A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• Modern Times (1936) IMDB Charlie Chaplin - The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.
• M (1931) IMDB Fritz Lang - When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.
• City Lights (1931) IMDB Charlie Chaplin - The Tramp struggles to help a blind flower girl he has fallen in love with.
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) IMDB Frank Capra - A naive man is appointed to fill a vacancy in the US Senate. His plans promptly collide with political corruption, but he doesn't back down.
• Trouble in Paradise (1932) IMDB Ernst Lubitsch - High class European thief Gaston Monesque meets his soul mate Lily, a pickpocket masquerading as a countess.
• The Wizard of Oz (1939) IMDB Victor Fleming - Dorothy Gale is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.
• It Happened One Night (1934) IMDB Frank Capra - A spoiled heiress, running away from her family, is helped by a man who's actually a reporter looking for a story. But then he falls in love with her.
• I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) IMDB Mervyn LeRoy - Wrongly convicted James Allen serves in the intolerable conditions of a southern chain gang, which later comes back to haunt him.
• Duck Soup (1933) IMDB Leo McCarey - Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.
• Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) IMDB Michael Curtiz & William Keighley - When Prince John and the Norman Lords begin oppressing the Saxon masses in King Richard's absence, a Saxon lord fights back as the outlaw leader of a rebel guerrilla army.

Shirley Temple: Origins of the Optimistic Image - When the name is uttered an image of the dimpled faced, curly haired, tap dancing four year old from the 1930s automatically appears in everyone's mind. She was the child actress of the depression era, winning over the hearts and pocket books of many. Films, dolls and even a drink named after her, her face and name were ones that couldn't be missed. She was Fox's gem and saviour. She was an escape from the hard life. Her image clearly correlates with the mentality of the public at the time, but Fox must have had a hand. To analyze the degree to which Shirley Temple's image was formed through the needs of the time or through manipulation by Fox, one must first look at stars' images in general and how they come into being. What do stars represent to the audience? - From an essay by Anna Boyce from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• Casablanca (1942) IMDB Michael Curtiz - Classic film set in occupied Africa during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
• Citizen Kane (1941) IMDB Orson Welles - Following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance. Love it or hate it, this is the Gold Standard by which all other films are judged.
• It's a Wonderful Life (1946) IMDB Frank Capra - An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would had been like if he never existed.
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) IMDB John Huston - Greed destroys prospectors. Classic Bogart!
• The Third Man (1949) IMDB Carol Reed - Arriving in Vienna, Holly Martins learns that his friend Harry Lime, who has invited him, recently died in a car accident.
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) IMDB John Huston - Sam Spade, a private detective, gets involved in a murderous hunt for a valuable statuette.
• Double Indemnity (1944) IMDB Billy Wilder - An insurance rep lets himself be talked into a murder/insurance fraud scheme that arouses an insurance investigator's suspicions.
• La Belle et la Bête (1946) IMDB Jean Cocteau - Spellbinding retelling of the classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast.
• Rebecca (1940) IMDB Alfred Hitchcock - When a naive young woman marries a rich widower, they settle in his gigantic mansion, where she finds the memory of the first wife maintaining a grip on her husband and the servants.
• Brief Encounter (1945) IMDB David Lean - Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband.

Mildred Pierce and His Girl Friday: Portrait of Working Women in the Pre- and Post-World War Period - His Girl Friday and Mildred Pierce are two films from the 1940's that deal with the position of women within the workforce in the time prior to America's involvement in the war, and after the tide turned in the Allies' favor respectively. This has a great deal to do with the ways in which these women--Hildy and Mildred--are portrayed. The two films are of drastically different genres and plots, and this in addition to the social milieu in the two drastically different times that they were made shows the changes in attitudes towards women in the workforce over the course of the war. His Girl Friday is a screwball romantic comedy that creates a fantasy world and a fantasy woman who navigates this world with great ease. She finds love at every turn, and succeeds in earning her heart's desire, which is both a career and a man who loves her, who, with every underhanded trick, proves the power of love. Mildred Pierce on the other hand, was made in a combination of the film noir and melodramatic styles, showing a woman's struggles for both success and love, and within the diagetic space of the film, she is constantly frustrated. - From an essay by Robin Morrison from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

