The Defining Films of Each Decade of the 20th Century
| By: Dr. Ted Baehr; ©2000 |
| Dr. Baehr list 10 films which have influenced or showcased the American culture during the past century. |
THE DEFINING FILMS OF EACH DECADE IN THE 20TH CENTURY
Offering a list of the defining movies of each decade of the 20th Century is a dangerous proposition, because there are so many movies that have influenced and impacted 20th Century culture, such as Battleship Potemkin, Akira Kurosawa’s epic movie Seven Samurai, which re-invigorated Japan after its World War II defeat, and Frederico Fallini’s La Dolce Vita, which exploded on the cultural scene, figuratively and literally. Therefore, I have focused on popular American movies, but I could make a case for many others.
In 1908, Pathe produced the first three-reel movie in color called The Life of Christ. Audiences stood in line for blocks to see this full-length feature film. Its success told Nickelodeon operators that people would sit through longer films, and so it ushered in the age of the grand theater. More than all that, the movie told the life of Christ.
During the 1910s, two films shaped the nation. The first was Birth of a Nation, which produced such a public outcry that D.W. Griffith followed this ground-breaking movie with Intolerance to complain about the intolerance of people who reviled Birth of a Nation. The heart of Intolerance was the section about Jesus Christ forgiving the woman at the well. It is a powerful example of love and forgiveness, and the story of law vs. grace.
In the 1920s, H.B. Warner played Jesus in Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings in 1926. This is still the classic of all religious motion pictures, with the most vivid resurrection scene. Many people throughout the world came to Jesus Christ because of King of Kings.
In 1939, Gone With the Wind became the American epic expressing all the tensions as well as the worst and the best in America.
In 1946, the most beloved movie of all time, It’s a Wonderful Life, was released to lackluster public response. When I speak at film schools like USC, so-called cutting-edge students still say It’s a Wonderful Life is their favorite movie. Clips from the movie still show up in modern movies as a kind of homage to small-town American values.
In 1956, The Ten Commandments, perhaps not the best movie but the biggest, the brashest and the most often cited. However, in the same category, I’d like to mention Quo Vadis (1951), a movie that helped raise the issues of faith in a powerful way. Both of these movies led a new wave of Biblical epics in the late 1950s and 1960s.
In the 60s, the movie that demolished the Motion Picture Code was Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Filmmaking was never the same after Elizabeth Taylor’s tirade of obscenities, profanities and sexual games.
In the 1970s, the first of the Star Wars movies moved science fiction fantasy from the B-movie to the mythic dream (1977).
In the 1980s, Chariots of Fire (1981) beat out Raiders of the Lost Ark and several other big movies for the Best Picture Academy Award and told the entertainment industry that there was still room for powerful personal stories of redemption.
In the 1990s, Natural Born Killers (1994) made heroes out of killers and elevated killing to artistic expression and a heroic activity. On the more positive side, the success of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King led a wave of family-oriented animated movies, culminating in 1998’s The Prince of Egypt and 1999’s Toy Story 2.
