Watch the First Sherlock Holmes Movie (1900), the Arrival of the Most Popular Character in Cinema

in Film, Literature | May 13th, 2016

Accord­ing to Guin­ness World Records, the human lit­er­ary char­ac­ter who pops up most often on screens big and small is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s best known cre­ation, Sher­lock Holmes. (Ham­let is a dis­tant sec­ond.)

The list of actors who’ve had a go include Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Robert Downey, Jr., Ian McK­ellen, Michael Caine, and Basil Rath­bone.

John Cleese spoofed him on Com­e­dy Play­house.

John Giel­gud’s cel­e­brat­ed voice brought Holmes to life oppo­site Ralph Richardson’s Dr. Wat­son in a 1954 radio series.

The fic­tion­al detec­tive time warped onto Fan­ta­sy Island and the holodeck of the Star­ship Enter­prise, in the respec­tive form of Peter Law­ford and Brett “Data” Spin­er.

Although Holmes main­tained that “the fair sex was (Watson’s) depart­ment,” the Sovi­et Union’s My Ten­der­ly Loved Detec­tive fea­tured actress Yeka­te­ri­na Vasi­lye­va as a female Sher­lock named Shirley.

But no one has solved the mys­tery of 1900’s Sher­lock Holmes Baf­fled, above, the very first filmed enter­tain­ment to fea­ture the char­ac­ter. The direc­tor and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er was Arthur W. Mar­vin, who went on to serve as cam­era­man for D. W. Grif­fith’s ear­ly silent films. The iden­ti­ty of his star­ring actor has unfor­tu­nate­ly been lost to the ages.

The film itself was believed lost, too, until Michael Point­er, a his­to­ri­an spe­cial­iz­ing in Sher­lock Holme­siana, unearthed a paper copy in a Library of Con­gress archive. A series of indi­vid­ual cards, it was intend­ed to be viewed by Muto­scope, a sin­gle view­er, crank-oper­at­ed peep show device, com­mon in turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry arcades.

No doubt audi­ences who paid a pen­ny to watch this fair­ly plot­less 30-sec­ond adven­ture were more impressed by the spe­cial effects than the anony­mous actor play­ing the icon­ic detec­tive.

To see how this mys­tery man’s per­for­mance mea­sures up against oth­er cin­e­mat­ic Sher­locks, check out these Holmes films found on the web. And find oth­er great films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More:

  • • The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes  – Free – The film is adapt­ed from the 1899 play “Sher­lock Holmes” by William Gillette, and stars Basil Rath­bone, Nigel Bruce, Ida Lupino, George Zuc­co and Alan Mar­shal. (1939)
  • • Dressed to Kill – Free – The last of 14 films star­ring Basil Rath­bone as Sher­lock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doc­tor Wat­son. (1941)
  • • Sher­lock Holmes and the Secret Weapon – Free – Sher­lock Holmes res­cues an inven­tor of a new bomb site before the Nazis can get him. (1943)
  • • The Woman in Green – Free – Sher­lock Holmes inves­ti­gates when young women around Lon­don turn up mur­dered, each with a fin­ger sev­ered off. Scot­land Yard sus­pects a mad­man, but Holmes believes the killings to be part of a dia­bol­i­cal plot. Stars Basil Rath­bone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Wat­son. (1945)
  • • Ter­ror by Night – Free – Sher­lock Holmes film, the thir­teenth to star Basil Rath­bone and Nigel Bruce and was direct­ed by Roy William Neill. The sto­ry revolves around the theft of a famous dia­mond aboard a train. (1946)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Lost Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ry That Was Just Dis­cov­ered in an Attic in Scot­land

Hear The New Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes, the Vin­tage Radio Dra­ma Star­ring John Giel­gud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richard­son

Arthur Conan Doyle Names His 19 Favorite Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ries

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

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

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Watch the Pioneering Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-American Filmmaker

in Film, History | May 12th, 2016

You may nev­er have heard of Oscar Micheaux, but out of his “impov­er­ished con­scious­ness-rais­ing exploita­tion pot­boil­ers,” writes crit­ic Dave Kehr, “the Amer­i­can black cin­e­ma was born.” Kehr wrote that in a brief review of Micheaux’s Mur­der in Harlem, a “1935 mys­tery tale involv­ing corpses and mys­te­ri­ous let­ters and flash­backs and Byzan­tine plot twists, all of which should undoubt­ed­ly prove tax­ing to Micheaux’s mea­ger tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties. It hard­ly mat­ters though, since Micheaux was his own cin­e­mat­ic insti­tu­tion.”

