Director Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, Metropolis is a highly influential silent science fiction masterpiece. Metropolis depicts a highly stylized futuristic city in which a glimmering utopia rests above a dismal underworld wherein nameless laborers toil beneath the streets. Their work powers the towering aristocrats’ life of leisure in the cultured utopia. 

Freder is the son of the governor of the city. Freder sparks revolt when he finds himself one day venturing into one of the underground factories. There, he meets Maria, played by Brigitte Helm, who opens his eyes to the desire of the masses for a mediator between classes. Meanwhile, Freder’s father has employed the mad inventor Rotwang, who lives in isolation amidst the skyscrapers. Rotwang creates a female robot that the governor intends to use to infiltrate the working class by giving it the face of Maria. Helm casts herself wholeheartedly into her dual role, playing both the thoughtful Maria and the malevolent android with great aplomb.

Lang being a master of his silent domain utilizes mise en scene to its fullest, creating a work of storytelling genius in every frame. However, the movie is far from being all visual spectacle. 

Director Francois Truffaut’s 1959 film, The 400 Blows seems to posit that every child lives their live on the edge of delinquency. Antoine Doinel suffers uncaring parents, and abusive teacher, and poor friends. That being said, Truffaut’s camera in this film captures the energy and optimism of youth with quick paced dolly shots and sweeping pans. Part way through the film, Antoine’s rambunctiousness takes hold as he and his friend go on a crime spree of sorts. They hold as tightly as they can to the carefree lifestyle of adolescence. 

Jean-Pierre Leaud’s performance as Antoine is admirable. The character is played with an innocence yet with a rebellious fire. Several dissolve cuts make up a sequence in which Antoine answers the questions of a psychiatrist and delivers a powerful monologue when presented with an adult unlike his parents who is genuinely interested in hearing what he has to say.

Through the sequence of events in the film, Antoine finds himself landed in what seems to be a boarding school or juvenile center of sorts. Nevertheless, he makes his escape and an extended tracking shot follows him as he runs along a dirt road toward freedom. The silence is broken with a sweeping score as Antoine comes to a stop at a beach and the camera pans to reveal the endless expanse of ocean laid before him. The sea seems quite often to represent true freedom, and perhaps in Antoine’s abstract perception of it, it does. He is running again, as fast as he can across the sand and toward the waves, but upon finally reaching the surf he stops. The ocean becomes yet another barrier. He has ran as far as he can possibly physically run, so Antoine turns, looking directly into the camera in a final freeze frame that leaves the viewer locked in eye contact with a boy doomed to grow up.

Director Vittorio De Sica’s 1949 film, The Bicycle Thieves is a staple of Italian postwar neorealism. Despite its academic reputation, this film remains an accessible, pleasant viewing experience. Antonio Ricci is a husband and father who is desperately trying to find work. A job putting up posters around Rome becomes available but a bicycle is a requirement. Antonio’s wife, Maria, sells the family’s prized dowry bedsheets so that he can afford to buy a bike. On his first day of work, Antonio’s new bike is stolen. 

The way that De Sica conveys just how much the bicycle means to Antonio and his family makes the theft feel like a cataclysmic event. By the time the bike is stolen, the audience has come to understand that it is the one ray of hope for a family living in poverty. The remainder of the film follows Antonio, accompanied by his son Bruno, searching throughout Rome for his stolen chance at freedom from his status quo. 

The finale of the film plays out just as tragically as the rest as the viewer watches through Bruno’s eyes as Antonio is forced to give up his on his own principles and become a bicycle thief himself. The film’s title serves as clever foreshadowing/spoiler-in-disguise to this tragic story about the human spirit.

Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers is set in the 1950’s during the Algerian War in which France seeks to destroy militant cells that are fighting for Algerian independence. Early in the film we watch French troops raid a home wherein a woman, child, and two men are hiding in a wall. The camera slowly pans across the faces of those hiding, lingering on each’s expression, presenting to the viewer the humanity of those being dehumanized by the French occupying forces. 

A few scenes later a flashback shows one of the men we met inside the wall, Ali La Pointe, being pursued by the police until he is tripped by a Frenchman. Ali stands and punches the man and the French crowd jumps and begins beating him. In contrast to the aforementioned scene, the camera now quickly shows the faces of the attackers and blends them into a single entity of anger and hate.

Despite the seemingly clear line having been drawn between the French and Algerians as “bad” and “good” respectively, it is soon revealed that things are not quite as simple. After his release from prison, Ali joins the National Liberation Front, a, for all intents and purposes, terrorist organization. When the group plants a bomb in a European café, there are several close-up shots of the French patrons who are presented as innocent victims just going about their daily lives.

The Battle of Algiers is presented as a docudrama; its black and white footage and unprofessional actors evoking the feeling of watching a newsreel. Pontecorvo uses handheld cameras and location shooting to make his film appear as real as the events that it is based upon. The close-ups, however, use the faces in a way far removed from a documentary and cement this film as one truly humanist.