10 great films of 1926

In March 1926, Virginia Woolf visited the Film Society in London and described “peering over the edge of a cauldron in which fragments of all shapes and savours seem to simmer”. European cinema was more ambitious than ever, especially in Germany, with a string of prestige releases and Fritz Lang toiling away at Ufa on an epic that would not be released until the following year – Metropolis.

Hitchcock had been taking note, and was incorporating the shadows of expressionism in a film, also released the following year, that was shooting in London – The Lodger. Meanwhile, working on a small scale, with grand repercussions, paper-cut animator Lotte Reiniger made her first feature-length film. The avant-garde flourished in France, in short-form, documentary, experimental film and narrative features, and the young Soviet filmmakers expressed themselves in yet more challenging and confrontational ways…