Classic Hollywood Films

Cecil B DeMille’s This Day and Age portrayed the tensions of its era as well as the dynamics of Hollywood film production

This Day and Age capitalises on a certain hopefulness about the younger generation pervading the air.

Kiss Me Deadly: Robert Aldrich's crime movie classic is less detective story, more myth with a physical presence

The first to consider Robert Aldrich as a serious artist—and this film a masterpiece—were the young critics at the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.

Revisiting King Vidor's Our Daily Bread: 1934 Great Depression film idealised community, self-sufficiency

In the first scene of Our Daily Bread, Mary (Karen Morley) wards off debtors as John (Tom Keene) returns after a fruitless day looking for jobs, his days of dreaming big far behind him. So begins King Vidor's 1934 classic on the Great Depression.

Revisiting Sergeant York: Why the 1941 Gary Cooper-starrer, while flawed, exemplifies Golden Era Hollywood

Howard Hawks’ Sergeant York (1941), starring Gary Cooper as World War I hero Alvin C York, was the biggest box-office draw of the year and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. Even so, it isn’t cherished the same way the classics of the period are.