Reddit reviews The American Cinema: Directors And Directions 1929-1968

Theres a 15 part documentary on Hulu called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. It's excellent, and it will give you a very broad understanding of the history of film.

As for lists, one good way to start is to watch all of the movies on the [AFI 100] (http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies.aspx). That will give you a very broad picture of the history of American movies. Just set aside one day a week and watch one movie on the list every week.

Don't just watch them. Try to find out WHY each movie is revered as it is. After watching it, then read as much as you can about it. Read Roger Ebert's review, read it's entry on Filmsite.org, and start trying to contextualize each movie in its place in cinema history.

That will take you two years, but you'll have a much deeper appreciation than you do now.

After that, I suggest watching the BFI Sight and Sound Top 50. That will give you a more broad understanding of foreign film as well.

As for books I assign these to my class:

Film Art: An Introduction
This is the textbook that the department assigns. Its pretty broad and a decent overview.

Hitchcock In the 1960's Francois Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock and covered his entire filmography in detail. Fantastic, indispensable read.

What Is Cinema?
Andre Bazin was a french film critic, and the originator of Auteur theory. This is one of the original film theory books.

The American Cinema
Andrew Sarris is the American analog of Bazin. This is also a fundamental Film Theory book.

That should give you a solid start.

As that asshole who posted that thing, I...

A. Narcissistically think it's awesome that you're asking this question. Mostly because I asked this question, and I honestly enjoy film more because of it. I disagree completely with the idea that when one understands art more it's thus more difficult to enjoy it.

B. Literary theory is helpful with many films, especially the more standard ones. It becomes less helpful when we get into more avant garde cinema, but either way, I think it's a great jumping off point but one should preferably support the analysis that has been framed in Literary terms via Cinematic ones, because that's where the evidence to support your theory actually lies.

C. Here are my bullet points of advice, in the interest of economizing information:

• Read some books on film theory. A really good place to start is with the work of Bordwell & Thompson, which is pretty standard practice for film students. That will give you a rudimentary and foundational vocabulary through which you can begin understanding film better, and often that's the problem is not knowing what to look for.
  
  
• If you can, try to talk about film as much as you can with people who know more than you. I meet for drinks regularly with a former professor and screenwriter who has done more in the industry than most and is one of the smartest people I know. I can keep up with him, but he's clearly way ahead of me as he should be. I've learned and figured out specific films almost as much just talking out ideas with similarly informed people, as just sitting there watching them or reading about them.
  
  
• Read up on a wide variety of topics, specifically philosophy, art theory and psychology as well as perhaps some science, anthropology and history. Find fields with which you are really fascinated by. Those who are interested in physics, determinism or analytic philosophy will look at and interpret film in a different way than others, I'd imagine they may be heavily structuralist and influenced by the Soviet Montage school in their own work, for instance. Someone else more interested in history and science may approach film from a sociological perspective as well as subscribe to some interesting ideas such as Jean Epstein's theory that film breaks the space time continuum. Me, myself, I'm really fascinated with psychoanalysis and abstractly cosmic concepts, things that cut to the core of human experience, and couldn't care less about free will or analytics because I don't see how they change anything phenomenologically. So it would make sense that I'm drawn to surrealism, and analyze film is a post-structural, Lacanian way, as well as drawing much of my support for interpretations from the semiotic aesthetics when I can.
  
  
• Write stuff. Often I don't figure out a movie until I start writing, and then it just sort of comes out fully formed much of the time. If you have a blog send me a link too, I'd like to see it. Anyway.
  
  
• Once you've determined your points of interest it will be easier to decide who to read/watch next but I find these ones were the most enlightening for me. So if you like what I said about my own viewpoint above, they will help, and I'll include some things that are standard that I don't prefer but am glad I read as well.
  
  Christian Metz will teach you about how film communicates information through non-verbal aesthetics. If you want to understand how to analyze film via a non-literary perspective, this is where to start.
  
  Hugo Munsterberg is the father of most film theory. Oddly, he doesn't seem to like movies very much, but the book has some very relevant information on the interaction between film and spectator, that is essential (assuming a relatively modern approach at least. I suppose a formalist wouldn't care too much about the meaning of the film itself and thus the relationship wouldn't matter).
  