That movie came in the late-mid­dle peri­od of Micheaux’s career, which pro­duced more than 44 pic­tures and qual­i­fied him as the most pro­lif­ic black inde­pen­dent film­mak­er in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma his­to­ry as well as, in the words of Atlas Obscu­ra’s Stephanie Weber, “a pio­neer in almost every aspect of film.” Hav­ing start­ed out as a writer, he chose for his first motion pic­ture to adapt The Home­stead­er, his own nov­el “about a black home­stead­er in the Dako­tas who falls in love with the daugh­ter of a Scot­tish wid­ow­er. In 1919, Micheaux raised the mon­ey on his own to film and pro­duce The Home­stead­er in Chica­go, becom­ing the first African Amer­i­can to make a fea­ture film.”

Not only did Micheaux take on a con­tro­ver­sial theme right away by hint­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of inter­ra­cial romance (though The Home­stead­er’s love inter­est turns out, in a plot twist that must have made more sense at the time, not to actu­al­ly be white), his­to­ry has remem­bered him as stand­ing against not just the dom­i­nant social phe­nom­e­na but the dom­i­nant cin­e­mat­ic phe­nom­e­na of his day: his sec­ond film With­in Our Gates told the sto­ry of a mixed-race school­teacher whose adop­tive father stood up to the fam­i­ly’s white land­lord, osten­si­bly as a response to post-World War I social insta­bil­i­ty, though some took it as a rebuke to D.W. Grif­fith’s The Birth of a Nation.

“Giv­en the times, his accom­plish­ments in pub­lish­ing and film are extra­or­di­nary,” says NAACP His­to­ry, “includ­ing being the first African-Amer­i­can to pro­duce a film to be shown in ‘white’ movie the­aters. In his motion pic­tures, he moved away from the ‘Negro’ stereo­types being por­trayed in film at the time.” In recent years, crit­ics like Kehr and oth­ers have direct­ed a bit of atten­tion back toward Micheaux’s path-break­ing body of work, and many future lead­ing lights of black Amer­i­can cin­e­ma could no doubt ben­e­fit from dis­cov­er­ing it them­selves. But in his con­fi­dent treat­ment of sen­sa­tion­al mate­r­i­al, his cre­ativ­i­ty-induc­ing tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic lim­i­ta­tions, and his learn-on-the-job under­stand­ing of the mechan­ics of cin­e­ma, he also fore­shad­owed the excite­ment of all the waves of indie film to come.

You can watch many of Oscar Micheaux’s films free on Youtube or at the Inter­net Archive. Or find them in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

To learn more about Micheaux, read Patrick McGilli­gan’s book, Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of Amer­i­ca’s First Great Black Film­mak­er. 

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Wizard of Oz Broken Apart and Put Back Together in Alphabetical Order

in Film, Random | May 11th, 2016

WARNING: This film con­tains extreme­ly fast edit­ing, flash­es of light, abrupt changes in image and sound.

Back in 2001, Matt Bucy had the inspi­ra­tion to do some­thing tru­ly orig­i­nal — take the entire Wiz­ard of Oz, cut it up, and put it back together–this time in alpha­bet­i­cal order. And that’s pre­cise­ly what he did sev­er­al years lat­er, in 2004. A coder, Bucy cre­at­ed an app that made it easy to decon­struct the beloved 1939 film. He told Vox:

That [app] spit out a big text file with all the words and their loca­tions in the film, which I then import­ed into a spread­sheet, sort­ed in alpha­bet­i­cal and then chrono­log­i­cal order, and fed into anoth­er lit­tle pro­gram that took the sort­ed list and pro­duced the edit. So basi­cal­ly, it was edit­ed in Excel.…

All told, I think it took about sev­en days spread out over a cou­ple of months. Dis­as­sem­bly was mind-bend­ing in itself. It was lit­er­al­ly hard to talk after mov­ing word by word, or syl­la­ble by syl­la­ble, through the film. Eng­lish stopped sound­ing like lan­guage, and at times I had to stop because I could not fig­ure out what a word was — I just could­n’t hear it right.

