I’ll just list some here:
The Adventures of Robin Hood
The African Queen
Ben-Hur
The Best Years of Our Lives
Bringing Up Baby
Casablanca
It’s a Wonderful Life
Lawrence of Arabia
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Quiet Man
Rear Window
West Side Story
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Lots of the others listed were great as well.
These may not be the best of their genres but they’re the films that I think changed things.
Citizen Kane showed directors how to direct
Star Wars showed studios what can be done with merchandising
Blair Witch Project showed filmakers that you don’t need a big budget
Akira showed people that animation need not be disney style
Psycho showed people that the star can die
I don’t think I could come up with 10 movies, but I think Chaplin’s The Kid (1921) is the most important movie Chaplin ever made - it was the movie that showed that a comedy could be more than humorous. I think it was the blueprint for the modern full-length comedy - it has three acts, it has a love story, it has laughs, and it has a happy ending. That was Chaplin’s largest quantum leap in film making, and comedies changed forever after it.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is eleven years older. Even so, it’s only the oldest *surviving *animated feature; El Apóstol was released 9 years earlier still, but the last known print was destroyed by fire in 1969.
Kurosawa never escaped the shadow of his mentor, Kenji Mizoguchi, who did everything first and better, although before color became commonplace.
Cabiria was released a year earlier and was a huge influence on Griffith. And there’s a version of Richard III that’s two years older still.
You mean dialogue. Don Juan, 1926, had a recorded musical soundtrack. Sunrise, release a couple weeks before The Jazz Singer, had a recorded soundtrack of music and sound effects. The Jazz Singer was very similar to Sunrise; it had musical numbers plugged into an essentially silent film; all dialogue occurred immediately after a musical number, as part of the plug in, and was ad-libbed by Jolson during their recordings.
There *has *been a wave of revision, led mostly by the European directors–e.g., Jacques Rivette–who have acknowledged their indebtedness to Verhoeven, and to ***Showgirls ***in particular.
Ummm, you do realize that Oscar Hammerstein wrote the play Showboat, don’t you? I didn’t mean to imply that Oklahoma! was the first popular musical to integrate song and plot. However, Rodgers & Hammerstein were the ones to take everything to the next level with the 1943 Broadway production of Oklahoma!. There were certainly stirrings of integration of song and story, as in the 1951 version of Showboat (based on the Hammerstein stage adaptation of Ferber’s novel), but Oklahoma! was the watershed film in the devlopment of the film musical.
The first feature was The Ned Kelly Gang, 63 minutes long, released in Australia in 1903. When you watch Intolerance, you realize that it is probably the more influential film, though it often gets swept under the rug. More modern filmmaking techniques are evident there than in BoaN.
Read my OP again:
This thread wasn’t just about the most important films, but also films that you think are important or innovative. If I were to replace Showgirls, it would probably be with Eyes Wide Shut.
Wow, I didn’t find this one on my search; I only found surviving films I guess. FWIW, IMDb calls it The Story of the Kelly Gang, and says it was released in 1906.
Not in a particular order:
All that Jazz - Bob Fosse was one of the most gifted film makers duriung the past century. It’s too bad that the musical genre was almost dead when he made his films, otherwise, his influnce would have been even greater, mostly because he did choreography for the camera, not an audience. AtJ is the best, IMO, being semi-autobiographical and also showing that it’s quite possible to tell a coherent story without a linear narrative. I don’t know if Tarrantino has watched it a lot, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Romeo+Juliet - Baz Luhrman did what no one alse has managed. Make a version of Shakespeare that’s relevant today and which captures the fever, insanity and stupidity of what it’s like to be in love and a teenager. I think it’s the best screen adaption of any Shakespeare play, being true to the source material, while being totally modern at the same time.
The Ox-Bow incident - mostly because I saw it when I was about ten and I’m still a firm opponent to the death penalty.
Star Wars - a tad predictable, but I was 16 when it was realeased and for anyone who came in contact with it afterwards: you just can’t imagine what an impact it made. Especially on this geeky kid who were totally into SF and fantasy at the time. There’s an episode of That 70’s show which actually captures it quite well.
North By Northwest - the Double Chase perfected. It’s the quintessential Hitchcock movie and Cary Grant is perfect. James Mason is a very good villain, soft spoken and not sadistic. An elderly gentleman and therefore so much more frightening.
Blazing Saddles - the mother of all parody movies.
Chinatown - Polanski and Towne made the best Film Noire about 30 years after the glory days of the genre. Is it a hommage? Or maybe a movie that coudn’t be done in the 40’s because of the political implications. It has everything, including the bad guy getting away with murder.
Jungle Book - the first movie I saw in a theatre.
Cross of Iron - Many would pick ‘The Wild Bunch’, but I really like a movie told from a German POV, but made with American actors - who don’t speak English with a heavy fake German accent. It’s a great movie about the futility and madness of war.
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers - I don’t know if Don Siegel realized it when he made the film, but it’s the best horror flick ever. Almost 50 years old and it’s still scary. Frankenstein and Dracula are fun, but not something to give actual nightmares. But the claustrophobic and paranoid atmosphere of Bodysnatchers is still palpable. I also think it made the original mold for most horror films that followed.
Quoth ZeroGyro:
What I mean by that, was that it was the first film to realize that a movie can do things that a play can’t. On stage, you can’t change the camera angle, or do close-ups, or abrupt scene changes, whereas you can do all of those things on film. I’ve heard that Citizen Kane was the first to make use of these techniques, though if you can find earlier examples, I’ll obviously stand corrected.
And I suppose that commercial tie-ins aren’t really what makes a blockbuster, specifically (how many folks have Independance Day action figures, either?), so you’re correct that Jaws would be the first blockbuster. But whatever the term is for a marketing phenomenon, Star Wars pioneered it.
Also, thanks to RitzyRae for reminding me of It’s a Wonderful Life, and Liberal for reminding me of The Sound of Music. I don’t know how I forgot either in my first post.