METROPOLIS Germany 1927 Perhaps the most famous of all silent films, Fritz Lang's Metropolis envisions a future where the populace is divided between workers who must live underground and the rich who enjoy a futuristic city of splendour. Lavish and spectacular, Metropolis stands today as one of the crowning achievements of the German Expressionist cinema. STEAMBOAT BILL JR. USA 1928 Arguable cinema's greatest-ever comic, Buster Keaton wowed American audiences with his easy gift for pioneering stunts and physical comedy. Demonstrating Hollywood's focus on pure entertainment during the silent era, Steamboat Bill Jr. is renowned for its epic scale and timeless humour. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA USSR 1929 Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera is an exuberant montage of urban life in the USSR. Vertov used a variety of pioneering cinematic techniques to document the full spectrum of 1929 Soviet life, producing a radical documentary that is exhilarating and intellectually brilliant. UMBERTO D Italy 1952 Considered the last and greatest Italian Neo-Realist film, Umberto D is a moving portrait of one man's battle for survival in the gritty reality of post-war Rome. Starring non-professional actors, Umberto D follows a retired civil servant as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of eviction and poverty. SEVEN SAMURAI Japan 1954 One of the most revered films of all time, Akira Kurosawa's jidai-geki follows the fate of a farming hamlet whose residents entreat a number of masterless samurai to protect them and their crops from marauding brigands. One of the first films to introduce Japanese culture to the west, Seven Samurai is an enduring masterpiece. VIVRE SA VIE France 1962 Told in twelve episodes, Vivre Sa Vie shocked audiences at its 1962 première and was instantly recognised as one of the definitive films of the French New Wave. A highly-structured combination of documentary techniques and gangster noir, it is one of Godard's most complex and critically-acclaimed films.