Loving and exalting the work of Feuillade had the effect of unlocking my appreciation for several other titans of the silent cinema – up until 2005, Keaton and Barnet were pretty much the only directors whose work I could connect with, without undue strain. After Feuillade, I began to look upon films by Méliès, Griffith, Bauer and Chaplin, and others, with new eyes, and their work seemed like dead flowers come to life. They didn’t change, of course – I changed. It was not unlike crossing the seemingly insurmountable barrier that separates the high school student who dutifully suffers through Shakespeare readings in English class, and the same person, sometime later in their life perhaps, whose soul is invigorated, even galvanized, by the same words.

In 2009, Kino released a three-disc set entitled “Gaumont Treasures: 1897-1913″; one disc was devoted entirely to Feuillade’s shorts, which are still largely overlooked, given that most of us, if we know him at all, only associate his name with blockbuster crime-adventure serials from the 1910s (Fantômas, Judex, Les vampires, Tih Minh). I wrote about a few of the films for Out, Damned Spot! – scribbles mostly, but scribbles in an attempt to address aspects of the work I felt were crucial, such as his eye for composition (which for some folks doesn’t seem to amount to much), what set him apart from the mill of set-the-camera-anywhere silent directors, and just generally anything that caught my eye.

I’m reprinting each entry below – bear in mind I had no expectation that any of it was going to be read by anyone. I wouldn’t reprint them here if I didn’t think they held some value, but, you know, it’s meant to be taken in the style and spirit of live-blogging.

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1. The Colonel’s Account (1907)

An elderly dinner guest tells a war story that comes to life, leaving no guest unperturbed, no inanimate object unsmashed. A stunning ensemble work, as perfectly timed as a flock of birds changing direction midflight. Two and a half minutes separate Victorian fine dining from utter bedlam.

2. A Very Fine Lady (1908)

A girl so hot she leaves a trail of disaster a mile wide.

Feuillade may not be the first filmmaker to use music hall gags (the swinging ladder/rifle that hits the other man; man is sprayed by ignorant gardener, etc), but here at least he has a knack for exploiting the frame’s edge and foreground-background interplay. Gags would be perfected later by Chaplin, Keaton, Tashlin, Kovacs, Tati, et al. Crude but fun.

3. Spring (1909)

Ice melts to become whiteclad girl. Nymphs, in-camera superimpositions. Why shoot birds when miniature f/x will give you tiny flutists? Inconsequential pageantry? Maybe, but I wonder if Feuillade did the other three seasons in the same mode; have a feeling the whole would be greater than the sum, etc. Final shot is pleasurable and sincere, like the middle section of Le Plaisir.

4. The Fairy of the Surf (1909)

Not more refined than Melies’ work but Feuillade’s approach to phantasmagoria exhibits his capacity for directing individuals and groups, and his compositions create startling shapes and intersecting lines because of his human players rather than in spite of them. (See also The Colonel’s Account.) Felt my heart lift during the final shot, a mesmerizing collage that celebrates what was then the cutting edge of film production: layers of in-camera effects, puppets, pageantry, hand-painted frames joined with early 2-strip color. Divine.

EDIT: Realize I called puppets “cutting edge 1909 technology.” Intended, rather, to indicate multitude of layers within shot, which mixes old & new, hi-tech with lo-, and such.

5. Custody of the Child (1909)

Of course, Feuillade would begin a melodrama with a shot that promises to drop us into the story yet, Tati-like, does not highlight the principals or even indicate they have entered the shot! But with unaccented grace he sweeps aside all visual noise and clarity arrives. (Among silent-film titans, LF was the ninja, silent but deadly.)

(Should note that I am highlighting LF’s formal strengths very nearly in panicked defense from the pulpy melodrama, which perhaps only form can transcend. The film’s title practically exclaims, “skip me!”)

Rooms structured around tasteful yet extravagant decor, LF is rarely happy unless the background contains a few ports: doors, windows, curtained nooks, fireplaces…why is the painting over the fire curtained?

An idiot could have handled this narrative, but an idiot didn’t, Feuillade did. And he gets suspense from a child hiding (badly) from cops under the dining room table. His seamless merger of film frame and theatrical arch pays huge dividends.

6a. The Defect (1911)

“…where loose women congregate…”. A prequel to Custody?

Once again, theatrical choreography with an architecturally- preoccupied camera position. I feel confident that this is one of the director’s defining features. However, I’m 4-5 minutes in and the film is not yet great and the relentless musical refrain (not Feuillade’s fault) is driving me bananas. And then a HALF DOZEN waitresses (profanely recalling Feuillade’s 1909 Spring) just MATERIALIZE to clean a table that would take (and has) one waitress less than 9 seconds to make new and pine-smelling for the next patron. The kind of grand gesture that Feuillade slips under our noses from time to time.

Transition: gorgeous deep-focus photography, train passes foreground (bird’s-eye with slightly canted angle; sunlit bay in far, depressed background).

I respect contemporary long-take directors, think static-cam maneuvers challenging enough that even mild success earns at least a grudging respect. Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor employed long takes that worked the foreground and background against each other and built gargantuan visual tapestries. Usually to indicate one joke. Feuillade’s static camera juggles multiple planes and multiple timing cues to further the narrative. As alluded earlier, Feuillade’s crowd control is the impulse while his use of architecture is the correction. Closer to Welles, in this way.

In this odd film, what appears to be a gaggle of moralizing harpies descending upon the heroine evaporates to reveal the heroine’s apparent benefactor. (But we are not sure of that, either; a mindbending manipulation of expectations. Yet Feuillade continues to promise NOTHING: promises neither cathartic she’s-a-saint fist-pumping nor snarky ha-ha-that’s- what-you-get-for-expecting-happiness tragedy; what is on the agenda, with Feuillade creating set-/frame-centric backgrounds and allowing the melodrama to run its course? The director coaches his actors to express rather than telegraph, so each gesture seems to be taking place in the present, and events seem to end before they begin.

Transition: as the “loose woman”‘s patron expires, his entourage suggests jealousy and black-clothed contempt but appearances deceive as their demonstration of easygoing acceptance resembles that of a Farrelly brothers movie. How long can this idyll last? The title after all is DEFECT.

To be continued. At 41 minutes, The Defect is quite long in comparison to almost all of Feuillade’s non-serial work. Will resume with a Part 2.

6b. The Defect (1911)

Resuming 21 minutes in. No chapters for this 41 minute film, so fastforward is only option to get to where I left off, i.e. waiting for the heroine’s defect to reappear and mess up her nice life. (It bears observing that her sordid past is expressed visually by her acts of waiting tables, bussing tables, and being flirty with male patrons. SCANDAL!) Had to stop to admire the overhead train transition shot.

24:41…aaaand here we go.

29:29…Calm and menace. Images prefigure Les Vampires; Ann…a good Irma Vep?

31:33…this meeting of society’s elite investors seems to be going great, what could go wrong?

31:50…a mysterious letter!

33:13…”So, ladies and gentlemen, I trust you’ve had a chance to review…say, why so glum?”

33:31…”It’s not you, whore, it’s us. You understand. I’m sure you’ll land on your back–er, your feet.”

35:51…these people, clearly not fans of music and revelry. Half-hoping this movie will end like Animal House or School of Rock, something.

36:03…holy moley,that one lady is really getting into this, a la Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist. Counted at least three Christ-figure poses since Ann’s forced outing.

37:02…nice trick-wall shot, beatifully executed but also the whole scene employs it well. Trick or no trick, the most graceful shot in the film.

7. The Roman Orgy (1911)

Feuillade understood the power of actors and costumes to rebuild a frame or simply redirect its visual energy. Feathered orgy is wonderful “moment out of time.” Lots of color, each shot seems to be built on one direction across the frame: left or right, up or down. Result, viewer feels highly unstable at precise moment of melodramatic release.

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These Feuillade films, and others, can be viewed on Fandor, although the Kino disc still seems to be available via Netflix.

Hall Pass (Bobby and Peter Farrelly)

An attempt to gauge and tabulate the must-see films of 2011 (going by IMDb year whenever possible):

TOP TIER:
A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)
The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
Faust (Alexander Sokurov)
Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki)
House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello)
The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes)
Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)
Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
The Return (Nathaniel Dorsky)
Ricky (Janie Geiser)
River Rites (Ben Russell)
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
This is Not a Film (Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi)
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Adam Curtis)
Almayer’s Folly (Chantal Akerman)
Art History (Joe Swanberg)
Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)
Autoerotic (Joe Swanberg)
Bridesmaids (Paul Feig)
Caitlin Plays Herself (Joe Swanberg)
Carnage (Roman Polanski)
The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry)
Contagion (Steven Soderbergh)
Corpo Celeste (Alice Rohrwacher)
The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
Edwin Parker (Tacita Dean)
Elena (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
Footnote (Joseph Cedar)
The Future (Miranda July)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher)
Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Love)
Hall Pass (Bobby and Peter Farrelly)
Hanna (Joe Wright)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (David Yates)
Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon)
Hors Satan (Bruno Dumont)
The Ides of March (George Clooney)
Innocent Saturday (Alexander Mindadze)
J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood)
The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev)
Love and Bruises (Lou Ye)
Low Life (Nicolas Klotz)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo)
Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
Policeman (Nadav Lapid)
Septien (Michael Tully)
Silver Bullets (Joe Swanberg)
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)
Sleeping Sickness (Ulrich Kohler)
Slow Action (Ben Rivers)
Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)
Target (Alexander Zeldovich)
Terri (Azazel Jacobs)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)
This Must Be the Place (Paolo Sorrentino)
The Three Musketeers (Paul W.S. Anderson)
Uncle Kent (Joe Swanberg)
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (Todd Strauss-Schulson)
Weekend (Andrew Haigh)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay)
Young Adult (Jason Reitman)

OF INTEREST:
4:44 Last Day on Earth (Abel Ferrara)
The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg)
Bellflower (Evan Glodell)
The Green Hornet (Michel Gondry)
Shame (Steve McQueen)
Source Code (Duncan Jones)
Super 8 (J.J. Abrams)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Michael Bay)
War Horse (Steven Spielberg)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
50/50 (Jonathan Levine)
The Lincoln Lawyer (Brad Furman)
The Mechanic (Simon West)
Paul (Greg Mottola)
Unknown (Jaume Collet-Serra)

Target (Alexander Zeldovich)

10) Forest of the Hanged – although his career spanned fifty years, the work of Romanian director Liviu Ciulei is an unknown quantity here in the US, mostly because Romanian cinema is an unknown quantity in the US. But his 1965 movie, a drama set during the First World War, won the Directing prize at Cannes. It plays today at 6 PM at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. You can expect stark, noirish black and white photography and ceaseless movement by the camera as well as in the frame, to offset the gritty realism of its subject. Bears comparison to Kubrick’s Paths of Glory and Joseph Losey’s King & Country, and Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood.

9) The Silver Cliff – Brazilian Karim Ainouz’s new film played the festival circuit – Cannes, Helsinki, Toronto – and has gathered a small following. It’s worth checking out the Museum of Modern Art’s “Contenders” series – it’s showing on Monday, December 5, at 7 PM. It’s a story of a family in crisis, but for reasons which remain cryptic – the pleasures of the film are in the director’s sense of duration, the moment, and his characters’ behavior. It’s worth taking a chance on.

8) Possession – Here are some films you wouldn’t think could go together: The War of the Roses, Scenes from a Marriage, Repulsion, The Brood, Alien, Suspiria, Moonlighting. And yet, Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, which seems to have more sheer kineticism than Spielberg’s Tintin, will have Film Forum audiences grabbing at those film titles to try to get a handle on Zulawski’s best-known film, which is filled to the point of running over with freak-outs and violence and f/x work against a claustrophobic-realist, Polanski-influenced backdrop. Its one-week run begins today.

7) Tuesday, After Christmas – Like Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy and Raul Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon, Radu Muntean’s fourth movie had its US premiere at the 2010 New York Film Festival, but should be making a few critics’ top 10 lists for this year, as well. Its story of marital infidelity could not be more elementary, nor could its patient shooting style, employing without exception a series of long, almost motionless takes. What’s fascinating here is that Muntean’s widescreen photography captures actions, behaviors, and events that are performed on a different tempo entirely, a “life as it happens” kind of speed that isn’t overtly stylized, and allows the audience to tease out the intelligences and emotions of his characters without concealment, but also without resorting to over-emphasis. The result is a kind of musicality between two different, but complementary styles, which is more than enough to make Tuesday, After Christmas a worthwhile experience. It’s playing at the Walter Reade on Monday at 6 PM.

