Watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Groundbreaking, Six-Minute Trailer for Psycho (1960)

in Film | March 18th, 2025

The ear­ly trail­er for Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Psy­cho above describes the film as “the pic­ture you MUST see from the begin­ning… or not at all!” That’s good advice, giv­en how ear­ly in the film its first big twist arrives. But it was also a pol­i­cy: “Every the­atre man­ag­er, every­where, has been instruct­ed to admit no one after the start of each per­for­mance of Psy­cho,” declares Hitch­cock him­self in its print adver­tise­ments. “We said no one — not even the man­ager’s broth­er, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States or the Queen of Eng­land (God bless her).” Even in 1960, ordi­nary movie­go­ers still had the habit of enter­ing and leav­ing the the­ater when­ev­er they pleased. With Psy­cho’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign, Hitch­cock meant to alter their rela­tion­ship to cin­e­ma itself.

As for the trail­er’s form and con­tent, audi­ences would nev­er have seen any­thing like it before. Con­tain­ing no actu­al footage from the film — and indeed, con­sti­tut­ing some­thing of a short film itself — it instead offers a tour of its main loca­tions per­son­al­ly guid­ed by Hitch­cock. Those are, of course, the Bates Motel and its pro­pri­etor’s house, “which is, if I may say so, a lit­tle more sin­is­ter look­ing, less inno­cent-look­ing than the motel itself. And in this house, the most dire, hor­ri­ble events took place.”

In his telling, these build­ings are not film sets, but the gen­uine sites of heinous crimes, about which he proves only too hap­py to pro­vide sug­ges­tive details. We com­plain that today’s trail­ers “give the movie away,” and that seems to be Hitch­cock­’s enter­prise here.

But after these six min­utes, what, in a world that had yet to see Psy­cho, would you real­ly know about the movie? It would seem to involve some sort of gris­ly mur­ders, and you’d sure­ly be dying, as it were, to know of what sort and how gris­ly. Who, more­over, could fail to be star­tled and intrigued by Hitch­cock­’s sud­den reveal of a scream­ing blonde woman behind the motel-room show­er cur­tain? Hitch fans might have rec­og­nized her as Vera Miles, who’d been in The Wrong Man in 1956 and the first episode of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents the next year. They might also have noticed the name of no less a movie star than Janet Leigh, and won­dered what she was doing in such a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic-look­ing genre pic­ture. One thing is cer­tain: when they final­ly did take their seat for Psy­cho — before show­time, of course — they had no idea what they were in for.

Relat­ed con­tent:

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

Alfred Hitchcock’s Strict Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho in The­aters (1960)

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

Hitch­cock (Antho­ny Hop­kins) Pitch­es Janet Leigh (Scar­lett Johans­son) on the Famous Show­er Scene

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the Only Time Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton Performed Together On-Screen (1952)

in Film, History | March 13th, 2025

Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton were the two biggest com­e­dy stars of the silent era, but as it hap­pened, they nev­er shared the screen until well into the reign of sound. In fact, their col­lab­o­ra­tion did­n’t come about until 1952, the same year that Sin­gin’ in the Rain dra­ma­tized the already dis­tant-feel­ing advent of talk­ing pic­tures. That hit musi­cal deals with once-famous artists cop­ing with a chang­ing world, and so, in its own way, does Lime­light, the film that final­ly brought Chap­lin and Keaton togeth­er, deal­ing as it does with a washed-up music-hall star in the Lon­don of 1914.

A spe­cial­ist in down­trod­den pro­tag­o­nists, Chap­lin — who hap­pened to have made his own tran­si­tion from vaude­ville to motion pic­tures in 1914 — nat­u­ral­ly plays that star­ring role. Keaton appears only late in the film, as an old part­ner of Chap­lin’s char­ac­ter who takes the stage with him to per­form a duet at a ben­e­fit con­cert that promis­es the sal­va­tion of their careers. In real­i­ty, this scene had some of that same appeal for Keaton him­self, who had yet to recov­er finan­cial­ly or pro­fes­sion­al­ly after a ruinous divorce in the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties, and had been strug­gling for trac­tion on the new medi­um of tele­vi­sion.

