The Jazz Singer, 1927, is an American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is notable as the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolated sequences). Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era. It was produced by Warner Bros. with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and features six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same name by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story “The Day of Atonement”.

The film depicts the fictional story of Jakie Rabinowitz, a young man who defies the traditions of his devout Jewish family. After singing popular tunes in a beer garden, he is punished by his father, a hazzan (cantor), prompting Jakie to run away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer, performing in blackface. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer, but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.

Darryl F. Zanuck won an Academy Honorary Award for producing the film; Alfred A. Cohn was nominated for Best Writing (Adaptation) at the 1st Academy Awards. In 1996, The Jazz Singer was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” motion pictures. In 1998, the film was chosen in voting conducted by the American Film Institute as one of the best American films of all time, ranking at number ninety.

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Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947, is an American drama film based on Laura Z. Hobson’s best-selling 1947 novel of the same name. It concerns a journalist (played by Gregory Peck) who poses as a Jew to research an exposé on the widespread distrust and dislike of Jews in New York City and the affluent communities of New Canaan, Connecticut and Darien, Connecticut. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won three: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm), and Best Director (Elia Kazan).

The movie was controversial in its day, as was a similar film on the same subject, Crossfire, which was released the same year (though that film was originally a story about anti-homosexuality, later changed to anti-Semitism).

In 2017, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. It was released on DVD as part of the 20th Century Fox Studio Classics collection.

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The Third Man, 1949, is a British film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Set in postwar Vienna, the film centres on American Holly Martins (Cotten), who arrives in the city to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime (Welles), only to learn that Lime has died. Viewing his death as suspicious, Martins elects to stay in Vienna and investigate the matter.

The atmospheric use of black-and-white expressionist cinematography by Robert Krasker, with harsh lighting and distorted “Dutch angle” camera technique, is a major feature of The Third Man. Combined with the iconic theme music, seedy locations and acclaimed performances from the cast, the style evokes the atmosphere of an exhausted, cynical post-war Vienna at the start of the Cold War.

Greene wrote the novella of the same name as preparation for the screenplay. Anton Karas wrote and performed the score, which featured only the zither. The title music “The Third Man Theme” topped the international music charts in 1950, bringing the previously unknown performer international fame; the theme would also inspire Nino Rota’s principal melody in La Dolce Vita (1960).[citation needed] The Third Man is considered one of the greatest films of all time, celebrated for its acting, musical score and atmospheric cinematography.

In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time. In 2011 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the second best British film ever.

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The African Queen, 1951, is an adventure film adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. The film was directed by John Huston and produced by Sam Spiegel and John Woolf.The screenplay was adapted by James Agee, John Huston, John Collier and Peter Viertel. It was photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff and has a music score by Allan Gray. The film stars Humphrey Bogart (who won the Academy Award for Best Actor, his only Oscar) and Katharine Hepburn with Robert Morley, Peter Bull, Walter Gotell, Richard Marner and Theodore Bikel.

The African Queen was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1994, and the Library of Congress deemed it “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

Samuel Sayer and his sister Rose are British Methodist missionaries in the village of Kungdu in German East Africa at the beginning of the First World War in August 1914. Their post and supplies are delivered by a small steam launch named the African Queen, helmed by the rough-and-ready Canadian mechanic Charlie Allnut, whose coarse behavior they stiffly tolerate.

When Charlie warns the Sayers that war has broken out between Germany and Britain, they choose to remain in Kungdu, only to witness Schutztruppe (German colonial troops) burn down the village and herd the villagers away to be pressed into service. When Samuel protests, he is struck by an officer, and soon becomes delirious with fever and dies shortly afterward. Charlie returns later the same day after finding his mine destroyed by the Germans, who are now pursuing him for his supplies, which include gelignite. He helps Rose bury her brother, and they set off in the African Queen.

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High Noon,1952, is an American Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, which occurs in real time, centers on a town marshal whose sense of duty is tested when he must decide to either face a gang of killers alone, or leave town with his new wife.

Though mired in controversy at the time of its release due to its political themes, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four (Actor, Editing, Score and Song) as well as four Golden Globe Awards (Actor, Supporting Actress, Score, and Black and White Cinematography). The award-winning score was written by Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin.

High Noon was selected by the Library of Congress as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1989, the NFR’s first year of existence. An iconic film whose story has been partly or completely repeated in later film productions, its ending in particular has inspired a next-to-endless number of later films, including but not just limited to westerns.

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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969, is a British drama film directed by Ronald Neame from a screenplay written by Jay Presson Allen, adapted from her own stage play, which was based in turn on the 1961 novel of the same name by Muriel Spark. The film stars Maggie Smith in the title role as an unrestrained teacher at a girls’ school in Edinburgh. Celia Johnson, Robert Stephens, Pamela Franklin, and Gordon Jackson are featured in supporting roles.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie premiered at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or and was released in cinemas in the UK on 24 February 1969 and in the US on 2 March 1969. The film received positive reviews with major acclaim drawn towards Smith’s performance, although it was a box office disappointment, grossing $3 million on a $2.76 million budget. It received two nominations at the 42nd Academy Awards; Best Original Song for its theme song “Jean”, with Smith winning Best Actress.

Jean Brodie is a teacher at Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1930s. Brodie is known for her tendency to stray from the school’s curriculum, to romanticize fascist leaders like Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, and to believe herself to be in the prime of life. Brodie devotes her time and energy to her four special 12-year-old junior school girls, called the Brodie Set: Sandy, Monica, Jenny and Mary.

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Strictly Ballroom, 1992, is an Australian romantic comedy film directed and co-written by Baz Luhrmann in his feature directorial début. The film is the first in his “Red Curtain Trilogy” of theatre-motif-related films; it was followed by 1996’s Romeo + Juliet and 2001’s Moulin Rouge!

Strictly Ballroom is based on a critically acclaimed stage play originally set up in 1984 by Luhrmann and fellow students during his studies at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney. An expanded version of the play became a success at the Czechoslovakian Youth Drama Festival in Bratislava in 1986, and, in 1988, it had a successful season at Sydney’s Wharf Theatre, where it was seen by Australian music executive Ted Albert and his wife Antoinette. They both loved it, and, when Albert soon after set up the film production company M&A Productions with ex-Film Australia producer Tristram Miall, they offered Luhrmann their plan to transform his play into a film. He agreed on the condition that he would also get to direct it.

Scott Hastings, the frustrated son of a family of ballroom dancers, has been training since the age of six. His mother Shirley teaches ballroom dancing, and his father Doug meekly handles maintenance chores at the dance studio, while secretly watching old footage of his bygone dance competitions as well as Scott’s in a back room. Scott struggles to establish his personal style of dance to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship, but his innovative and flashy “crowd-pleasing” steps are not considered “strictly ballroom”, and as such are denounced by Australian Dancing Federation head Barry Fife.

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The Usual Suspects,1995, is a neo-noir mystery thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwaite, and Kevin Spacey.

The plot follows the interrogation of Roger “Verbal” Kint, a small-time con man, who is one of only two survivors of a massacre and fire on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles. Through flashback and narration, Kint tells an interrogator a convoluted story of events that led him and his criminal companions to the boat, and of a mysterious crime lord—known as Keyser Söze—who controlled them. The film was shot on a $6 million budget and began as a title taken from a column in Spy magazine called The Usual Suspects, after one of Claude Rains’ most memorable lines in the classic film Casablanca, and Singer thought that it would make a good title for a film.

The film was shown out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and then initially released in a few theaters. It received favorable reviews and was eventually given a wider release. McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. The Writers Guild of America ranked the film as having the 35th greatest screenplay of all time.

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