Classic Cinema Zone

After gaining notoriety on radio, Orson Welles became one of Classic Hollywood’s most pioneering directors. With his very first movie, Welles directed what many consider to be the best film ever made. Active as a director for five decades, Welles made only a handful of films, largely due to his inability to secure financing for his increasingly experimental projects. Still, he remained a highly influential auteur whose techniques changed the course of Hollywood filmmaking.

Alfred Hitchcock’s career spanned across six decades and over 50 feature films. The acknowledged “Master of Suspense” practically invented the thriller and was a brilliant technician who deftly blended sex, suspense and humor into the genre.

One of the most revered directors of his generation, Sidney Lumet produced an extraordinary body of work that included some of New Hollywood’s most seminal classics. While his best work was made in the 1970s, Lumet spent the previous decades earning a reputation as a consummate professional capable of drawing stellar performances out of his actors, some of whom won Academy Awards. He employed an economical visual style and a strong social consciousness to create thought-provoking films that were also commercial hits.

Marlon Brando was the most celebrated and influential actor of the 20th century. Employing the famed Method style of acting, Brando was a powerful and mesmerizing presence on the screen, but combative and enigmatic behind the cameras. His career spanned across six decades, though his best work came in the 1950s and often in collaboration with director Elia Kazan. His career hit the skids the following decade, though he saw a brief resurgence in the 1970s. He was idolized by fans and copied by numerous actors throughout the decades, from James Dean to Robert De Niro to Leonardo DiCaprio.

One of the most taciturn leading men of any era, Charles Bronson spent years working as supporting player throughout the 1950s and early ’60s until finally becoming a star. Known for playing unemotional tough guys more comfortable using violence over words, Bronson became a top box office draw during the turbulent late-1960s and early ’70s, when he played hard-nosed vigilantes who took matters into their own hands. Though his starred dimmed in the following decades, Bronson lived on as one of the great action stars of his generation.

A former aspiring musician and law student born in Austria, Fred Zinnemman found himself in Hollywood in the early 1930s, where he made a number of B-movies before scoring a hit with ‘The Seventh Cross’ (1944) and earning his first Academy Award nomination for ‘The Search’ (1948). But it wasn’t until the next decade that he hit his stride with his revisionist Western ‘High Noon,’ and went on to direct highly acclaimed and commercially successful films for the next two decades, several of which have become all-time classics. Over the course of the next three decades, he would direct stunning films in genres as varied as thrillers, Westerns, film noir and even musicals. The winner of two Oscars and director of some of Hollywood’s biggest hits, Zinnemann left behind a legacy as one of cinema’s most accomplished filmmakers.

Over the years, Roger Ebert wrote thousands of reviews for his home newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times. He has given thumbs up or thumbs down on countless movies during his five decades as a critic. While he mainly focused on contemporary movies, he also wrote reviews of many classics. Here is a list of classic movies loved by Roger Ebert and what he had to say about them.

With the old studio system decaying and the abolition of the Hays Code in the face of rapid social change, movies in the 1960s increasingly became more experimental. But the winners of Best Picture throughout most of the decade were decidedly traditional, however, with four winners being musicals despite that old staple’s general decline; something that never happened even during the genre’s heyday of the 1930s and 1940s. By the end of the decade, the classic era had finally given way to New Hollywood with the first and so far only X-rated Best Picture winner, lining up the Second Golden Age of the 1970, one of cinema’s greatest decades.

As we did earlier in the month in highlighting the Best Actor winners from past Academy Awards, let’s take a look at all the great female performances from the 1930s-1970s. In one of the greatest decades for Best Actress in Oscar history, the 1930s saw the rise of some of the classic era’s greatest stars. Following surprise wins by Norma Shearer and Marie Dressler, such greats as Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert and Bette Davis earned top honors and cemented their place in Oscar history. Luise Reiner won two Oscars in a row before seeing her career fall by the wayside, while Vivien Leigh took home Oscar for playing one of the silver screen’s most iconic roles, Scarlett O’Hara, in Gone With the Wind . … Read Full Post

As they loosened its production code in the 1960s, Hollywood focused more on grittier character driven films that finally gave way to the New Hollywood era at the end of the decade. News names like Warren Betty and Jon Voight were breaking through, while Sidney Poitier smashed the color barrier in 1963 with his historic win. Of course, older stars like Burt Lancaster and John Wayne also received their due, making the 1960s one of the most interesting decades in Oscar history.