Though Lime­light may be a sound film, and Chap­lin and Keaton’s scene may be a musi­cal num­ber, what they exe­cute togeth­er is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, a work of silent com­e­dy. Chap­lin plays the vio­lin and Keaton plays the piano, but before either of them can get a note out of their instru­ments, they must first deal with a series of tech­ni­cal mishaps and wardrobe mal­func­tions. This is in keep­ing with a theme both per­form­ers essayed over and over again in their silent hey­day: that of the human being made inept by the com­pli­ca­tions of an inhu­man world.

But of course, Chap­lin and Keaton’s char­ac­ters usu­al­ly found their ways to tri­umph at least tem­porar­i­ly over that world in the end, and so it comes to pass in Lime­light — moments before the hap­less vio­lin­ist him­self pass­es on, the vic­tim of an onstage heart attack. In the real world, both of these two icons from a bygone age had at least anoth­er act ahead of them, Chap­lin with more films to direct back in his native Eng­land and Europe, and Keaton as a kind of liv­ing leg­end for hire, called up when­ev­er Hol­ly­wood need­ed a shot of what had been redis­cov­ered — not least thanks to TV’s re-cir­cu­la­tion of old movies — as the mag­ic of silent pic­tures.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

When Char­lie Chap­lin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dic­ta­tor Speech Came About

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About

in Film, History | March 11th, 2025

Char­lie Chap­lin came up in vaude­ville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mas­tery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skep­ti­cism about sound when it came along: in 1931, he called the silent pic­ture “a uni­ver­sal means of expres­sion,” where­as the talkies, as they were then known, “nec­es­sar­i­ly have a lim­it­ed field.” Nev­er­the­less, he was too astute a read­er of pub­lic tastes to believe he could stay silent for­ev­er, though he only began to speak onscreen on his own terms — lit­er­al­ly, in the case of Mod­ern Times. In that cel­e­brat­ed film, his icon­ic char­ac­ter the Tramp sings a song, but does so in an unin­tel­li­gi­ble hash of cod French and Ital­ian, and yet still some­how gets his mean­ing across, just as he had in all his silent movies before.

That scene appears in the Cin­e­maS­tix video essay above on “the moment the most famous silent come­di­an opens his mouth,” which comes not in Mod­ern Times but The Great Dic­ta­tor, Chap­lin’s 1940 send-up of the then-ascen­dant Adolf Hitler. In it, Chap­lin plays two roles: the nar­row-mus­ta­chioed Hitler par­o­dy Ade­noid Hynkel who “speaks” in a tonal­ly and rhyth­mi­cal­ly con­vinc­ing ersatz Ger­man, and a Tramp-like Jew­ish Bar­ber interned by Hynkel’s regime whose only lines come at the film’s very end.

Dressed as the dic­ta­tor in order to escape the camp, the Bar­ber sud­den­ly finds him­self giv­ing a speech at a vic­to­ry parade. When he speaks, he famous­ly does so in Chap­lin’s nat­ur­al voice, express­ing sen­ti­ments that sound like Chap­lin’s own: inveigh­ing against “machine men with machine minds,” mak­ing a plea for lib­er­ty, broth­er­hood, and good­will toward men.

Though it may have been Chap­lin’s biggest box-office hit, The Great Dic­ta­tor isn’t his most crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­ture. When it was made, the Unit­ed States had yet to enter the war, and the full nature of what the Nazis were doing in Europe had­n’t yet come to light. This film’s rela­tion­ship with actu­al his­tor­i­cal events thus feels uneasy, as if Chap­lin him­self was­n’t sure how light or heavy a tone to strike. Even his cli­mac­tic speech was only cre­at­ed as a replace­ment for an intend­ed final dance sequence, though he did work at it, writ­ing and revis­ing over a peri­od of months. It’s more than a lit­tle iron­ic that The Great Dic­ta­tor is main­ly remem­bered for a scene in which a com­ic genius to whom words were noth­ing as against image and move­ment for­goes all the tech­niques that made him a star — and indeed, for­goes com­e­dy itself.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Char­lie Chaplin’s Final Speech in The Great Dic­ta­tor: A State­ment Against Greed, Hate, Intol­er­ance & Fas­cism (1940)

Char­lie Chap­lin Finds Com­e­dy Even in the Bru­tal­i­ty of WWI: A Scene from Shoul­der Arms (1918)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

