13. The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920)
If D.W Griffith established a new language for cinema, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first film to try to take his rules to the limit. The two writers of the film, Hans Janowitz and Carl Meyer, wanted to show "radical anti-bourgeois art" and once director Robert Wiene was brought in, the trio went to work on one of the first horror films. The filmmakers used stylized backgrounds, abstract buildings characterized by their jagged edges, flat surfaces, and unusual acting methods to make the film as strange as possible and the affect was astonishing to audiences at the time. Many people also consider the ending to be the first example of a "twist ending" and the film is also one of the first movies to take place in someone's mind. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari helped set the stage for the German Expressionist period of the 20's and 30's, one of the most important periods in film history, and set the standard for any kind of film that aspired to be experimental and surreal.