In partnership with The Film Foundation, Turner Classic Movies is proud to bring you this exclusive monthly column by iconic film director and classic movie lover Martin Scorsese.

AS I STUDIED THE ROSTER for this year's edition of Summer Under the Stars, I looked at the names of all those actors, and I thought about the passing of time. When I was growing up almost all of the stars from what we refer to as Hollywood's Golden Age were alive and working. Some, like Lucille Ball (honored on August 2), were becoming TV stars. Some, like Humphrey Bogart (August 20) were coming to the ends of their lives. Some, like Bette Davis (August 21) and Spencer Tracy (August 11), were moving into new phases in their careers. Thanks to the revival circuit, the many books devoted to Hollywood history, television (this channel especially) and home video, the most famous stars of the era stayed as fresh and vitally alive in everyone's minds as the stars of the '70s, '80s and '90s. But after the turn of the century, things changed. The end of 35mm, the beginning of YouTube (where everything is broken up into clips), the worldwide explosion of moving images brought about by digital technology, the implosion of home video...all of these factors combined to create a break in continuity, a feeling that the films of the past were suddenly devalued, interchangeable and as distant from the present as the Ancient Roman tragedies of Seneca. If you go on YouTube and look quickly at a handful of clips of Edward G. Robinson, for instance, he might seem like a grotesque, a ham. When you look at his greatest performances in their entirety, it's a very different story. Robinson, who kicks off this year's Summer Under the Stars, was a brilliant actor and, right from the start, a brave one: he was never afraid of playing characters that were paranoid, homely, or unlikeable; but at the same time, he was always electrifying, and he gives every scene an extra burst of energy and power. TCM is including the film that made him a star, Little Caesar, from the W.R. Burnett novel, in addition to Michael Curtiz's adaptation of Jack London's The Sea Wolf, Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street, Delmer Daves' The Red House and Billy Wilder's remarkable adaptation of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (written by Raymond Chandler), in which Robinson gives one of the great performances of the cinema: his character comes alive in a way that few characters in movies do. Montgomery Clift is another actor whose greatness really can't be understood by the sampling of clips. He is always surprising from one moment to the next, and if you look at him in this or that scene he might seem spacey and disconnected (you could say the same of Gary Cooper): you need to experience the impact of the entire performance. The five films included in his August 6 tribute, made before his car accident in 1956--The Search (his debut), Red River, The Big Lift, A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity--marked the beginning of a whole new era in Hollywood, a new approach to acting. Clift, like Robinson, Davis, Jean Simmons, Ralph Richardson and so many of the other actors honored this month, were remarkable artists, but their artistry can be seen and appreciated only when you watch their pictures from start to finish.

by Martin Scorsese