By Decade

Cinema is well over a century old now, and it has not stopped changing for a single decade of it. This is the whole site laid out as a timeline, from the silent era to whatever came out last week. Pick a decade and see how the films, and the world making them, were shifting.

It is one of the best ways to wander: watch how sound, colour, the collapse of the studio system, the new waves and the blockbuster all arrive and rearrange everything. Every decade below links through to the reviews from those years.

Where to start

If you fancy time-travelling, here is one film that catches what each decade was doing.

The General (1920s) · M (1930s) · Casablanca (1940s) · Seven Samurai (1950s) · The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1960s) · The Godfather (1970s) · The Empire Strikes Back (1980s) · Pulp Fiction (1990s) · The Dark Knight (2000s) · Parasite (2010s) · Spider-Man: No Way Home (2020s)

Every decade

1880s (1) · 1890s (2) · 1900s (2) · 1910s (1) · 1920s (30) · 1930s (31) · 1940s (25) · 1950s (48) · 1960s (61) · 1970s (95) · 1980s (116) · 1990s (159) · 2000s (268) · 2010s (323) · 2020s (148)

Last updated: May 2026.