Those who watch and dis­like Chan­tal Aker­man’s best-known film, Jeanne Diel­man, 23 quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles, often com­plain that “noth­ing hap­pens” in it. But in my expe­ri­ence of intro­duc­ing it — nay, evan­ge­liz­ing for it — to friends, it usu­al­ly only takes a sol­id view­ing or two of that 1975 three-hour-and-twen­ty-minute tale of a Bel­gian sin­gle moth­er’s days and nights spent cook­ing (a short clip of which you can see above), clean­ing, and pos­si­bly engag­ing in pros­ti­tu­tion to feel — or at least in the imme­di­ate after­math of view­ing, feel — that in no movie but Jeanne Diel­man, 23 quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles does any­thing tru­ly hap­pen. Every oth­er movie plays, by com­par­i­son, as if on fast-for­ward, or like a set of filmed Clif­f’s Notes.

Clear­ly, Aker­man saw, and real­ized, a wider sto­ry­telling poten­tial in cin­e­ma than do most film­mak­ers. So much worse the loss, then, when she died ear­li­er this month, leav­ing behind a fil­mog­ra­phy con­sist­ing of not just her ear­ly mas­ter­piece Jeanne Diel­man, which she direct­ed at just 25 years of age, but a vari­ety of fea­ture films and shorts made between 1968 and this year. As a trib­ute, the cinephile-beloved home video com­pa­ny The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion has, for a very lim­it­ed time, made all of their Aker­man films free to view on Hulu (unfor­tu­nate­ly, for view­ers in cer­tain ter­ri­to­ries only), includ­ing 1978’s Les ren­dezvous d’An­na, embed­ded just above, 1972’s Hotel Mon­terey and La cham­bre, 1975’s Je tu il elle, 1976’s News from Home…

… and of course, Jeanne Diel­man. If you plan to enjoy a free Aker­man marathon on Hulu thanks to Criteron, you’d bet­ter do it soon, since they’ll only remain free to view through the next day. And do invite all your most cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly adven­tur­ous friends to join your side, as with most auteur films, the inter­est that does­n’t lie in watch­ing them lies in argu­ing about their mer­its after­ward. You can hear one such fun con­ver­sa­tion on a 2011 episode of The Cri­te­ri­on­cast, a pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to films released by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, just above. It actu­al­ly fea­tures yours tru­ly as the spe­cial guest, dis­cussing Jeanne Diel­man with the reg­u­lar pan­elists. Do you side with the likes of an Aker­man par­ti­san like me, or does your opin­ion most close­ly resem­ble one of the oth­ers who does­n’t take quite such a rich expe­ri­ence from their every view­ing? Today, you can find out where you stand on this and oth­er of Aker­man’s fas­ci­nat­ing works for free. And you can always find many more free films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

What Films Should Get Into The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion? Video Series “Three Rea­sons” Makes the Case

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

In an alter­nate uni­verse ver­sion of Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Pulp Fic­tion, Eddie Mur­phy, not Samuel L. Jack­son, might have played Jules, the bible-spout­ing hit man. His part­ner-in-crime, Vin­cent Vega, might have been played by Gary Old­man, not John Tra­vol­ta. And the role of Mia, played mem­o­rably by Uma Thur­man in black bangs, could have been played by Debra Winger or per­haps Phoebe Cates.

Doc­u­ments about the movie recent­ly sur­faced on Red­dit, offer­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse into the ear­ly cre­ative dis­cus­sions for the huge­ly influ­en­tial movie. In Tarantino’s wish list, which you can see above, he states that he wrote the roles of Pump­kin and Hon­ey Bun­ny, the would-be Bon­nie and Clyde of the fam­i­ly din­ing restau­rant cir­cuit, with Tim Roth and Aman­da Plum­mer in mind. They, of course, were ulti­mate­ly cast but Taran­ti­no was will­ing to enter­tain John­ny Depp and Patri­cia Arquette. One won­ders how Depp’s oth­er­world­ly weird­ness would have trans­lat­ed as a low lev­el street tough. On the oth­er hand, Tarantino’s first choice for Lance, Vin­cent Vega’s bathrobe-sport­ing drug deal­er, was none oth­er than John Cusack. That would have been amaz­ing.