When final­ly alpha­bet­ized, the film, says Bucy, had a sur­pris­ing ener­gy to it. A cer­tain je ne sais quoi. Yes it’s hard to describe. Maybe you can put your own words to it.

In 2016, Bucy final­ly made the alpha­bet­ized Wiz­ard of Oz avail­able to the rest of world. You can watch it here. And do heed the warn­ing above.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, Avail­able as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

Watch the Ear­li­est Sur­viv­ing Filmed Ver­sion of The Wiz­ard of Oz (1910)

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Ozin One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

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What Are the Most Beautifully & Creatively Shot Films of All Time? Cinematographers Pick Their Favorites

in Film | May 11th, 2016

To deter­mine the all-around great­est films of all time, the well-known Sight and Sound Direc­tors Poll sur­veys film­mak­ers them­selves. By that same log­ic, then, if you want to know which movies most excel in one par­tic­u­lar aspect, you’ll want to poll the peo­ple who work on that aspect of cin­e­ma: the actors will know which have the best act­ing, the edi­tors which have the best edit­ing, the sound design­ers which have the best sound design, the rig­ging grips which have the best-gripped rig­ging. And if you want to know the best-shot films of all time, you have only to ask the cin­e­matog­ra­phers.

In 1998, Amer­i­can Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er polled the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Cin­e­matog­ra­phers mem­ber­ship for the best-shot films of all time. Kristo­pher Tap­ley at Hit­flix writes that the “cin­e­matog­ra­phers were asked for their top picks in two eras: films from 1894–1949 (or the dawn of cin­e­ma through the clas­sic era), and then 1950–1997, for a top 50 in each case. Then they fol­lowed up 10 years lat­er with anoth­er poll focused on the films between 1998 and 2008.”

Here are the 1894–1949 top-ten results and their cin­e­matog­ra­phers:

  1. Cit­i­zen Kane (Gregg Toland, 1941)
  2. Gone with the Wind (Ernest Haller, Ray Ren­na­han, 1939)
  3. Sun­rise (Charles Rosh­er, Karl Struss, 1927)
  4. Metrop­o­lis (Karl Fre­und, Gün­ther Rit­tau, 1927)
  5. The Wiz­ard of Oz (Harold Rosson, 1939)
  6. The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons (Stan­ley Cortez, 1942)
  7. Casablan­ca (Arthur Edes­on, 1942)
  8. Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (Eduard Tisse, 1926)
  9. The Third Man (Robert Krasker, 1950)
  10. The Birth of a Nation (G.W. Bitzer, 1915)

“The choice of Gregg Toland’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy for Cit­i­zen Kane as the best in the first 45 years of motion pic­tures comes as no sur­prise,” writes Amer­i­can Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er’s George Turn­er. “No oth­er movie has been more praised, stud­ied and writ­ten about — or more panned, damned and black­list­ed.” At the time, “audi­ences in gen­er­al were put off by the ‘arty’ pho­tog­ra­phy, over­lap­ping dia­logue, unusu­al cut­ting and Welles’s pen­chant for inject­ing star­tling and often irri­tat­ing sound effects. It was years before the ‘new­ness’ of the Kane style wore off and gained wide­spread accep­tance,” and even absorbed into the main­stream.

And those from 1950–1997:

  1. Lawrence of Ara­bia (Fred­die Young, 1962)
  2. The God­fa­ther (Gor­don Willis, 1971)
  3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Geof­frey Unworth, 1969)
  4. Days of Heav­en (Nés­tor Almen­dros, 1978)
  5. Schindler’s List (Janusz Kamin­s­ki, 1993)
  6. Apoc­a­lypse Now (Vit­to­rio Storaro, 1979)
  7. The Con­formist (Vit­to­rio Storaro, 1970)
  8. Rag­ing Bull (Michael Chap­man, 1980)
  9. Blade Run­ner (Jor­dan Cro­nen­weth, 1982)
  10. Touch of Evil (Rus­sell Met­ty, 1958)

