Free Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisenstein & Other Russian Greats

Dur­ing the past two years, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky have qui­et­ly come online, giv­ing view­ers the chance to encounter the Sovi­et direc­tor’s great body of work. If you’re not famil­iar with Tarkovsky, it’s worth men­tion­ing that Ing­mar Bergman con­sid­ered him his favorite direc­tor, and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa once said, “Every cut from his films is a mar­velous image in itself.” The list of avail­able films now includes:

• Ivan’s Child­hood — Web — Buy DVD (1962)
• Solaris — Part 1 — Part 2 — Buy DVD (1972)
• The Mir­ror  — Web — Buy DVD (1975)
• Stalk­er — Web — Buy DVD (1979)

(Note: If you access the films via YouTube, be sure to click “CC” at the bot­tom of the videos to access the sub­ti­tles.)

You can thank Mos­film, the old­est film stu­dio in Rus­sia, if not Europe, for bring­ing these films to the web. If you head to Mos­film’s YouTube Chan­nel, you can watch more than 50 Russ­ian clas­sics, includ­ing Sergei Bon­darchuk’s 1969 adap­ta­tion of Tol­stoy’s War & Peace, a film that Roger Ebert called “the defin­i­tive epic of all time.” In a con­ces­sion to West­ern cap­i­tal­ism, each film is pre­ced­ed by a short com­mer­cial, prov­ing yet again that there’s no such thing as a tru­ly free lunch.

Final­ly, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Movies Online, which fea­tures six films by Sergei Eisen­stein, Rus­si­a’s pio­neer­ing film­mak­er and film the­o­rist: Strike, Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, Romance Sen­ti­men­tale, Octo­ber: Ten Days That Shook the World, Old and New and Alexan­der Nevsky. They’re all there.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971

The Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive