There are a number of great classic short films out there that have truly stood the test of time. These are the films that have influenced generations of filmmakers and continue to not only entertain audiences but also teach and inspire future lovers of the cinematic arts.?
From sci-fi adventures by cinema¡¯s first magician Georges Melies to surrealist splendour by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, these short films have it all. Here are some of the best short films ever made.
Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is the first truly great short film and arguably the short film that has had the greatest influence on the history of cinema. 21st-century viewers still recognize its most iconic image: a rocket ship landing in the eye of the Man on the Moon. Indeed, that remains probably the single most iconic image in all of science-fiction cinema, a brilliant visual summation of the dangers inherent in space exploration, both for the explorers and the new worlds being explored.
Among Charlie Chaplin¡¯s many classic films, initially short and eventually longer, is The Immigrant, in which he recreated his own journey to the US as a penniless economic migrant, in the process creating a visual language for transatlantic travel that has been hugely influential ever since, even in much later films such as The Godfather Part II.
The greatest and most famous surrealist film, An Andalusian Dog, is a short film, but in just over 20 minutes Luis Bunuel and his equally revolutionary co-writer, Salvador Dali, included enough extraordinary imagery to make it a miniature epic. Of course, one image above all resonates, that of the ¡°eye-slicing¡±, as Bu?uel cuts first to a passing cloud and then to the actual slicing of a dead animal¡¯s eyeball.
Sisyphus had it easy: he only had to roll a rock to the top of a hill and then watch it roll back down again, before starting all over ad infinitum. But Laurel and Hardy had to transport the titular music box (a self-playing piano) up a winding and apparently unending set of stairs while also contending with each other¡¯s unique brand of idiocy.
Zero de Conduit (Zero For Conduct) is the third of only four films made by Jean Vigo, probably the greatest short filmmaker ever, because even his longest film, L¡¯Atalante (1934), was just over an hour long. Zero de Conduit was based on Vigo¡¯s own horrific experience of attending boarding school, but he transformed that agonizing memory into an unforgettable fantasy about downtrodden students taking over a school.
Written and directed by Jean Renoir, it is his best short film and one of the most poetic short films ever made, in which an entire love affair is somehow played out in one single afternoon beside the Seine.
La Jetee, written and directed by Chris Marker, is arguably not a movie at all, as it is largely composed of still images, with only minimal movement of those images. Nevertheless, La Jet¨¦e is a masterpiece of concision, showing how the destruction of the entire human race and in particular one member of it can be conveyed in less than 30 minutes.
Film, which stars Buster Keaton, is undoubtedly an oddity as the story (such as it is) is largely seen through the eye of the camera rather than Keaton, but it is still a cinematic odyssey completed in less time than the average one-act play.
Most students of Star Wars and its creator believe that George Lucas¡¯ cinematic journey all began with his 1971 dystopian sci-fi feature THX 1138. In fact, the story goes back even further, because THX 1138 was itself an expansion of the student film that Lucas had made four years earlier while at the University of Southern California¡¯s film school. The short film¡¯s long and complex title, Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, belies a relatively simple story about a man trying (and ultimately failing) to outrun state-sanctioned pursuers.
The best short filmmaker of the late 20th century is Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit, the finest comic and cinematic double-act since Laurel and Hardy even if only one of them (the dimmer one, naturally) is human. Almost any of Park¡¯s early masterpieces, beginning with A Grand Day Out (1989), which was a superb updating of Le Voyage dans la Lune, would merit inclusion on this list. However, for sheer comic brilliance and especially the finest animated penguin ever, The Wrong Trousers is surely a first among equals.