Film took off in a million directions during the 1950s, and it is truly up for debate what constitutes the “best” of this prolific and diverse decade. Psychological thrillers, Shakespeare adaptations, goofy musicals, and the “cast of millions” epic style canonized by Cecil B. The French New Wave was in full flow, with directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut defining what would come to be known as auteur theory. It was the decade of Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman, and in Asia, Akira Kurosawa and Satayajit Ray were both producing some of their finest work. Cold War paranoia and anti-Communist sentiment joined with a profusion of new technologies to fuel American film-science fiction and “outer space” films, in particular. Television became mainstream, and Hollywood found itself with some stiff competition from the networks.

There is also an emphasis on teen culture, perhaps best represented by the brief but meteoric career of James Dean. The affluence that grew in the post-war years and the rise of “leisure culture” play a role in the zeitgeist of this decade. We also see the proliferation of color technology. We still see the profound influence of WWII, we still see film noir and Westerns and the development of European neorealism.

While the passing decades have distilled critical opinion to a fairly reliable “Required Viewing” roster for films of the prolific 1950s, the era remains more difficult to pin down than the1930s or ’40s, largely due to an explosive diversity in both subject matter and cinematic technology.

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