This Quarter in Film History

Why David O. Selznick feared a tombstone epitaph as the man who made Gone with the Wind (1939) is mysterious. This film was his Tara as much as it was Miss Scarlett’s.

Of all his creations, ‘The Apartment’ is Billy Wilder’s most influential and greatest film. 

Roberto Rossellini’s Open City (Roma, Cittá Aperta), which premiered in Italy 65 years ago in September 1945, revolutionized the perception and marketing of foreign films in America when it opened in New York just five months later.

The Battleship Potemkin, or Potemkin as it is generally known, galvanized filmmakers around the world because of the audacity of its film editing––especially in the iconic Odessa Steps massacre. Its impact on editors and directors since its premiere in Moscow on Christmas Eve, 1925 is immeasurable.

The signature Alfred Hitchcock thriller frequently involves an innocent person accused of a politically motivated murder committed by twisted villains who are terrorists, Nazis, fascists or Communists.

Rex Ingram put what became MGM on the map, but ironically, the studio he helped to create was also his undoing. 

F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that there are no second acts to American lives––an odd statement because Americans have always sought new challenges and adventures. During the Depression, people lost their careers, their savings and their homes, and families were forced to discover new ways to survive. Three-quarters of a century later, the current generation is experiencing similar joblessness, foreclosures and bankruptcies, which have caused national anxiety.