Offtopic, an early-ish film that impressed me is ‘The Rules of the Game’ (‘La Règle du Jeu’) by Jean Renoir, from 1939. I somehow stumbled across it long ago, a

Offtopic, an early-ish film that impressed me is ‘The Rules of the Game’ (‘La Règle du Jeu’) by Jean Renoir, from 1939. I somehow stumbled across it long ago, and recently had to wade through Wikipedia looking for its name, because I realized how alive it was for its time—it's basically ‘French new wave’ before even the WW2, and does quite much remind of Fellini. Maybe I'm watching too few pre-war films, but e.g. ‘Citizen Kane’ looks rather stilted compared to ‘The Rules of the Game’. Apparently the picture was originally poorly received and quickly recut to a shorter time, but reconstructed in the 50s back to 110 minutes—so it's best to make sure to see this version. One other, even earlier film that has the same lifelike quality for me is ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ by Dziga Vertov, which is not even a fiction film per se but sort of a documentary. Originally a silent film, but now best enjoyed with the soundtrack by Cinematic Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGYZ5847FiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGYZ5847FiI P.S. Wim Wenders said in his quasi-documentary ‘Tokyo-Ga’ about director Yasujiro Ozu, that previously films were about life as it is, as opposed to now that both life and films feel more and more like dreams. That's the impression that I get most from European films from around the 50s and the 60s: French new wave, Fellini, Bergman—even though Fellini constantly swerved into the territory of fantasies. ‘The Rules of the Game’ is also in this company for me.