Movies of the 50s / Müller, Prof. Dr. Jürgen (ED)

At a time when people were terrified of UFOs and Communism, the movie industry was busy producing movies that ranged from film noir to suspense to grandiose musicals; apparently the paranoid public in the 1950s craved family entertainment and dark, brooding pictures in equal doses. The result is a decade`s worth of truly monumental cinema, from Hitchcock masterpieces (Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window) to comedy classics (Tati`s Mr. Hulot`s Holiday, Billy Wilder`s Some Like it Hot) to groundbreaking nouvelle vague films (Godard`s Breathless, Truffaut`s The Four Hundred Blows) and profound, innovative dramas such as Antonioni`s L`Avventura, Fellini`s La Strada, John Huston`s Misfits, and Kubrick`s Paths of Glory. Though censorship kept sex safely off-screen, sexy stars such as James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn Monroe provided plenty of heat in Rebel Without a Cause, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes respectively.