Turn­er calls Lawrence of Ara­bia “per­haps the crown­ing achieve­ment in the long and illus­tri­ous career of direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Fred­er­ick A. Young,” nam­ing as its most famous sin­gle image “the lin­ger­ing scene in which Omar Sharif, rid­ing a camel, is first seen as a tiny spot in a mirage on the hori­zon. In the fore­ground, Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) and an Arab youth are draw­ing water from a well when they notice the wob­bly, dis­tort­ed shape com­ing toward them. Shim­mer­ing in waves of heat and strange­ly liq­uid col­ors, the rid­er steadi­ly approach­es the well. As he gets clos­er, he is still indis­tinct, but the omi­nous thump­ing of the camel’s feet can be heard. Sharif final­ly emerges from the mirage, rais­es his rifle and shoots the Arab. The long scene car­ries a strong ele­ment of dread and sus­pense.”

Final­ly, here are the results from 1998–2008:

  1. Amélie (Bruno Del­bon­nel, 2001)
  2. Chil­dren of Men (Emmanuel Lubez­ki, 2006)
  3. Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan (Janusz Kamin­s­ki, 1998)
  4. There Will Be Blood (Robert Elswit, 2007)
  5. No Coun­try for Old Men (Roger Deakins, 2007)
  6. Fight Club (Jeff Cro­nen­weth, 1999)
  7. The Dark Knight (Wal­ly Pfis­ter, 2008)
  8. Road to Perdi­tion (Con­rad L. Hall, 2002)
  9. City of God (Cidade de Deus) (César Char­lone, 2003)
  10. Amer­i­can Beau­ty (Con­rad L. Hall, 1999)

The Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Cin­e­matog­ra­phers quotes Del­bon­nel on Amélie’s visu­al vic­to­ry: “This is real hon­or for me, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the oth­er movies in this list. These are some of the finest cin­e­matog­ra­phers, and I’m not sure I deserve to be among them, but I am very hap­py to be. They are all explor­ers.” And in that, he sums up why, when we want to know what movies to watch, we should ask the peo­ple who make movies: their real com­pe­ti­tion lies not in sim­ply gen­er­at­ing beau­ty, but in lead­ing the art form into ter­ri­to­ry unknown.

You can watch sev­er­al films on the lists–Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, Sun­rise and Metrop­o­lis–above. Find more great films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Hit­flix

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 100 Most Mem­o­rable Shots in Cin­e­ma Over the Past 100 Years

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

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

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Free Sergei Eisen­stein Films

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Clever Supercut of Writers Struggling with Writer’s Block in 53 Films: From Barton Fink to The Royal Tenenbaums

in Film, Writing | May 10th, 2016

Quite patient­ly, Ben Watts cut apart and stitched togeth­er scenes from 53 films (find a com­plete list here) show­ing char­ac­ters suf­fer­ing through writer’s block. Adap­ta­tion, Bar­ton Fink, Shake­speare in Love, The Roy­al Tenen­baums, and, yes, Throw Mom­ma From the Train–they’re among the films fea­tured in the 4‑minute super­cut above. If you give the clip a lit­tle time, you’ll see that the super­cut has an arc to it. It tells a tale, and has an end­ing that Hol­ly­wood would love.

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 and BlueSky.

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!

via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a 44-Minute Super­cut of Every Woody Allen Stam­mer, From Every Woody Allen Film

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son: A Super­cut for Bib­lio­philes

A Great Com­pi­la­tion of “The Lick” Found in Music Every­where: From Coltrane & Stravin­sky, to Christi­na Aguil­era

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Watch Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue: The PBS American Masters Documentary That’s Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Film, Music | May 4th, 2016

A very quick heads up: Until the end of the month, you can stream free online Janis Joplin: Lit­tle Girl Blue, a new doc­u­men­tary from PBS’ Amer­i­can Mas­ters series. Writes PBS:

The broad­cast fea­tures Amy Berg’s nev­er-before-seen extend­ed film cut with addi­tion­al archival per­for­mance footage and new inter­views with Jan­ice Joplin’s sis­ter Lau­ra Joplin and musi­cians influ­enced by Janis: Ale­cia Moore (a.k.a. Pink), Juli­ette Lewis, Melis­sa Etheridge and the film’s nar­ra­tor, Chan Mar­shall, who is best known as indie rock star Cat Pow­er.

