If I had to pick the most significant motion picture of the century - at least for the United States - it would have to be a movie not even made by American studios.

Roberto Rossellini directed the Italian drama "The Miracle" in 1948, but it didn't reach America until December of 1950 when it played at a New York theater.

In the story - written by Italy's legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini - a peasant girl (played by Anna Magnani) becomes drunk. In her inebriated state, she mistakes a bearded vagrant (Fellini himself) who seduces her to be Saint Joseph, and imagines her resulting pregnancy to be a miracle.

Instantly, the Legion of Decency attacked the movie as "a sacrilegious and blasphemous mockery of Christian religious truth." The Catholic Church, notably Cardinal Spellman, condemned it as "a despicable affront to every Christian" and the Church launched demonstrations against the movie.

The New York Board of Regents buckled under the pressure and revoked a license previously given to Joseph Burstyn, a Polish film distributor responsible for bringing "The Miracle" to the Big Apple.

In effect, the film had been banned. Burstyn, a feisty entrepreneur, took the case to court. After the New York Supreme Court sided with the government, Burstyn appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1952, U.S. Justices handed down a decision that rocked the American cultural landscape.

For the first time, movies would be granted constitutional protection under the First Amendment. Before, films had been considered by the court to be merely businesses that could be regulated by the government.

Because of the efforts by Burstyn and his attorney Ephraim London, movies would be protected and free to explore all subjects and to experiment with bolder treatments.

A happy ending?

No. Not at all.

Never did any of the Hollywood studios, the entities that would benefit most from the "Miracle" decision, help Burstyn in his fight for First Amendment protection.

He received not a dime or any form of moral or political support from Hollywood. Burstyn spent two years and $75,000 of his own money to get constitutional protection for the movies.

Even after the historic "Miracle" decision, most cowering studio honchos refused to comment on the case to reporters.

Then, a year after the landmark case, Burstyn took an airplane trip to Europe and suffered a heart attack en route. By the time the plane landed, he had died.

To this day, the Supreme Court case "Burstyn Vs. Wilson" remains one of the greatest untold stories of the American cinema, and Italy's "The Miracle" the most significant movie in American history.

Here, in alphabetical order, are the remainder of 10 of the most significant motion pictures of the past century:

"The Blair Witch Project" (1999) - The $30,000 horror picture that dragged Hollywood kicking and screaming into the Internet Age and single-handedly changed the business of movie marketing for the next millennium.

"Deep Throat" (1972) - Linda Lovelace's comic romp about a frustrated woman with her sex organ in her throat not only became a box office smash, it attracted couples and mainstreamed the once-ghettoized genre of hard-core porn, paving the way for public acceptance of those adults-only back rooms we see in neighborhood video stores today.

"The Graduate" (1967) - When people actually bought the soundtrack album to hear Simon and Garfunkel warble "The Sounds of Silence," Hollywood executives almost got burned by the light bulb going off over their heads. "You mean people will pay money for motion picture scores?" they wondered. Thus the subsidiary industry known as movie soundtracks kicked into serious mode, and reached its ultimate plateau 10 years later when the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" became the biggest selling movie record in history. Still, Oscar voters ignored both the film and the BeeGees.

"The Great Train Robbery" (1903) - Edwin S. Porter's classic short became famous for being the first film to employ a moving camera. I still say it looks like the cameraman accidentally bumped the lens. This film also introduced the close-up when it showed a tight shot of a cowboy who levels his gun directly at the audience and fires. Theaters have been holding up viewers at concession stands ever since.

"Jaws" (1975) - Steven Spielberg's adventure about three guys chasing a big, nasty fish cracked the $100 million mark and changed the course of movie culture overnight. Moviemakers stopped trying to create the Great American Motion Picture as they had been for the previous 10 years, and decided to try to create the Great American Blockbuster. Two years later, George Lucas accomplished both goals when he directed a modest project called "Star Wars."

"The Jazz Singer" (1927) - "You ain't heard nothing yet!" Al Jolson said, and thus he introduced Hollywood to the age of sound and instantly killed the golden era of silent movies. For the next few years, Hollywood wouldn't shut up. We had "the first 100 percent talking, singing college picture," "the first all-Negro all-talking picture." By 1929, "On With the Show" claimed to be "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing, 100 per cent all-color." Now we know where television got its obsession with promoting "all-new" TV episodes.

"Napoleon" (1926) - Abel Gance, considered the D.W. Griffith of France, created a triple-screen effect for this historical epic, thereby inventing the precursor to the wide-screen technology that Hollywood would employ three decades later to combat the insidious audience-stealing medium called TV. Then, another three decades later, nobody could watch wide-screen movies on TV without those annoying letterboxed black strips across the bottom and top of the picture.

"Psycho" (1960) - The most ripped-off movie ever made. Often imitated, but never duplicated. Alfred Hitchcock's horror tale not only violated classic Aristotelian dramatic structure by killing off the main character during the first 40 minutes, the infamous shower scene stands as the ultimate movie magic, a masterful blend of music (stabbing violins by Bernard Herrmann), sound effects (a knife plunging into a casaba), editing, and acting by a naked body double.

"Snow White" (1937) - Dubbed "Disney's Folly" by critics, this movie disproved the common belief that people were so ADD that they wouldn't sit through a cartoon that lasted more than 8 minutes. Walt Disney's gamble paid off when "Snow White" became one of the few movies to make money that year. Plus, the film flaunted public morality by telling a story about an unmarried, nubile young woman living in the same house with seven blue-collar miner males. Little wonder why Disney initially bankrolled Kevin Smith's "Dogma."

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