It's funny how the film releases in a single year can often be characterized in a general sense. The best films of 2002 vs. the best films of 2003, for example, are pretty wildly different. It got me to thinking about various years of film throughout the last hundred years that can be characterized in a general sense.

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1920

The year 1920 seems to be the first generally great year of feature films. It had only been five years since "The Birth of a Nation" more or less single-handedly change film from a disposable diversion to a brand new art form and entertainment medium. Film companies fell over themselves trying to duplicate D. W. Griffith's success, including Griffith himself. Films were no longer about plunking a camera down in front of a stage play. The years 1915-1919 were bountiful, but 1920 seems to be when early film came into its own.

It was 1920 that the first action hero of the movies emerged, Douglas Fairbanks, swashbuckling his way through The Mark of Zorro. It had Lillian Gish fleeing across ice floes drifting toward a waterfall. It had John Barrymore in a star-making performance as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

While the Americans were formulating legends and spectacles, the Germans were figuring out how to appeal to the psyche. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" became the first great work of German Expressionism, a movement that lasted throughout the 1920s until Hitler came along and killed the film industry in Germany. Far from filming stage plays with a motionless camera, the expressionists experimented with camera angles, spatial relationships, and lighting in evocative ways. As amazing as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" must have been to see in 1920, the best was yet to come.

1927

As 1920 was the first great year of silent film, 1927 was arguably the best. So many of the great artists and performers of the silent era did their best work in this year. Buster Keaton, commonly considered the greatest silent comedian as well as the greatest writer-director-star of all time, made his masterwork, "The General," a film that is as watchable today as it was then. F. W. Murnau, one of the great expressionists, made "Sunrise," the crown jewel of the movement. And Fritz Lang made "Metropolis," the patriach of nearly every science fiction story of urban dystopia written since.

In addition to being a year of climaxes, it was a year of beginnings, as well. Alfred Hitchcock made his first signature thriller in "The Lodger"; the first great film emerged from France's budding film industry in "Napoleon"; and "The Jazz Singer" became the first sound film. It was mostly silent but had some musical performances characteristic of the forthcoming barrage of musicals made throughout the next few years.

Keeping company with these landmarks are such films as Cecil B. DeMille's epic "The King of Kings," Frank Borzage's great romance "Seventh Heaven," one of Ernst Lubitsch's greatest films, "The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg," and more. On a good year these days, there's a quarter as many classics.

1928

As 1927 was, so also was 1928. Film director and historian Peter Bogdanovich considers 1928 to be the greatest year in film. It was, he said, when filmmakers got silent films right and hadn't started to get sound films wrong.

Not a lot of titles were released in 1928 are widely seen today except by the most rabid of cinephiles. Consequently, there are some great forgotten gems in the group: "The Man Who Laughs" was one of the last great masterpieces of expressionism; the haunting face of the title character is one of the most enduring images from the era. "Show People" was the first great Hollywood satire of itself. "The Crowd" was a masterful piece of realism and social commentary as relevant today as 75 years ago.

Other titles are more recognizable: Keaton made his last great films, "The Cameraman" and "Steamboat Bill, Jr." Chaplin, whose career was already firmly established, started reaching to new heights with "The Circus."

The grossly underrated comedy team Laurel and Hardy, instantly popular after its formal creation in 1926 and sporadically brilliant throughout 1927, came into its own in 1928 with short films like "The Finishing Touch." The next year would be the apex of their silent film careers -- then, they would make "Big Business," commonly considered the funniest two reeler of all time. Unlike many silent comedians, they survived the transition to sound beautifully and reach an equally spectacular second career high in 1932.

1939

If 1927 or 1928 marks when filmmakers figured out how to do silent films right, 1939 is when they figured out how to do sound films right. It is famously considered Hollywood's greatest year. An astonishing number of classics were released in 1939, and, moreover, and astonishing number of *enduring* classics were released in 1939. Even many who only normally care about newish releases have seen, possibly even prize, films from 1939.

1939 was the year of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and Stagecoach. I could stop there, but why? It was the year of Ninotchka and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. It was the year of Gunga Din, Charles Laughton's remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dark Victory, Wuthering Heights, and Beau Geste. It was the year of Love Affair (remade as An Affair To Remember, the guiding light for the characters in Sleepless In Seattle), Stanley and Livingstone ("Mr. Livingstone, I presume?"), The Four Feathers, Of Mice and Men, Midnight, and The Flying Deuces. Young Mr. Lincoln, Destry Rides Again, and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.

Meanwhile, though France was hardly as prolific as Hollywood was at the time, it produced not one but two titles that commonly appear (one more than the other) on the top 10 lists of film critics and historians. One was "Le Jour Se Leve," a tragic pre-noir crime thriller. The other was "The Rules of the Game," directed by Jean Renoir, son of the French Impressionist painter. If Citizen Kane is most commonly considered the greatest of all films, The Rules of the Game is most commonly considered the runner up.

1939 would turn out to be poised right on the verge of World War II. It's understandable that the great 1939 films from France -- a lot closer to the pre-war tension -- would carry a darker tone. The 1939 Hollywood films are characterized by the breezy entertainments that Hollywood is reputed for. They have a cheery optimism about them, an unabashed faith in humanity. The writing was smart, sophisticated, and insightful, but in a simple kind of way.

