Video clips and history of world cinema: 1948-1957

10 Years 10 Films (10Y10F) is a project to display embedded YouTube selections of cinema history. This is Decade Seven of a series that aims for a quick time-lapse view of how movie technology and style has developed throughout the world – one clip each year – from 1888 through 2017, starting with the foundations to see how filmmakers build or deconstruct them.

World cinema 1948-1957

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Video clips and history of world cinema: 1938-1947

10 Years 10 Films (10Y10F) is a project to display embedded YouTube selections of cinema history. This is Decade Six of a series that gives the viewer a quick time-lapse view of how movie technology and style has developed throughout the world – one clip each year – from 1888 through 2017, starting with the foundations to see how filmmakers build or deconstruct them.

World cinema 1938-1947

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Queer films and directors, 1938-1947 (10Y10F VI Bonus List)

Some of the gay and lesbian stereotypes in these films are clearly damaging, others are celebrated as coded queer classics in a time when “sex perversion” was forbidden in Hollywood. An interactive version of this list, with notes on each film, can be found at Letterboxd.

Still from Fireworks (1947)
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Video clips and history of world cinema: 1928-1937

10 Years 10 Films (10Y10F) is a project to display embedded YouTube selections of cinema history. This is Part Five of a series that gives the viewer a quick time-lapse view of how movie technology and style has developed throughout the world – one clip each year – from 1888 through 2017, starting with the foundations to see how filmmakers build or deconstruct them.

World cinema 1928-1937

Sound “talkies” and censorship are the huge cinematic changes for this decade. It’s hard to say how the Great Depression (1929, lasting about ten years) affected the film industry, but Nazi policies throughout the 1930s definitely had an effect until the end of WWII, and many German filmmakers and actors emigrated.
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Changes in the Hollywood Production Code

Sex perversion. White slavery. Childbirth. Miscegenation. Obscenity. Salacious titles. These are just a few of the subjects that were forbidden by the “Production Code” that governed Hollywood on-screen morality from 1930 through 1968. It’s been a challenge to find a good summary of the changes in the Code, so included here are links to original sources as well as a downloadable quick-guide I created showing the three major changes to the code before it was strictly enforced in 1934.

Text of the 1934 Production Code
1934 Production Code from the Motion Picture Herald
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Video clips and history of world cinema: 1918-1927

10 Years 10 Films (10Y10F) is a project to display embedded YouTube selections of cinema history. This is Part IV of a series that gives the viewer a quick time-lapse view of how movie technology and style has developed throughout the world – one clip each year – from 1888 through 2017, starting with the foundations to see how filmmakers build or deconstruct them.

World cinema 1918-1927

As “the war to end all wars” came to a close in 1918, the destruction in Europe shifted the center of the film world to Hollywood. By 1928, the “Big Five” studios had been established and they dominated the artistic and economic production of films in the United States.[1] This was particularly stifling for women directors as alpha males created a toxic environment on set.[2]

Despite – or perhaps because of – their lack of resources, German filmmakers in particular were especially creative during this time. Foreign language films were rarely exhibited in the States, but as the political situation worsened, several directors from Europe and Russia were recruited to Hollywood.

This is an era that continues to be revered today, with frequent exhibitions of classics like Metropolis, Within Our Gates, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, The Gold Rush, Battleship Potemkin, Nosferatu, and The Mark of Zorro to name a few. Read more Video clips and history of world cinema: 1918-1927