Chinatown
A 1930s private detective uncovers a vast conspiracy involving the Los Angeles water supply and a powerful tycoon.
The defining neo-noir. The ending — where evil wins completely — was the anti-Hollywood statement of the New Hollywood era.
Watergate had just broken. The film channeled America's dawning understanding that power is corrupt at its root.
The bomb, the Red Menace, and the space race turbocharged science fiction. Giant ants, alien invasions, and body-snatchers were all metaphors for communist infiltration or nuclear dread.
Sputnik shock accelerated public fascination with space. From The Fly to 2001, cinema processed the question: what lies beyond our world?
Unlike WWII films, Vietnam cinema was fractured and critical. The war appeared first in coded form (Apocalypse Now's development started in 1969), then explicitly in The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July.
The women's movement slowly opened cinema to female perspectives. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (1975), the rise of the 'strong female lead' in the 80s, and the gradual dismantling of the male gaze.