10 Movies, 10 Storytelling Milestones
In the beginning, movies took their inspiration from the classic Greek Tragedy structure: one plot, characters driving the narrative, three acts, unity of time, setting and action etc. But progressively, some ingenuous filmmakers embraced the cinematic medium with more creativity, changing forever the way stories would be told.
The question is: in your opinion, which of these 10 influential movies was the most groundbreaking in the field of storytelling?
Discuss here
The question is: in your opinion, which of these 10 influential movies was the most groundbreaking in the field of storytelling?
Discuss here
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10 titles
- DirectorEdwin S. PorterStarsGilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' AndersonA.C. AbadieGeorge BarnesA group of bandits stage a brazen train hold-up, only to find a determined posse hot on their heels.As a former cameraman, director Edwin S. Porter had an 'eye for action' and understood first, the importance of editing, angles, shots... and more than anything: leaving a final impact on viewers. Indeed, the last shot of the outlaw shooting at the audience can only be interpreted as a free artistic license, sealing the fate of Cinema as the ultimate art-form of mass-entertainment.
- DirectorD.W. GriffithStarsLillian GishMae MarshHenry B. WalthallThe Stoneman family finds its friendship with the Camerons affected by the Civil War, both fighting in opposite armies. The development of the war in their lives plays through to Lincoln's assassination and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.If technical greatness doesn't redeem the film from its controversial content, the controversy can't cancel out the revolutionary achievement either. For its 3-hour ambitious epic structure, its pioneering use of parallel editing and its narrative spanning many decades of action and characterization, "The Birth of Nation" simply marks the birth of modern Cinema, with D.W. Griffith as the undisputed father.
- DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsPierre BatcheffSimone MareuilLuis BuñuelLuis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 16 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.The eye-moment breaks the ultimate taboo by depicting the most repulsive thing ever for a viewer, yet that eye slicing is liberation, it challenges our faculties to watch a film, inviting us to change our perspective and to look at a reality that goes beyond reality. The reolutionary and iconoclast Luis Bunuel paved the way for a new surrealistic and symbolic form of expression, highlighting Cinema's innate yearning for dream-like (or nightmarish) escapism.
- DirectorOrson WellesStarsOrson WellesJoseph CottenDorothy ComingoreFollowing the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'There have been movies beginning with the ending before, but Orson Welles transcended the informative value of ellipses and flashbacks. Through his personal take on non-linear narrative, never has a character study (literally) challenged the viewers' comprehension and appreciation in such an exciting and fascinating way.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsToshirô MifuneMachiko KyôMasayuki MoriThe rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter.With a simple story told from four different perspectives, Akira Kurosawa created the 'unreliable narrator' concept: the point is not to know the truth, but to read between its many versions and understand through them the deceptive nature of the camera as the flawed expression of human subjectivity, and to trust our personal vision.
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsMax von SydowGunnar BjörnstrandBengt EkerotA knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague.is it the backbone of a colossal oeuvre about the meaning of existence or a 'pretentious' work? Actually, Ingmar Bergman never pretended to bring a satisfying answer, only a cinematic journey whose first and penultimate shots, (parodied countless times) translated for the first time men's moral and intellectual torments into a cinematic language.
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsJean-Paul BelmondoJean SebergVan DoudeA small-time crook, hunted by the authorities for a car theft and the murder a police officer, attempts to persuade a hip American journalism student to run away with him to Italy.What characterizes Jean-Luc Godard's film is a total rejection of any form of authority, a freedom of style and a cool detachment through the main character, the relative absence of plot, and so many unusual uses of "jump cuts". The film becomes an area of constant creativity devoid of any storytelling or aesthetic rules, "no rules" becomes the rule.
- DirectorFederico FelliniStarsMarcello MastroianniAnouk AiméeClaudia CardinaleA harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.Federico Fellini isn't a showman but a ringleader, the center of his own universe, and the movie becomes the chronicle of a creative, intellectually and emotionally challenging, process, whose final result is the film itself... or something artistically faithful to his vision.
- DirectorGillo PontecorvoStarsBrahim HadjadjJean MartinYacef SaadiIn the 1950s, fear and violence escalate as the people of Algiers fight for independence from the French government.For a long time, cinema distanced itself from reality, until Gillo Pontecorvo understood the force of the footage look and used documentary-like realism and unknown faces with minimal dialogues, to put the story in history. Fiction can benefit from realism and that would even apply to comedy with the mockumentary genre.
- DirectorQuentin TarantinoStarsJohn TravoltaUma ThurmanSamuel L. JacksonThe lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.One golden rule in screenwriting is that whatever you put, must be related to the story, well, Quentin Tarantino threw that rule away, the characters are more important than the story, and what they say, as random, irrelevant and pointless as it sounds, is more important than what they are, because it's all about fun and entertainment, and you know what? At the end, it's this very randomness and unpredictability of things (isn't life the same anyway?) that make us care for the characters, and ultimately the story.