"Gone With the Wind" (1939) If one film epitomizes the Hollywood blockbuster, it is "Gone With the Wind." Scarlett O’Hara has inspired a legion fiery females caught in the sweep of history, most notably Kate Winslet in "Titanic." For decades, filmmakers have drawn on David O. Selznick’s work to create and sell romantic dreams writ large on the screen.
"Stagecoach" (1939) John Ford’s mixture of character depth and hard-riding action reminded audiences that the winning of the West was more than just popcorn fodder. Ford’s work inspired Orson Welles, who screened the film 40 times while shooting "Citizen Kane."
* "Citizen Kane" (1941) Working with a level of control rare in Hollywood, Orson Welles paved the way for director-centric cinema that has produced some of the screen’s greatest achievements and worst excesses. By combining deep-focus photography, directional sound, overlapping dialogue and a fragmented narrative assembled from several different viewpoints, he created a film audiences experienced as they did the real world.
"The Bicycle Thief" (1947) Director Vittorio De Sica was part of a movement to take cinema back to the streets. Shot on real locations with a factory worker in the leading role,"The Bicycle Thief" was among several post-war Italian films that provided an alternative to Hollywood’s big-budget studio productions.
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa’s groundbreaking film put Japanese cinema on the international map. His editing techniques gave it a sensual power that attracted audiences to the emotionally charged story. Kurosawa transcended the challenges of a low budget and censorship to create a new cinematic world that would inspire filmmakers like George Lucas and Martin Scorsese.
"The Searchers" (1956) Almost 20 years after revitalizing Westerns with "Stagecoach," director John Ford pointed the genre in a new direction. "The Searchers" offers one of the screen’s first attempts to depict racism underlying U.S.-native relations. Ford views the problem from both sides, showing how John Wayne’s obsessed Indian hunter Ethan Edwards and the equally obsessed Comanche chief, Scar, have been shaped by violent acts of the past.
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