6) The Color Wheel – With this and Impolex, Alex Ross Perry is making a name for himself in independent film; what you can expect from the lo-fi sibling drama The Color Wheel is a classic brother-sister rivalry in which the traditional expectations of “mumblecore” dialogue are flipped and each character not only speaks what’s on their mind, but does so clearly, and in impatient, cocksure torrents. All without abandoning emotional truth – a melancholy movie at a screwball pace.” The Color Wheel is being shown at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, on Thursday, December 8, with the director in person.

5) Caitlin Plays Herself – In many ways 2011 is a “Joe Swanberg year,” with the filmmaker releasing literally a half dozen new features this year alone. Like the great Korean director Hong Sang-soo, Swanberg writes and shoots what he sees, starting with himself and those in his social and artistic sphere. With its temporal ellipses and slowly crumbling boy-girl romance, Caitlin is kind of a spiritual (rather than structural) cousin to Nights and Weekends, the 2008 movie he co-directed, co-wrote, and costarred in, with Greta Gerwig. What distinguishes Caitlin from his previous films is that Swanberg – almost as a lark – shoots the movie in a series of attractive, Tsai Ming-liang-like tableaux, with similarly lengthy takes. Featuring a lead performance of steely good humor by Caitlin Stainken, Caitlin Plays Herself begins a 1-week run at Brooklyn’s ReRun Gastropub theater, with the director and star making an appearance at tonight’s premiere.

4) The Strange Case of Angelica – Someone once said that almost all of Manoel de Oliveira’s films, at least starting in the 1970s, could be called Doomed Love, which is the name of his 1979 miniseries, and possibly one of his greatest works. The Strange Case of Angelica renders his themes of ill-fated love into a wisp of a ghost story, and a somewhat quietly comical one at that. What you can expect from Angelica is beautiful landscape and interior photography, showing off, as many of his films have done, the beauty of Portugal, and Lisbon on particular. But many, many of Oliveira’s films are also horror films, although they’re almost entirely bloodless – taking place in the head and the heart instead of before the eyes. For a director who, as many critics have written, is nearly as old as the cinema itself, his slight-seeming features are imbued with more personality and feeling than almost anyone else’s. The Strange Case of Angelica is showing at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday at 5 PM.

3) White Heat – Raoul Walsh’s status as a great director is still being debated in a number of circles, which is only natural for a career as long as his was, and as varied – we’re still assessing its many phases, and he seemed to make one film of every imaginable type and style. Still, his most famous movie, which confirmed rather than granted James Cagney’s screen immortality, is also one of his greatest. White Heat is showing at the Museum of Modern Art’s ongoing “Auteurist History of Film” series, at 1:30 today.

2) The Tarnished Angels – 92Y Tribeca is doing a great job showing great films that haven’t quite attained the status of “official” classic, so while it’s understandable that the Sirk films we count as all-time masterpieces only includes Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, and Imitation of Life, seeing The Tarnished Angels projected should change your mind. In an uncommon combination of black & white and CinemaScope, Tarnished Angels takes a fairly rote melodramatic set-up and raises it to a kind of astral plane of cheap, noirish melancholy. Disreputable content, operatic emotions, regal construction. 92Y is showing the film at 9:30 tonight, following Sirk’s 1958 WWII melodrama A Time to Live and a Time to Die, which plays at 7 PM. You can see both films for one admission.

1) Late Spring – Truly one of the greatest of all films, Ozu’s 1949 masterpiece is kind of his Rio Bravo – it seems the epicenter of his themes and aesthetic, and he remade it twice, the second time being his last film. Not only should this be part of any cinephile’s fundamental education, it’s the kind of film, like the cinema of Dreyer, Bresson, Hawks, Ford, and Hitchcock, that should accompany you throughout your life. See it on Wednesday or Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art, 1:30 on both days.

Sumerki zhenskoi dushi / Twilight of a Woman's Soul (Yevgeni Bauer)

1919

TOP TIER:
Barrabas (Louis Feuillade)
Blind Husbands (Erich von Stroheim)
Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith)
A Romance of Happy Valley (D.W. Griffith)
True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Ask Father (Hal Roach)
Back Stage (Fatty Arbuckle)
Back to God’s Country (David M. Hartford)
Billy Blazes, Esq. (Hal Roach)
Bumping Into Broadway (Hal Roach)
Daddy-Long-Legs (Marshall A. Neilan)
A Day’s Pleasure (Charles Chaplin)
The Delicious Little Devil (Robert Z. Leonard)
The Doll (Ernst Lubitsch)
Don’t Change Your Husband (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Girl Who Stayed at Home (D.W. Griffith)
The Greatest Question (D.W. Griffith)
Madame Dubarry (Ernst Lubitsch)
Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille)
Meyer From Berlin (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch)
Sir Arne’s Treasure (Mauritz Stiller)
The Sons of Ingmar (Victor Sjostrom)
Die Spinnen, 1. Teil – Der Goldene See (Fritz Lang)
Sunnyside (Charles Chaplin)
When the Clouds Roll By (Victor Fleming)

1918

TOP TIER:
Hearts of the World (D.W. Griffith)
The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjöström)
Tih Minh (Louis Feuillade)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (Marshall A. Neilan)
Are Crooks Dishonest? (Gil Pratt)
Beautiful Japan (Benjamin Brodsky)
The Bell Boy (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
The Blue Bird (Maurice Tourneur)
Blue Blazes Rawden (William S. Hart)
Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch)
The City Slicker (Gilbert Pratt)
The Cook (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and Buster Keaton)
A Dog’s Life (Charles Chaplin)
The Forbidden City (Sidney Franklin)
Good Night, Nurse! (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
Hell Bent (John Ford)
Hey There (Alfred J. Goulding)
Himmelskibet (Holger-Madsen)
How to Make Movies (Charles Chaplin)
I Don’t Want to Be a Man (Ernst Lubitsch)
Johanna Enlists (William Desmond Taylor)
Know Thy Wife (Al E. Christie)
The Married Virgin (Joe Maxwell)
Mickey (F. Richard Jones and James Young)
M’Liss (Marshall Neilan)
Moonshine (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
The Non-Stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt)
Old Wives for New (Cecil B. DeMille)
Out West (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
A Pair of Silk Stockings (Walter Edwards)
Policy and Pie (Gregory La Cava)
Shifting Sands (Albert Parker)
Shoulder Arms (Charles Chaplin)
The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay)
Stella Maris (Marshall A. Neilan)
Two-Gun Gussie (Alf Goulding)
The Unbeliever (Alan Crosland)
The Whispering Chorus (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Young Lady and the Holligan (Yevgeni Slavinsky and Vladimir Mayakovsky)

1917

TOP TIER:
The Adventurer (Charles Chaplin
The Cure (Charles Chaplin)
The Dying Swan (Yevgeni Bauer)
Easy Street (Charles Chaplin)
The Immigrant (Charles Chaplin)
A Man There Was (Victor Sjostrom)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Bucking Broadway (John Ford)
The Butcher Boy (Fatty Arbuckle)
Coney Island (Fatty Arbuckle)
Le coupable (Andre Antoine)
Father Sergius (Yakov Protazanov and Alexandre Volkoff)
Girl from Stormy Croft (Victor Sjostrom)
His Wedding Night (Fatty Arbuckle)
The Little Princess (Marshall Neilan)
The Merry Jail (Ernst Lubitsch)
A Modern Musketeer (Allan Dwan)
A Mormon Maid (Robert Z. Leonard)
Oh Doctor! (Fatty Arbuckle)
Poor Little Rich Girl (Maurice Tourneur)
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (George Irving)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Marshall Neilan)
A Reckless Romeo (Fatty Arbuckle)
A Romance of the Redwoods (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Rough House (Fatty Arbuckle)
The Secret Game (William C. de Mille)
The Silent Man (William S. Heart)
Straight Shooting (John Ford)
The Sultan’s Wife (Clarence G. Badger)
Teddy at the Throttle (Clarence G. Badger)
Thomas Graal’s Best Film (Mauritz Stiller)
The Tornado (John Ford)
The Trail of Hate (John Ford)
Until They Get Me (Frank Borzage)
The War and the Dream of Momi (Segundo de Chomón and Giovanni Pastrone)

1916

TOP TIER:
Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)
Judex (Louis Feuillade)
One A.M. (Charles Chaplin)
The Pawnshop (Charles Chaplin)
The Rink (Charles Chaplin)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Stuart Paton)
Als ich tot war (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Americano (John Emerson)
Behind the Screen (Charles Chaplin)
Blind Justice (Benjamin Christensen)
Burlesque on Carmen (Charles Chaplin)
Civilization (Reginald Barker and Thomas H. Ince)
The Count (Charles Chaplin)
The Danger Girl (Clarence G. Badger)
Dödskyssen (Victor Sjöström)
The Dumb Girl of Portici (Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
The Fireman (Charles Chaplin)
The Floorwalker (Charles Chaplin)
Friday the 13th (Emile Chautard)
Gretchen the Greenhorn (C.M. Franklin and S.A. Franklin)
The Half-Breed (Allan Dwan)
He Did and He Didn’t (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
Hell’s Hinges (Charles Swickard)
Her Sister’s Rival (Yevgeni Bauer)
Hoodoo Ann (Lloyd Ingraham)
King Lear (Ernest C. Warde)
Joan the Woman (Cecil B. DeMille)
Manhattan Madness (Allan Dwan)
The Mutiny of the Bounty (Raymond Longford)
The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (Christy Cabanne and John Emerson)
Oliver Twist (James Young)
Das Phantom der Oper (Ernst Matray)
Police (Charles Chaplin)
The Prisoner of Karlsten’s Fortress (Georg af Klercker)
The Queen of Spades (Yakov Protazanov)
Schuhpalast Pinkus (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Sea Vultures (Victor Sjöström)
Snow White (J. Searle Dawley)
The Three Godfathers (Edward J. Le Saint)
The Vagabond (Charles Chaplin)
Where Are My Children? (Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber)

1915

TOP TIER:
After Death (Yevgeni Bauer)
The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille)
Regeneration (Raoul Walsh)
The Tramp (Charles Chaplin)
Les vampires (Louis Feuillade)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Alias Jimmy Valentine (Maurice Tourneur)
Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini and Gustavo Serena)
The Bank (Charles Chaplin)
The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith)
A Butterfly on the Wheel (Maurice Tourneur)
A Burlesque on Carmen (Charles Chaplin)
Carmen (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Champion (Charles Chaplin)
The Coward (Reginald Barker and Thomas H. Ince)
Daydreams (Yevgeni Bauer)
Deti veka (Yevgeni Bauer)
The Disciple (William S. Hart)
Enoch Arden (William Christy Cabanne)
Fatty and Mabel’s Simple Life (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
Fatty’s Faithful Fido (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
Fatty’s Reckless Fling (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
Fatty’s Tintype Tangle (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
A Fool There Was (Frank Powell)
Four Feathers (Four Feathers (J. Searle Dawley)
The Golden Chance (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Golem (Henrik Galeen and Paul Wegener)
The Governor (Edgar Lewis)
His New Job (Charles Chaplin)
Hypocrites (Lois Weber)
The Immigrant (George Melford)
The Italian (Reginald Barker)
Knight of the Trail (William S. Hart)
A Night Out (Charles Chaplin)
Old Heidelberg (John Emerson)
The Raven (Charles J. Brabin)
Shanghaied (Charles Chaplin)
Trilby (Maurice Tourneur)
Wished on Mabel (Mabel Normand)
A Woman (Charles Chaplin)
Work (Charles Chaplin)
Young Romance (George Melford)

1914

TOP TIER:
Child of the Big City (Yevgeni Bauer)
Fantomas contre Fantomas (Louis Feuillade)
Le faux magistrat (Louis Feuillade)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
The Avenging Conscience: or ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ (D.W. Griffith)
The Bargain (Reginald Barker)
The Battle of the Sexes (D.W. Griffith)
Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone)
Cinderella (James Kirkwood)
A Florida Enchantment (Sidney Drew)
Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay)
The Hazards of Helen (James Davis and J.P. McGowan)
His Musical Career (Charles Chaplin)
His New Profession (Charles Chaplin)
His Trysting Place (Charles Chaplin)
In the Land of the Head Hunters (Edward S. Curtis)
Judith of Bethulia (D.W. Griffith)
Leading Lizzie Astray (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
The Magic Cloak (J. Farrell MacDonald)
The Man with Wax Faces (Maurice Tourneur)
The Massacre (D.W. Griffith)
Max Sets the Style (Max Linder)
The Mysterious X, or Sealed Orders (Benjamin Christensen)
Mystery of the Hindu Image (Raoul Walsh)
The New Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum)
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (J. Farrell MacDonald)
The Perils of Pauline (Louis J. Gasnier and Donald MacKenzie)
The Primitive Man (D.W. Griffith)
The Rounders (Charles Chaplin)
The Squaw Man (Dustin Farnum and Monroe Salisbury)
Tess of the Storm Country (Edwin S. Porter)
Tillie’s Punctured Romance (Mack Sennett)
The Virginian (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England (Maurice Tourneur)
The Wrath of the Gods (Reginald Barker)

