Favorite Decade For Cinema?

the 60s are taking an absolute battering in my rewatch.

The 1970's


1910-Intolerance
1920's The General
1930's M
1940's To Be or Not to Be
1950's The Seventh Seal
1960's Dr. Strangelove
1970's Godfather pt 1
1980's Blade Runner
1990's Goodfellas
2000's LOTR Fellowship of the Ring
2010's Inception
2020's Need to catch up on recent movies, but my favorite that I have seen is The Holdovers

I find it impossible to choose between the 1960s and 1970s, currently leaning towards the sixties but it never fails to amaze me how much great stuff was made in the seventies.
The look and vibe of both decades have aged very well, I think.

For a long time I believed that the 1990s performed much better than the 1980s, but now I'm not so sure anymore.
Perhaps I've always compared the best (of the 90s) with the worst (of the 80s) and that's not fair.

Apart from the fastgrowing technology, the most recent decades lack a sense of zeitgeist - unless the story covers a very specific topic.
I find it difficult to remember if my favourite films were made in the 2000s or 2010s. Not that a number means everything, but context is always nice, isn't it.
I guess the very young people who shaped their lives in these years will see things very differently. Or maybe not, I have no idea really.

I'm still firmly of the view that it's the 60s, but I don't find the 70s or the 50s outrageous.


20s Blackmail
(The Adventures of Prince Achmed, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Pandora's Box, Sunrise, Sherlock Jr)

30s Salt for Svanetia
(The Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Scarface)

40s Day of Wrath
(Mr Darling Clementine, The Third Man, Casablanca, Laura, Out of the Past, Ornamental Hairpin, Brief Encounter, Bicycle Thieves)

50s Rear Window
(Anatomy of a Murder, Journey to Italy, The Music Room, Pather Panchelli, North by Northwest, On the Waterfront, Rebel, Bridge on the River Kwai)

60s The Naked Island
(2001, High and Low, Alphaville, Psycho, For a Few Dollars More, Onibaba, KES, Bonheur, Lawrence of Arabia, Marienbad, Blow-up, Le Notte)

70s Apocalypse Now
(Alien, McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Day of the Jackal, The Passenger, The Godfather Part 2, Don't Look Now, Barry Lyndon)

80s Blade Runner
(The Runner, Taipei Story, The Terminator, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Body Heat, L'Argent, The King of Comedy)

90s Vive L'Amour
(LA Confidential, Voices Through Time, The Commitments, Pulp Fiction, 7, The Player, Remains of the Day, Dayd of Being Wild, The River)

00s Uzak
(Mulholland Drive, In The Mood for Love, Gladiator, There Will be Blood, Cafe Lumiere, Wall-E, No Country for Old Men, Sexy Beast)

10s La La Land
(The Lighthouse, Argo, Roma, Arrival, Embrace of the Serpent, Nightcrawler, Frances Ha, OUATI Anatolia)

20s Aftersun

The 1970's is leading the poll, and it's a great decade to be sure... my second favorite, but to me the 1950s is THE decade of cinema. I could go on for hours on why it's my favorite decade of cinema and if I was cursed and could only watch films from one decade it would be the 1950s. Honestly I don't even know where to begin. Hollywood directors like Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, George Steven's, Vincente Minnelli, and dozens of others were making their best films. Smaller directors like Nic Ray, Anthony Mann, Sam Fuller, and others were pushing the boundaries of what could be done with smaller budgets and more intimate and tight films. Social commentary directors like Elia Kazan and Fred Zinneman were challenging the status quo and internationally filmmakers like Bergman, Fellini, Melville, Bresson, Clouzot, Chahine, Kurosawa, and Ozu were making great films and exploding the greatness of world cinema. Genre films be they noir, westerns, musicals, or epics were at their best and indie cinema was in its infancy with Cassavettes and Rogosin making films. The 50s also gave rise to pop culture stars like Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Brando, and James Dean and Bogart gave his best performances of his career in the 50s.

Basically the 50s were a decade that saw film synthesize and refined everything that had been, while showing some true signs of things to come and turmoil on the horizon that were lurking in the shadows and subtext to out wit the MPAA Hayes Code. If Cinema is Star Wars then the 1950s was its Empire Strikes Back.

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OK, I need to tread carefully here, lest Yoda bans me after 23 years... but I love Gloria Grahame. I also think of her as "Hollywood's slut" and I say that with fondness and amazement and completely valuing her in that role which she played so well both on and off.screen. She is afterall in one of my top 10 films of all time In a Lonely Place and she is perfect in it. I don't think or her as beautiful in a traditional way... she was always far hotter than she was pretty... no doubt perfectly cast as the town floozy and flirt in It's a Wonderful Life. She is also great in an under known and under appreciated Kazan film called Man on a Tightrope which is a middle finger to communism and a film that holds personal resonance having gone through a career Hell and having seen evil first hand and something that you love completely destroyed, just as the Fredric March character does. The scene where he is interrogated by the Marxist communist party is a scene that is so true and real that having experienced something sooo eerily similar to it in my life... it makes it actually emotionally and almost physically painful for me to watch. You cannot fake a scene like that or imagine it, it can only be experienced and then captured in writing having gone through that type of a Hell.

