Italian neorealism — the rubble and the real
Post-war Italy, 1943-1955. Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti shot in bombed streets with non-actors and natural light. Rome, Open City (1945) defined the movement. Bicycle Thieves (1948) is the blueprint every social-realist film since has copied. Umberto D. (1952) made Vittorio De Sica cry on set. Visconti's Ossessione (1943) predated it all. These films invented modern cinema's moral seriousness — Truffaut, Satyajit Ray, the Dardennes all pointed back here.
Le Trou
foreign gemdreadslow burn
Bicycle Thieves
foreign gemgut punchraw
Big Deal on Madonna Street
foreign gemcozyplayful
The Wages of Fear
foreign gemdreadraw
La Dolce Vita
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
Nights of Cabiria
foreign gembittersweettender
La Strada
foreign gembittersweettender
Umberto D.
foreign gembittersweetslow burn
La Terra Trema
foreign gemrawslow burn
I Vitelloni
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
Germany, Year Zero
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Purple Noon
foreign gembittersweetneon soaked
Paisan
foreign gembittersweetslow burn
Obsession
foreign gemparanoidraw
The Earrings of Madame de...
foreign gembittersweetslow burn
L'Avventura
foreign gemcerebraloutsider
Il Grido
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Mon Oncle
foreign gembittersweetplayful
Black Sunday
foreign gemdreadsurreal
Othello
dreadgut punchparanoid
Europa '51
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Miracle in Milan
foreign gembittersweettender
Journey to Italy
foreign gembittersweetslow burn
The Return of Don Camillo
foreign gemcozytender
French Cancan
foreign gembittersweetneon soaked
Senso
foreign gembittersweetgut punch
The Flowers of St. Francis
slow burntender
Stromboli
bittersweetdreadoutsider
The Golden Coach
bittersweetneon soakedplayful
The Barefoot Contessa
bittersweettender
Other canon collections
Japanese New Wave — the essentials
80s horror everyone has forgotten
Giallo — Italy's blood-red mystery genre
Korean cinema essentials beyond Parasite
Post-Soviet cinema — Russia & Eastern Europe after 1991
The Romanian New Wave
Essential anime that isn't Studio Ghibli
Slow cinema — the long-take canon
70s American paranoia — the post-Watergate canon
First features by directors who later mattered
Documentaries that hold up as cinema
Scandinavian noir beyond the Stieg Larsson franchises
Iranian new wave — Kiarostami, Farhadi, and the rest
Argentine cinema — beyond Wild Tales
British kitchen-sink and what it became
First features directed by cinematographers
German New Wave — Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Schlöndorff
Hong Kong action — Woo, Lam, Tsui, To
Spaghetti westerns — Leone, Corbucci, Sollima, and the second tier
Mumblecore — the American indie movement nobody named
Czech New Wave — Forman, Chytilová, Menzel, before they fled
French New Wave — Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Rivette, Rohmer
Blaxploitation — Shaft, Pam Grier, and the 70s Black cinema boom
Dogme 95 — von Trier, Vinterberg, and the vow of chastity
Australian New Wave — Weir, Miller, Armstrong, Campion
African cinema — Sembène, Sissako, Mambéty, and beyond
Commedia all'italiana — Italy laughing at itself
German expressionism — shadows, angles, madness
Taiwanese New Cinema — Hou, Yang, Tsai, and the island's quiet revolution
New Queer Cinema — Haynes, Araki, Van Sant, and the 90s insurgency
Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters