Directed by John Ford • 1956 • United States
Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles
A towering work of Hollywood mythmaking, John Ford’s masterpiece represents both the apex of the classical Hollywood western and the blueprint for the troubling moral complexity of the genre revisionism that would follow it. In his defining role, John Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, an embittered Civil War veteran who returns to Texas and discovers that Comanches have killed his family and kidnapped his nieces. Along with Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who was adopted by the Edwardses after his own parents were killed by Comanches, Ethan sets out to find his surviving niece (Natalie Wood) on a quest that will take him through the psychologically charged landscapes of Ford’s beloved Monument Valley and into the darkest recesses of the soul.
Up Next in Sight and Sound Directors’ Poll: Greatest Films of All Time
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Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce,...
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • Belgium
Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jan DecorteA singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores ...
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8½
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1963 • Italy
Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Otto e mezzo) turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand e...
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Mirror
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1974 • Soviet Union
Starring Margarita Terekhova, Filipp Yankovskiy, Ignat DaniltsevA subtly ravishing passage through the halls of time and memory, this sublime reflection on twentieth-century Russian history by Andrei Tarkovsky (STALKER) is as much a poem compos...