World War II would infuse a dark undercurrent into Hollywood's offerings. The era of the screwball comedy was ending. The most popular musical comedy team of the 1930s -- Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers -- had run there course, and after 1939's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, they wouldn't make another film together until 1949, right when Gene Kelly was repopularizing the genre.

Meanwhile, film noir (named by the French and descended from German expressionism, yet a distinctly American genre) was gestating. While the crime thrillers of the 1930s were sometimes quite brutal, there was still a clear delineation between good and evil and the hope that good would conquer all. By contrast, noir would brood about the inevitable evil in everyone. The heroes were the guys that felt guilty about it.

It's hard to imagine something like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, about a rallying triumph of the common man over greedy politicans, selling to audiences just five years later. The Wizard of Oz might have worked, but only if the flying monkeys were Nazis in disguise.

1963

If 1939 is Hollywood's greatest year, 1963 is its worst. True, it saw the release of The Great Escape, the only 1963 American film that can be considered the best among the best, a grand epic action film that's both broad and intimate at the same time. And there were classic genre pieces, too, like Charade and Hud, and the flawed but brilliant The Birds.

But 1963 marked an occasion when American film was suffering from transitional pains. The studio system was crumbling. Modern film was emerging. The flower power generation was dissatisfied but was still struggling to establish its identity. Billy Wilder made "Irma La Douce," which is highly entertaining but also highly flawed, caught as it is between an old school screwball comedy and a modern satire. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, How the West Was Won, and Cleopatra were all over-ambitious entries in flagging genres, while new genres were fighting to emerge -- James Bond, for instance, appeared on the silver screen for the second time in From Russia With Love, a great spy story but still premature as a Bond adventure. The golden age of Disney animation gasped out "The Sword In the Stone" during its fall from grace. And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was so confused it gave its Best Picture award to Tom Jones, a move as silly as the movie itself, while the most deserving English language film, The Great Escape, went unnominated.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Frederico Fellini made 8 1/2. Confusing times indeed.

1964

It didn't take long for Hollywood (and London) to pull together again. 1964 was the greatest year for film in its generation: it had (all arguably) the greatest Broadway musical adaptation (My Fair Lady), the greatest family film (Mary Poppins), the greatest rock musical (A Hard Day's Night), and the greatest black comedy (Dr. Strangelove). It had a great political thriller (Fail-Safe, sort of the serious version of Dr. Strangelove), a wonderfully fun action war film (Zulu), the definitive Bond film (Goldfinger), and an assortment of smaller gems like The Train, Becket, Seven Days In May, Dear Heart, A Shot In the Dark, Topkapi, and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.

It was even a good year internationally: Sergio Leone made A Fistful of Dollars, the first of three classic spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood; Hiroshi Teshigahara made Woman In the Dunes; and a uniquely cheerful musical called Umbrellas of Cherbourg came out of France.

Despite the continuing Cold War and brewing troubles elsewhere, the slate of 1964 films is remarkably upbeat, much like the preceding decade. Still, audiences were ready for a change. Films like Bonnie and Clyde (1968), Bullitt (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969), and Patton (1970) were just around the corner. The era of modern film would be ushered in, changing it more drastically than anything since 1915, and there would be no going back.

1971

The year 1971 marked the most dramatic year in the course of this change. The Hays Code was gone, and the MPAA ratings were in, as of 1968. Filmmakers were allowed to film and screen mature material, and audiences wanted it. Because of the time it takes to see a creative vision from its conception to its release as a film, conventional wisdom puts the movie industry's reaction time at about three years. Small wonder, then, that three years after Bonnie and Clyde and MPAA ratings is when we'd get Dirty Harry, The French Connection, The Last Picture Show, and A Clockwork Orange.

Some innocence had been long lost and some growing up had been done, in the days since Leave It To Beaver was mainstream entertainment, and here was when that started to have a dramatic effect on the movies. Is it really conceivable that A Clockwork Orange would be released a mere five years or so after Doris Day was queen of the box office with her series of breezy, squeaky clean romantic comedies?

If World War II can be cited as the cause for the films of the 1940s taking on a darker tone, perhaps the Vietnam War had something to do with the frank, brutal approach to violence in the films of the early 1970s. Violence was never before less glamorized than in cop thrillers like Dirty Harry or anti-war dramas like Johnny Got His Gun. Then again, 1971 also saw the release of Shaft, which was also frank and brutal about violence but glamorized it in a whole new way -- a James Bond for black culture, perhaps.

These and other titles like Play Misty For Me, Klute, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Harold and Maude do keep company with some of the last artifacts from the prior age: Fiddler on the Roof, for example, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Overall, however, the best films of 1971 had a unity of vision that nothing in the prior five or six years had: glamor and fantasy was out, and gritty realism was in.

Interestingly, the seeds for the antidote to this movement were already being sown. A guy by the name of George Lucas made his first film (THX-1138), and another by the name of Steven Spielberg made his first hit (Duel, made for TV).

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Coming soon: The rise and fall of independent film, and thoughts about the last five years.