The 1950s were a varied decade for film, including both old-fashioned spectacles and bold artistic leaps. Directors across the globe were redefining the medium in fascinating ways. Out of postwar ...

If you listen to the Left, the 1950s were a decade of boring conformity (the poet Robert Lowell referred to it as “the tranquilized Fifties”) — and the movies of that era, one is told, were a ...