Post-war cinema was less about breaking free from "traditional" cliche(s) and exploring new ideas/techniques in filmmaking, but all of a sudden there was this sense of immense self-reflexivity/reflection that you see across the numerous film movements or Waves. I like to say the 1960s was the peak due to the simultaneous co-development and flourishing of ideas in cinema. 1950s did lay the groundwork before the democratization of film in the Second and Third World nations. Cinema was, in a sense, the last to mature as an art form - literature had its modernist movement in the inter-war period, as well as music where the turning point was clearly the very early 20th century with atonal and jazz music. Sadly, the 70s was marked by turmoil - political and economic crises that led to a certain disenchantment with the arts and the rise in neoliberal ideology.

50s still rules dawg.

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I came up with the following based on my favourite 150 films, allocating 150 points to nr1 in my list 149 points to nr2 and so on:

1920s. 329 (10th)
1930s. 597 (9th)
1940s. 839 (7th)
1950s. 1243 (3rd)
1960s. 2315 (1st)
1970s.1655 (2nd)
1980s. 1059 (5th)
1990s. 1196 (4th)*
2000s. 754 (8th)
2010s. 903 (6th)

*I gave Blade Runner to the 90s as I like the Director's Cut

Or putting it the other way:
1st. 1960s. 2315 points
2nd. 1970s.1655 points
3rd. 1950s. 1243 points
4th. 1990s. 1196 points
5th. 1980s. 1059 points
6th. 2010s. 903 points

1920s Metropolis


1930s Gone with the wind


1940s the Maltese falcon


1950s Twelve angry men... The seventh seal


1960s 2001... Planet of the apes... A bunch of French new wave films too. Films were more sexual and new boundaries were pushed.


1970s 👈 Favourite year. I just wish Blade runner was apart of it. 1970s... Chinatown... Alien... Taxi driver.




1980s... Blade runner... Paris Texas... The thing...The Shinning


1990s... Fight Club... Seven..Pulp fiction... Interview with the vampire 👈 The edges decade in cinema.


2000s... Donnie Darko... Last life in the universe


2010s... First reformed... The lighthouse


2020s....Not sure really, so far proving to be the worst decade in cinema.


All decades before the 1900s were the worst though. There was F**k all on 😒

Good news: Blade Runner is apart from the 1970s. It is a part of the 1980s. Same as The Shining (1980), BTW. And 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968, which you may note is also not the 1970s.

I think you've cracked that one. Can't argue with your logic.

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Damm I messed up. I forgot the shining was 1980 and 2001 was 68. Guess they looked ahead of there time. I'll edit my post. But 70s still take the W

I like to think of Gloria Grahame as the 'tart with a heart'. One of my favorite performances by her is in the underseen The Glass Wall (1953)...A noir/social awareness hybrid film that deals with an illegal entry immigrant who is trying to find an old friend with hopes of a better life. Gloria is in the first 1/3rd of the film and it's a role that allows her to develop her character in ways she didn't always get to.

I like a lot of this.
The 50s. I mean these are solid selections. There's some other crackers from that decade though, and I suspect you have probably seen some of them.
70s, very good choices there. The 80s, I have the same nr1 as you Blade Runner. Awesome film, awesome selection. Paris, Texas good move yeah, the others you mention have good reputations.
You're obviously a 90s fan and picked some solid films, albeit with a focus again on American movies.
The 2000s, I was talking on here the other day about how I think Donnie Darko is an overlooked masterpiece. Great selection. It's 1 or 2 for me in the decade.
2010, Lighthouse. Again superb pick. It's in my top 6 I think (there's some cracking films this decade imo) but I can completely dig having it as nr 1.
I also agree with you totally on the 2020s. Dire.
In fact we have so much in common in recent decades that I am excited about checking out Last Life in the Universe and First Reformed, neither of which I know.

Then the other bits:
I suspect you haven't watched any films from the 1920s or 30s. I'd bet you haven't watched Metropolis or Gone With the Wind for example (I don't think you've missed much tbh).
You might have watched the Maltese Falcon, although there's some good ones you've likely not seen.
I'm not bothered about that.
No foreign language cinema in the 2000s and 2010s though is a big oversight.
And I look at the 1960s. The GREATEST decade in the history of cinema. And (although I notice in fairness you've got 2001, a masterpiece of cinema) and you refer to, "A bunch of French new wave films too".
But you identify PLANET OF THE APES.
As one of the 2 greatest films of the 1960s!!!!!
Dude, the 60s is not about American/Hollywood cinema. It's about international cinema, to an extent Japan, but mostly Europe.
You have got a huge hole in your history of cinema there old chap. But it's a great position to be because you have so many gems yet to discover!!

