Like music, like painting, like all the other arts, cinema in its artistic form has been looking for its own essence since its beginning, and hasn't yet found a definitive, fixed one. We could say that its very essence is to look for that essence, through all the possible combinations of its components. When it is art and not merely entertainment, cinema is always experimental, because it searches the right way to convey exactly what each film struggles to say.Art is never for art's sake.
From this perspective, it is possible to pinpoint some very special films that managed to create a meaningful form that transformed deeply the way we understand cinema. They broadened our understanding of cinema as art. When they were released, they were difficult to grasp, and many were misunderstood and undervalued.Since they were so new in different aspects, critics and viewers needed some time to assimilate them.
