
Citizen Kane
Welles was twenty-five and had never directed a feature before: he built a portrait of a man whose whole life nobody around him can add up, and changed everything.

Welles was twenty-five and had never directed a feature before: he built a portrait of a man whose whole life nobody around him can add up, and changed everything.

Huston's first film as a director, and the one that finally made Bogart a star: everyone chasing the black bird lies about it for a hundred straight minutes.

Ida Lupino had top billing and Bogart got the part after George Raft turned it down: John Huston co-wrote it, and an aging gunman takes one last job in the Sierra Nevada.

John Ford built an entire Welsh mining village in the California hills and shot it like memory: a colliery family in a valley the pit is slowly ruining, narrated by the youngest son.

Alvin York blocked a film about himself for two decades and gave in only to fund a Bible school: a Tennessee pacifist wins the Medal of Honor and Gary Cooper wins Best Actor.