Many of the studio’s approved cast­ing choic­es for the movie, seen here in a fax also appear­ing in the same Red­dit post, are much stranger. Eddie Mur­phy was tapped as a pos­si­ble Jules. Mira­max liked Nico­las Cage or John­ny Depp (real­ly?) for Butch, the samu­rai-sword wield­ing box­er. Bruce Willis, who played the role, wasn’t even on the orig­i­nal list. And mob clean-up man The Wolf, played with an off-kil­ter deco­rous­ness by Har­vey Kei­t­el, could have gone to War­ren Beat­ty or Dan­ny DeVi­to. Strange­ly, the stu­dio didn’t think John­ny Depp would have been right for the role.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Hal­loween & More

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

If you read Open Cul­ture even casu­al­ly, you know we love Alfred Hitch­cock, Stan­ley Kubrick, and videos that make us see film in a new way. It only makes sense, then, that we’d jump right on Adrien Deza­lay, Emmanuel Delabaere, and Simon Philippe’s The Red Drum Get­away, which mash­es Hitch­cock and Kubrick up into a four-minute shot of dis­tilled cin­e­mat­ic col­li­sion. “Jim­my was hav­ing a rather beau­ti­ful day,” reads the video’s prepara­to­ry descrip­tion, “until he bumped into Jack and things got weird.”

“Jim­my” refers, of course, to Jim­my Stew­art as seen in the work of Alfred Hitch­cock. “Jack” refers to Jack Nichol­son seen in the work of Stan­ley Kubrick — which, of course, means Jack Nichol­son of The Shin­ing. Strange enough, you might think, that those two would ever encounter each oth­er, but what might hap­pen if the gang of droogs from A Clock­work Orange also turned up? Or if poor mild-man­nered Jim­my found him­self at the aris­to­crat­ic, NSFW fetish par­ty from Eyes Wide Shut?

When an auteur suc­cess­ful­ly taps into our sub­con­scious minds, as Hitch­cock and Kubrick so often did, we describe their work, in a com­pli­men­ta­ry sense, as “dream­like.” But art that feels like a dream can also feed mate­r­i­al to our night­mares, and as The Red Drum Get­away more close­ly inter­twines these two dis­parate cin­e­mat­ic worlds as it goes, it begins to resem­ble the most har­row­ing filmic freak­outs any of us have ever endured. It makes a per­fect set­ting for Jack, who, as we know, has already gone insane due to his own alco­holism and the goad­ing of the spir­its who haunt the Over­look Hotel. And as for Jim­my, sure­ly Ver­ti­go put him through enough of the sur­re­al to pre­pare him for the psy­che­del­ic end of 2001.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Two Gen­tle­men of Lebows­ki: What If The Bard Wrote The Big Lebows­ki?

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

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Cre­ative Mashup of Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant’s Psy­cho Films

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Sal­vador Dalí Cre­ates a Dream Sequence for Spell­bound, Hitchcock’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Thriller

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

UK film month­ly mag­a­zine Sight & Sound’s most recent issue is ded­i­cat­ed to “The Female Gaze: 100 Over­looked Films Direct­ed by Women.” The list of 100 films runs some 20 pages, and the edi­tion also col­lects mini essays from actors like Gre­ta Ger­wig, Isabelle Hup­pert, and Til­da Swin­ton; direc­tors like Jane Cam­pi­on and Claire Denis, and crit­ics like Amy Taubin and Camille Paglia, all focus­ing on female-direct­ed films that deserve a sec­ond look.

Many of the film­mak­ers are fair­ly obscure, but even bet­ter known direc­tors are rep­re­sent­ed here with less­er-known selec­tions, like Ida Lupino’s Out­rage (and not her noir clas­sic The Hitch­hik­er) and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Love­less, her first fea­ture co-direct­ed with Mon­ty Mont­gomery and fea­tur­ing a young Willem Dafoe. (Fact: Until Bigelow won for The Hurt Lock­er in 2010, no woman had earned a Best Direc­tor Oscar).

