring Wendy Hiller, Leslie Howard, Wilfred Lawson, Scott Sunderland
The finest film version of George Bernard Shaw's play in which a phonetics professor bets that he can transform a lower-class girl into a lady in three months time.
Awards:
Best Writing, Screenplay. Academy Awards, USA
Best Actor, Leslie Howard. Venice Film Festival
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Red Shoes, England, 1948
Directed by Michael Powell
Starring Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer, Marius Goring
A composer and ballerina fall in love while working on a ballet about pair of magical ballet shoes, but then the owner of the theater company becomes jealous. The ultimate ballet film.
Awards:
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color. Academy Awards, USA
Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. Academy Awards, USA
Best Motion Picture Score. Golden Globes, USA
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Movie Reviews UK
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu), France, 1939
Directed by Jean Renoir
Starring Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Gaston Modot, and Jean Renoir
An record-setting aviator seeks the love of his mistress, so her husband ends his affair to keep her. A perceptive critique on French pre-WWII bourgeois society that flopped commercially in 1939. Restored in 1959 and premiered at the Venice Film Festival, the film was hailed as one of the greatest films of all-time.
Awards:
Best European Film. Bodil Festival, Denmark
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Movie Reviews UK
Tucson Weekly
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Shoeshine (Sciuscià), Italy, 1947
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
Starring Rinaldo Smordoni, Franco Interlenghi, Anielo Mele
Two streetwise boys use their experience shining Allied soldiers' boots to enter the black market, but eventually their activities lead them to a brutal reform school. A real life drama. Many youngsters in the cities of post-World War II Italy experienced the destitution presented in De Sica's neorealist masterpiece.
Awards:
Honorary Award, for creative spirit triumphing over adversity. Academy Awards, USA
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
The Thief of Baghdad, England, 1940
Directed by Ludwig Berger
Starring Sabu, Conrad Veidt, June Duprez, John Justin, Rex Ingram
A charming young street thief and a deposed ruler attempt to rescue a beautiful princess from the clutches of an evil magician. Adapted from the Arabian Nights fables, this version is one of the greatest fantasy films ever made.
Awards:
Best Color Art Direction, Best Color Cinematography, Best Special Effects. Academy Awards, USA
Reviews:
At-A-Glance Film Reviews
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Vampyre, Denmark/France/Germany, 1932
Directed by Carl-Theodor Dreyer
Starring Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel
A young man travelling through a mysterious European village takes a room at an inn when strange events begin. An undisputed masterpiece of horror loosely based on In A Glass Darkly.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Zero for Conduct (Zéro de Conduite), France, 1933
Directed by Jean Vigo
Starring Jean Daste, Robert Le Fion
Two boys rebel against unbearable authority in a boarding school. This landmark film was an early influence on Truffaut's The 400 Blows.
Reviews:
Motion Picture Database
Additional Information:
Internet Movie Database
Masterpieces of Cinema II: 1950 - 1974
Masterpieces of Cinema III: 1975 - 1999
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