25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noirchaelogist” Eddie Muller

in Film | February 19th, 2014

Film noir received its name in 1946 when French crit­ic Nino Frank expressed his fas­ci­na­tion with dark Hol­ly­wood melo­dra­mas of the time. But noir as a genre only took shape ret­ro­spec­tive­ly, and the bit­ter argu­ments over what it is con­tin­ue to the present. I’ve always thought of film noir as the off­spring of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism, pulp fic­tion, and the hard-boiled crime nov­els of Ray­mond Chan­dler. Its characters—dangerous seduc­tress­es and “fall­en” women, cyn­i­cal detec­tives, sadis­tic vil­lains and amoral deviants of all kinds—are exag­ger­at­ed out­law mir­rors of the era’s vir­tu­ous every­man pro­tag­o­nists. Most noirs seem express­ly cre­at­ed to defy the Hays Code’s strong sug­ges­tion that “the sym­pa­thy of the audi­ence shall nev­er be thrown to the side of crime, wrong­do­ing, evil or sin.”

Alain Sil­ver, edi­tor of the Film Noir Read­er, dates “the clas­sic era of film noir” to “a fif­teen year span from You Only Live Once (1937) to Where Dan­ger Lives (1952).” But films as ear­ly as Fritz Lang’s 1931 M are dis­cussed in noir terms, and the aes­thet­ic per­sists, if only in homage or par­o­dy, as in the obvi­ous noir take-off Sin City. Roger Ebert con­cise­ly defined the genre in a short list of ten essen­tial fea­tures. Despite its French name and styl­is­ti­cal­ly Ger­man ori­gins, Ebert called it “the most Amer­i­can film genre, because no soci­ety could have cre­at­ed a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betray­al, unless it were essen­tial­ly naive and opti­mistic.”

What­ev­er the genre’s bound­aries, I think it’s safe to say that film noir’s his­to­ry rests in good hands. The Film Noir Foun­da­tion has ded­i­cat­ed itself to “res­cu­ing and restor­ing America’s Film Noir Her­itage”; Film Noir Stud­ies aims to be a crit­i­cal resource for stu­dents, schol­ars, and fans alike. And per­haps best of all, we have Eddie Muller—self-described “word­slinger, impre­sario, noirchaelogist”—on the case. A very noir-ish char­ac­ter him­self, Muller, a sea­soned San Fran­cis­co reporter, barfly, box­ing enthu­si­ast, and adult film his­to­ri­an, defines film noir as “the flip side of the all-Amer­i­can suc­cess sto­ry.”

It’s about peo­ple who real­ize that fol­low­ing the pro­gram will nev­er get them what they crave. So they cross the line, com­mit a crime and reap the con­se­quences. Or, they’re tales about seem­ing­ly inno­cent peo­ple tor­tured by para­noia and ass-kicked by Fate. Either way, they depict a world that’s mer­ci­less and unfor­giv­ing. 

On his site, Muller has com­piled a list of “25 noir films that will stand the test of time.” His picks range from acknowl­edged clas­sics like Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty and Sun­set Boule­vard to less­er-known pic­tures like Raw Deal. Below, I’ve list­ed his favorites in the reverse order he prefers. Call­ing his list “End­less Night,” Muller asks us to “take this with a grain of salt” and to “con­sid­er the list­ing a sort of car­ni­val barom­e­ter, rang­ing from INFATUATED to PASSIONATE.”

25. Raw Deal (Eagle-Lion, 1948) — Avail­able on YouTube
24. City that Nev­er Sleeps (Repub­lic, 1952)
23. Touch of Evil (Uni­ver­sal, 1958)
22. Scar­let Street (Uni­ver­sal, 1945) — Avail­able on Open Cul­ture or watch above
21. Detour (PRC, 1945) — Avail­able on Open Cul­ture
20. Tomor­row is Anoth­er Day (Warn­er Bros., 1951)
19. The Prowler (Unit­ed Artists, 1950)
18. Gun Crazy (Unit­ed Artists, 1950)
17. Act of Vio­lence (MGM, 1949)
16. Odds Against Tomor­row (Unit­ed Artists, 1959)
15. The Killing (Unit­ed Artists, 1956)
14. They Live By Night (RKO, 1949)
13. Thieves’ High­way (20th Cen­tu­ry-Fox, 1949)
12. Sweet Smell of Suc­cess (Unit­ed Artists, 1958)
11. The Killers (Uni­ver­sal, 1946)
10. Moon­rise (Repub­lic, 1948) — Avail­able on YouTube
9.  Out of the Past (RKO, 1947)
8.  Night and the City (20th Cen­tu­ry-Fox, 1950)
7.  Night­mare Alley (20th Cen­tu­ry-Fox, 1947)
6.  The Mal­tese Fal­con (Warn­er Bros., 1941)
5.  Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty (Para­mount, 1944)
4.  The Asphalt Jun­gle (MGM, 1950)
3.  Sun­set Boule­vard (Para­mount, 1950)
2.  Criss Cross (Uni­ver­sal, 1949)
1.  In a Lone­ly Place (Colum­bia, 1950)

