1953 was a fascinating year for cinema , featuring blockbuster spectacles, groundbreaking sci-fi, innovations in Technicolor, several future icons making their feature debuts, and even the proliferation of 3D.

Hollywood’s star-driven machinery, Japan’s postwar renaissance, European art-house minimalism , and genre innovation all produced films that would define decades of filmmaking. Here are ten of that year's most important classics.

10 ‘Stalag 17’ (1953)

Image via Paramount Pictures

"There’s a spy in the barracks." Billy Wilder ’s prisoner-of-war movie is equal parts thriller, character study, and dark comedy . The story is set in a German POW camp where American airmen begin to suspect that one of their bunkmates is an informant. Suspicion quickly falls on Sefton (an Oscar

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