The doc runs 102 min­utes, and just start­ed air­ing on tele­vi­sion on PBS this week. Enjoy.

h/t goes to Elana and Robin.

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 and BlueSky.

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:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Remem­ber­ing Janis Joplin: Some Clas­sic Live Per­for­mances and Pre­views of a New Joplin Musi­cal

Dick Cavett’s Epic Wood­stock Fes­ti­val Show (August, 1969)

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Download 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them However You Like

in Film, Internet Archive | May 3rd, 2016

Fea­tures, com­mer­cials, art pieces, stock footage, home movies, pro­pa­gan­da: the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma so far has pro­duced count­less indi­vid­ual forms, all of which also count as doc­u­men­taries. Watch any kind of film made suf­fi­cient­ly long ago and you look through a win­dow onto the atti­tudes, aes­thet­ics, and accou­trements of anoth­er time.

And if it’s one made long enough ago or of obscure enough own­er­ship to fall into the pub­lic domain, you can incor­po­rate that piece of his­to­ry into your own mod­ern, era-span­ning work in any way you like. Now, Prelinger Archives has made that eas­i­er than ever by mak­ing more than 6600 films free on the Inter­net Archive to down­load and use.

“Prelinger Archives was found­ed in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City,” says the col­lec­tion’s about page. “Over the next twen­ty years, it grew into a col­lec­tion of over 60,000 ‘ephemer­al’ (adver­tis­ing, edu­ca­tion­al, indus­tri­al, and ama­teur) films. In 2002, the film col­lec­tion was acquired by the Library of Con­gress, Motion Pic­ture, Broad­cast­ing and Record­ed Sound Divi­sion,” and now holds “approx­i­mate­ly 11,000 dig­i­tized and video­tape titles (all orig­i­nal­ly derived from film) and a large col­lec­tion of home movies, ama­teur and indus­tri­al films acquired since 2002.” Its mis­sion? “To col­lect, pre­serve, and facil­i­tate access to films of his­toric sig­nif­i­cance that haven’t been col­lect­ed else­where.”

And what can you find amid these 6000-odd pieces of ephemera host­ed on Archive.org? At first glance, they may real­ly strike you as 6000 odd pieces. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured 1958’s Have I Told You Late­ly That I Love You?, a UCLA stu­dent short Ayun Hal­l­i­day described as the tale of “a white-col­lar dad and house­wife mom… marooned in their indi­vid­ual exis­ten­tial hells, unable to con­nect” due to the labor-sav­ing devices of the day. 1965’s equal­ly cau­tion­ary (as well as often unin­ten­tion­al­ly hilar­i­ous) Per­ver­sion for Prof­it, offers a stern two-part warn­ing against the “pornog­ra­phy which may appear at the local news­stand, malt shop or drug­store.”

Mid­cen­tu­ry moral­ism man­i­fests in count­less enter­tain­ing forms across the Prelinger Archives col­lec­tion, includ­ing in Make Mine Free­dom, a Cold War car­toon treat­ment of the var­i­ous treach­er­ous “-isms” out to under­mine truth, jus­tice, and the Amer­i­can Way. That came out in 1948, just as fears start­ed roil­ing again after the Unit­ed States’ vic­to­ry in the Sec­ond World War. The year before, the hus­band-and-wife exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing team of Alexan­der Ham­mid and Maya Deren com­plet­ed The Pri­vate Life of a Cat. “Using their own cats in their own apart­ment,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Amber Frost, “they chron­i­cle the inte­ri­or world of a cat ‘fam­i­ly,’ and it’s just insane­ly com­pelling, even out­side of the cat-lady milieu!” Fur­ther down, we have House in the Mid­dle (1954), which sug­gests that a clean, tidy house can help you sur­vive an atom­ic blast.

But you don’t have to watch every­thing you dig up from the Prelinger Archives col­lec­tion in an iron­ic or avant-garde frame of mind. Some pieces, like ama­teur film­mak­er and inven­tor Tul­lio Pel­le­grini’s 1955 Cin­e­mas­cope homage to the city of San Fran­cis­co just above, offer much in the way of pure his­tor­i­cal inter­est. You can find a few more sug­ges­tions about where to start from Tim Brookes at MakeUse­Of, who high­lights even ear­li­er footage of the City by the Bay, per­haps the most gener­ic film ever made, and instruc­tions on what to do on a date as well as what to do in the event of a nuclear attack — all valu­able mate­r­i­al for those of us remix­ing his­to­ry, one ephemer­al clip at a time.

