The popularity of the cinematic supercut produces its fair share of pedestrian content. But Jacob T. Swinney manages to bring the filmmaking auteur mentality to the supercut genre of video, whether it’s the first and final frames of 55 films or his musings on the meaning of the fade-to-white edit. For his latest supercut, 100 Years/100 Shots, Swinney culls 100 of the most iconic moments from the last century of cinema.
Appropriately, the supercut includes D. W. Griffith’s pioneering though controversial film Birth of a Nation, while making equal room for the experimental surrealist film Un Chien Andalou and the blockbuster bombast of Die Hard, before ending with Mad Max: Fury Road. And of course, there’s plenty of Chaplin, Kubrick, Hitchcock, and Welles along the way.
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100 Years/100 Shots from Jacob T. Swinney on Vimeo.
“A journey through the past 100 years of cinema—the most memorable shot from each year (in my opinion),” Swinney says of the supercut. “While many of these shots are the most recognizable in film history, others are equally iconic in their own right. For example, some shots pioneered a style or defined a genre, while others tested the boundaries of censorship and filmgoer expectations. If anything, I want this video to be a reminder as to why we all love cinema so much.”
Click here to see more supercuts by Jacob T. Swinney.
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Relive David Lynch’s Most Suspenseful Moments in Sound