1913

TOP TIER:
The Child of Paris (Leonce Perret)
Fantômas – À l’ombre de la guillotine (Louis Feuillade)
Ingeborg Holm (Victor Sjöström)
Juve contre Fantômas (Louis Feuillade)
Le mort qui tue (Louis Feuillade)
The Mothering Heart (D.W. Griffith)
Tragic Error (Louis Feuillade)
Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Yevgeni Bauer)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Atlantis (August Blom)
The Bangville Police (Henry Lehrman)
Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life (Mack Sennett)
The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (D.W. Griffith)
Bout-de-Zan and the Elephant (Louis Feuillade)
Death’s Marathon (D.W. Griffith)
The Drummer of the 8th (Thomas H. Ince)
The Evidence of the Film (Lawrence Marston and Edwin Thanhouser)
Fate and Love (Max Linder)
Fatty Joins the Force (George Nichols)
Granddad (Thomas H. Ince)
The Grasshopper and the Ant (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
A House Divided (Alice Guy)
The House of Darkness (D.W. Griffith)
How Men Propose (Lois Weber)
The Insects’ Christmas (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
The Last Days of Pompeii (Mario Caserini & Eleuterio Rodolfi)
Mabel’s Dramatic Career (Mack Sennett)
Matrimony’s Speed Limit (Alice Guy)
A Muddy Romance (Mack Sennett)
The New Desk (Karl Valentin)
The Night Before Christmas (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
Raja Harishchandra (Dhundiraj Govind Phalke)
The Speed Kings (Wilfred Lucas)
The Student of Prag (Stellan Rye and Paul Wegener)
Suspense (Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber)
Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker)

1912

TOP TIER:
The Cameraman’s Revenge (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
The Girl and Her Trust (D.W. Griffith)
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (D.W. Griffith)
The Mystery of the Rocks of Kador (Leonce Perret)
The Painted Lady (D.W. Griffith)
The Race for Millions (Louis Feuillade)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
The Broken Springrose (Victor Sjöström)
Brutality (D.W. Griffith)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (J. Searle Dawley)
A Christmas Accident (Bannister Merwin)
Conquest of the North Pole (George Melies)
A Dash Through the Clouds (Mack Sennett)
Desdamona (August Blom)
The Dwarf (Louis Feuillade)
Falling Leaves (Alice Guy)
The Female of the Species (D.W. Griffith)
The Flying Circus (Alfred Lind)
For His Son (D.W. Griffith)
Friends (D.W. Griffith)
From the Submerged (Theodore Wharton)
The Heart and Money (Louis Feuillade and Léonce Perret)
How a Mosquito Operates (Winsor McCay)
The Land Beyond the Sunset (Harold M. Shaw)
The Loves of Queen Elizabeth (Henri Desfontaines and Louis Mercanton)
Max and His Dog (René Leprince and Max Linder)
Max the Shoe Collector (Max Linder)
The Mender of Nets (D.W. Griffith)
The Narrow Road (D.W. Griffith)
The New York Hat (D.W. Griffith)
The Obsession (Louis Feuillade)
The Old Actor (D.W. Griffith)
One Is Business, the Other Crime (D.W. Griffith)
Onesime, Clockmaker (Jean Durand)
The Railway of Death (Jean Durand)
The Red Chrysanthemum (Léonce Perret)
The Sunbeam (D.W. Griffith)
Troubles of a Grasswidower (Max Linder)
An Unseen Enemy (D.W. Griffith)
The Usurer’s Grip (Bannister Merwin)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Independenta Romaniei (Aristide Demetriade)
Quo Vadis? (Enrico Guazzoni)

1911

TOP TIER:
Enoch Arden (D.W. Griffith)
Little Nemo (Winsor McCay)
The Lonesdale Operator (D.W. Griffith)
The Roman Orgy (Louis Feuillade)
The Trust: or The Battles For Money (Louis Feuillade)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen (Georges Melies)
The Adventures of Billy (D.W. Griffith)
As in a Looking Glass (D.W. Griffith)
Balletdanserinden (August Blom)
The Battle (D.W. Griffith)
The Black Dream (Urban Gad)
Bobby, the Coward (D.W. Griffith)
Brains Repaired (Emile Cohl)
The Broken Cross (D.W. Griffith)
A Country Cupid (D.W. Griffith)
The Defect (Louis Feuillade)
The Dream (Thomas H. Ince and George Loane Tucker)
Fate’s Turning (D.W. Griffith)
His Trust (D.W. Griffith)
L’inferno (Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe de Liguoro)
The Last Drop of Water (D.W. Griffith)
Little Red Riding Hood (James Kirkwood and George Loane Tucker)
Max and His Mother-in-Law (Max Linder and Lucien Nonguet)
Max Plays at Drama (Max Linder and Rene Leprince)
Max Takes Tonics (Max Linder)
The Miser’s Heart (D.W. Griffith)
The Poisoned Flume (Allan Dwan)
Romance With a Double Bass (Kai Hansen)
Swords and Hearts (D.W. Griffith)
A Tale of Two Cities (William Humphrey)
The Traitress (Urban Gad)
What Shall We Do with Our Old (D.W. Griffith)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
At the Prison Gate (August Blom)
The Fall of Troy (Luigi Romano Borgnetto and Giovanni Pastrone)
The Merchant of Venice (Gerolamo Lo Savio)
She (George Nichols)

1910

TOP TIER:
The Unchanging Sea (D.W. Griffith)
The Userer (D.W. Griffith)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
An Arcadian Maid (D.W. Griffith)
As It Is in Life (D.W. Griffith)
The Automatic Moving Company (Émile Cohl)
Bebe apache (Louis Feuillade)
Birth of a Flower (F. Percy Smith)
The Broken Doll (D.W. Griffith)
That Chink at Golden Gulch (D.W. Griffith)
A Christmas Carol (J. Searle Dawley, Charles Kent, and Ashley Miller)
Le duel d’un monsieur myope (Louis J. Gasnier)
Faithful (D.W. Griffith)
Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley)
The Fugitive (D.W. Griffith)
The Hasher’s Delirium (Émile Cohl)
The House with Closed Shutters (D.W. Griffith)
Idiot (Pyotr Chardynin)
In Old California (D.W. Griffith)
In the Border States (D.W. Griffith)
Les illusions fantaisistes (Georges Méliès)
Jeffries-Johnson World’s Championship Boxing Contest, Held at Reno, Nevada, July 4, 1910 (J. Stuart Blackton)
Max is Almost Married (Max Linder)
Max Takes a Bath (Lucien Nonguet)
New York of Today (Thomas Edison)
The Oath and the Man (D.W. Griffith)
Queen of Spades (Pyotr Chardynin)
Ramona (D.W. Griffith)
Re Lear (Gerolamo Lo Savio)
The Stenographer’s Friend; Or, What Was Accomplished by an Edison Business Phonograph (Thomas Edison)
What the Daisy Said (D.W. Griffith)
White Fawn’s Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America (James Young Deer)
Wilful Peggy (D.W. Griffith)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner)
The Woman Always Pays (Urban Gad)

True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtv1D9DrzUE&w=560&h=315]

Future editions, of course, will have more “video essay” panache, flashing lights, film clips, girls making out, the whole kit.

Applause (Rouben Mamoulian)

1929

TOP TIER:
Arsenal (Alexander Dovzhenko)
Big Business (James Horne and Leo McCarey)
Un chien andalou (Luis Bunuel)
Diary of a Lost Girl (G. W. Pabst)
The General Line (Sergei Eisenstein)
Lady of the Pavements (D.W. Griffith)
Liberty (Leo McCarey)
Lucky Star (Frank Borzage)
The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
Pandora’s Box (G. W. Pabst)
Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim)
The River (Frank Borzage)
Thunderbolt (Josef von Sternberg)
Woman in the Moon (Fritz Lang)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Alibi (Roland West)
Applause (Rouben Mamoulian)
Asphalt (Joe May)
Big News (Gregory La Cava)
Black and Tan (Dudley Murphy)
Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Black Watch (John Ford)
Le bled (Jean Renoir)
Broadway (Paul Fejos)
The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont)
Brumes d’automne (Dimitri Kirsanoff)
The Canary Murder Case (Malcolm St. Clair and Frank Tuttle)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith)
Desert Nights (William Nigh)
Dynamite (Cecil B. DeMille)
Eternal Love (Ernst Lubitsch)
Evangeline (Edwin Carewe)
Finis terrae (Jean Epstein)
Flight (Frank Capra)
The Four Feathers (Merian C. Cooper and Lothar Mendes)
Glorifying the American Girl (Millard Webb)
The Godless Girl (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Great Gabbo (James Cruze)
H2O (Ralph Steiner)
Hallelujah! (King Vidor)
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Charles F. Reisner)
The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan)
The Kiss (Jacques Feyder)
The Last Warning (Paul Leni)
The Letter (Jean de Limur)
The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Love Trap (William Wyler)
Marianne (Robert Z. Leonard)
Men O’War (Lewis R. Foster)
Navy Blues (Clarence Brown)
The New Babylon (Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg)
Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont)
Rain (Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens)
Redskin (Victor Schertzinger)
Salute (John Ford)
Seduction (Gustav Machaty)
Seven Footprints to Satan (Benjamin Christensen)
The Skeleton Dance (Walt Disney)
Speedway (Harry Beaumont)
Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick)
Strong Boy (John Ford)
The Trespasser (Edmund Goulding)
The Virginian (Victor Fleming)
White Hell of Pitz Palu (Arnold Fanck and G.W. Pabst)
Wrong Again (Leo McCarey)

OF INTEREST:
The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock)
Tokyo March (Kenji Mizoguchi) [fragment]

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Divine Lady (Frank Lloyd)
Girls Gone Wild (Lewis Seiler)
The Mysterious Island (Lucien Hubbard)The Single Standard (John S. Robertson)

1928

TOP TIER:
The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton)
The Circus (Charles Chaplin)
The Crowd (King Vidor)
The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein)
A Girl in Every Port (Howard Hawks)
The Last Command (Josef von Sternberg)
Lonesome (Paul Fejos)
October (Sergei Eisenstein)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
The Patsy (King Vidor)
Sadie Thompson (Raoul Walsh)
Spies (Fritz Lang)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Charles Reisner and Buster Keaton)
Street Angel (Frank Borzage)
The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim)
The Wind (Victor Sjostrom)
Zvenigora (Alexander Dovzhenko)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
L’argent (Marcel L’Herbier)
Beggars of Life (William A. Wellman)
The Bridge (Joris Ivens)
Un chapeau de paille d’Italie (Rene Clair)
The Chaser (Harry Langdon)
Drums of Love (D.W. Griffith)
L’étoile de mer (Man Ray)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Melville Webber, James Sibley Watson)
Four Sons (John Ford)
Hangman’s House (John Ford)
The House on Trubnaya Square (Boris Barnet)
In Old Arizona (Raoul Walsh and Irving Cummings)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Herbert Brenon)
Leave ‘em Laughing (Clyde Bruckman)
The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapich)
Maldone (Jean Gremillon)
The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni)
The Mating Call (James Cruze)
The Mysterious Lady (Fred Niblo)
Our Dancing Daughters (Harry Beaumont)
La petite marchande d’allumettes (Jean Renoir and Jean Tédesco)
The Power of the Press (Frank Capra)
The Racket (Lewis Milestone)
The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac)
Show People (King Vidor)
Speedy (Ted Wilde)
Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
That Certain Thing (Frank Capra)
Le tournoi dans la cite (Jean Renoir)
Two Tars (James Parrott)
We Faw Down (Leo McCarey)
West of Zanzibar (Tod Browning)
White Shadows on the South Seas (W. S. Van Dyke)
A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown)

OF INTEREST:
Champagne (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Farmer’s Wife (Alfred Hitchcock)

1927

TOP TIER:
7th Heaven (Frank Borzage)
College (Buster Keaton and James Horne)
The Love of Jeanne Ney (G. W. Pabst)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
Napoléon (Abel Gance)
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
Underworld (Josef von Sternberg)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
After Midnight (Monta Bell)
Barbed Wire (Rowland V. Lee)
Bed and Sofa (Abram Room)
The Beloved Rogue (Alan Crosland)
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann)
The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard)
Don’t Tell Everything (Leo McCarey)
The End of St. Petersburg (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
The Girl With the Hatbox (Boris Barnet)
La glace à trois faces (Jean Epstein)
Hindle Wakes (Maurice Elvey)
Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller)
It (Clarence Badger)
The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde and J.A. Howe)
The King of Kings (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock)
London After Midnight (Tod Browning)
Long Pants (Frank Capra)
The Love of Zero (William Cameron Menzies and Robert Florey)
Man, Woman and Sin (Monta Bell)
The Monkey Talks (Raoul Walsh) [missing reels]
My Best Girl (Sam Taylor)
Paid to Love (Howard Hawks)
Quality Street (Sidney Franklin)
The Red Mill (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock)
Spiritual Constructions (Oskar Fischinger)
Sur un air de Charleston (Jean Renoir)
The Town Rat and the Country Rat (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
Tracked by the Police (Ray Enright)
The Unknown (Tod Browning)
Upstream (John Ford)
Wax Experiments (Oskar Fischinger)
West Point (Edward Sedgwick)
Wings (William A. Wellman)

1926

TOP TIER:
Battling Butler (Buster Keaton)
By the Law (Lev Kuleshov)
Faust (F.W. Murnau)
The General (Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman)
Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanov)
Miss Mend (Boris Barnet and Fedor Ozep)
A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa)
So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger)
Anemic Cinema (Marcel Duchamp)
3 Bad Men (John Ford)
Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor)
The Bat (Roland West)
Beau Geste (Herbert Brenon)
Beverly of Graustark (Sidney Franklin)
The Blackbird (Tod Browning)
The Black Pirate (Albert Parker)
La boheme (King Vidor)
Bromo and Juliet (Leo McCarey)
Brown of Harvard (Jack Conway)
The Clinging Vine (Paul Sloane)
Crazy Like a Fox (Leo McCarey)
Dog Shy (Leo McCarey)
Don Juan (Alan Crosland)
The Duchess of Buffalo (Sidney Franklin)
Ella Cinders (Alfred E. Green)
Emak-Bakia (Man Ray)
Exit Smiling (Sam Taylor)
Fig Leaves (Howard Hawks)
Filmstudie (Hans Richter)
Fine Manners (Richard Rosson)
Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown)
For Heaven’s Sake (Sam Taylor)
Geheimnisse einer Seele (G.W. Pabst)
The Girl in Tails (Karin Swanström)
The Great K&A Train Robbery (Lewis Seiler)
Hands Up! (Clarence Badger)
The Holy Mountain (Arnold Fanck)
Kiki (Clarence Brown)
Long Fliv the King (Leo McCarey)
The Magician (Rex Ingram)
Mantrap (Victor Fleming)
The Man Who Cheated Life (Henrik Galeen)
Mare Nostrum (Rex Ingram)
Memory Lane (John Stahl)
Mighty Like a Moose (Leo McCarey)Moana (Robert J. Flaherty)
Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
Nana (Jean Renoir)
Nell Gwynne (Herbert Wilcox)
Old Ironsides (James Cruze)
Rien que les heures (Alberto Cavalcanti)
The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjostrom)
Secrets Of A Soul (G.W. Pabst)
The Shamrock Handicap (John Ford)
The Show Off (Malcolm St. Clair)
The Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice)
The Sorrows of Satan (D.W. Griffith)
So’s Your Old Man (Gregory La Cava)
Sparrows (William Beaudine)
The Strong Man (Frank Capra)
Tell It to the Marines (George Hill)
The Temptress (Fred Niblo)
Torrent (Monta Bell)
Upstage (Monta Bell)
What Price Glory (Raoul Walsh)
The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King)

1925

TOP TIER:
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
The Big Parade (King Vidor)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch)
Lazybones (Frank Borzage)
Master of the House (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
Strike! (Sergei Eisenstein)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
At 3:25 (René Clair)
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Fred Niblo)
Braveheart (Alan Hale)
Chess Fever (Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky)
The Circle (Frank Borzage)
Cobra (Joseph Henabery)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina)
Don Q Son of Zorro (Donald Crisp)
The Eagle (Clarence Brown)
Faces of Children (Jacques Feyder)
The Freshman (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
Go West (Buster Keaton)
Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)
His Wooden Wedding (Leo McCarey)
Innocent Husbands (Leo McCarey)
Isn’t Life Terrible? (Leo McCarey)
The Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst)
The King on Main Street (Monta Bell)
Lady of the Night (Monta Bell)
The Lights of Old Broadway (Monta Bell)
Little Annie Rooney (William Beaudine)
The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt)
Maciste in Hell (Guido Brignone)
The Merry Widow (Erich von Stroheim)
The Monster (Roland West)
The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian)
Pretty Ladies (Monta Bell)
Proud Flesh (King Vidor)
The Rag Man (Edward F. Cline)
The Rat’s Knuckles (Leo McCarey)
Sally of the Sawdust (D.W. Griffith)
The Salvation Hunters (Josef von Sternberg)
Stage Struck (Allan Dwan)
Tartuffe (F.W. Murnau)
Tumbleweeds (King Baggot)
The Unholy Three (Tod Browning)
The Vanishing American (George B. Seitz)
Varieté (E. A. Dupont)
Whirlpool of Fate (Jean Renoir)
Zander the Great (George Hill)

1924

TOP TIER:
Girl Shy (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjöström)
Isn’t Life Wonderful (D.W. Griffith)
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau)
Mikaël (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
The Navigator (Donald Crisp and Buster Keaton)
Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Fritz Lang)
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (Fritz Lang)
Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton)
The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
America (D.W. Griffith)
Ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy)
Beau Brummel (Harry Beaumont)
The Cigarette Girl from Moscow (Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky)
The Enchanted Cottage (John S. Robertson)
Entr’acte (René Clair)
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov)
Family Life (Robert P. Kerr)
Forbidden Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Hands of Orlac (Robert Wiene)
Her Night of Romance (Sidney Franklin)
Hot Water (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
L’inhumaine (Marcel L’Herbier)
The Iron Horse (John Ford)
Janice Meredith (E. Mason Hopper)
Kino-Eye (Dziga Vertov)
Manhandled (Allan Dwan)
The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch)
Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott)
Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon)
Pierrot, Pierrette (Louis Feuillade)
The Saga of Gosta Berling (Mauritz Stiller)
Secrets (Frank Borzage)
Soviet Toys (Dziga Vertov)
Symphonie diagonale (Viking Eggeling)
Three Women (Ernst Lubitsch)
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Leo Birinsky and Paul Leni)
Wild Oranges (King Vidor)
Wine of Youth (King Vidor)

1923

TOP TIER:
Coeur fidèle (Jean Epstein)
The Love Nest (Buster Keaton)
The Norrtull Gang (Per Lindberg)
Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton and Jack Blystone)
Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille)
Three Ages (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
The White Rose (D.W. Griffith)
A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
The Balloonatic (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
Cameo Kirby (John Ford)
The Covered Wagon (James Cruze)
The Extra Girl (F. Richard Jones)
The Faithful Heart (Jean Epstein)
Felix in Hollywood (Otto Messmer)
Fire Onboard (Victor Sjostrom)
Die Flamme (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Frogs Who Wanted a King (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
Gunnar Hedes saga (Mauritz Stiller)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley)
It’s a Gift (Hugh Fay)
Little Old New York (Sidney Olcott)
Merry-Go-Round (Rupert Julian)
North of Hudson Bay (John Ford)
The Pilgrim (Charles Chaplin)
Raskolnikow (Robert Wiene)
Le Retour à la Raison (Man Ray)
La roue (Abel Gance)
Scaramouche (Rex Ingram)
The Shock (Lambert Hillyer)
The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac)
Souls for Sale (Rupert Hughes)
The Street (Karl Grune)
The Treasure (G.W. Pabst)
Voice of the Nightingale (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
Warning Shadows (Arthur Robison)
The White Sister (Henry King)
Why Worry? (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
Zaza (Allan Dwan)

1922

TOP TIER:
Cops (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline)
Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Fritz Lang)
Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim)
Love’s Crucible (Victor Sjöström)
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (F.W. Murnau)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
L’arlesienne (Andre Antoine)
Back Pay (Frank Borzage)
Beauty’s Worth (Robert G. Vignola)
Beyond the Rocks (Sam Wood)
The Blacksmith (Buster Keaton and Malcolm St. Clair)
Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo)
Burning Soil (F.W. Murnau)
Crainquebille (Jacques Feyder)
Danse macabre (Dudley Murphy)
Daydreams (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline)
Dr. Jack (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
The Electric House (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
Felix Saves the Day (Max Linder)
Flesh and Blood (Irving Cummings)
The Frozen North (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline)
Die Gezeichneten (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Grandma’s Boy (Fred C. Newmeyer)
Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen)
Jumping Beans (Dave Fleischer)
Kindred of the Dust (Raoul Walsh)
Lorna Doone (Maurice Tourneur)
Manslaughter (Cecil B. DeMille)
Monte Cristo (Emmett J. Flynn)
Moran of the Lady Letty (George Melford)
My Wife’s Relations (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
Nathan der Weise (Manfred Noa)
Oliver Twist (Frank Lloyd)
Once Upon a Time (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki)
Our Gang (Robert F. McGowan)
The Paleface (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline)
Peg o’ My Heart (King Vidor)
The Phantom (F.W. Murnau)
The Primitive Lover (Sidney Franklin)
The Prisoner of Zenda (Rex Ingram)
Robin Hood (Allan Dwan)
Romance of a Fruit Peddler (Shichuan Zhang)
Smilin’ Through (Sidney Franklin)
Tess of the Storm Country (John Robertson)
The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin)
When Knighthood Was in Flower (Robert G. Vignola)
The Young Rajah (Philip Rosen)

1921

TOP TIER:
The Boat (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
Destiny (Fritz Lang)
Dream Street (D.W. Griffith)
The Goat (Buster Keaton and Malcolm St. Clair)
The ‘High Sign’ (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
The Kid (Charles Chaplin)
Leaves From Satan’s Book (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty)
Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith)
The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström)
The Play House (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
The Ace of Hearts (Wallace Worsley)
Adventures of Tarzan (Robert F. Hill and Scott Sidney)
Be My Wife (Max Linder)
The Conquering Power (Rex Ingram)
Eldorado (Marcel L’Herbier)
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram)
Hamlet (Svend Gade and Heinz Schall)
Hard Luck (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
The Haunted House (Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
Jesse James as the Outlaw (Franklin B. Coates)
Johan (Mauritz Stiller)
The Idle Class (Charles Chaplin)
Leap Year (James Cruze)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (Alfred E. Green and Jack Pickford)
Love Never Dies (King Vidor)
Missing Husbands (Jacques Feyder)
Miss Lulu Bett (William C. de Mille)
Never Weaken (Fred C. Newmeyer)
Nobody (Roland West)
The Nut (Theodore Reed)
Parisette (Louis Feuillade)
The Pet (Winsor McCay)
A Sailor-Made Man (Fred C. Newmeyer)
Seven Years Bad Luck (Max Linder)
The Sheik (George Melford)
The Sky Pilot (King Vidor)
La terre (Andre Antoine)
The Three Musketeers (Fred Niblo)
Tol’able David (Henry King)
The Wildcat (Ernst Lubitsch)

1920

TOP TIER:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)
Last of the Mohicans (Maurice Tourneur and Clarence Brown)
Neighbors (Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton)
A Dangerous Pledge (Victor Sjöström)
One Week (Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton)
The Parson’s Widow (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Way Down East (D.W. Griffith)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Anne Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch)
Convict 13 (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (John S. Robertson)
An Eastern Westerner (Hal Roach)
Erotikon (Mauritz Stiller)
From Morn to Midnight (Karl Heinz Martin)
The Garage (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle)
The Golem (Carl Boese and Paul Wegener)
High and Dizzy (Hal Roach)
Humoresque (Frank Borzage)
Just Pals (John Ford)
Kohlheisel’s Daughters (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Love Expert (David Kirkland)
The Love Flower (D.W. Griffith)
Mademoiselle de la Seigliere (Andre Antoine)
Man of the Sea (Marcel L’Herbier)
The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo)
Masterman (Victor Sjostrom)
The Mollycoddle (Victor Fleming)
Monastery of Sendomir (Victor Sjostrom)
The Monastery’s Hunter (Franz Osten)
Number, Please? (Hal Roach and Fred Newmeyer)
Outside the Law (Tod Browning)
The Penalty (Wallace Worsley)
Pollyanna (Paul Powell)
Romeo und Julia im schnee (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Saphead (Herbert Blache)
The Scarecrow (Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton)
Something to Think About (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Soul of Youth (William Desmond Taylor)
The Spiders, Part 2: The Diamond Ship (Fritz Lang)
Suds (Jack Dillon)
The Swallow and the Titmouse (Andre Antoine)
Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille)

Romeo und Julia im schnee (Ernst Lubitsch)

Stagecoach (John Ford)

1939

TOP TIER:
Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford)
Love Affair (Leo McCarey)
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)
The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
The Spy in Black (Michael Powell)
Stagecoach (John Ford)
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi)
When Tomorrow Comes (John M. Stahl)
The Women (George Cukor)
Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
5th Ave Girl (Gregory La Cava)
Allegheny Uprising (William A. Seiter)
Another Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin)
Back Door to Heaven (William K. Howard)
Beau Geste (William A. Wellman)
Buck Rogers (Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind)
The Cat and the Canary (Elliott Nugent)
Daredevils of the Red Circle (John English and William Witney)
Destry Rides Again (George Marshall)
Dick Tracy’s G-Men (John English and William Witney)
Disputed Passage (Frank Borzage)
Dodge City (Michael Curtiz)
La fin du jour (Julien Duvivier)
Five Came Back (John Farrow)
The Four Feathers (Zoltan Korda)
Frontier Marshal (Allan Dwan)
Golden Boy (Rouben Mamoulian)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle)
Le jour se lève (Marcel Carne)
Let Us Live (John Brahm)
The Man in the Iron Mask (James Whale)
Midnight (Mitchell Leisen)
My Apprenticeship (Mark Donskoy)
Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Old Maid (Edmund Goulding)
Q Planes (Tim Whelan and Arthur B. Woods)
Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Whole Family Works (Mikio Naruse)
Zorro’s Fighting Legion (John English and William Witney)

OF INTEREST:
Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Alfred Werker)
Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (Norman Foster)
Charlie Chan in Reno (Norman Foster)
Singing Lovebirds (Masahiro Makino)

1938

TOP TIER:
Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein)
La bete humaine (Jean Renoir)
Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks)
Holiday (George Cukor)
The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock)
Olympia (Leni Riefenshahl)
Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett)
Three Comrades (Frank Borzage)
You and Me (Fritz Lang)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
The Baker’s Wife (Marcel Pagnol)
The Beachcomber (Erich Pommer)
Block-Heads (John G. Blystone)
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (Mark Donskoi)
The Citadel (King Vidor)
The Dawn Patrol (Edmund Goulding)
Dick Tracy Returns (John English and William Witney)
The Drum (Zoltan Korda)
Four Men and a Prayer (John Ford)
The Great Waltz (Julien Duvivier)
J’accuse! (Abel Gance)
Jezebel (William Wyler)
King of Alcatraz (Robert Florey)
The Lone Ranger (John English and William Witney)
The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason)
Marie Antoinette (W. S. Van Dyke)
La Marseillaise (Jean Renoir)
The Masseurs and a Woman (Hiroshi Shimizu)
Quadrille (Sacha Guitry)
Le quai des brumes (Marcel Carné)
Le roman de Werther (Max Ophuls)
Remontons les Champs-Elysees (Sacha Guitry)
Shanghai Drama (G.W. Pabst)
The Shining Hour (Frank Borzage)
Song of the Scarlet Flower (Teuvo Tulio)
Spawn of the North (Henry Hathaway)
Submarine Patrol (John Ford)
Suez (Allan Dwan)
Test Pilot (Victor Fleming)

OF INTEREST:
The Buccaneer (Cecil B. DeMille)
Hôtel du Nord (Marcel Carne)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Allan Dwan)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (Ford Beebe and Robert Hill)

1937

TOP TIER:
Angel (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey)
Easy Living (Mitchell Leisen)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
Gueule d’amour (Jean Gremillon)
The Great Garrick (James Whale)
History Is Made at Night (Frank Borzage)
Humanity and Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka)
Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey)
Les perles de la couronne (Sacha Guitry)
Stage Door (Gregory La Cava)
Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock)
You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Drôle de drame (Marcel Carne)
Un carnet de bal (Julien Duvivier)
Confession (Joe May)
The Edge of the World (Michael Powell)
Green Fields (Edgar G. Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami)
The Hurricane (John Ford)
Internes Can’t Take Money (Alfred Santell)
Kid Galahad (Michael Curtiz)
Mannequin (Frank Borzage)
Nothing Sacred (William Wellman)
An Optical Poem (Oskar Fischinger)
Pepe le Moko (Julien Duvivier)
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (Dave Fleischer)
The Prisoner of Zenda (John Cromwell)
Shall We Dance (Mark Sandrich)
Slave Ship (Tay Garnett)
Something to Sing About (Victor Schertzinger)
The Spanish Earth (Joris Ivens)
A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman)
Stella Dallas (King Vidor)
Street Angel (Yuan Mu-jih)
Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen)
The Thirteen (Mikhail Romm)
Virginity (Otakar Vavra)
Way Out West (James W. Horne)
Wee Willie Winkie (John Ford)
What Did the Lady Forget? (Yasujiro Ozu)
The Young (Shiro Toyoda)

OF INTEREST:
Black Legion (Archie L. Mayo)
Captains Courageous (Victor Fleming)
The Life of Emile Zola (William Dieterle)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Ever Since Eve (Lloyd Bacon)
Marked Woman (Lloyd Bacon and Michael Curtiz)
Souls at Sea (Henry Hathaway)
They Won’t Forget (Mervyn LeRoy)
True Confession (Wesley Ruggles)

1936

TOP TIER:
By the Bluest of Seas (Boris Barnet)
Camille (George Cukor)
Ceiling Zero (Howard Hawks)
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir)
A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir)
Dodsworth (William Wyler)
Fury (Fritz Lang)
Mary of Scotland (John Ford)
Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin)
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
The Only Son (Yasojiro Ozu)
Osaka Elegy (Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Prisoner of Shark Island (John Ford)
The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks)
Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell)
Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock)
Sisters of the Gion (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
After the Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
Arigato-san (Hiroshi Shimizu)
Big Brown Eyes (Raoul Walsh)
Cesar (Marcel Pagnol)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (Michael Curtiz)
Come and Get It (Howard Hawks and William Wyler)
Craig’s Wife (Dorothy Arzner)
Desire (Frank Borzage)
The Devil-Doll (Tod Browning)
Faisons un reve (Sacha Guitry)
Follow the Fleet (Mark Sandrich)
It’s Love Again (Victor Saville)
Libeled Lady (Jack Conway)
The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir)
The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Lothar Mendes)
Mon pere avait raison (Sacha Guitry)
The Milky Way (Leo McCarey)
The Only Son (Yasujiro Ozu)
The Plainsman (Cecil B. DeMille)
Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (Dave Fleischer)
Rembrandt (Alexander Korda)
Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor)
Schlußakkord (Douglas Sirk)
Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock)
Show Boat (James Whale)
Stowaway (William A. Seiter)
Swing Time (George Stevens)
The Texas Rangers (King Vidor)
These Three (William Wyler)
They Were Five (Julien Duvivier)
Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies)
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway)

OF INTEREST:
Bullets or Ballots (William Keighley)
The Garden of Allah (Richard Boleslawski)
The Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle)
Theodora Goes Wild (Richard Boleslawski)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Cain and Mabel (Lloyd Bacon)
Charlie Chan at the Race Track (H. Bruce Humberstone)
Charlie Chan’s Secret (Gordon Wiles)
The Devil Is a Sissy (W.S. Van Dyke)
Dracula’s Daughter (Lambert Hillyer)
The Gay Desperado (Rouben Mamoulian)
The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone)
Sutter’s Gold (James Cruze)

1935

TOP TIER:
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
The Devil Is a Woman (Josef von Sternberg)
The Girl from the Marsh Croft (Douglas Sirk)
The Girl in the Rumor (Mikio Naruse)
The Informer (John Ford)
A Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka)
Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey)
Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor)
The Wedding Night (King Vidor)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Aerograd (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
Alice Adams (George Stevens)
Annie Oakley (George Stevens)
La bandera (Julien Duvivier)
Barbary Coast (Howard Hawks)
Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian)
Black Fury (Michael Curtiz)
The Black Room (Roy William Neill)
Bonne chance! (Sacha Guitry)
Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz)
Carnival in Flanders (Jacques Feyder)
Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg)
The Crime of Doctor Crespi (John H. Auer)
The Crusades (Cecil B. DeMille)
David Copperfield (George Cukor)
Divine (Max Ophuls)
Every Night at Eight (Raoul Walsh)
The Farmer Takes a Wife (Victor Fleming)
Four Hours to Kill! (Mitchell Leisen)
Gold Diggers of 1935 (Busby Berkeley)
The Good Fairy (William Wyler)
Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen)
The Highway (Yu Sun)
An Inn in Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu)
Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway)
Living on Velvet (Frank Borzage)
Love Me Forever (Victor Schertzinger)
Mad Love (Karl Freund)
Magnificent Obsession (John M. Stahl)
Man on the Flying Trapeze (Clyde Bruckman)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (William Dieterle and Max Reinhardt)
Page Miss Glory (Mervyn LeRoy)
Peter Ibbetson (Henry Hathaway)
The Phantom Light (Michael Powell)
Private Worlds (Gregory La Cava)
Reckless (Victor Fleming)
The Scoundrel (Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur)
She Married Her Boss (Gregory La Cava)
Show Them No Mercy! (George Marshall)
So Red the Rose (King Vidor)
Steamboat Round the Bend (John Ford)
Stranded (Frank Borzage)
Three Sisters With Maiden Hearts (Mikio Naruse)
Toni (Jean Renoir)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl)
The Whole Town’s Talking (John Ford)
Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Mikio Naruse)

OF INTEREST:
China Seas (Tay Garnett)
Mark of the Vampire (Tod Browning)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Call of the Wild (William A. Wellman)
Charlie Chan in Egypt (Louis King)
Charlie Chan in Shanghai (James Tinling)
The Last Days of Pompeii (Ernest B. Schoedsack)

1934

TOP TIER:
L’atalante (Jean Vigo)
The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer)
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
Judge Priest (John Ford)
Little Man, What Now? (Frank Borzage)
Man of Aran (Robert J. Flaherty)
The Merry Widow (Ernst Lubitsch)
No Greater Glory (Frank Borzage)
Our Daily Bread (King Vidor)
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg)
La signora di tutti (Max Ophuls)
A Story of Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu)
Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Angele (Marcel Pagnol)
Born to Be Bad (Lowell Sherman)
Broadway Bill (Frank Capra)
Charlie Chan in London (Eugene Forde)
Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille)
Crime Without Passion (Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur)
David Harum (James Cruze)
Death Takes a Holiday (Mitchell Leisen)
A Dream Walking (Dave Fleischer)
Evergreen (Victor Saville)
Fetiche (Wladyslaw Starewicz)
Flirtation Walk (Frank Borzage)
The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich)
The Goddess (Wu Yong-gang)
Le grand jeu (Jacques Feyder)
Happiness (Aleksandr Medvedkin)
Heat Lightning (Mervyn LeRoy)
Imitation of Life (John Stahl)
It’s a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod)
Liliom (Fritz Lang)
The Lost Patrol (John Ford)
Mandalay (Michael Curtiz)
Manhattan Melodrama (W. S. Van Dyke)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock)
Maskerade (Willi Forst)
Les misérables (Raymond Bernard)
A Modern Hero (G. W. Pabst)
Of Human Bondage (John Cromwell)
The Old Fashioned Way (William Beaudine)
One More River (James Whale)
The Private Life of Don Juan (Alexander Korda)
Queen of Sports (Sun Yu)
Le roi des Champs-Elysees (Max Nosseck)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young)
Street Without End (Mikio Naruse)
Tarzan and His Mate (Cedric Gibbons)
The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke)
Three Songs of Lenin (Dziga Vertov)
Treasure Island (Victor Fleming)
Viva Villa! (Howard Hawks and Jack Conway)
You’re Telling Me! (Erle C. Kenton)

OF INTEREST:
Belle of the Nineties (Leo McCarey)
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (Roy Del Ruth)
Four Frightened People (Cecil B. DeMille)
Murder at the Vanities (Mitchell Leisen)
The Richest Girl in the World (William A. Seiter)
Six of a Kind (Leo McCarey)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Sidney Franklin)
The Dragon Murder Case (H. Bruce Humberstone)
Here Is My Heart (Frank Tuttle)
Jolly Fellows (Grigori Aleksandrov)
One Night of Love (Victor Schertzinger)
Operator 13 (Richard Boleslawski)
Peck’s Bad Boy (Edward F. Cline)
Sequoia (Chester M. Franklin and Edwin L. Marin)
We Live Again (Rouben Mamoulian)

