In America, we tend to think about the 1960s as that moment when our culture shifted—a decade long earthquake that shook everything from our politics to our radio dials. But the movies? With some notable American exceptions, the bulk of that particular revolution was taking place across the Atlantic. European cinema during the 1960s gave birth to new movements—French New Wave, Czech New Wave, Italian post-Neorealism—each exploding with innovative ideas about how to flip the medium on its head. Filmmakers were at once paying homage to classic American cinema while thumbing their noses at its anchor-like conventionalism. New voices were immerging (Truffaut, Godard, Forman, Polanski) at the same moment when established directors (Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni) were taking experimental turns of their own. It was style and substance combined as never before. In short: some of the coolest movies ever made.
Past Films in this Series
