World War Two changed the playing field in cinema. Even in America, the pre-war glamour was stripped back, and the anxieties of wartime mobilisation, post-traumatic stress, and urban alienation manifested in the birth of film noir. Directors used low-key lighting, deep shadows, and cynical, non-linear narratives, crystallised by Orson Welles’s groundbreaking Citizen Kane (1941) and Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944), to reflect a deeply unsettled national psyche.

Across the Atlantic, the physical ruin of Europe gave rise to Italian Neorealism. Filmmakers like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica abandoned the artificiality of soundstages entirely, taking lightweight cameras onto the bombed-out streets to shoot gritty, emotionally devastating stories like Rome, Open City (1945) and Bicycle Thieves (1948) using non-professional actors, a movement that permanently altered the global standard of cinematic authenticity.

Those born during the 1940s—including Bernardo Bertolucci (1941), Hayao Miyazaki (1941), Martin Scorsese (1942), Werner Herzog (1942), George Lucas (1944), Steven Spielberg (1946), and David Lynch (1946) grew up in the immediate shadow of the war, coming of age during the height of the Cold War and the rapid rise of domestic television. They’d become Movie Brats and New German Cinema filmmakers, equally creating high-concept blockbusters and complex arthouse films.