12 Angry Men
Directed by Sidney Lumet
1957
Nothing beats it as a filmed argument, and it happens in a single room: eleven jurors want to go home, one will not, and the temperature keeps rising.
★ 8.7
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1957
Showing 111 works across all media from 1957
Doctor Zhivago
1957 · 673 pages
Yuri Zhivago, a doctor who writes poetry, is carried through war and revolution and away from the women he loves. Pasternak lets history arrive like weather, and the Soviets banned it outright.
★ 8.4
Paths of Glory
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1957
France stayed uncomfortable enough to keep it out of cinemas for eighteen years: Kubrick tracked the camera down the trenches and staged an injustice that still makes people furious.
★ 8.3
Jailhouse Rock
1957
Leiber and Stoller wrote it as a goof; Scotty Moore's solo nearly derails the take and Presley never blinks.
★ 8.3
The Seventh Seal
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
1957 · Sweden
No image from any film has been parodied more: a knight plays chess with Death on a beach, and Bergman is completely serious about the question underneath it.
★ 8.3
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Directed by David Lean
1957
Lean built an epic about the seduction of a job well done: a British colonel in a Japanese prison camp finds a strange satisfaction in building their bridge properly.
★ 8.2
That'll Be the DayBuddy Holly and the Crickets
That'll Be the Day
1957
Holly took the title from a John Wayne line and recut it in Clovis after Decca shelved the first version.
★ 8.2
Wild Strawberries
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
1957 · Sweden
Bergman cast the founding father of Swedish cinema as an old man reckoning with his own coldness: a drive across the country, punctuated by dreams that keep ambushing him.
★ 7.8
The Cairo Trilogy
1957 · 1313 pages
A Cairo merchant rules his household as a tyrant and drinks his nights away with singers while his wife may not step outside. Over three generations, revolution and war reach inside that house.
★ 7.8
You Send MeSam Cooke
You Send Me
1957 · From Sam Cooke
Cooke credited it to his brother L.C. to dodge his publisher, then carried it to number one on both charts.
★ 7.8
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
1957
One microphone, Roland Janes muted behind the boogie piano, and a July 1957 television debut that turned it national.
★ 7.7
On The Road
1957 · 416 pages
Sal Paradise crosses and recrosses America with Dean Moriarty, a car thief who talks nonstop and cannot sit still. Kerouac made restlessness the American subject, and the prose runs on the same fuel.
★ 7.7
Nights of Cabiria
Directed by Federico Fellini
1957 · Italy
Giulietta Masina gives the performance that everyone remembers from Fellini: a Roman streetwalker keeps hoping harder than her luck deserves, and the film never once pities her.
★ 7.7
Peggy SueBuddy Holly and the Crickets
Peggy Sue
1957
Cut in Clovis as "Cindy Lou" until Allison's girlfriend got the title, and his paradiddles never let up.
★ 7.7
Great Balls of Fire
1957
Lewis argued theology with Sam Phillips between takes at Sun, decided the devil could wait, and cut it anyway.
★ 7.7
Wake Up Little SusieThe Everly Brothers
Wake Up Little Susie
1957
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant's plot is an alibi, Boston banned it as suggestive, and it still topped the pop chart.
★ 7.4
All Shook Up
1957
A shaken Pepsi bottle gave Blackwell the title, and Presley's version held number one for two solid months.
★ 7.3
Got My Mojo Working
1957 · From The Anthology: 1947-1972
Waters heard Ann Cole sing it on tour, cut a single that flopped, then made it his signature at Newport.
★ 7.3
Bye Bye Love
1957
Some thirty acts turned the Bryants' song down; Don Everly's intro, written for something else, took it to number two.
★ 7.1
Blue Train
1957
Coltrane's only record as a leader for Blue Note, made as a favor to the label's founder while he was under contract elsewhere.
★ 7.1