Milestones in American cinema

A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - the most important picture of the silent era.
It also had tremendous budget, at $112,000.
he propagandistic film was one of the biggest box-office money-makers in the history of film, partly due to its exorbitant charge of $2 per ticket - unheard of at the time. This 'first' true blockbuster made $18 million by the start of the talkies. It clearly demonstrated that film-making could be lucrative.

The Power of Love (1922) - now a lost film - was the first 3-D feature film shown to a paying film audience, at the Ambassador Hotel's 'theater' in Los Angeles in September, 1922. The stereoscopic film was projected 'dual-strip' in the red/green anaglyph format, making it both the earliest known film that utilized dual strip projection and the earliest known film in which anaglyph glasses were used. The film utilized and may have been the only commercial film produced in the dual-camera, dual-projector system developed by Harry K. Fairhall and Robert F. Elder. Another 3-D stereoscopic film screening to a paying audience was in December, 1922. It was a stereoscopic print of the 14 minute documentary film Movies of the Future (1922), shown at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City. It was mostly a travelogue of NYC.

F. W. Murnau's American debut. A beautiful, atmospheric, lyrical and poetic work of art with roots in the German Expressionist movement.
Won the only Oscar® ever given for "Most Artistic Film", which was almost a 2nd best picture award; Sunrise won 3 Oscars® for 1928.

It was Warner Bros that took the 1st leap into the all-talking movie with the Jazz Singer in 1927. Though there are instances of sound being used earlier this film is the 1st feature-length motion-pic with synchronized dialogues. Directed by Alan Crosland, it starred Al Jolson performing the 6 songs in the Movie.

A phenomenal, influential landmark film that raised the bar for special effects for many decades - due to the genius of chief technical-special effects man Willis H. O'Brien, famed for his first feature film The Lost World (1925). It utilized sequences with stop-motion animation, miniature models about 18 inches high, trick photography, and one of the earliest uses of back- (or rear) projection. It was extremely influential on up-and-coming special effects artist Ray Harryhausen.

One of the last great "silent" comedy masterpieces, with music, sound effects, and very limited gibberish dialogue/singing, and the last screen appearance of Charlie Chaplin's memorable character, The Little Tramp. Chaplin's next film after the successful City Lights (1931), about the dehumanizing and frustrating effects of the machine age - even in the 1930s.

The first full-length animated feature (83 minutes in length) in color and with sound, one of Disney's greatest films, and a pioneering classic tale in film history. It was the first commercially successful film of its kind and a technically brilliant, innovative example of Disney animation.
It was the first film with an official soundtrack and the first film to release a motion picture soundtrack album.

The most beloved, enduring and popular film of all time - cinema's greatest, star-studded, historical epic film of the Old South during wartime that boasted an immortal cast in a timeless, classic tale of a love-hate romance.
This big-screen, blockbuster adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 best-selling novel was a 228-minute Civil War epic drama that went on to profitably gross almost $200 million (domestic) (and $400 million worldwide) - highest-grossing film status at the time.
Adjusted for inflation, this remains the highest grossing film ever made (at $1.676 billion), and one of the original blockbusters on the silver screen.

Considered by most film critics as the greatest, or one of the top ten films ever made. It rewrote the rules of Hollywood cinema, setting Hollywood on its ear when first released. The film was co-written, directed, and starred in by 25-year old radio star Orson Welles in his first film effort and on a low budget.
It is famous for its innovative cinematic techniques, quick cuts, use of shadows to intensify the drama, limited close-ups when they were in style, deep-focus photography, and dissolves.

This groundbreaking Western marked a turning point in the Hollywood representation of Indians, and contributed to present Delmer Daves as one of the first pro-Indian Hollywood film directors.

Singin' in the Rain (1952) is one of the most-loved and celebrated film musicals of all time from MGM, before a mass exodus to filmed adaptations of Broadway plays emerged as a standard pattern. It was made directly for film, and was not a Broadway adaptation.
The joyous film, co-directed by Stanley Donen and acrobatic dancer-star-choreographer Gene Kelly, is a charming, up-beat, graceful and thoroughly enjoyable experience with great songs, lots of flashbacks, wonderful dances, casting and story.

This reactionary film is considered Hollywood's best 50's film of rebellious and restless youth (and sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll) that spawned many other lesser teen exploitation films in its wake.
This film made James Dean an anti-hero icon for generations to come - this was the second of his three films and the best archetypal 50s film of its kind regarding the generation gap.

Pioneering independent filmmaker, writer/director John Cassavetes' low-budget ($40,000), controversial, pre-cinema-verité first feature film has often been cited as the start of the independent (or indie) feature film movement in the US with its daring subject matter (about an inter-racial love affair), mostly improvised dialogue, and a non-professional cast and crew. The film was first shot in 1957 (with a16 mm hand-held camera), then screened, re-edited and re-shot in the following years, and re-released.

