The decade that taught cinema its grammar

Our collection reaches back to 1954 for a single film, and it is not a token inclusion. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is the film most responsible for the shape of the modern action picture: the assembly of a team, the training of civilians, the staged siege, the cost of victory. Almost every ensemble action film made since has been building on it, usually without knowing.

The 1950s are also the decade in which cinema became genuinely international in the way we recognise today. Post-war distribution opened European, Japanese and Indian films to audiences who had previously seen almost nothing outside their own industry, and the art film as a commercial category was invented. Our coverage of the decade is deliberately thin because we only write about films we can say something specific about, and this list will grow.