Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Inspired by the real-life murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906, which was followed by Gillette’s execution by electric chair in 1908 as well as the book An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, this is one of the best American movies of all time, winning six Academy Awards and the first-ever Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama.

George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) has come to work in his uncle Charles’ (Herbert Heyes) factory. Co-worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) romances him in the hopes that Eastman’s last name will get her ahead in life. But George has also met socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) and falls in love. But he’s already gotten Alice pregnant, so he can’t forget his past and can’t truly be part of Angela’s world.

George and Alice go to get married, but the Justice of the Peace is closed. Instead, he plans on drowning her and takes her out on a boat, but he decides to let her live. At that moment, she stands up and the boat capsizes. She drowns as he swims to safety. In truth, he killed her, as he never tried to save her and saw this as a way of getting the life he wanted. He’s charged with murder just as he’s been accepted into Angela’s family and ends up going to the electric chair.

Directed by George Stevens and written by Michael Wilson and Harry Brown, this may be too slow and melodramatic for modern audiences, this movie had an impact on fashion, as Taylor’s white lilac gown inspired prom and wedding dresses for a decade.

Stevens spent $2.3 million on this movie and shot more than 400,000 feet of film. It took over a year to edit it. In case you think you’ve seen the Eastwood mansion before, it’s a recycled set from Sunset Boulevard.