Psycho broke all film conventions and redefined cinema by displaying its leading female protagonist (Janet Leigh) having a lunchtime affair in her sexy white undergarments in the first scene (to cheat the Production Code); also by photographing a toilet bowl - and flush - in a bathroom (a first in an American film), and killing off its major 'star' a third of the way into the film - something duplicated by many films since. It also included such taboo topics as transvestism, implied incest, and hints of necrophilia.
A shocking, brilliantly-edited, and notorious 3-minute shower murder scene, accompanied by screeching violins (Bernard Herrmann's famous score with shrieking, harpie-like piercing violins), included about 90 different shots pieced together as a montage.

It boasted spectacular visuals, landmark special effects, classical music, a psychedelic light-show ride (that appealed to late 60s 'tripping' viewers) and the memorable, flawed HAL supercomputer (with the uncredited voice of Douglas Rain). The memorable anthropomorphic character of HAL, a computer that could see, speak, hear, and think like its human colleagues, was omnipresent aboard the spaceship.

The flesh-eating zombie sub-genre of films was given a boost with George A. Romero's cheap, stark black and white horror flick - a B picture cult classic and one of the most successful independent films ever made. His debut film was an influential, milestone 'splatter' film. Its controversial and unconventional themes included cannibalism, matricide, and a heroic black protagonist (a rarity in the 1960s).

The blaxploitation film genre, with anti-Hollywood films aimed at a primarily African-American audience, was launched with Melvin Van Peebles' groundbreaking film -- it was the first commercially-successful black-themed film. It was the top-grossing independent movie of 1972.

The phenomenal epic space opera generated a remarkable two sequels (for the original trilogy) and three prequels (in a second trilogy), and led to the equally-successful collaboration between Spielberg and Lucas for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). It created a massive dedicated fan-base for the first film - and all films following.

Director Richard Donner's first big blockbuster comic book adaptation movie was a major A-level Hollywood feature hit, grossing over $300 million (with a mega-budget of $55 million). It was a major production: from its casting (with prominent actors in supporting roles), to its soaring music, visual effects (making Superman fly realistically), and its record length end-titles (7 minutes).

Apocalypse Now (1979) is producer/director Francis Ford Coppola's visually beautiful, ground-breaking masterpiece with surrealistic and symbolic sequences detailing the confusion, violence, fear, and nightmarish madness of the Vietnam War.

Many now consider this the best sports film ever.
Robert De Niro's performance was the most overwhelming of his career - he completely immersed himself in the role by altering his physical appearance in an ultimate Method-acting performance. As a lean boxer, he rigorously trained with La Motta for the boxing sequences, and then bloated out with over fifty pounds more weight for the film's ending as a defeated has-been.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) is the immensely popular magical fantasy movie myth, Steven Spielberg's very personal, heartwarming sci-fi masterpiece (with special effects produced by George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic Company).
Much of the film was deliberately shot from a lower camera angle - from a child's point-of-view to manipulatively encourage younger viewers to identify with the characters.

Blade Runner (1982), rising director Ridley Scott's follow-up to his hit Alien (1979), is one of the most popular and influential science-fiction films of all time - and it has become an enduring cult classic favorite.
This ambitious, enigmatic, visually-complex film is a futuristic film noir detective thriller with all its requisite parts - an alienated hero of questionable morality, a femme fatale, airborne police vehicles called "Spinners", dark sets and locations in a dystopic Los Angeles of 2019, and a downbeat voice-over narration.
It can be considered the best example (and one of the few) of cyberpunk movies. Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a future setting that tends to focus on society as "high tech low life". It was popular in the eaerly 80s and its plots often center on conflict among artificial intelligences, hackers, and among megacorporations, and tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than in the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation or Frank Herbert's Dune.[3] The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors.

Walt Disney Studios' visually-pioneering, state of the art (at its time) landmark film was the first true CGI-animated (Computer-generated imagery) film. It was released as both a feature film and an arcade video game.
This ground-breaking, escapist film was heralded as the first live action film with over 20 minutes of full 3D graphics and computer animation.
The greatest testament to this film's unique visual effects, soundtrack, costuming, art direction and set decoration is that none of it has ever been duplicated, and remains unique to this day.
At the Oscars, TRON was disqualified for a Best Visual Effects award because the Academy believed that it "cheated" by using a computer - the concept of using computers to craft environments, rather than drawing them by hand, was considered inauthentic in these early years. In reality, the process was an extremely arduous one for animators.

An early example of mockumentary, Zelig is a spoof documentary on the 'legendary' Leonard Zelig. His progress from medical marvel to celebrity in the 1920's and 1930's is charted in 'vintage' newsreels, recordings and interviews with contemporary intellectuals.
Woody Allen's film demonstrated the technical accomplishment of laboriously matching and interweaving authentic and older period film (newsreels and documentary footage) from the 1920s and 30s with newer, flickering B/W film shot by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Gordon Willis, to make the film appear authentically 'historic'.