It just goes to show that, put in the right hands, you can root, or shed a tear, for any pro­tag­o­nist — even if it’s a plas­tic bag. Shot in 2009 by Ramin Bahrani (who Roger Ebert called the “new great Amer­i­can direc­tor”) this 18-minute film “traces the epic, exis­ten­tial jour­ney of a plas­tic bag search­ing for its lost mak­er, the woman who took it home from the store and even­tu­al­ly dis­card­ed it.” Adding a spe­cial touch, Wern­er Her­zog nar­rates the inner thoughts of the bag as it “encoun­ters strange crea­tures, expe­ri­ences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved mak­er, and tries to grasp its pur­pose in the world.”

Plas­tic Bag was one of 11 films released in the Inter­net Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice’s “Futurestates” film series explor­ing “what life might look like in an Amer­i­ca of the future.” Upon its release, Her­zog told The Guardian, ‘I’m so glad this is not an agen­da movie or I would run like mad and get away from here. I mean, we can talk about sus­tain­abil­i­ty issues, about plas­tic, about the Earth, but the movie’s about some­thing else, some­thing more … it’s about a jour­ney.” An emo­tion­al, exis­ten­tial one, indeed.

You can find Plas­tic Bag in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Top Films

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel report­ed­ly car­ried rocks in their pock­ets dur­ing the pre­miere of their first film Un Chien andalou, antic­i­pat­ing a vio­lent reac­tion from the audi­ence.

It was a fair con­cern. The movie might be almost 90 years old but it still has the pow­er to pro­voke – the film fea­tures a shot of a woman get­ting her eye slashed open with a straight razor after all. As it turned out, rocks weren’t need­ed. The audi­ence, filled with such avant-garde lumi­nar­ies as Pablo Picas­so and André Bre­ton liked the film. A dis­ap­point­ed Dalí lat­er report­ed that the night was “less excit­ing” than he had hoped.

Un Chien andalou fea­tured many of Dalí’s visu­al obses­sions – eye­balls, ants crawl­ing out of ori­fices and rot­ting ani­mals. Dalí delight­ed in shock­ing and incit­ing peo­ple with his gor­geous, dis­turb­ing images. And he loved grandiose spec­ta­cles like a riot at a movie the­ater.

Dalí and Buñuel’s next movie, the caus­tic L’Age d’or, exposed the dif­fer­ences between the two artists and their cre­ative part­ner­ship implod­ed in pre-pro­duc­tion. Buñuel went on to make a string of sub­ver­sive mas­ter­pieces like Land With­out Bread, Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel and The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geois; Dalí large­ly quit film in favor of his beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed paint­ings.

Then Hol­ly­wood came call­ing.

Alfred Hitch­cock hired Dalí to cre­ate a dream sequence for his 1945 movie Spell­bound. Dalí craft­ed over 20 min­utes of footage of which rough­ly four and a half min­utes made it into the movie. “I want­ed to con­vey the dream with great visu­al sharp­ness and clarity–sharper than film itself,” Hitch­cock explained to Fran­cois Truf­faut in 1962. The sequence, which you can see imme­di­ate­ly above, is filled with all sorts of Daliesque motifs – slashed eye­balls, naked women and phan­tas­magoric land­scapes. It is also the most mem­o­rable part of an oth­er­wise minor work by Hitch­cock.

Dalí’s fol­low up film work was for, of all things, the Vin­cente Min­nel­li com­e­dy Father of the Bride (1950). Spencer Tra­cy plays Stan­ley Banks whose beau­ti­ful daugh­ter (Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, no less) is get­ting mar­ried. As Stanley’s anx­i­ety over the impend­ing nup­tials spi­rals, he has one very weird night­mare. Cue Dalí. Stan­ley is late to the wed­ding. As he rush­es down the aisle, his clothes mys­te­ri­ous­ly get shred­ded by the tiled floor that bounces and con­torts like a piece of flesh.

This dream sequence, which you can see at the top of the arti­cle, has few of the visu­al flour­ish­es of Spell­bound, but it still has plen­ty of Dalí’s trade­mark weird­ness. Those float­ing accusato­ry eyes. The way that Tracy’s leg seems to stretch. That floor.

Father of the Bride marked the end of Dalí’s work in Hol­ly­wood, though there were a cou­ple poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tions that would have been amaz­ing had they actu­al­ly hap­pened. Dalí had an idea for a movie with the Marx Broth­ers called Giraffes on Horse­back Sal­ad. The movie would have “includ­ed a scene of giraffes wear­ing gas masks and one of Chico sport­ing a deep-div­ing suit while play­ing the piano.” Though Har­po was report­ed­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the pro­posed idea, Grou­cho wasn’t and the idea sad­ly came to noth­ing.

Lat­er in life, Dalí became a fix­ture on the talk show cir­cuit. On the Dick Cavett Show in 1970, he flung an anteater at Lil­lian Gish.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

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.

I try to catch the Noir City film fes­ti­val when­ev­er it comes through Los Ange­les, not just because it uses the Egypt­ian, one of my favorite the­aters in town, but because it comes curat­ed by the experts. You’d have a hard time find­ing any group more knowl­edge­able about film noir than the Film Noir Foun­da­tion, who put Noir City on, and any­one in par­tic­u­lar more knowl­edge­able than its founder and pres­i­dent, “noir­chae­ol­o­gist” Eddie Muller.