See Muller’s orig­i­nal arti­cle for his price­less com­men­tary on each film. And if his list piques your inter­est, be sure to vis­it our con­sid­er­able col­lec­tion of free online film noir clas­sics, all oth­er­wise found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fritz Lang’s Cen­sored Noir Film, Scar­let Street, Star­ring the Great Edward G. Robin­son (1945)

Detour: The Cheap, Rushed Piece of 1940s Film Noir Nobody Ever For­gets

Watch D.O.A., Rudolph Maté’s “Inno­v­a­tive and Down­right Twist­ed” Noir Film (1950)

The Third Man: Film Noir Clas­sic on YouTube

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Art of Restoring Classic Films: Criterion Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitchcock Movies

in Film, Technology | February 19th, 2014

Why have cinephiles, from the era of Laserdiscs through that of DVDs and now Blu-rays, so con­sis­tent­ly respect­ed The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion? Speak­ing as one such cinephile, I could point to a num­ber of fac­tors: their cura­to­r­i­al bent toward impor­tant films, their pro­duc­tion of rich sup­ple­men­tary fea­tures, their always impres­sive pieces of cov­er art. But Cri­te­ri­on has become increas­ing­ly known for the con­sid­er­able work they put in not at the end of the process, when they pack­age a clas­sic or poten­tial­ly clas­sic motion pic­ture for max­i­mum aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al appeal (and your pur­chase), but at the begin­ning, when they track down the actu­al cel­lu­loid film in the first place, often aged or dam­aged, and engage in the often painstak­ing task of return­ing it to the prime of visu­al and son­ic life.

In the short Giz­mo­do video at the top, Cri­te­ri­on direc­tor Lee Kline and his team talk about the work they did to restore Alfred Hitch­cock­’s 1940 For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent, which includ­ed acquir­ing the neg­a­tive from the Library of Con­gress, scan­ning the whole thing at high res­o­lu­tion over two days to a week, doing the research nec­es­sary to fig­ure out how the film “should have looked,” clean up scratch­es and film dam­age, and fil­ter out the clicks and pops on the sound­track. (And yes, we get some insight into its “snazzy” cov­er design as well.) The Kline-nar­rat­ed video just above offers a demon­stra­tion of Cri­te­ri­on’s restora­tion process on anoth­er piece of clas­sic Hitch­cock, the first, 1934-made ver­sion of The Man Who Knew Too Much, a pic­ture with no known neg­a­tive still in exis­tence. A for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge, but if we film geeks entrust that job to any­one, we entrust it to Cri­te­ri­on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

The Restora­tion of a Mas­ter­piece, as Nar­rat­ed by Mar­tin Scors­ese

Watch The Plea­sure Gar­den, Alfred Hitchcock’s Very First Fea­ture Film (1925)

Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Some of the First Words Ever Spo­ken on Film …. and They’re Saucy Ones (1929)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” Retooled as 1920s New Orleans Jazz

in Comedy, Music | February 18th, 2014

Thanks to the efforts of Scott Bradlee’s Post­mod­ern Juke­box and singer Miche Braden, the world now knows how heavy met­al rock­ers, Guns N’ Ros­es sound with their knees rouged up and their stock­ings down.

Their New Orleans jazz take on 1987’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine” replaces the preen­ing rock god sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the orig­i­nal with a sort of mature, female swag­ger harken­ing all the way back Bessie Smith. (Braden’s stage cred­its include turns as Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Valai­da Snow, and Ma Rainey.)

The back­up musi­cians get in on the fun, too, retool­ing Slash’s gui­tar solo as a horn-dri­ven cake­walk. I know which par­ty I’d rather hit!

Over the years, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” has proved a remark­ably study work­horse, with­stand­ing attempts to make it over as elec­tron­i­ca, a Gre­go­ri­an Chant and Brazil­ian prog rock. Or how about this ver­sion played on the Guzheng, an ancient Chi­nese instru­ment. Post­mod­ern Juke­box’s entry into this stakes is not with­out gim­mick, but it’s a win­ning one.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Radiohead’s “Creep” Per­formed in a Vin­tage Jazz-Age Style

Enjoy a Blue­grass Per­for­mance of Elton John’s 1972 Hit, “Rock­et Man”

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

A Mid­dle-East­ern Ver­sion of Radiohead’s 1997 Hit “Kar­ma Police”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the long run­ning zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Kurt Vonnegut Diagrams the Shape of All Stories in a Master’s Thesis Rejected by U. Chicago

in Design, Literature, Writing | February 18th, 2014

“What has been my pret­ti­est con­tri­bu­tion to the cul­ture?” asked Kurt Von­negut in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy Palm Sun­day. His answer? His master’s the­sis in anthro­pol­o­gy for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, “which was reject­ed because it was so sim­ple and looked like too much fun.” The ele­gant sim­plic­i­ty and play­ful­ness of Vonnegut’s idea is exact­ly its endur­ing appeal. The idea is so sim­ple, in fact, that Von­negut sums the whole thing up in one ele­gant sen­tence: “The fun­da­men­tal idea is that sto­ries have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper, and that the shape of a giv­en society’s sto­ries is at least as inter­est­ing as the shape of its pots or spear­heads.” In 2011, we fea­tured the video below of Von­negut explain­ing his the­o­ry, “The Shapes of Sto­ries.” We can add to the dry wit of his les­son the pic­to-info­graph­ic by graph­ic design­er Maya Eil­am above, which strik­ing­ly illus­trates, with exam­ples, the var­i­ous sto­ry shapes Von­negut described in his the­sis. (Read a con­densed ver­sion here.)

The pre­sen­ter who intro­duces Von­negut’s short lec­ture tells us that “his sin­gu­lar view of the world applies not just to his sto­ries and char­ac­ters but to some of his the­o­ries as well.” This I would affirm. When it comes to puz­zling out the import of a sto­ry I’ve just read, the last per­son I usu­al­ly turn to is the author. But when it comes to what fic­tion is and does in gen­er­al, I want to hear it from writ­ers of fic­tion. Some of the most endur­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures are expert writ­ers on writ­ing. Von­negut, a mas­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tor, ranks very high­ly among them. Does it do him a dis­ser­vice to con­dense his ideas into what look like high-res, low-read­abil­i­ty work­place safe­ty graph­ics? On the con­trary, I think.

Though the design may be a lit­tle slick for Von­negut’s unapolo­get­i­cal­ly indus­tri­al approach, he’d have appre­ci­at­ed the slight­ly corny, slight­ly macabre boil­er­plate iconog­ra­phy. His work turns a sus­pi­cious eye on over­com­pli­cat­ed pos­tur­ing and cham­pi­ons unsen­ti­men­tal, Mid­west­ern direct­ness. Vonnegut’s short, trade pub­li­ca­tion essay, “How to Write With Style,” is as suc­cinct and prac­ti­cal a state­ment on the sub­ject in exis­tence. One will encounter no more a ruth­less­ly effi­cient list than his “Eight Rules for Writ­ing Fic­tion.” But it’s in his “Shapes of Sto­ries” the­o­ry that I find the most insight into what fic­tion does, in bril­liant­ly sim­ple and fun­ny ways that any­one can appre­ci­ate.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Writ­ing Tips from Kurt Von­negut

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch 13 Experimental Short Films by Tezuka Osamu, the Walt Disney of Japan

in Animation, Art, Film | February 18th, 2014

Tezu­ka Osamu (1928–1989) is known as “the God of man­ga” in Japan. He cre­at­ed clas­sics for both chil­dren and adults in every genre – from hor­ror to romance to action. The sheer amount of work pro­duced in Osamu’s rel­a­tive­ly short life is stag­ger­ing; some esti­mates have it that he drew over 150,000 pages of comics.

While focus­ing just on man­ga would have been enough for most mor­tals, Osamu was also a trail­blaz­er in ani­ma­tion. He cre­at­ed Astro-Boy, the huge­ly pop­u­lar char­ac­ter that spawned com­ic books, TV shows, video games and a cou­ple of movies. The visu­al style of Osamu’s ani­mat­ed work — Astro-Boy and oth­ers — proved to be very influ­en­tial. Those trade­mark giant eyes on ani­me char­ac­ters come straight from Osamu (who in turn was influ­enced by Walt Dis­ney and Max Fleis­ch­er).

