The Best Film The Year You Were Born! (1931–1971)

From the Silents to Gen-X, experience our history in film.

Odin Halvorson
20 min readNov 1, 2022

Before I set out to become a writer, I lived in the world of cinematography. I attended film history and theory classes and even worked on a few simple student films. A giant part of my life revolved around the film world, and I collected a massive library of favorites from across the decades, but soon found that I adored early films beyond almost any others.

From the 1920s to the 1970s, a great change took place in the landscape of American society and in the development of film. They mirrored and affected one another, as the growing popularity of the medium, the impact of World War 2, and a wildly unsteady social landscape all collided on the silver screen.

I’ve set out to capture the best films from 1931 to 2021 in two massive articles, thereby chronicling life from the so-called “Silent Generation”, through the “Baby Boomers”, on to Generation X and the Millennial, and finally into the future of “iGen” and “Generation Alpha”.

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Odin Halvorson

A futurist/socialist/fantasist writer, editor, and scholar. MFA/MLIS. Free access to my articles at OdinHalvorson.substack.com | More over at OdinHalvorson.com.