The Adventures of Robin Hood The impossibly young and fearless Errol Flynn in the greatest swordplay movie ever made; Technicolor doesn’t have full range yet (every green is the same green) but what colors it has leap off the screen like, well, Errol Flynn.
Summertime Katharine Hepburn as a librarian tempted to fling on vacation with Italian hunk of cheese Rosanno Brazzi; the plot’s dated but Kate’s terrific, and the sunny Venice photography will make you want to hop on a plane right now.
Oklahoma! The musical that revolutionized (or ruined) Broadway, in a too-reverent and slightly poky production; made up for by the fact that it was shot in 30 frames-per-second, 70MM Todd-AO, which means it’s basically a 50s Imax movie and almost freakishly vivid to watch.
The Searchers The great John Wayne western and the great American movie about racism, in which he’s an Indian hunter whose quest to rescue niece Natalie Wood takes on darker psycho-logical undertones. Bonus: count all the scenes Star Wars ripped off!
Ju Dou Bizarrely, decades after Hollywood got too cheap for true Technicolor, China still uses it—and no one’s used it more flamboyantly than Zhang Yimou (Hero) in this visual stunner about illicit lovers working in (how convenient) a fabric-dyeing mill.