Osamu relent­less­ly chal­lenged the lim­its of what man­ga and ani­me could do. He’s cred­it­ed with mak­ing the first ever X‑Rated ani­mat­ed fea­ture film, Cleopa­tra, Queen of Sex (1970) — imag­ine Dis­ney doing that. He also made a series of exper­i­men­tal ani­mat­ed shorts, which show­case not only Osamu’s cre­ativ­i­ty and range but also his phi­los­o­phy, which was heav­i­ly influ­enced by Bud­dhism.

His 1962 work Tale of Street Cor­ner is a sur­pris­ing­ly mov­ing short about the day-to-day life of a city street cor­ner as seen through the eyes of some anthro­po­mor­phized mice and sen­tient street posters.

And if you want get a sense of Osamu’s ver­sa­til­i­ty, check out his 1966 movie Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion. The work is an omnibus film fea­tur­ing ten small­er shorts, all set to Mus­sorgsky’s famous suite. Osamu recre­at­ed each short in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent style from the oth­ers.

His 1984 short, Jump­ing is a tech­ni­cal tour-de-force told with admirable sim­plic­i­ty. Seen from a first per­son point of view, the movie is about a young child who is jump­ing down a coun­try road. As each jump gets high­er and longer, the cam­era pass­es through cities, fields and oceans and even­tu­al­ly into a war­zone. The sharp-eyed view­er will see R2D2 and C‑3PO make a sur­prise cameo at around the 2:57 mark­er.

And final­ly, here is an inter­view with the mas­ter him­self as he talks about mak­ing these movies. And you can see all 13 of the ani­mat­ed shorts here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyza­ki

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satirical History Of England: Read the Handwritten Manuscript Online (1791)

in History, Literature | February 18th, 2014

EDWARD

Last week, we post­ed about the British Library’s colos­sal online exhib­it, which includes over 30,000 items, all freely dig­i­tized for read­er perusal. Although we’d men­tioned some of the choic­est hold­ings — the orig­i­nal writ­ings by Mozart and da Vin­ci, for exam­ple — we’ve recent­ly come across anoth­er piece of lit­er­ary his­to­ry that com­pelled us to revis­it the col­lec­tion: a brows­able man­u­script of Jane Austen’s The His­to­ry of Eng­land, penned in 1791, when the author was only 15 years old.

Austen was, by and large, a home­schooled and auto­di­dac­tic child. Although she had tak­en part in some for­mal school­ing between the ages of 7 and 10, ill­ness and the family’s lack of means dic­tat­ed that she had to rely on her father’s exten­sive library for an edu­ca­tion. By the time she was fif­teen, Austen had evi­dent­ly gath­ered suf­fi­cient mate­r­i­al to fuel her writ­ing, and had com­plet­ed a his­to­ry of Eng­land, begin­ning with Hen­ry IV (1367–1413), and end­ing with Charles I (1600–1649). Above, you can see one of the book’s many illus­tra­tions drawn by Jane’s elder sis­ter, Cas­san­dra, depict­ing Edward IV, of whom Austen writes, “This Monarch was famous only for his Beau­ty & his Courage, of which the Pic­ture we have here giv­en of him, & his undaunt­ed Behav­iour in mar­ry­ing one Woman while he was engaged to anoth­er, are suf­fi­cient proofs.” In spite of its brevi­ty — the book num­bers only 36 hand­writ­ten pages — Austen’s juve­nil­ia shows unmis­tak­able signs of her dis­tinct satir­i­cal voice. The vol­ume is, in fact, a par­o­dy of the stuffy claims of objec­tiv­i­ty found in 18th cen­tu­ry grade school his­to­ry text­books, like Oliv­er Gold­smith’s The His­to­ry of Eng­land from the Ear­li­est Times to the Death of George II.  Rather than fol­low suit, Austen skips triv­i­al­i­ties such as key dates and events, not­ing to her read­ers in the intro­duc­tion to a sec­tion on Hen­ry VIII,

 “It would be an affront to my Read­ers were I to sup­pose that they were not as well acquaint­ed with the par­tic­u­lars of the King’s reign as I am myself. It will there­fore be sav­ing them the task of read­ing again what they have read before, & myself the trou­ble of writ­ing what I do not per­fect­ly rec­ol­lect, by giv­ing only a slight sketch of the prin­ci­pal Events which marked his reign”