How Char­lie Chap­lin Used Ground­break­ing Visu­al Effects to Shoot the Death-Defy­ing Roller Skate Scene in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the Sci-Fi Short Film “I’m Not a Robot”: Winner of a 2025 Academy Award

in Film, Sci Fi | March 7th, 2025

Vic­to­ria Warmer­dam, the writer and direc­tor of the short film, “I’m Not a Robot,” sum­ma­rizes the plot of her 22-minute film as fol­lows: The film “tells the sto­ry of Lara, a music pro­duc­er who spi­rals into an exis­ten­tial cri­sis after repeat­ed­ly fail­ing a CAPTCHA test—leading her to ques­tion whether she might actu­al­ly be a robot. Through a dark comedic lens, [the film] explores themes of iden­ti­ty, self-deter­mi­na­tion, love, and tech­nol­o­gy in a world where the line between human­i­ty and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is becom­ing increas­ing­ly blurred.” This past week­end, “I’m Not a Robot” won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short, mark­ing the first time a Dutch short film received this hon­or. Dis­trib­uted by The New York­er, “I’m Not a Robot” can be viewed free online. We’re adding it to our col­lec­tion of 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 

Glass: The Oscar-Win­ning “Per­fect Short Doc­u­men­tary” on Dutch Glass­mak­ing (1958)

The Clas­sic 1956 Oscar-Win­ning Children’s Film, The Red Bal­loon

Watch This Year’s Oscar-Win­ning Short The Neighbor’s Win­dow, a Sur­pris­ing Tale of Urban Voyeurism

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

 

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The Classic 1972 Concert Film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii Gets Restored & Will Soon Hit IMAX Theaters

in Film, Music | March 6th, 2025

Today, when we watch genre-defin­ing con­cert films like Mon­terey Pop, Wood­stock, Gimme Shel­ter, or Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, we look upon the audi­ence with near­ly as much inter­est as we do the per­form­ers. But Pink Floyd nev­er did things in quite the same way as oth­er rock bands of that era. In 1972, they put out a con­cert film with no audi­ence at all, sub­sti­tut­ing for visu­al inter­est the majes­tic ruins of the ancient Roman amphithe­ater in Pom­peii. Pink Floyd at Pom­peii – MCMLXXII has late­ly been restored, and you can see the trail­er for its upcom­ing world­wide cin­e­mas-and-IMAX re-release above.

Even with­out the unpre­dictable ele­ment of atten­dees (apart from a few local chil­dren who snuck in to watch), the pro­duc­tion had its dif­fi­cul­ties. Ever musi­cal­ly rig­or­ous, the Floyd insist­ed on play­ing live with their actu­al tour­ing gear, which took three days to truck over from Lon­don.

Only then was it dis­cov­ered that the amphithe­ater did­n’t have enough elec­tric­i­ty avail­able to pow­er it all, which ulti­mate­ly required run­ning a half-mile-long exten­sion cord to the town hall. Though hard­ly unim­pres­sive, the result­ing footage fell short of fea­ture length, which required sup­ple­men­tary shoot­ing at the con­sid­er­ably less his­toric Stu­dio Europa­sonor in Paris.

Pink Floyd at Pom­peii – MCMLXXII was orig­i­nal­ly meant, in part, to pro­mote their then-lat­est-release Med­dle. That album is best remem­bered for “Echoes,” which occu­pies the entire­ty of side two, and which fore­shad­owed the kinds of ambi­tious com­po­si­tions of which the post-Syd Bar­rett ver­sion of the Floyd would be capa­ble. The film splits it up into two parts, one to open it and the oth­er to close it; you can get a taste of this live ren­di­tion from the clip just above. In between the two halves of “Echoes” come songs like “Care­ful with That Axe, Eugene,” “A Saucer­ful of Secrets,” and “Made­moi­selle Nobs,” as well as footage of the band in the stu­dio, at work on their next project: an album called The Dark Side of the Moon.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

Watch the Rare Reunions of Pink Floyd: Con­certs from 2005, 2010 & 2011

David Gilmour Makes His Live at Pom­peii Con­cert Film Free to Watch Online

Take a High Def, Guid­ed Tour of Pom­peii

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Andrei Tarkovsky’s Message to Young People: “Learn to Be Alone,” Enjoy Solitude

in Film, Life | March 3rd, 2025

I remem­ber the first time I sat down and watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s lyri­cal, mean­der­ing sci-fi epic Stalk­er. It was a long time ago, before the advent of smart­phones and tablets. I watched a beat-up VHS copy on a non-“smart” TV, and had no abil­i­ty to pause every few min­utes and swing by Face­book, Twit­ter, or Insta­gram for some instant dis­trac­tion and dig­i­tal small talk. The almost three-hour film—with its long, lan­guid takes and end­less stretch­es of silence—is a med­i­ta­tive exer­cise, a test in patience that at times seems like its own reward.