  Slavoj Zizek has a lot of books on cinema, but also his documentary "The Perverts Guide to Cinema" is one of the most entertaining, as well as informative looks at film I've seen. It doesn't really address aesthetic elements as well as take a Lacanian look at why certain scenes provoke the reactions they do or what they mean, but I think that if one combines this psychological perspective with the understanding of how juxtaposition of elements conditions the viewer as evidenced by a lot of Soviet Film Theory, one can figure out the mechanism of how these meanings are being communicated. Also here's an interesting more structural take on Zizek that I've read.
  
  I don't find it necessarily essential to my own views, but Sergei Eisenstein has a lot of really interesting work, and his books use a lot of synonymous examples in other art to illustrate how film works differently from theater and other narrative form. It also breaks down the Soviet Montage theory better than almost any other work.
  
  Another essential book for many that I'm not a huge fan of yet I'd still say is pretty important to read is What Is Cinema by Andre Bazin
  Dude loves movies and is pretty enlightening for many people I just disagree with a lot of his ideas of how film should best be made.
  
  Andrew Sarris is a relatively important guy for understanding American film criticism. He and Pauline Kael warred for a while, and I think Pauline Kael is a blowhard ignoramous who never actually said anything relevant or informed about movies. People love her though, probably because she was an entertaining writer, and she was influential. But anyway, Sarris was the one who brought auteur theory, the dominant theory of understanding filmmaking today, to America from France.
  
  An interesting look at directorial style and authorship is Martin Scorese's "A Personal Journey Through American Movies". It's not comprehensive or detailed, but it will not only show you some great classical era films to look up, but he has a unique idea of the director as filling one of four roles, storyteller, illusionist, smuggler and iconoclast. As a side note, I think Scorsese sees himself as a Smuggler, and attempts to be much more so in the wake of his reaching iconic status. For a much more challenging work of film criticism from a director that is still alive, check out Histoire(s) du Cinema by Jean-Luc Godard.
  
  Finally I'd say Tom Gunning, who I actually met once and was fascinating to listen to, is pretty important. He's mostly focused on early film, and the development of how a film communicates narrative. He will illustrate some interesting things on spacial reasoning and editing and how logical information is communicated. For instance now in film you know which character is on the left by giving him some negative talk space in close up on the right, and when a character leaves frame on the right they enter the next from on the left if one wishes to maintain continuity of space, time and setting. Also his cinema of attractions theory is pretty interesting and explains exactly why people go watch Michael Bay movies, as well as elucidating the mentality of film-goers in the pre-Griffith era.
  
  Also, look around the web. Some places like Slant.com, RogerEbert.com's essays and blogs sections, or Mubi.com occasionally have some really interesting stuff. Also there are random blogs around that do really enlightening work (like mine! shameless self promotion aside, if you want it I'll send it to you but I'm not gonna be that douche) that I sometimes stumble across.
  
  Let me know if you have any questions or need clarification, and good luck!

Ahh, yes, The Birth of a Nation. Despite it's unavoidable stature, it wasn't necessarily the best movie from that year, or the best movie made up until that point, y'know? It's just where Hollywood got its start from. Put simply, if you try to do this by watching the 'official' classics, you're going to have a bad time.

I have found this book really useful so try to find it at a library or just buy it. (Despite the name, a good number of directors who only worked partially in America are represented in it.)

I'd also suggest not working forward chronologically because that'll take forever and, as I've learned from a similar project with a few of the mods here, you never know what'll be good and what'll still be crap a century later. Let somebody else do the recommending for you. Figure out which directors and genres interest you and then mix them all up, even I'd go a little crazy trying to only watch silents.

Also note that silent films in many cases are available on YouTube in excellent quality, everything from obscure stuff to what are considered the masterpieces of the period. This is better than trying to find and watch them on DVD in my experience.

I think there's a bit of bias towards milestone in technique movies from that long ago and the really great movies don't get talked about enough. von Sternberg's late period silents are still entertaining as fuck today. We can say the same of the more well-known Murnau, Lang, Chaplin, and Keaton. (In the last case, new restorations of his movies look like they could have be filmed yesterday.) All of these guys made great movies, and none of them made 'art' movies, whatever that means.

My guess is that once you're actually enjoying watching old movies the occasional milestone movie that doesn't feel so great won't feel like a waste of time.