1950-1959

1950

• Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder is released. The classic film noir will be reprised on Broadway in 1995.
  
• Debuts of Marlon Brando in The Men, Sidney Poitier in No Way Out and director Michelangelo Antonioni with Cronaca di un Amore.
  
• Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa is the first Japanese film seen in the west since 1928.
  
  1952
  
• Gene Kelly directs and stars in one of the great Hollywood musicals, Singin' In the Rain.
  
• Zinnemann's High Noon.
  
• Decca purchases Universal
  
• Cinerama debuts
  
  1953
  
• Bwana Devil is the first feature movie created in 3-D.
  
• Hollywood's taboos against implied sex is broken with the immortal kiss of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity.
  
• Fox Studios launches its Cinemascope (wide-screen) with The Robe. Both this and the 3-D movie are intended to entice people away from the new invention called television.
  
• Hitchcock's Rear Window.
  
  1954
  
• The studio system finally begins to break down. Directors and actors are able to work for the studio of their choice instead of being held to contracts.
  
• In Japan, Akira Kurosawa directs his masterpeice, Seven Samurai and Fellini's La Strada both become international hits
  
• Kazan's On the Waterfront reinforces Marlon Brando as a star
  
• Televised McCarthy hearings result in McCarthy's disgrace and begins to stop blacklisting
  
  1955
  
• Blackboard Jungle is the first picture to feature rock music. 'Rock Around the Clock'.
  
• James Dean makes his debut in East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause.
  
• Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali introduces Indian film to the west.
  
  1956
  
• Stanley Kubrick directs his first picture The Killing.
  
• Love Me Tender marks the debut of Elvis Presley to the movies.
  
• Ford's The Searchers
  
• Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
  
• Release of hundreds of pre-1948 feature films to television starts new relationship between film & TV
  
  1958
  
• Hitchcock's Vertigo
  
  1959
  
• Some Like It Hot, directed by Billy Wilder, stars Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.
  
• Hitchcock's North By Northwest.
  
• Birth of New Wave: Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Resnais's Hiroshima.
  
• Fellini's La Dolce Vita.
  
  
  

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