I had the sense that Austin rel­ished writ­ing such humor­ous prose as much as I enjoyed read­ing it. Uncon­strained by the for­mal­i­ties of her medi­um, she takes to ref­er­enc­ing Shake­speare and giv­ing voice to her numer­ous opin­ions. Take, for exam­ple, her entries on Hen­ry V and Hen­ry VI:

henry austen

 Hen­ry the 5th 

This Prince after he suc­ceed­ed to the throne grew quite reformed and ami­able, for­sak­ing all his dis­si­pat­ed Com­pan­ions, & nev­er thrash­ing Sir William again. Dur­ing his reign, Lord Cob­ham was burnt alive, but I for­get what for. His Majesty then turned his thoughts to France, where he went & fought the famous Bat­tle of Agin­court. He after­wards mar­ried the King’s daugh­ter Cather­ine, a very agree­able Woman by Shake­spear’s account. Inspite of all this how­ev­er, he died, and was suc­ceed­ed by his son Hen­ry.

Hen­ry the 6th

I can­not say much for this Monar­ch’s sense. Nor would I if I could, for he was a Lan­cas­tri­an. I sup­pose you know all about the Wars between him & the Duke of York who was of the right side; if you do not, you had bet­ter read some oth­er His­to­ry, for I shall not be very dif­fuse in this, mean­ing by it only to vent my Spleen against, & shew my Hatred to all those peo­ple whose par­ties or prin­ci­ples do not suit with mine, & not to give infor­ma­tion. This King mar­ried Mar­garet of Anjou, a Woman whose dis­tress­es & mis­for­tunes were so great as almost to make me who hate her, pity her. It was in this reign that Joan of Arc lived & made such a row among the Eng­lish. They should not have burnt her — but they did. 

mary austen

The whole book, includ­ing the above pages on Queens Mary and Eliz­a­beth, may be viewed at the British library’s web­site.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Stamp Col­lec­tion Cel­e­brates Six Nov­els by Jane Austen

Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Find Jane Austen’s Works in Our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks Col­lec­tions

 

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David Foster Wallace’s Surprising List of His 10 Favorite Books, from C.S. Lewis to Tom Clancy

in Books, Literature | February 18th, 2014

wallace syllabus

Image by Steve Rhodes, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Like many David Fos­ter Wal­lace fans, I bought a copy of J. Ped­er Zane’s The Top Ten (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here), a com­pi­la­tion of var­i­ous famous writ­ers’ top-ten-books lists, express­ly for DFW’s con­tri­bu­tion. Like most of those David Fos­ter Wal­lace fans, I felt more than a lit­tle sur­prised when I turned to his page and found out which ten books he’d cho­sen. Here, as quot­ed in the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, we have the Infi­nite Jest author and wide­ly rec­og­nized (if reluc­tant) “high-brow” lit­er­ary fig­ure’s top ten list:

1. The Screw­tape Let­ters, by C.S. Lewis

2. The Stand, by Stephen King

3. Red Drag­on, by Thomas Har­ris

4. The Thin Red Line, by James Jones

5. Fear of Fly­ing, by Eri­ca Jong

6. The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Har­ris

7. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Hein­lein

8. Fuzz, by Ed McBain

9. Alli­ga­tor, by Shel­ley Katz

10. The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clan­cy

Thrillers, killers, and a dose of Chris­tian­i­ty to top it off; I did­n’t blame Zane when he asked, “Is he seri­ous? Beats me. To be hon­est, I don’t know what Wal­lace was think­ing. But I do think there’s a cer­tain integri­ty to his list.” Wal­lace him­self seemed to read assid­u­ous­ly all over the map — or, more to the point, all up and down the scale of crit­i­cal respectabil­i­ty. Rat­tling off  “the stuff that’s sort of rung my cher­ries” to Salon’s Lau­ra Miller in 1996, for a con­trast, he named, among oth­er wor­thy reads, Socrates’ funer­al ora­tion, John Donne, “Keats’ short­er stuff,” Schopen­hauer, William James’ Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence, Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus, Joyce’s Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man, Hem­ing­way’s In Our Time, Don DeLil­lo, A.S. Byatt, Cyn­thia Ozick, Don­ald Barthelme, Moby-Dick, and The Great Gats­by. (You can find many of these texts in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion.)