1933

TOP TIER:
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra)
The Bowery (Raoul Walsh)
Counsellor at Law (William Wyler)
Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch)
Las Hurdes (Luis Buñuel)
Man’s Castle (Frank Borzage)
Okraina (Boris Barnet)
Pilgrimage (John Ford)
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
Zero for Conduct (Jean Vigo)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon)
Alice in Wonderland (Norman Z. McLeod)
Apart From You (Mikio Naruse)
Baby Face (Alfred E. Green)
Bed of Roses (Gregory La Cava)
Blood Money (Rowland Brown)
Bombshell (Victor Fleming)
Broadway Through a Keyhole (Lowell Sherman)
The Cocktail Hour (Victor Schertzinger)
The Dancing Girl of Izu (Heinosuke Gosho)
Deserter (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
Dinner at Eight (George Cukor)
Doctor Bull (John Ford)
Don Quixote (G. W. Pabst)
Double Harness (John Cromwell)
Dragnet Girl (Yasujiro Ozu)
Ecstasy (Gustav Machatý)
Employee’s Entrance (Roy Del Ruth)
Every Night Dreams (Mikio Naruse)
Fast Workers (Tod Browning)
The Fatal Glass of Beer (Clyde Bruckman)
Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon)
Friday the Thirteenth (Victor Saville)
Gabriel Over the White House (Gregory La Cava)
Gallant Lady (Gregory La Cava)
Going Hollywood (Raoul Walsh)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy)
The Good Companions (Victor Saville)
The Great Consoler (Lev Kuleshov)
Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (Lewis Milestone)
Hard to Handle (Mervyn LeRoy)
Her First Mate (William Wyler)
Heroes for Sale (William A. Wellman)
I Cover the Waterfront (James Cruze)
I’m No Angel (Wesley Ruggles)
The Invisible Man (James Whale)
Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Hiroshi Shimizu)
Jofroi (Marcel Pagnol)
The Kennel Murder Case (Michael Curtiz)
Ladies They Talk About (Howard Bretherton and William Keighley)
Lady for a Day (Frank Capra)
Lady Killer (Roy Del Ruth)
Liebelei (Max Ophuls)
The Little Giant (Roy Del Ruth)
Little Women (George Cukor)
La maternelle (Jean Benoit-Levy)
Midnight Mary (William A. Wellman)
Morning Glory (Lowell Sherman)
The Night on Bald Mountain (Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker)
Only Yesterday (John Stahl)
Passing Fancy (Yasujiro Ozu)
Penthouse (W.S. Van Dyke)
Policeman (Tomu Uchida)
The Power and the Glory (William K. Howard)
The Private Life of Henry VIII (Alexander Korda)
The Prizefighter and the Lady (W. S. Van Dyke)
Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian)
Reunion in Vienna (Sidney Franklin)
Sailor’s Luck (Raoul Walsh)
Snow-White (Dave Fleischer)
Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter)
The Story of Temple Drake (Stephen Roberts)
The Stranger’s Return (King Vidor)
Tillie and Gus (Francis Martin)
Topaze (Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast)
The Water Magician (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Wild Boys of the Road (William A. Wellman)
Woman of Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu)
Zoo in Budapest (Rowland V. Lee)

OF INTEREST:
Ex-Lady (Robert Florey)
Female (Michael Curtiz)
Mystery of the Wax Museum (Michael Curtiz)
Secrets (Frank Borzage)
Today We Live (Howard Hawks)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Bureau of Missing Persons (Roy Del Ruth)
College Humor (Wesley Ruggles)
Deluge (Felix E. Feist)
The Eagle and the Hawk (Stuart Walker)
Hold Your Man (Sam Wood)
Murders in the Zoo (A. Edward Sutherland)
Perfect Understanding (Cyril Gardner)
The Song of Songs (Rouben Mamoulian)

1932

TOP TIER:
Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg)
Boudu Saved From Drowning (Jean Renoir)
The Crowd Roars (Howard Hawks)
Freaks (Tod Browning)
I Was Born, But… (Yasujiro Ozu)
Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian)
Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh)
La nuit du carrefour (Jean Renoir)
Scarface (Howard Hawks)
Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg)
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)
Two Seconds (Mervyn LeRoy)
Vampyr – Der Traum des Allan Grey (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
After Tomorrow (Frank Borzage)
Air Mail (John Ford)
American Madness (Frank Capra)
L’Atlantide (G. W. Pabst)
Back Street (John Stahl)
Bird of Paradise (King Vidor)
Das blaue Licht (Leni Riefenstahl)
Boop-Oop-A-Doop (Dave Fleischer)
Chandu the Magician (William Cameron Menzies and Marcel Varnel)
Doctor X (Michael Curtiz)
A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage)
Forbidden (Frank Capra)
The Greeks Had a Word for Them (Lowell Sherman)
The Half-Naked Truth (Gregory La Cava)
The Hatchet Man (William A. Wellman)
Hell’s Highway (Roland Brown)
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy)
I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You (Dave Fleischer)
The Impatient Maiden (James Whale)
Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton)
Ivan (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
Jewel Robbery (William Dieterle)
Ladies of the Jury (Lowell Sherman)
The Lost Squadron (George Archainbaud)
The Man I Killed (Ernst Lubitsch)
Marie, A Hungarian Legend (Pal Fejos)
The Mask of Fu Manchu (Charles Brabin)
Merrily We Go to Hell (Dorothy Arzner)
Million Dollar Legs (Edward F. Cline)
Minnie the Moocher (Dave Fleischer)
The Most Dangerous Game (Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack)
Movie Crazy (Clyde Bruckman)
The Mummy (Karl Freund)
The Music Box (James Parrott)
Number 17 (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Old Dark House (James Whale)
One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch and George Cukor)
One Way Passage (Tay Garnett)
The Penguin Pool Murder (George Archainbaud)
Rain (Lewis Milestone)
Red Dust (Victor Fleming)
The Red Shadow (Roy Mack)Service for Ladies (Alexander Korda)
Smilin’ Through (Sidney Franklin)
Tarzan the Ape Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy)
Tiger Shark (Howard Hawks)
Tom Brown of Culver (William Wyler)
Union Depot (Alfred E. Green)
What Price Hollywood? (George Cukor)
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (Yasujiro Ozu)
While Paris Sleeps (Allan Dwan)
White Zombie (Victor Halperin)

OF INTEREST:
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (Michael Curtiz)
A Bill of Divorcement (George Cukor)
Broken Lullaby (Ernst Lubitsch)
Laywer Man (William Dieterle)
Red-Headed Woman (Jack Conway)
Rich and Strange (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. De Mille)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Beast of the City (Charles Brabin)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey)
Payment Deferred (Lothar Mendes)

1931

TOP TIER:
An American Tragedy (Josef von Sternberg)
La chienne (Jean Renoir)
City Lights (Charlie Chaplin)
Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg)
Enthusiasm (Dziga Vertov)
Limite (Mario Peixoto)
M (Fritz Lang)
The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Struggle (D. W. Griffith)
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (F.W. Murnau)
Tokyo Chorus (Yasujiro Ozu)
The Yellow Ticket (Raoul Walsh)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Anna Christie (Jacques Feyder)
À nous la liberté (René Clair)
Bachelor Apartment (Lowell Sherman)
Bad Girl (Frank Borzage)
The Champ (King Vidor)
Chances (Allan Dwan)
City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian)
Corsair (Roland West)
The Criminal Code (Howard Hawks)
Dirigible (Frank Capra)
Dracula (Tod Browning)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian)
Douro, Faina Fluvial (Manoel de Oliveira)
Five and Ten (Robert Z. Leonard)
Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy)
Flunky, Work Hard! (Mikio Naruse)
Frankenstein (James Whale)
Friends and Lovers (Victor Schertzinger)
The Front Page (Lewis Milestone)
High Stakes (Lowell Sherman)
Girls About Town (George Cukor)
A House Divided (William Wyler)
Indiscreet (Leo McCarey)
Kameradschaft (G.W. Pabst)
The Last Flight (William Dieterle)
Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy)
Maedchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan)
The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth)
Marius (Alexander Korda)
Le million (René Clair)
Night Nurse (William A. Wellman)
The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra)
Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (Edward Sedgwick)
Philips Radio (Joris Ivens)
Platinum Blonde (Frank Capra)
Possessed (Clarence Brown)
Private Lives (Sidney Franklin)
The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman)
Quick Millions (Rowland V. Brown)
The Royal Bed (Lowell Sherman)
Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman)
Seas Beneath (John Ford)
Smart Money (Alfred E. Green)
A Spray of Plum Blossoms (Wancang Bu)
The Squaw Man (Cecil B. DeMille)
Star Witness (William A. Wellman)
Street Scene (King Vidor)
Strictly Dishonorable (John M. Stahl)
Taris, roi de l’eau (Jean Vigo)
Tarnished Lady (George Cukor)
The Threepenny Opera (G.W. Pabst)
Three Who Loved (George Archainbaud)
Tonight or Never (Mervyn LeRoy)
Trader Horn (W.S. Van Dyke)
Waterloo Bridge (James Whale)
The Woman Between (Victor Schertzinger)

OF INTEREST:
Arrowsmith (John Ford)
Blonde Crazy (Roy del Ruth)
Inspiration (Clarence Brown)
Iron Man (Tod Browning)
Other Men’s Women (William A. Wellman)
The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Behind Office Doors (Melville Brown)
The Black Camel (Hamilton MacFadden)
Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles)
Dance, Fools, Dance (Harry Beaumont)
Mata Hari (George Fitzmaurice)
Svengali (Archie Mayo)

1930

TOP TIER:
Abraham Lincoln (D.W. Griffith)
L’age d’or (Luis Buñuel)
The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh)
The Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau)
The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg)
City Girl (F. W. Murnau)
Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko)
Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch)
Morocco (Josef von Sternberg)
People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer)
Under the Roofs of Paris (René Clair)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
À propos de Nice (Jean Vigo)
Anna Christie (Clarence Brown)
Au bonheur des dames (Julien Duvivier)
The Bat Whispers (Roland West)
Billy the Kid (King Vidor)
The Dawn Patrol (Howard Hawks)
The Devil to Pay! (George Fitzmaurice)
Farewell (Robert Siodmak)
Feet First (Clyde Bruckman)
Hell’s Angels (Howard Hughes)
Hell’s Heroes (William Wyler)
Her Man (Tay Garnett)
Holiday (Edward H. Griffith)
I Flunked, But… (Yasujiro Ozu)
King of Jazz (John Murray Anderson)
Ladies of Leisure (Frank Capra)
Laughter (Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast)
Liliom (Frank Borzage)
Madam Satan (Cecil B. DeMille)
Man to Man (Allan Dwan)
Men Without Women (John Ford)
Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock)
Nothing But Time (Alberto Cavalcanti)
Part-Time Wife (Leo McCarey)
La petite lise (Jean Gremillon)
Raffles (George Fitzmaurice)
Rain or Shine (Frank Capra)
Redemption (Fred Niblo)
Romance (Clarence Brown)
The Royal Family of Broadway (George Cukor and Cyril Gardner)
Salt for Svanetia (Mikhail Kalatozov)
The Story of the Fox (Irene and Wladyslaw Starewicz)
That Night’s Wife (Yasujiro Ozu)
Up the River (John Ford)
Westfront 1918 (G. W. Pabst)
Whoopee! (Thornton Freeland)

OF INTEREST:
Born Reckless (Andrew Bennison and John Ford)
The Divorcee (Robert Z. Leonard)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Big House (George W. Hill)
The Cuckoos (Paul Sloane)
The Florodora Girl (Harry Beaumont)
Follow Thru (Lloyd Corrigan and Laurence Schwab)
Good News (Nick Grinde)
Manslaughter (George Abbott)
Paid (Sam Wood)
Show Girl in Hollywood (Mervyn LeRoy)
The Silver Horde (George Archainbaud)
Sinners’ Holiday (John G. Adolfi)

Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock)

The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir, 1947)

“You liked me once.”

“Sure…for ten minutes…one ginny evening.”

- actual dialogue from Female on the Beach

Jean Renoir’s The Woman on the Beach – his last assignment for Hollywood, a film that preceded a four-year gap ending with The River – is the only film I can recall that dissolves, after a non-verbal opening, into a sleeping man’s dream, effectively rendering the rest of the film (even though he soon wakes) somewhat distant and phantasmal. Renoir was hardly the only filmmaker to use the beach, the shore, and the breakers to act upon the film (and us) as a surrogate subconscious, the kind that takes and devours, in its undertow, rather than gives or reveals. Jean Epstein’s 1948 masterpiece, Le tempestaire, uses a Griffithian, rolling sea as a monolithic agent of fate, visibly impassive; even something supposedly light, like Blake Edwards’ 10 shows its protagonist (Dudley Moore) mesmerized into catatonia by the crashing waves, while recent American favorites such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inception promote subtext to text, using the land-ocean border to represent the disintegration of memory and sanity.

Eight years after Renoir’s film, there appeared another movie whose title bore an unmistakable similarity: Female on the Beach. There’s no earthly reason to think the two are related in any way, unless you invent one, but if you start inventing, there’s plenty. Besides the rhyming titles, each film stars one of Hollywood’s legendary Joans: Renoir’s has Joan Bennett, and Female (directed by Joseph Pevney) stars Joan Crawford. Both are high-camp melodramas set – you know where they’re set. While there’s a pronounced separation in terms of class (the affluent in Female, underpopulated squalor outside a military base in Woman), there’s more than enough jealousy and lust to transcend social grouping of any kind.

The opening sequence of Female is not exactly un-dreamlike, either. Rather than a literal dream, we seem to descend into a kind of waking nightmare of panicked, off-screen voices, as shadowy figures flutter onstage, refill highballs, and hurry away just as quickly. The Renoir film this opening most resembles is not The Woman the Beach but La nuit du carrefour, with its impenetrable fog of obfuscation and signs of wrongdoing and debauchery.

Thereafter, the mist settles onto a more straightforward, if unremittingly glittery, melodrama, the kind where even the real estate lady dresses in the latest fashions, and the main cast spends almost all of its time in classy evening attire, and no dialogue is exchanged that isn’t meant to seduce, or destroy, or both. The underrated Pevney, whose claim to fame these days consists mostly of his work directing various episodes of Star Trek, but who warrants re-examination for such films as The Midnight Story and Twilight of the Gods, proves quite adept at assembling the film’s camp components, which are almost overwhelming in number: score, scenery, jewelry, drinks, you name it. The premise actually comes to resemble a prototype of Roman Polanski’s The Tenant – a newcomer in a community attempts to piece together the fate of their predecessor, even as the community hopes to draw the noose around his or her neck.

As with many Crawford vehicles, her flamboyance (and that which surrounds her) and androgyny have made her the ultimate gay icon, and it’s no trick to read Female on the Beach as a magnificent gay opera: Drummond Hall (Jeff Chandler, about 15 years too old for the part, but it hardly matters) plays a male hustler in all particulars except the words, freelancing his salt-and-pepper boy-toy status from a manipulative, elderly couple (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer) to the newly arrived Lynn Markham (Crawford), while the hotel detective – I mean, the homicide detective – looks into the possible murder of the woman who lived in the beach house before she arrived. Meanwhile, the swindling duo’s niece (newly Oscar-nominated Jan Sterling), jealous psychosis in tow, prowls the periphery in a speedboat and bottle-blonde hair, her memory of a long-ago drunken assignation with Hall just what she needs to carry the torch for him forevermore. All in all, a garish shop window of proto-Fassbinderian tumult and turmoil, transfixing in every way.

Joan Bennett, 19 when she was cast as the 2nd lead in the Oscar-winning Disraeli (1929), is among the foremost of Hollywood’s forgotten stars – her career was long and distinguished, consisting of a robust pre-Code period, a successful transition to auteur-powered movies of the ’40s and ’50s (she worked on films with Max Ophüls, Douglas Sirk, and Vincente Minnelli, and on four pictures with Fritz Lang), and then a career in television, capped off by her part as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, which she played for the entire 1966-1971 run of Dark Shadows. Her final film was Dario Argento’s Suspiria, and while she doesn’t seem to have acquired the household-name status of the other Joan, or Bette, or Kate, or Marilyn, her place in the firmament is assured by cinema aficionados everywhere, not only for her choice in collaborators, but her powerfully sensual screen presence, her shrewd intelligence, and her magnificent eyebrows.

Renoir favors an emphasis on places and their inhabitants -where they walk and hang their hat first, what they see, hear, and feel in relation to the unfolding drama second. Character and spatial relations seem to arise from a void, cutting away early assumptions we may have made, such as the idea that Joan Bennett’s Peggy is a mysterious phantom, or that Charles Bickford’s Tod can see, or that Robert Ryan’s Coast Guard Lieutenant’s mind is the most disturbed. Unsurprisingly, too, there’s no taking the theater out of Renoir, whose personality seems more immediate and viable in two-shots, wide shots, and walk-throughs, as opposed to shot/reverse-shot and the like. The Woman on the Beach is Renoir’s most Langian film – the very air seems malformed by static and ill intent. Although, like the Pevney film, Woman‘s fatalistic melodrama is structured in part by prophecies and repetitions, the script (adapted by Renoir and two co-writers, from a novel by Mitchell Wilson) circles around and under a template of classic melodrama, rather than through one.

Female on the Beach and The Woman on the Beach will be shown together at Anthology Film Archives twice tonight, as well as two shows each on Monday, November 21, and Tuesday, November 22, as part of Miriam Bale’s program Joans on the Beach, to celebrate the launch of “Joan’s Digest: A Film Quarterly”. There will also be a reception tonight: free Joan-themed bourbon cocktails from 8:30 to 11:30.

Female on the Beach (Joseph Pevney, 1955)

Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock)

1949

TOP TIER:
Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh)
I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks)
Jour de fête (Jacques Tati)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
Only a Mother (Alf Sjoberg)
Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger)
The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls)
Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford)
The Small Back Room (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray)
The Third Man (Carol Reed)
Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock)
White Heat (Raoul Walsh)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Adam’s Rib (George Cukor)
Alias Nick Beal (John Farrow)
Bad Luck Blackie (Tex Avery)
Begone Dull Care (Norman McLaren)
The Big Steal (Don Siegel)
Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis)
Border Incident (Anthony Mann)
Caught (Max Ophuls)
Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak)
The Crooked Way (Robert Florey)
Easy Living (Jacques Tourneur)
The Emperor’s Nightingale (Jirí Trnka and Milos Makovec)
Flame of My Love (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Follow Me Quietly (Richard Fleischer)
The Fountainhead (King Vidor)
The Great Madcap (Luis Bunuel)
The Heiress (William Wyler)
House of Strangers (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown)
I Shot Jesse James (Samuel Fuller)
King Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer)
A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Long-Haired Hare (Chuck Jones)
Madame Bovary (Vincente Minnelli)
Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
My Foolish Heart (Mark Robson)
Night Unto Night (Don Siegel)
Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius)
Pattes blanches (Jean Gremillon)
The Pirates of Capri (Edgar G. Ulmer and Giuseppe Maria Scotese)
The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson)
Rendez-vous de Juillet (Jacques Becker)
The Rocking Horse Winner (Anthony Pelissier)
Samson and Delilah (Cecil B. DeMille)
Sands of Iwo Jima (Allan Dwan)
Le sang des bêtes (Georges Franju)
Shockproof (Douglas Sirk)
Le silence de la Mer (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Slattery’s Hurricane (Andre De Toth)
The Spider and the Fly (Robert Hamer)
The Set-Up (Robert Wise)
Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Busby Berkeley)
Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin)
The Undercover Man (Joseph H. Lewis)
We Were Strangers (John Huston)
Whiskey Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick)
Whirlpool (Otto Preminger)
The Window (Ted Tetzlaff)

OF INTEREST:
Beyond the Forest (King Vidor)
Christ in Concrete, or Give Us This Day (Edward Dmytryk)
Down to the Sea in Ships (Henry Hathaway)
Edward, My Son (George Cukor)
Knock on Any Door (Nicholas Ray)
Slightly French (Douglas Sirk)
A Woman’s Secret (Nicholas Ray)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Impact (Arthur Lubin)
Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc. (Fred C. Brannon)
The James Brothers of Missouri (Fred C. Brannon)
King of the Rocket Men (Fred C. Brannon)
The Passionate Friends (David Lean)
Rotation (Wolfgang Staudte)

1948

TOP TIER:
3 Godfathers (John Ford)
Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
Fort Apache (John Ford)
Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini)
Good Sam (Leo McCarey)
Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls)
Moonrise (Frank Borzage)
The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli)
Pitfall (Andre de Toth)
Raw Deal (Anthony Mann)
Red River (Howard Hawks)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Springtime in a Small Town (Mu Fei)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann)
The Amazing Mr. X (Bernard Vorhaus)
L’amour (Roberto Rossellini)
The Argyle Secrets (Cy Endfield)
Behind Locked Doors (Budd Boetticher)
Berlin Express (Jacques Tourneur)
The Big Clock (John Farrow)
The Boy with Green Hair (Joseph Losey)
Call Northside 777 (Henry Hathaway)
The Cat That Hated People (Tex Avery)
Cry of the City (Robert Siodmak)
Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa)
Easter Parade (Charles Walters)
A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder)
A Hen in the Wind (Yasujiro Ozu)
He Walked by Night (Anthony Mann and Alfred L. Werker)
I, Jane Doe (John H. Auer)
Jungle Patrol (Joseph M. Newman)
Ladies of the Chorus (Phil Karlson)
The Last Stage (Wanda Jakubowska)
Lucky Ducky (Tex Avery)
Macbeth (Orson Welles)
Meditation on Violence (Maya Deren)
The Naked City (Jules Dassin)
Les parents terribles (Jean Cocteau)
Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle)Rachel and the Stranger (Norman Foster)
Road House (Jean Negulesco)
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock)
Ruthless (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Secret Beyond the Door… (Fritz Lang)
Sleep, My Love (Douglas Sirk)
A Song is Born (Howard Hawks)*
State of the Union (Frank Capra)
La terra trema (Luchino Visconti)
Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges)
Van Gogh (Alain Resnais)
The Velvet Touch (Jack Gage)
Wake of the Red Witch (Edward Ludwig)
The Walls of Jericho (John Stahl)
A Woman’s Vengeance (Zoltan Korda)
Women of the Night (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Yellow Sky (William A. Wellman)

OF INTEREST:
Black Bart (George Sherman)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Anna Karenina (Julien Duvivier)
Johnny Belinda (Jean Negulesco)
The Street with No Name (William Keighley)

1947

TOP TIER:
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger)
Fireworks (Kenneth Anger)
Good News (Charles Walters)
The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles)
Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (Albert Lewin)
Pursued (Raoul Walsh)
Ramrod (André De Toth)
Le tempestaire (Jean Epstein)
Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
13 Rue Madeleine (Henry Hathaway)
Antoine et Antoinette (Jacques Becker)
Brighton Rock (John Boulting)
Brute Force (Jules Dassin)
California (John Farrow)
Calcutta (John Farrow)
Dark Passage (Delmer Daves)
Desperate (Anthony Mann)
Le diable au corps (Claude Autant-Lara)
Driftwood (Allan Dwan)
Ecole des facteurs (Jacques Tati)
The Exile (Max Ophuls)
The Flame (John H. Auer)
The Fugitive (John Ford)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
It Always Rains on Sunday (Robert Hamer)
King-Size Canary (Tex Avery)
Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway)
Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery)
The Late George Apley (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Alberto Cavalcanti)
Life with Father (Michael Curtiz)
Living in a Big Way (Gregory La Cava)
The Macomber Affair (Zoltan Korda)
The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh)
Motion Painting No. 1 (Oskar Fischinger)
Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding)
Odd Man Out (Carol Reed)
One Wonderful Sunday (Akira Kurosawa)
The Paradine Case (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Pearl (Emilio Fernández)
Quai des Orfèvres (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Railroaded! (Anthony Mann)
Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Yasujiro Ozu)Ride the Pink Horse (Robert Montgomery)
The Scout’s Exploit (Boris Barnet)
Le silence est d’or (Rene Clair)
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (Preston Sturges)
That’s My Man (Frank Borzage)
They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti)
T-Men (Anthony Mann)
Unconquered (Cecil B. De Mille)

OF INTEREST:
A Double Life (George Cukor)
Forever Amber (Otto Preminger)
Lured (Douglas Sirk)
The Sea of Grass (Elia Kazan)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Angel and the Badman (James Edward Grant)
Born to Kill (Robert Wise)
Magic Town (William A. Wellman)
Panique (Julien Duvivier)
Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt)

1946

TOP TIER:
Baby Bottleneck (Robert Clampett)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)
The Big Snooze(Robert Clampett)
Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Diary of a Chambermaid (Jean Renoir)
Humoresque (Jean Negulesco)
It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)
Kitty Kornered (Robert Clampett)
A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford)
Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)
Paisa (Roberto Rossellini)
Ritual in Transfigured Time (Maya Deren)
So Dark the Night (Joseph H. Lewis)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
La bataille du rail (Rene Clement)
La belle et la bête (Jean Cocteau)
Bedlam (Mark Robson)
Black Angel (Roy William Neill)
Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur)
The Chase (Arthur D. Ripley)
Cloak and Dagger (Fritz Lang)
Crisis (Ingmar Bergman)
Dark Alibi (Phil Karlson)
The Dark Corner (Henry Hathaway)
Dragonwyck (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Duel in the Sun (King Vidor)
From This Day Forward (John Berry)
Gilda (Charles Vidor)
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Robert Clampett)
Green for Danger (Sidney Gilliat)
Her Sister’s Secret (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Iris and the Lieutenant (Alf Sjoberg)
I’ve Always Loved You (Frank Borzage)
The Killers (Robert Siodmak)
Live Wires (Phil Karlson)
The Locket (John Brahm)
Margie (Henry King)
Murderers Are Among Us (Wolfgang Staudte)
Northwest Hounded Police (Tex Avery)
Pink String and Sealing Wax (Robert Hamer)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett)
A Scandal in Paris (Douglas Sirk)
Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica)
Strange Impersonation (Anthony Mann)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone)
The Stranger (Orson Welles)
The Strange Woman (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Three Little Girls in Blue (H. Bruce Humberstone)
To Each His Own (Mitchell Leisen)
Two Years Before the Mast (John Farrow)
Utamaro and His Five Women (Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Verdict (Don Siegel)