The talks he some­times gives before screen­ings give a sense of the depth and scope of his knowl­edge of the genre; you can sam­ple it in a video clip where he intro­duces Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hik­er (above) at last year’s Noir City Seat­tle.

You may remem­ber Muller’s name from our post fea­tur­ing his list of the 25 noir films that will stand the test of time. I do rec­om­mend Noir City as the finest con­text in which to watch any of them, but you don’t have to wait until the fes­ti­val comes to your town to see a few, such as Fritz Lang’s Scar­let Street and Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour. (2nd and 3rd on this page.) They and var­i­ous oth­er impor­tant pieces of the film noir canon have fall­en into the pub­lic domain, mak­ing them eas­i­ly and legal­ly view­able free online. Watch The Hitch-Hik­er that way after you’ve seen Muller’s intro­duc­tion, and you can repli­cate a lit­tle of the Noir City expe­ri­ence in the com­fort of your own home.

Oth­er pub­lic-domain noirs of note include Orson Welles’ The Stranger, a sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy among Welles fans but one about which Noir of the Week says “you could­n’t make a bet­ter choice if you’re look­ing for a con­ven­tion­al, fan­tas­tic look­ing film noir thriller.”

And as the name of the fes­ti­val implies, when we talk about such a high­ly urban sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion as noir, we very often talk about the city as well. Rudolph Maté’s D.O.A. includes as a par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid depic­tion of 1940s Los Ange­les and one of the more dra­mat­ic uses of the beloved Brad­bury Build­ing in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. These five pic­tures should put you well on your way to a stronger grasp of film noir, and no doubt get you ready to explore our list of 60 free noir films online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

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

Before Net­flix killed Block­buster, Block­buster killed the mom and pop video store. Maybe you had your favorite ma and pa shop, where under the sur­face of new releas­es you’d find the quirky, curat­ed selec­tions that reflect­ed the mind of the own­er.

When Allen Gins­berg lived in New York’s East Vil­lage, it was Kim’s Video, opened in 1987 by Yong­man Kim. With so many artists fre­quent­ing its St. Marks Place loca­tion, Kim asked its more famous cus­tomers to share their lists of top ten favorite films. Gins­berg oblig­ed. And you can now find his top 10 list online (in two parts: Part 1 — Part 2) thanks to The Allen Gins­berg Project.

Gins­berg’s old­est choice is Sergei Eisen­stein’s 1925 Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, which you can watch above. One must won­der if it was the very poet­ic edit­ing that drew Gins­berg to the film, or some­thing else, per­haps, maybe the film’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary nature?

Many of Gins­berg’s choic­es reflect his inter­est in poet­ic real­ism, the French film move­ment that com­bined sto­ries of real folks with some­times very impres­sion­ist cam­era work. Three of its most famous pro­po­nents, Julian Duvivi­er, Jean Renoir, and Mar­cel Carné appear on the Gins­berg list.

Julian Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937) is set in that most won­der­ful loca­tion for the Beat poets, Tang­iers, and inspired Gra­ham Greene to write The Third Man. Mar­cel Carné’s clas­sic Chil­dren of Par­adise (1945) makes the list, as does his 1938 film noir Port of Shad­ows. Jean Renoir’s The Grand Illu­sion, which still tops many top 10 film lists today, is here too.

Anoth­er French­man, Jean Cocteau gets on the list twice, with two films from his Orphic tril­o­gy, The Blood of a Poet (1930) and Orpheé (1950). The mix of the dream­like and the erot­ic make a per­fect choice for the poet.

Gins­berg saves space for Beat cin­e­ma, a lot of which is still not on DVD. Ron Rice’s The Flower Thief (1960) is often called one of the main films of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion, a large­ly impro­vised, low bud­get film about the artists and writ­ers of San Fran­cis­co. It sad­ly remains unavail­able on DVD, and one won­ders if the film was even avail­able at Kim’s, as it doesn’t appear to be on VHS either.

More avail­able are his final two choic­es, Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy (1959), which was named after (and exe­cut­ed in a style sim­i­lar to) an Exquis­ite Corpse-style poem writ­ten by Gins­berg, Jack Ker­ouac, and Neil Cas­sady in the late ‘40s. Also large­ly impro­vised, the film involves bohemi­an par­ty crash­ers who make life com­pli­cat­ed for a man and wife try­ing to impress a respectable bish­op who’s come for din­ner.

Last­ly, Gins­berg names Har­ry Smith’s vision­ary cut-up ani­ma­tion mas­ter­piece Heav­en and Earth Mag­ic (1957 — 1962), which you can see above. Smith was not just a superb film­mak­er, but a great influ­ence on the Beats through his inter­est in psy­che­delics and mys­ti­cism, as well as the man behind the Amer­i­can Anthol­o­gy of Folk Music on Folk­ways records. A great friend of Gins­berg, Har­ry Smith gets the final tip of the hat.

via The Allen Gins­berg Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

13 Lec­tures from Allen Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” Course (1975)

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Rare Footage of Allen Gins­berg, Jack Ker­ouac & Oth­er Beats Hang­ing Out in the East Vil­lage (1959)

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.