That, some Wal­lace read­ers may think, sounds more like it. But those who’ve paid close atten­tion to Wal­lace’s lan­guage — that often breath­less­ly but hope­less­ly imi­tat­ed mix­ture of high-cal­iber vocab­u­lary, casu­al­ly spo­ken rhythm, decep­tive­ly sharp-edged per­cep­tion, shrug­ging pre­sen­ta­tion, and delib­er­ate sole­cism — know how ful­ly he simul­ta­ne­ous­ly embod­ied both “high” and “low” Eng­lish writ­ing. Just look at the Lit­er­ary Analy­sis syl­labus from his days teach­ing at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, which demands stu­dents read not just The Silence of the Lambs but anoth­er Thomas Har­ris nov­el, Black Sun­day, as well as more C.S. Lewis (in this case The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) and Stephen King (Car­rie). Lest you doubt his com­mit­ment to the seri­ous read­ing of pop­u­lar fic­tion, note the pres­ence of Jack­ie Collins’ Rock Star. In the class­room and in life, Wal­lace must tru­ly have believed that there exists no low fic­tion; just low ways of read­ing fic­tion.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Free: F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise, the 1927 Masterpiece Voted the 5th Best Movie of All Time

in Film | February 17th, 2014

sunrise-movie-poster-197

Ger­man direc­tor F.W. Murnau’s silent mas­ter­piece Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) is a rare exam­ple of a for­eign auteur who man­aged to keep his vision in the face of the Hol­ly­wood machine.

Pri­or to this movie, F. W. Mur­nau was arguably the most impor­tant film direc­tor of his time. He direct­ed a string of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist works that were as bleak and brood­ing as they were tech­ni­cal­ly bril­liant. Murnau’s eeri­ly, hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Nos­fer­atu (1922) rede­fined the hor­ror movie. The spec­tac­u­lar­ly depress­ing Der Let­zte Mann (1924) fea­tured a rov­ing cam­era, dou­ble-expo­sure and forced per­spec­tive to bril­liant­ly evoke the shame, humil­i­a­tion and (in one tour-de-force sequence) drunk­en­ness of a proud door­man demot­ed to a wash­room atten­dant. And his adap­ta­tion of Faust (1926) was the most lav­ish, expen­sive movie Ger­many had ever pro­duced at the time.

Enter William Fox, a Jew­ish-Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who found­ed the Fox Film Cor­po­ra­tion. Though his stu­dio was mod­er­ate­ly suc­cess­ful pro­duc­ing Tom Mix seri­als, he aspired to some­thing greater; he aspired to art. Fox con­vinced Mur­nau to make the jump to Hol­ly­wood, in part by agree­ing to build a $200,000 set for the movie — an astro­nom­i­cal sum in those days.

Sun­rise opens with a series of title cards that announce just what this movie is about:

This song of the man and his wife is of no place and every place; you might hear it any­where at any time. For wher­ev­er the sun ris­es and sets in the city’s tur­moil or under the open sky on the farm, life is much the same; some­times bit­ter, some­times sweet.

Mur­nau and his screen­writer Carl Mey­er (who also wrote Der Let­zte Mann) made the plot­line so sim­ple, so uni­ver­sal that the char­ac­ters don’t even have names.

A strug­gling farmer is smit­ten with a femme fatale from the city. She invei­gles him to drown his young wife and run off to the city with her. But when it comes time to do the deed, he real­izes that he can’t do it. When the wife flees from him, he fol­lows her into the city, apol­o­giz­ing pro­fuse­ly. Even­tu­al­ly, he and his remark­ably for­giv­ing wife rec­on­cile and rekin­dle their love for one oth­er. The sto­ry is so ele­men­tal that it could be a fairy tale.

Yet Murnau’s abil­i­ty to spin absolute­ly daz­zling images — using tech­nol­o­gy per­fect­ed in Ger­many – is what makes Sun­rise so mem­o­rable. At one point in the movie, the cam­era seem­ing­ly floats over a crowd in an amuse­ment park; at anoth­er the lovers walk down a city street that, with­out a cut, trans­forms into a flow­er­ing mead­ow. Com­pared to his Hol­ly­wood con­tem­po­raries – D.W. Grif­fith for exam­ple – Murnau’s movie seems vital, mod­ern, and sur­pris­ing­ly poignant.

Though the movie earned a few Oscars – includ­ing one for Best Unique and Artis­tic Pro­duc­tion and one for Best Actress for Janet Gaynor — Sun­rise suf­fered the fate of many cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces: It flopped. Yet over the years, its crit­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion has only grown. In 2012, it was named the 5th best movie of all time by Sight and Sound mag­a­zine just ahead of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike Kubrick’s sci-fi saga, how­ev­er, you can watch Sun­rise for free on Archive.org. Check it out. Also find the clas­sic on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, Named the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Watch Ten of the Great­est Silent Films of All Time — All Free Online

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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