OF INTEREST:
The Bamboo Blonde (Anthony Mann)
The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall)
No Regrets for Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa)
Somewhere in the Night (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Undercurrent (Vincente Minnelli)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Crimson Ghost (Fred C. Brannon and William Witney)
Deception (Irving Rapper)
Decoy (Jack Bernhard)
I See a Dark Stranger (Frank Launder)
The Kid from Brooklyn (Norman Z. McLeod)
Shock (Alfred Werker)
Specter of the Rose (Ben Hecht)

1945

TOP TIER:
The Bells of St. Mary’s (Leo McCarey)
Brief Encounter (David Lean)
The Clock (Vincente Minnelli)
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Falbalas (Jacques Becker)
Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger)
I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl)
Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz)
Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini)
Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang)
They Were Expendable (John Ford)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Elia Kazan)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
And Then There Were None (Rene Clair)
The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise)
Confidential Agent (Herman Shumlin)
Counter-Attack (Zoltan Korda)
Dead of Night (Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton, & Alberto Cavalcanti)
The Enchanted Cottage (John Cromwell)
L’espoir (André Malraux and Boris Peskine)
The Falcon in San Francisco (Edgar G. Ulmer)
A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings)
Getting Gertie’s Garter (Allan Dwan)
Hangover Square (John Brahm)
The Horn Blows at Midnight (Raoul Walsh)
The House on 92nd Street (Henry Hathaway)
Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson)
Kitty (Mitchell Leisen)
Love Letters (William Dieterle)
Murder, He Says (George Marshall)
My Name is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis)
Objective, Burma! (Raoul Walsh)
Perfect Strangers (Alexander Korda)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin)
Salty O’Rourke (Raoul Walsh)
The Seventh Veil (Compton Bennett)
The Southerner (Jean Renoir)
The Spanish Main (Frank Borzage)
The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak)
The Story of G.I. Joe (William A. Wellman)
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (Robert Siodmak)
Strange Illusion (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Two People (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Le vampire (Jean Painleve)
A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone)
The White Gorilla (H.L. Fraser)
Yolanda and the Thief (Vincente Minnelli)
You Came Along (John Farrow)

OF INTEREST:
Blithe Spirit (David Lean)
Escape in the Fog (Budd Boetticher)
The Great Flamarion (Anthony Mann)
Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock)
Two O’Clock Courage (Anthony Mann)
The Way to the Stars (Anthony Asquith)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (Roy Rowland)
Pride of the Marines (Delmer Daves)
A Royal Scandal (Ernst Lubitsch and Otto Preminger)
The Shanghai Cobra (Phil Karlson)

1944

TOP TIER:
At Land (Maya Deren)
An American Romance (King Vidor)
A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges)
Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Sergei Eisenstein)
Laura (Otto Preminger)
Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Mask of Dimitrios (Jean Negulesco)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli)
Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang)
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges)
None Shall Escape (Andre De Toth)
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Address Unknown (William Cameron Menzies)
Bluebeard (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Champagne Charlie (Alberto Cavalcanti)
Christmas Holiday (Robert Siodmak)
La ciel est a vous (Jean Gremillon)
Cobra Woman (Robert Siodmak)
The Curse of the Cat People (Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise)
Dark Waters (Andre De Toth)
Days of Glory (Jacques Tourneur)
The Eve of St. Mark (John M. Stahl)
Experiment Perilous (Jacques Tourneur)
Going My Way (Leo McCarey)
The Great Moment (Preston Sturges)
Home in Indiana (Henry Hathaway)
The Fighting Seabees (Edward Ludwig)
The Keys of the Kingdom (John M. Stahl)
The Lodger (John Brahm)
Miyamoto Musashi (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk)
On Approval (Clive Brook)
Raduga (Mark Donskoy)
Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak)
Since You Went Away (John Cromwell)
Summer Storm (Douglas Sirk)
The Suspect (Robert Siodmak)
The Three Caballeros (Norman Ferguson)
Till We Meet Again (Frank Borzage)
Torment (Alf Sjoberg)
The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (Edgar Neville)
The Way You Wanted Me (Teuvo Tulio)
Uncertain Glory (Raoul Walsh)
The Uninvited (Lewis Allen)
When Strangers Marry (William Castle)

OF INTEREST:
Frenchman’s Creek (Mitchell Leisen)
Gaslight (George Cukor)
The Seventh Cross (Fred Zinnemann)
Wilson (Henry King)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Conspirators (Jean Negulesco)
I’ll Be Seeing You (William Dieterle)
In the Meantime, Darling (Otto Preminger)
Mrs. Parkington (Tay Garnett)
Wing and a Prayer (Henry Hathaway)
Winged Victory (George Cukor)

1943

TOP TIER:
Air Force (Howard Hawks)
Le corbeau (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Hangmen Also Die! (Fritz Lang)
Holy Matrimony (John Stahl)
I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)
The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Meshes in the Afternoon (Maya Deren)
The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson)
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock)
This Land is Mine (Jean Renoir)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Les anges du péché (Robert Bresson)
Background to Danger (Raoul Walsh)
Bataan (Tay Garnett)
Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli)
Edge of Darkness (Lewis Milestone)
L’éternel retour (Jean Delannoy)
Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings)
Five Graves to Cairo (Billy Wilder)
The Ghost Ship (Mark Robson)
Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch)
His Butler’s Sister (Frank Borzage)
The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown)
Immortal Sergeant (John M. Stahl)
It Happened at the Inn (Jacques Becker)
Journey Into Fear (Norman Foster)
The More the Merrier (George Stevens)
Muchhausen (Josef von Baky)
Northern Pursuit (Raoul Walsh)
Ossessione (Luchino Visconti)
Princess O’Rourke (Norman Krasna)
Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery)
Romance in a Minor Key (Helmut Kautner)
Sahara (Zoltan Korda)
Someone to Remember (Robert Siodmak)
Sugata Sanshiro (Akira Kurosawa)

OF INTEREST:
Bombs Over Burma (Joseph H. Lewis)
Hitler’s Madman (Douglas Sirk)
Isle of Forgotten Sins (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Man with a Cross (Roberto Rossellini)
The Outlaw (Howard Hughes and Howard Hawks)
Passport to Suez (Andre De Toth)
Son of Dracula (Robert Siodmak)
Stage Door Canteen (Frank Borzage)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Mission to Moscow (Michael Curtiz)
Mr. Lucky (H.C. Potter)
Wintertime (John Brahm)
Tonight We Raid Calais (John Brahm)

1942

TOP TIER:
Cat People (Jacques Tourneur)
Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
There Was a Father (Yasujiro Ozu)
To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Across the Pacific (John Huston)
Aniki Bobo (Manoel de Oliveira)
L’Assassin Habite… au 21 (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Desperate Journey (Raoul Walsh)
The Glass Key (Stuart Heisler)
Inflation (Cy Endfield) In This Our Life (John Huston)
In Which We Serve (Noel Coward and David Lean)
Lady in a Jam (Gregory La Cava)
Larceny, Inc. (Lloyd Bacon)
Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings)
The Major and the Minor (Billy Wilder)
The Moon and Sixpence (Albert Lewin)
Once Upon a Honeymoon (Leo McCarey)
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock)
Seven Sweethearts (Frank Borzage)
Tales of Manhattan (Julien Duvivier)
The Talk of the Town (George Stevens)
This Gun for Hire (Frank Tuttle)
Tomorrow We Live (Edgar G. Ulmer)
Thunder Rock (Roy Boulting)
The Undying Monster (John Brahm)
Les visiteurs du soir (Marcel Carné)
Wake Island (John Farrow)
Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti)
You Were Never Lovelier (William A. Seiter)

OF INTEREST:
Jungle Book (Zoltan Korda)
Keeper of the Flame (George Cukor)
The Mad Doctor of Market Street (Joseph H. Lewis)
Moontide (Archie Mayo and Fritz Lang)
Reap the Wild Wind (Cecil B. DeMille)

1941

TOP TIER:
The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Yasujiro Ozu)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
The Forty-Ninth Parallel (Michael Powell)
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)
Man Hunt (Fritz Lang)
The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg)
The Strawberry Blonde (Raoul Walsh)
Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Adventures of Captain Marvel (William Witney and John English)
All that Money Can Buy (William Dieterle)
All Through the Night (Vincent Sherman)
Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks)
Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian)
The Blood of Jesus (Spencer Williams)
Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc. (John English and William Witney)
Hellzapoppin’ (H.C. Potter)
Hideko the Bus Conductor (Mikio Naruse)
High Sierra (Raoul Walsh)
Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen)
The Flame of New Orleans (Rene Clair)
The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding)
H.M. Pulham, Esq. (King Vidor)
Invisible Ghost (Joseph H. Lewis)
Jungle Girl (John English and William Witney)
The Little Foxes (William Wyler)
Manpower (Raoul Walsh)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Alfred Hitchcock)
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward F. Cline)
Rhapsody in Rivets (Friz Freleng)
Remorques (Jean Grémillon)
Smilin’ Through (Frank Borzage)
Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock)
Swamp Water (Jean Renoir)
That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda)
That Uncertain Feeling (Ernst Lubitsch)
They Died With Their Boots On (Raoul Walsh)
Tobacco Road (John Ford)
Unfinished Business (Gregory La Cava)
Western Union (Fritz Lang)
A Woman’s Face (George Cukor)
Words for Battle (Humphrey Jennings)

OF INTEREST:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Victor Fleming)
The Green Hornet Strikes Again! (Ford Beebe and John Rawlins)
Johnny Eager (Mervyn LeRoy)
Lady from Louisiana (Bernard Vorhaus)
Meet John Doe (Frank Capra)
The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz)
Sergeant York (Howard Hawks)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
The Face Behind the Mask (Robert Florey)
Major Barbara (Gabriel Pascal)
Our Wife (John M. Stahl)Penny Serenade (George Stevens)
Pot o’ Gold (George Marshall)
Superman (Dave Fleischer)
The Wolf Man (George Waggner)

1940

TOP TIER:
Christmas in July (Preston Sturges)
Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin)
The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges)
His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
The Long Voyage Home (John Ford)
The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage)
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)
Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen)
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)

ALSO ESSENTIAL:
Adventures of Red Ryder (John English and William Witney)
All Girl Revue (Lloyd French)
Angels Over Broadway (Lee Garmes and Ben Hecht)
Arise, My Love (Mitchell Leisen)
The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline)
Boys of the City (Joseph H. Lewis)
Comrade X (King Vidor)
Contraband (Michael Powell)
Dark Command (Raoul Walsh)
Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (William Dieterle)
Drums of Fu Manchu (John English and William Witney)
Flight Command (Frank Borzage)
Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)
The Green Archer (James W. Horne)
The Green Hornet (Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor)
King of the Royal Mounted (John English and William Witney)
The Letter (William Wyler)
The Man from Tumbleweeds (Joseph H. Lewis)
The Mark of Zorro (Rouben Mamoulian)
De Mayerling à Sarajevo (Max Ophuls)
Murder Over New York (Harry Lachman)
Mysterious Doctor Satan (John English and William Witney)
Night Train to Munich (Carol Reed)
Northwest Passage (King Vidor)
The Old Jockey (Boris Barnet)
Phantom Raiders (Jacques Tourneur)
Pride of the Bowery (Joseph H. Lewis)
The Return of Frank James (Fritz Lang)
The Shadow (James W. Horne)
Spring on the Islands (Shiro Toyoda)
The Stars Look Down (Carol Reed)
Strange Cargo (Frank Borzage)
They Drive by Night (Raoul Walsh)
The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, and Tim Whelan)
Three Faces West (Bernard Vorhaus)
Traveling Actors (Mikio Naruse)
The Westerner (William Wyler)
You Ought to Be in Pictures (Friz Freleng)

OF INTEREST:
Ahí está el detalle (Juan Bustillo Oro)
Brigham Young (Henry Hathaway)
Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner)
Johnny Apollo (Henry Hathaway)
Stranger on the Third Floor (Boris Ingster)

POSSIBLY OF INTEREST:
Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (Lynn Shores)
Charlie Chan in Panama (Norman Foster)
Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (Eugene Forde)
The House of the Seven Gables (Joe May)
I Love You Again (W.S. Van Dyke)
Waterloo Bridge (Mervyn LeRoy)

Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)