shrinkrants:

Sixty summers have now passed since one of cinema’s greatest anni mirabiles. The entire decade rears like one long Himalayan chain of artistic eminence, but no year quite matches 1954 for sheer concentrated…

… if Rossellini, Mizoguchi, and Buñuel made three films apiece in a single year, on the backs of comparable numbers the years before and after, that means that production itself was relatively cheap and unfettered. Artists were experimenting, and had permission to fail. The point was not to show astronomical profits, but to make an indelible impression on the world mind, to shape a generation’s vision of itself. That alone was considered a good investment.