German expressionism — shadows, angles, madness
Weimar Republic, 1919-1933. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) painted shadows on the set walls. Nosferatu (1922) shot without permission from Bram Stoker's estate. Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) built a city that Blade Runner would rebuild fifty years later. M (1931) gave Peter Lorre the role of a lifetime. F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) told a story with no intertitles. G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929) made Louise Brooks an icon. Then the Nazis came and most of these directors fled to Hollywood.
Metropolis
foreign gemdreadepic
M
foreign gemdreadparanoid
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
foreign gemmindfucksurreal
Faust
foreign gemdreadsurreal
The Last Laugh
foreign gembittersweettender
Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
foreign gemparanoidslow burn
Nosferatu
foreign gemdreadslow burn
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
foreign gemdreadmindfuck
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
foreign gemneon soakedplayful
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
foreign gemslow burn
Pandora's Box
foreign gemgut punchsexy
Spies
foreign gemneon soakedparanoid
The Blue Angel
foreign gembittersweetparanoid
Vampyr
foreign gemdreadslow burn
Woman in the Moon
foreign gemepicslow burn
People on Sunday
foreign gemcozytender
Mädchen in Uniform
bittersweetoutsidertender
Autres collections canon
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
Italian neorealism — the rubble and the real
Commedia all'italiana — Italy laughing at itself
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