Italy in Crisis: an Analysis of Vittorio de Sica's The Bicycle Thief - The anti-fascist Resistance movement, which dominated the end of World War II, seemed to bring Italy a ray of hope. However, this hope was quickly extinguished, as widespread poverty, government corruption, and deep divisions between regions and classes persisted and no true social reform was attained. These harsh conditions were depicted by a group of Italian film directors whose neorealist works have since been celebrated as masterpieces of world cinema. One of the most prominent of these is Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. This 1948 film discusses the prevalent themes dominating Italy's social and political history, within the context of the unsettlingly poor post-War urban proletariat. - From an essay by Bart Bonikowski from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• Seven Samurai (1954) IMDB A poor village under attack by bandits recruits seven unemployed samurai to help them defend themselves.
• Rear Window (1954) IMDB A wheelchair bound photographer spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
• 12 Angry Men (1957) IMDB A dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court.
• North by Northwest (1959) IMDB An advertising executive is mistaken for a spy and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.
• Sunset Blvd (1950) IMDB A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
• Paths of Glory (1957) IMDB When soldiers in WW1 refuse to continue with an impossible attack, their superiors decide to make an example of them.
• Vertigo (1958) IMDB Complex story about a San Francisco detective and his psychological troubles with fear of heights and obsession over a woman.
• Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) (1957) IMDB A waifish prostitute wanders the streets of Rome looking for true love but finding only heartbreak.
• Le Salaire de la Peur (Wages of Fear) (1953) IMDB In a decrepit South American village, men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe.
• Rashômon (1950) IMDB A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view.

The Homosocial Struggle Versus the Heterosexual "Home": The Dialectic of Desire in the Films of Nicholas Ray - Nicholas Ray's films frequently address a competition between a 'father' and 'son' (whether literal or figurative filial relationship). More importantly, Ray has an ideological approach to these struggles. In his films, homosocial struggles are always supplanted by Ray's desired outcome of an idealized heterosexual coupling. That is, the threat of prolonged homosocial desire between his characters is usually eradicated by the death of one of the dueling men. The deus ex machina nature of the deaths implies that the resulting heterosexual coupling is somehow the way things "ought to be". - From an essay by Anna Phelan-Cox from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

"LUCA BRAZZI SLEEPS WITH THE FISHES": Vendetta and the Ritualized Revenge Motif in Popular Italian Film - Italian cinema is conventionally associated with neorealist films and their contribution to the international art film movement. However, while these films tend to draw on the ideas and artistic creativity of individual directors such as Fellini, Antonioni, and De Sica; there is also a strong tradition of genre cinema evident in more popularized examples of Italian film. Emerging in the post-war era, these filone, or formula films, were inspired by established American models such as the "sword and sandal" hero epic, the western, and the gangster film. Consequently, the international success of the peplum films of the 1950's, the spaghetti westerns of the next decade, and later, the Italian-American gangster film, are a collective testament to the post-war financial success of Italian Cinema as an exportable product. - From an essay by Kate Horton from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• Il Buono, il Crutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) (1966) IMDB Three gunmen set out to find a hidden fortune. Who will walk away with the cash?
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) IMDB An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop.
• C'era una Volta il West (Once Upon a Time In The West) (1968) IMDB Epic story of a mysterious stranger with a harmonica who joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.
• Psycho (1960) IMDB A young female embezzler arrives at the Bates Motel after stealing $40 thousand, which has terrible secrets of its own in the form of an odd proprietor and his domineering, never-seen mother.
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962) IMDB Epic rumination on a flamboyant and controversial British military figure and his conflicted loyalties during wartime service.
• To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) IMDB Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the Depression-era South, defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge and his kids against prejudice.
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962) IMDB A former Korean War POW is brainwashed by Communists into becoming a political assassin. But another former prisoner may know how to save him.
• The Apartment (1960) IMDB A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.
• The Great Escape (1963) IMDB Several hundred Allied POWs plan a mass escape from a German POW camp.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) IMDB Mankind finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, artifact buried on the moon and, with the intelligent computer HAL, sets off on a quest.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho: A Look at its Impact on the Film Industry - The 1960's marked a big change in American cinema. With the collapse of the Hollywood Studio System came a weakening of censorship laws; sex and violence moved from obscurity to the forefront of mainstream cinema. Although it quickly became clear that a market existed for such films, the earliest attempts to foray into the world of modern cinema were met with ambivalence. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, made in 1960, was one of the first of many to depict sexuality and violence in a graphic manner. Although the youth market was ready for such a change, the older audience resisted the modern trends. For this reason, Psycho was initially received by many with anger and critical rejection, before moving on to be named "Hitchcock's greatest film". - From an essay by Amanda Sage from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

Just What the Doctor Ordered: Cold War Purging, Political Dissent, and the Right Hand of Dr. Strangelove - In the third decade of the Cold War, less than two years after the United States population had been scared half-way to death by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dr. Strangelove invaded the nation's movie theatres and showed the country the end of the world. Touted by critics then and now as the film of the decade, Dr. Strangelove savagely mocked the President, the entire military defense establishment, and the rhetoric of the Cold War. To a nation that was living through the stress of the nuclear arms race and had faced the real prospect of nuclear war, the satiric treatment of the nation's leaders was an orgasmic release from deep fears and tensions. Its detractors argued that the film was juvenile, offensive, and inaccurate. Viewed, however, in its context of the Cold War and nuclear proliferation, Dr. Strangelove represents to the United States a purging of Cold War rhetoric and anxiety and the beginning of the wave of political and cultural dissent that would climax in the late 1960s. - From an essay by Jeremy Boxen from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• The Godfather (1972) IMDB The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.
• The Godfather: Part II (1974) IMDB The early life & career of Vito Corleone in 1920's New York is portrayed while his son, Michael, expands and tightens his grip on his crime syndicate stretching from Lake Tahoe, Nevada to pre-Revoltion 1958 Cuba.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) IMDB Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse.
• Star Wars (1977) IMDB Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet, teams up with other rebels, and tries to save Princess Leia from the evil clutches of Darth Vader.
• Taxi Driver (1976) IMDB A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as nighttime taxi driver in a city whose perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge to violently lash out.
• Apocalypse Now (1979) IMDB Based on Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, this is a controversial addition to the multitude of Vietnam war movies in existence. We follow Captain Willard on his mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade Green Beret who has set himself up as a God among a local tribe.
• Chinatown (1974) IMDB A private detective investigating an adultery case stumbles on to a scheme of murder that has something to do with water.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) IMDB King Arthur and his knights embark on a low-budget search for the Grail, encountering many very silly obstacles.
• Alien (1979) IMDB A mining ship, investigating a suspected SOS, lands on a distant planet. The crew discovers some strange creatures and investigates.
• A Clockwork Orange (1971) IMDB In a futuristic Britain, a gang of teenagers go on the rampage every night, beating and raping helpless victims.

Never Get Out of the Boat: - Operatic Melodrama in Apocalypse Now - The political and social unrest of the 1970s provided Hollywood with some of its most influential films, often stemming from unlikely sources; two decades after melodrama's heyday, the genre re-emerged in an original form that continues to affect modern filmmaking. The historical influences of Italian opera and Hollywood family melodramas spawned a type of film that has been described as "historical, operatic, choral or epic". Filmmakers of the 1970s explored the traditional modes of melodramatic expression in order to address the socially charged times they lived in. Filmed in the wake of the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now is a complex treatise of human morality and modern warfare that expresses itself through melodramatic conventions. - From an essay by James Rennie from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) IMDB While Luke takes advanced Jedi training from Yoda, his friends are relentlessly pursued by Darth Vader as part of his plan to capture Luke.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) IMDB Archeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the US government to find the Ark of the Covenant, before the Nazis.
• Das Boot (1981) IMDB The claustrophobic world of a WWII German U-boat; boredom, filth, and sheer terror.
• Raging Bull (1980) IMDB The claustrophobic world of a WWII German U-boat; boredom, filth, and sheer terror.
• The Shining (1980) IMDB An abusive husband, his wife and their psychic son take care of a haunted hotel over the winter, but the isolation becomes too much pressure.
• Ran (1985) IMDB An elderly lord abdicates to his three sons, and the two corrupt ones turn against him.
• Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1989) IMDB A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.
• Amadeus (1984) IMDB The incredible story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, told in flashback mode by Antonio Salieri - now confined to an insane asylum.
• Aliens (1986) IMDB The planet from Alien (1979) has been colonized, but contact is lost. This time, the rescue team has impressive firepower, enough?
• The Elephant Man (1980) IMDB A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous facade, there is revealed a person of intelligence and sensitivity.

A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• The Shawshank Redemption (1994) IMDB The life of Andy Dufresne changes when he is convicted and jailed for the murder of his wife.
• Schindler's List (1993) IMDB Oskar Schindler uses Jews to start a factory in Poland during the war. He witnesses the horrors endured by the Jews, and starts to save them.
• Pulp Fiction (1994) IMDB The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.
• The Usual Suspects (1995) IMDB Five villains in New York are rounded up by police in an unconventional manner that worries them. After release, they get together for a spot of revenge, but someone else is controling events.
• Goodfellas (1990) IMDB Henry Hill and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy.
• The Silence of the Lambs (1991) IMDB Clarice Starling, a young FBI agent, is assigned to help find a missing woman, and save her from a psychopathic killer with the help of another killer.
• American Beauty (1999) IMDB A man tells his tale of how he turned his miserable life around and turned everyone else's upside down as a result.
• Fight Club (1999) IMDB An office employee and a soap salesman build a global organization to help vent male aggression.
• The Matrix (1999) IMDB A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against the controllers of it.
• Se7en (1995) IMDB Police drama about two cops, one new and one about to retire, after a serial killer using the seven deadly sins as his MO.

Revenge of the Killer Genre - As with Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, the radical innovations included in Pulp Fiction make it hard to situate the film within mainstream cinema; it is, as John Cawelti would agree, "difficult to know what to call this type of film". While Penn's film and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction clearly acknowledge the conventions of the gangster genre, it is only as a point of departure. Tarantino introduces enigmatic characters and complex incongruities which combine to successfully remove his film from the "conventions of a traditional popular genre" - From an essay by Bryn Chamberlain from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

Burnt by the Sun: Something about the present - Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun was released in 1994, a year in which over seven decades of communism were undoubtedly still a vivid memory in the eyes of the Russian people. The transition from dictatorship to democracy left them with no choice but to try and disregard their past in order to better accept the many changes that the future would bring. In Burnt by the Sun, however, the director focuses on the characters' human emotions rather than condemn their ideology or their motivations. He thus brings us close to these individuals who are clutching the remnants of the ideals they originally fought for, and who, with the return of an old friend, are suddenly forced to simultaneously confront their future and search through their past. - From an essay by Morgan Le Roy, Claire Wynveen, and Lisa Goldberg from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada

A short list of some of the most highly regarded and representative films of the decade.

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) IMDB In a small village in the Shire a young Hobbit named Frodo has been entrusted with an ancient Ring. Now he must embark on an Epic quest to the Cracks of Doom in order to destroy it.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) IMDB Frodo and Sam continue on to Mordor in their mission to destroy the One Ring. Whilst their former companions make new allies and launch an assault on Isengard.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) IMDB The former Fellowship of the Ring prepare for the final battle for Middle Earth, while Frodo & Sam approach Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring.
• Cidade de Deus (City of God) (2002) IMDB Two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer.
• Memento (2000) IMDB A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes and tattoos to hunt down his wife's killer.
• Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001) IMDB Amelie, an innocent and naive girl in Paris, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way, discovers love.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) IMDB A couple (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.
• Der Untergang (Downfall) (2004) IMDB Traudl Junge, the final secretary for Adolf Hitler, tells of the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.
• Hotel Rwanda (2004) IMDB Don Cheadle stars in the true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed over a thousand Tutsis refugees during their struggle against the Hutu militia in Rwanda.
• The Pianist (2002) IMDB A Polish Jewish musician struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto of World War II.

The Technological Tower of Babel: Electronic and Digital Tongues in Media Society - The transference of authority from the individual onto electronic technology was first observed in a roundabout manner when McLuhan coined his famous adage "the medium is the message". - From an essay by Ryan Burwell from Queens University Film Studies, Kingston, Canada