Hitchcock's Psycho is undoubtedly one of the best films ever made.
All of the mentions of Metropolis prompts me to remind that Mad Love director Karl Freund is the cinematographer on Metropolis.
Film critic Pauline Kael proposed in ther book Raising Kane that Welles' Citizen Kane borrows heavily from the look of Mad Love.
Rotten Tomatoes gives Mad Love a score of 100%.
My pick is from the following year in 1936, and it's The Petrified Forest. Rotten Tomatoes also gives it a perfect 100%. One reviewer describes the film as simply "Gangster Existentialism Deluxe" which succintly affords an apt overview and alludes to why I feel it is decidedly ahead of its time. It was adapted from Pulizer-prize winner Robert E. Sherwood's stage play and the action unfolds mostly in one diner scene. Bette Davis plays the enchanting waitress. Humphrey Bogart, to marvelous effect, makes his film debut as the desperate ringleader of a band of lamming outlaws. But the prime draw of the film clearly manifests in the ethereal Leslie Howard who plays a rather philosophical hobo who becomes caught up in the proceedings.
the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRH__KePbQ