One final thing worth keep­ing in mind, the Archive comes with this invi­ta­tion:

You are warm­ly encour­aged to down­load, use and repro­duce these films in whole or in part, in any medi­um or mar­ket through­out the world. You are also warm­ly encour­aged to share, exchange, redis­trib­ute, trans­fer and copy these films, and espe­cial­ly encour­aged to do so for free. Any deriv­a­tive works that you pro­duce using these films are yours to per­form, pub­lish, repro­duce, sell, or dis­trib­ute in any way you wish with­out any lim­i­ta­tions.

If you hap­pen to get cre­ative with the films in the Archive, please feel free to share your cre­ations in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Have I Told You Late­ly That I Love You?: A 1958 Look at How Mod­ern Gad­gets & Con­ve­niences Lead to Exis­ten­tial Hell

This is Cof­fee!: A 1961 Trib­ute to Our Favorite Stim­u­lant

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

1,000,000 Min­utes of News­reel Footage by AP & British Movi­etone Released on YouTube

The Pub­lic Domain Project Makes 10,000 Film Clips, 64,000 Images & 100s of Audio Files Free to Use

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Poetic Harmony of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Filmmaking: A Video Essay

in Film | May 2nd, 2016

“What words would best describe a Tarkovsky film?” asks Lewis Bond, cre­ator of the cinephile video-essay Youtube chan­nel Chan­nel Criswell. He offers a few right away: “Haunt­ing, ethe­re­al, hyp­not­ic, serene.” But appre­ci­a­tors, schol­ars, and even crit­ics of the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, the Sovi­et direc­tor of such aus­tere yet visu­al­ly rich, seri­ous-mind­ed yet dream­like, and long artis­ti­cal­ly scru­ti­nized pic­tures as Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Stalk­er, and The Mir­ror (watch them all free online here), could come up with many more. And though the man him­self may have denied draw­ing any inspi­ra­tion from sim­i­lar­ly respect­ed film­mak­ers — Bres­son, Anto­nioni, Bergman, Kuro­sawa, Mizoguchi, “I have no desire to imi­tate any of them” — few could avoid expo­sure to his own wide­spread and last­ing influ­ence on cin­e­ma.

Why has Tarkovsky’s work made such an impact? One might argue that the answer has do to with his com­mit­ment to “pure cin­e­ma,” or in Bond’s words, “to do with film that which could­n’t be done with oth­er art forms.” Solaris may have emerged, exten­sive­ly rethought, out of the source mate­r­i­al of Stanis­law Lem’s epony­mous sci­ence fic­tion nov­el, and Stalk­er may have more recent­ly pro­vid­ed the ele­ments of a video game (which went on to become a series of nov­els itself), but none of Tarkovsky’s works can tru­ly exist out­side the medi­um, with all its emo­tion­al and expe­ri­en­tial pow­er, in which he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors made them.

In this video essay called “Poet­ic Har­mo­ny,” Bond iden­ti­fies the pure­ly cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ties of Tarkovsky’s films: from the tex­tures of their visu­al com­po­si­tion to their selec­tive use of sound (and quiet­ness as well) to build moods and the resis­tance of their abstrac­tion and ambi­gu­i­ty to intel­lec­tu­al analy­sis (despite how much view­ers con­tin­ue to fling at them); from their lack of sym­bol­ism to their build­ing of char­ac­ters through not words but action, the con­nec­tion of scenes through metaphor (as in Nos­tal­ghia, which cuts from a man who lights him­self on fire to a man who strug­gles to light a can­dle), and their use of long takes to build the “pres­sure of time.” Tarkovsky enthu­si­asts could hard­ly dis­agree, though the time soon comes to put away what The Sac­ri­fice’s cen­tral char­ac­ter calls “words, words, words” and sim­ply watch.

When you’re done watch­ing Bond’s video, you can watch many of Tarkovsky’s major films free online, thanks to Russ­ian film stu­dio Mos­film.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

“Auteur in Space”: A Video Essay on How Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Tran­scends Sci­ence Fic­tion

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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