I recall at the time think­ing about how didac­tic Tarkovsky’s work is, in the best pos­si­ble sense of the word. It teach­es its view­ers to watch, lis­ten, and wait. It’s a course best tak­en alone, like the jour­ney into the film’s mys­te­ri­ous “Zone,” since the pres­ence of anoth­er, like­ly per­plexed, view­er might break the qui­et spell the movie casts. But while watch­ing a Tarkovsky film—whether Stalk­er, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, or any of his oth­er pen­sive cre­ations (watch them online here)—may be a soli­tary activ­i­ty, it need not at all be a lone­ly one.

The dis­tinc­tion between healthy soli­tude and lone­li­ness is one Tarkovsky is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in. It’s a cin­e­mat­ic theme he pur­sues, and a ped­a­gog­i­cal one as well. In the video above from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, Tarkovsky offers some thought­ful insights that can only seem all the more rel­e­vant to today’s always-on, mul­ti-screen cul­ture. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sub­ti­tles trans­late his words selec­tive­ly, but Maria Popo­va at The Mar­gin­a­lian has a full trans­la­tion of the filmmaker’s answer to the ques­tion “What would you like to tell young peo­ple?” Like some ancient Pan dis­pens­ing time­less wis­dom, Tarkovsky reclines in an old, gnarled tree—on what may very well be one of his wild, wood­ed film sets—and says,

I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as pos­si­ble by them­selves. I think one of the faults of young peo­ple today is that they try to come togeth­er around events that are noisy, almost aggres­sive at times. This desire to be togeth­er in order to not feel alone is an unfor­tu­nate symp­tom, in my opin­ion. Every per­son needs to learn from child­hood how to spend time with one­self. That doesn’t mean he should be lone­ly, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with him­self because peo­ple who grow bored in their own com­pa­ny seem to me in dan­ger, from a self-esteem point of view.

Though I speak as one who grew up in an ana­logue world free from social media—the only world Tarkovsky ever knew—I don’t think it’s just the cranky old man in me who finds this advice com­pelling­ly sound. As a Tom Tomor­row car­toon satir­i­cal­ly illus­trat­ed, our rapid-fire, pres­sure-cook­er pub­lic dis­course may grant us instant access to information—or misinformation—but it also encour­ages, nay urges, us to form hasty opin­ions, ignore nuance and sub­tleties, and par­tic­i­pate in group­think rather than digest­ing things slow­ly and com­ing to our own con­clu­sions. It’s an envi­ron­ment par­tic­u­lar­ly hos­tile to medi­ums like poet­ry, or the kinds of poet­ic films Tarkovsky made, which teach us the val­ue of judg­ment with­held, and immerse us in the kinds of aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ences the inter­net and tele­vi­sion, with their non­stop chat­ter, push to the mar­gins.

Tarkovsky’s gen­er­al advice to young peo­ple can be paired with his chal­leng­ing advice to young film­mak­ers, and all artists, in par­tic­u­lar—advice that demands focused atten­tion, patience, and com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual pas­sion and vision.

Props to The Mar­gin­a­lian for the trans­la­tion.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films Free Online: Stalk­er, The Mir­ror & Andrei Rublev

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists the Best and Worst Sci-Fi Movies: The Blob, Back to the Future, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

in Film, Sci Fi | February 24th, 2025

Neil deGrasse Tyson may not be a film crit­ic. But if you watch the video above from his Youtube chan­nel StarTalk Plus, you’ll see that — to use one of his own favorite locu­tions — he loves him a good sci­ence fic­tion movie. Giv­en his pro­fes­sion­al cre­den­tials as an astro­physi­cist and his high pub­lic pro­file as a sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor, it will hard­ly come as a sur­prise that he dis­plays a cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ty to cin­e­mat­ic depar­tures from sci­en­tif­ic fact. His per­son­al low water­mark on that rubric is the 1979 Dis­ney pro­duc­tion The Black Hole, which moves him to declare, “I don’t think they had a physi­cist in sight of any scene that was script­ed, pre­pared, and filmed for this movie.”

As for Tyson’s “sin­gle favorite movie of all time,” that would be The Matrix, despite how the humans-as-bat­ter­ies con­cept cen­tral to its plot vio­lates the laws of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. (Over time, that par­tic­u­lar choice has been revealed as a typ­i­cal exam­ple of med­dling by stu­dio exec­u­tives, who thought audi­ences would­n’t under­stand the orig­i­nal scrip­t’s con­cept of humans being used for decen­tral­ized com­put­ing.) The Matrix receives an S, Tyson’s high­est grade, which beats out even the A he grants to Rid­ley Scot­t’s The Mar­t­ian, from 2015, “the most sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accu­rate film I have ever wit­nessed” — except for the dust storm that strands its pro­tag­o­nist on Mars, whose low air den­si­ty means we would feel even its high­est winds as “a gen­tle breeze.”

You might expect Tyson to poke these sorts of holes in every sci-fi movie he sees, no mat­ter how obvi­ous­ly schlocky. And indeed he does, though not with­out also show­ing a healthy respect for the fun of film­go­ing. Even Michael Bay’s noto­ri­ous­ly pre­pos­ter­ous Armaged­don, whose oil-drillers-defeat-an-aster­oid con­ceit was mocked on set by star Ben Affleck, receives a gen­tle­man’s C. While it “vio­lates more laws of physics per minute than any oth­er film ever made,” Tyson explains (not­ing it’s since been out­done by Roland Emmerich’s Moon­fall), “I don’t care that it vio­lat­ed the law of physics, because it did­n’t care.” For a more sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly respectable alter­na­tive, con­sid­er Mimi Led­er’s Deep Impact, the less­er-known of 1998’s two Hol­ly­wood aster­oid-dis­as­ter spec­ta­cles.

If you’re think­ing of hold­ing a Tyson-approved sci-fi film fes­ti­val at home, you’ll also want to include The Qui­et Earth, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Back to the Future, Con­tact, and Grav­i­ty, not to men­tion the nine­teen-fifties clas­sics The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Blob. But what­ev­er else you screen, the expe­ri­ence would be incom­plete with­out 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stan­ley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s joint vision of man in space. “Am I on LSD, or is the movie on LSD?” he asks. “One of us is on LSD for the last twen­ty min­utes of the film.” But “what mat­ters is how much influ­ence this film had on every­thing — on every­thing — and how much atten­tion they gave to detail.” If you’ve ever seen 2001 before, go into it with an open mind — and bear in it the fact that, as Tyson under­scores, it was all made a year before we reached the moon.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Arthur C. Clarke Cre­ates a List of His 12 Favorite Sci­ence-Fic­tion Movies (1984)

How Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon Became the First Sci-Fi Film & Changed Cin­e­ma For­ev­er (1902)

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Under­stand­ing Chris Marker’s Rad­i­cal Sci-Fi Film La Jetée: A Study Guide Dis­trib­uted to High Schools in the 1970s

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

A Con­cise Break­down of How Time Trav­el Works in Pop­u­lar Movies, Books & TV Shows

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More

in Film | February 12th, 2025

In 1913, Ger­many, flush with a new nation’s patri­ot­ic zeal, looked like it might become the dom­i­nant nation of Europe and a real rival to that glob­al super­pow­er Great Britain. Then it hit the buz­z­saw of World War I. After the Ger­man gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in 1918 from the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al toll of a half-decade of sense­less car­nage, the Allies forced it to accept dra­con­ian terms for sur­ren­der. The entire Ger­man cul­ture was sent reel­ing, search­ing for answers to what hap­pened and why.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism came about to artic­u­late these lac­er­at­ing ques­tions roil­ing in the nation’s col­lec­tive uncon­scious. The first such film was The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (1920), about a malev­o­lent trav­el­ing magi­cian who has his ser­vant do his mur­der­ous bid­ding in the dark of the night. The sto­ry­line is all about the Freudi­an ter­ror of hid­den sub­con­scious dri­ves, but what real­ly makes the movie mem­o­rable is its com­plete­ly unhinged look. Marked by styl­ized act­ing, deep shad­ows paint­ed onto the walls, and sets filled with twist­ed archi­tec­tur­al impos­si­bil­i­ties — there might not be a sin­gle right angle in the film – Cali­gari’s look per­fect­ly mesh­es with the nar­ra­tor’s dement­ed state of mind.

