The 1920s saw the climax of silent cinema. Movements flourished: German Expressionism pushed the boundaries of set design and psychological horror with masterpieces like F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), while Soviet Montage theorists like Sergei Eisenstein revolutionised editing with Battleship Potemkin (1925).

Hollywood solidified its studio system and global dominance, driven by the peerless visual comedy of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and the lavish melodramas of the era. However, the entire landscape shifted permanently in October 1927 with the release of Warner Bros.’ The Jazz Singer. The overnight success of synchronised dialogue shattered the aesthetics of the silent era, forcing studios to rapidly retool their soundstages, phase out silent stars, and completely rewrite the rules of film production as the decade drew to a close.

Those born during the 1920s included Federico Fellini (1920), Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922), Andrzej Wajda (1926), Stanley Kubrick (1928), Agnès Varda (1928), and Jean-Luc Godard (1930). These directors grew up watching the talkies mature throughout the 1930s and 1940s, seeing the codification of studio filmmaking and would proceed to shatter it. With the French New Wave, Italian modernist cinema and New Hollywood movements.