When Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ landed in New York on December 30, 1925, it was less a movie than a declaration. A fledgling studio eager to show its supremacy, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had created the largest, the most expensive, the most technologically audacious production the industry had ever known. Audiences were not asked to see Ben-Hur; they were ordered to attend. A century later, the film, whose centerpiece was a career-reviving performance by Ramon Novarro as Judah Ben-Hur, remains one of the silent era's greatest achievements: an unparalleled hybrid of biblical solemnity, humanistic pathos and high-end spectacle.

The Creation of The Christmas Party was one of those peculiarly early-sound Hollywood tales in which studio custom, instinct for publicity, and simple good will combined to create a low-keyed but revealing seasonal artifact.

HOLLYWOOD - Seventy-five years later, Sunset Boulevard remains as fresh and as incisive as the day it first appeared. A razor to Hollywood’s sanitized balloon. Billy Wilder’s masterpiece is not just film noir, it’s a horror movie in the purest sense — fame rotting into madness, celluloid dreams dying in the California sun.

HOLLYWOOD - It’s impossible to watch Dracula for the first time and not draw breath. It doesn’t happen when the fangs snap or the blood spurt (there’s less of that than you might expect).