52 Lost Movie Classics (The Guardian)

This isn't just another list of great movies. It's a rallying cry for films that for a variety of reasons - fashion, perhaps, or the absence of an influential advocate, or just pure bad luck - have been unduly neglected and should be more widely available. You know that feeling when someone hasn't heard of a film you've always loved and you want to show it to them? Or, in a different way, when you get annoyed because a picture hasn't been accorded the position you think it deserves in cultural history or the cinematic canon? That's the sort of film we have included on this list. Salt of the Earth, for instance, is a landmark film few have seen, though it was a cult movie to the radical students in John Sayles's debut, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, which is itself now a cult movie, though Sayles is represented on our list by his lesser known Lianna. We have also included the thoughts of some of Britain's most interesting film-makers about their favourite under-rated work.