Sub­se­quent Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies retreat­ed from the extreme aes­thet­ics of Cali­gari but were still filled with a mood of vio­lence, frus­tra­tion and unease. F. W. Mur­nau’s bril­liant­ly depress­ing The Last Laugh (1924) is about a proud door­man at a high-end hotel who is uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of his posi­tion and demot­ed to a low­ly bath­room atten­dant. When he hands over his uni­form, his pos­ture col­laps­es as if the jack­et were his exoskele­ton. You don’t need to be a semi­oti­cian to fig­ure out that the doorman’s loss of sta­tus par­al­lels Germany’s. Fritz Lang’s M (1931), a land­mark of ear­ly sound film, is the first ser­i­al killer movie ever made. But what starts out as a police pro­ce­dur­al turns into some­thing even more unset­tling when a gang of dis­tinct­ly Nazi-like crim­i­nals decide to mete out some jus­tice of their own.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism end­ed in 1933 when the Nazis came to pow­er. They weren’t inter­est­ed in ask­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions and viewed such dark tales of cin­e­mat­ic angst as unpa­tri­ot­ic. Instead, they pre­ferred bright, cheer­ful tales of Aryan youths climb­ing moun­tains. By that time, the movement’s most tal­ent­ed direc­tors — Fritz Lang and F.W. Mur­nau — had fled to Amer­i­ca. And it was in Amer­i­ca where Ger­man Expres­sion­ism found its biggest impact. Its stark light­ing, grotesque shad­ows and bleak world­view would go on to pro­found­ly influ­ence film noir in the late 1940s after anoth­er hor­rif­ic, dis­il­lu­sion­ing war. See our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films here.

You can watch 10 Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies – includ­ing Cali­gari, Last Laugh and M — for free below.

  • Nos­fer­atu — Free — Ger­man Expres­sion­ist hor­ror film direct­ed by F. W. Mur­nau. An unau­tho­rized adap­ta­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. (1922)
  • The Stu­dent of Prague — Free — A clas­sic of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film. Ger­man writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and Dan­ish direc­tor Stel­lan Rye bring to life a 19th-cen­tu­ry hor­ror sto­ry. Some call it the first indie film. (1913)
  • Nerves — Free — Direct­ed by Robert Rein­ert, Nerves tells of “the polit­i­cal dis­putes of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­to­ry own­er Herr Roloff and Teacher John, who feels a com­pul­sive but secret love for Rolof­f’s sis­ter, a left-wing rad­i­cal.” (1919)
  • The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari — Free — This silent film direct­ed by Robert Wiene is con­sid­ered one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist films and per­haps one of the great­est hor­ror movies of all time. (1920)
  • Metrop­o­lis — Free — Fritz Lang’s fable of good and evil fight­ing it out in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia. An impor­tant clas­sic. (1927)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — A fol­low-up to Paul Wegen­er’s ear­li­er film, “The Golem,” about a mon­strous crea­ture brought to life by a learned rab­bi to pro­tect the Jews from per­se­cu­tion in medieval Prague. Based on the clas­sic folk tale, and co-direct­ed by Carl Boese. (1920)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — The same film as the one list­ed imme­di­ate­ly above, but this one has a score cre­at­ed by Pix­ies front­man Black Fran­cis. (2008)
  • The Last Laugh - Free — F.W. Mur­nau’s clas­sic cham­ber dra­ma about a hotel door­man who falls on hard times. A mas­ter­piece of the silent era, the sto­ry is told almost entire­ly in pic­tures. (1924)
  • Faust — Free - Ger­man expres­sion­ist film­mak­er F.W. Mur­nau directs a film ver­sion of Goethe’s clas­sic tale. This was Mur­nau’s last Ger­man movie. (1926)
  • Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans — Free — Made by the Ger­man expres­sion­ist direc­tor F.W. Mur­nau. Vot­ed in 2012, the 5th great­est film of all time. (1927)
  • M — Free — Clas­sic film direct­ed by Fritz Lang, with Peter Lorre. About the search for a child mur­der­er in Berlin. (1931)

For more clas­sic films, peruse our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is Ger­man Expres­sion­ism? A Crash Course on the Cin­e­mat­ic Tra­di­tion That Gave Us Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Gave Rise to the “Dutch” Angle, the Cam­era Shot That Defined Clas­sic Films by Welles, Hitch­cock, Taran­ti­no & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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