I've seen a few since I last posted... I can't decide.

1960s
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
The Battle of Algiers
The Swimmer
Sult
A Child Is Waiting
Birdman of Alcatraz
An Autumn Afternoon
Ladybug, Ladybug
The Happy Ending
The Misfits
The Face of Another
The Loneliness of a Long-Distance Runner
Midnight Cowboy
The Sign of the Leo
The Professionals
Le Trou
Il Sorpasso
The Incident
Persona
Never On Sunday
David and Lisa
Hombre
Too Late Blues
The Face of Another
Dry Summer
High and Low
Too Late Blues
Woman In The Dunes
Two Women
The Collector
The Professionals
Hombre
Harakari
L'Eclisse
In Cold Blood
Peeping Tom
Contempt
Pitfall
Boy
The Hunt
Who Saw Him Die?
Raven's End
Kapo
Two Half-Times In Hell
The Prophet
The Doll
My Way Home
Carriage To Vienna
His Days Are Numbered
Cairo 30
The Leopard
Onibaba
Purple Noon
Eyes Without a Face
Lord of the Flies
One Eyed Jacks
Flight of the Phoenix
La Dolce Vita
Cool Hand Luke
Easy Rider
Yesterday's Girl
A Dance In The Rain
Romeo, Juliet a tma
Nahr el Hub
Spartacus
Lolita
The Best Man
To Kill a Mockingbird
La Notte
Belle de Jour
The Pumpkin Eater
Alfie
Rocco And His Brothers
Splendor In The Grass
Elmer Gantry
Ride The High Country
Knife In The Water
The Hill
Seven Days in May
Red Beard
Momma Roma
Lonely Are The Brave
Shame
The Fire Within
That Cold Day In The Park
A Patch of Blue
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Accatone
The Deadly Companions
Seance On a Wet Afternoon
The Little Soldier
Home From The Hill
A Gentle Woman
Something Wild
The Organizer
Fists In The Pocket
Sundays and Cybele
The Round-Up
The Red Angel
Pale Flower
All Fall Down
This Man Must Die
The End of the Summer
Sands of the Kalahari
The Shop On Main Street
The Splendor Thread
Late Autumn
The Visit
A Taste of Honey


1970s
Harry and Tonto
Nashville
A Woman Under the Influence
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Network
The Godfather
The Godfather: Part 2
Mikey and Nicky
Fat City
A Clockwork Orange
Harold and Maude
Last Tango In Paris
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Sunflower
The Conversation
Annie Hall
Stroczek
Alice in the Cities
The Deer Hunter
Chinatown
The Last Detail
Rocky
Dog Day Afternoon
Series Noire
The Ear
Zandy's Bride
Slap The Monster On Page One
Hope
Taxi Driver
Five Easy Pieces
Chit-Chat On The Nile
A Special Day
The Working-Class Goes To Heaven
Autumn Sonata
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Fifth Seal
Wise Blood
Minnie and Moskowitz
An Enemy of the People
One is a Lonely Number
Barry Lyndon
Hothead
The Merchant of Four Seasons
Johnny Got His Gun
Blume In Love
The New Centurions
Le Chat
Adoption
I Only Want You To Love Me
Lies My Father Told Me
Mother Kuesters Goes To Heaven
The Punishment
Nuts In May
Payday
Papillon
The Yellow Handkerchief
Whity
Horse
The Beguiled
Death In Venice
The Red Circle
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Scarecrow
Turkish Delight
The Emigrants
Scenes From a Marriage
Made For Each Other
Opening Night
Joe
Mr Klein
The Outfit
Ali: Fear Eats The Soul
My Brilliant Career
The Day of the Jackal
Equus
The Ascent
Love In The Afternoon
Dirty Harry
The Long Goodbye
The Getaway
And Justice For All
Straw Dogs
Hardcore
Ode To Billy Joe
Two Men In Town
Sounder
Camera Buff
I For Icarus
The Visitors
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Paper Moon
The Way We Were
10 Rillington Place
The Castle of Purity
Midnight Express
Breezy
Kramer vs. Kramer
Love Story

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To be fair on the big fan of Japanese cinema my knowledge is basic though. Kwaidan is one of my favorite films. I religiously watch Metropolis by far my favourite silent movie. Great to know we have similar taste. As of the 2020s and 2010s Korean cinema has really taken off in a huge way. I agree there's so much more than just American cinema

1870s'

And not unimportant, the soundtracks. It makes sense that the sixties and seventies did it best.

Very difficult to pick just one decade. If possible, I'd have picked the 1930s through 1950s.

As far as music scores are concerned, the era of composers like Alfred Newman, Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, Jerome Moross, and Elmer Bernstein, spanning the '30s to the '60s, was golden, and unapproached by anything of the past fifty years.