Pre­sent­ed in chrono­log­i­cal order, the list of 100 Over­looked Films Direct­ed by Women fea­tures many land­marks in film his­to­ry, like Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, the first fea­ture-length ani­mat­ed film, which we recent­ly high­light­ed here. Open Cul­ture has also pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed Ger­maine Dulac’s 1928 sur­re­al­ist film The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man.

Lois Weber’s 1913 Sus­pense, her short film co-direct­ed with Philippe Smal­l­ey (view it at the top of the post), is one of the first exam­ples of cross-cut­ting to cre­ate ten­sion, and it even fea­tures a three-way split frame. Cross-cut­ting is a tech­nique all thrillers have used since. (And Weber stars in the film as well.)

Sight & Sound also pro­files Stephanie Roth­man, the first female direc­tor to work for Roger Cor­man, and her 1971 film The Vel­vet Vam­pire, a West Coast take on a goth­ic genre. Jessie Maple, who made Will in 1981, was the first African-Amer­i­can woman to become a part of New York’s cam­era operator’s union.

Then there’s the careers of film­mak­ers whose lives were cut short: Sovi­et direc­tor Lar­isa Shep­itko died in a car crash at 40, leav­ing behind two mas­ter­pieces, while Elia Kazan’s wife Bar­bara Loden made her debut with Wan­da in 1970 and passed away soon after, too young.

Many of these films are dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to find, and Sight & Sound includes an online arti­cle of eight more films that might be lost for good, like the afore­men­tioned Lois Weber’s only col­or film White Heat, or the only film actor Lil­lian Gish direct­ed, Remod­el­ing Her Hus­band.

The Sight & Sound issue is avail­able on news­stands and as a dig­i­tal edi­tion to sub­scribers. As not­ed at the end of the article’s intro­duc­tion, “a sea­son relat­ed to this project will take place next year at BFI South­bank, Lon­don.”

Read­ers inter­est­ed in the con­tri­bu­tions of women film­mak­ers will want to explore the Women Film Pio­neers web­site host­ed by Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

Alice Guy-Blaché: The First Female Direc­tor & the Cin­e­mat­ic Trail­blaz­er You Like­ly Nev­er Heard Of

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

We got a nice tip from one of our read­ers, and want­ed to pass it along. Para­mount Pic­tures has launched an offi­cial, ver­i­fied YouTube chan­nel — called The Para­mount Vault — where you can watch full length films for free [update: if you’re based in the US]. You won’t find Para­moun­t’s best-known films in The Vault, but nonethe­less there are some qual­i­ty, if not enter­tain­ing, picks among the 150 films.

The movies are grouped into the fol­low­ing playlists: Clas­sics, Com­e­dy, Action/Adventure, Dra­ma, Hor­ror, West­erns, Sci­ence Fic­tion, and Thrillers. And they include motion pic­tures like 1987’s Iron­weed with Jack Nichol­son and Meryl Streep, Ham­let (1990) with Glenn Close and Mel Gib­son, Paris When It Siz­zles (1964) with William Hold­en and Audrey Hep­burn, Elvis in King Cre­ole (1958), Charl­ton Hes­ton in the 1950 noir film Dark City, Gene Wilder in Fun­ny About Love (1990), and Mar­got at the Wed­ding (2007) with Nicole Kid­man, Jack Black and Jen­nifer Jason Leigh.

The Para­mount Vault has been ver­i­fied by YouTube, so it looks like it’s the real deal. There is also an accom­pa­ny­ing ver­i­fied Face­book page.

If you stream the playlist embed­ded at the top, you can watch 43 dra­mas in a row, start­ing with Iron­weed and Ham­let.

The selec­tions above will be added to our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Enjoy!

Update: it looks like you need to be based in the US to view these films — some­thing that was­n’t appar­ent to me before­hand since I’m based here. My apolo­gies to any­one who’s geoblocked.

h/t David

Relat­ed Con­tent:

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

Colum­bia U. Launch­es a Free Mul­ti­me­dia Glos­sary for Study­ing Cin­e­ma & Film­mak­ing