It may sound redun­dant, but to many peo­ple a Hitch­cock film would not be a Hitch­cock film with­out Hitch­cock. By this I mean not only Hitchcock’s mas­ter­ful com­mand of light and shad­ow, cam­era move­ment, and edit­ing, but also the brief, wit­ty appear­ances of the man him­self, in front of the cam­era.

Of course we have the droll intro of the great direc­tor’s own TV show, with his sil­hou­ette slid­ing into a car­toon of his jow­ly pro­file. We also have the chance to spot him near­ly every­where else in his body of work since he appears—as a bystander or as some form of com­ic relief—in 37 of his films: from 1927’s The Lodger to 1976’s Fam­i­ly Plot. In this last cameo, as you can see below, he appears again in sil­hou­ette.

At the top of the post, you can watch a super­cut of all 37 of these cameos. And see a com­plete list, with descrip­tions, at Wikipedia. AMC’s Tim Dirks tells us of “two recur­ring themes” in Hitchcock’s film appear­ances: “(1) Hitch­cock often car­ried a musi­cal instru­ment, and (2) Hitch­cock often used pub­lic trans­porta­tion (bus­es, trains, etc.), and was seen as a casu­al pass­er-by in the crowd in the pub­lic place (train sta­tions, at an air­port, etc.). Most of the cameos appeared ear­ly in the film, and often there was a bit of mild humor in the appear­ance.” Though they may seem nar­cis­sis­tic, Hitch­cock promised the cameos were for the sake of his fans, who cer­tain­ly appre­ci­at­ed the recur­ring trade­mark. “I always give a lit­tle thought to my appear­ances,” said the direc­tor in a 1966 inter­view, “and come on as ear­ly as possible—don’t want to hold them in sus­pense!”

The Hitch­cock cameos began by acci­dent, writes Mys­teryNet, when, “short an actor in one of his first films, Hitch­cock took it upon him­self to play the small part.” In this movie, The Lodger (watch it online), Hitch­cock actu­al­ly appears twice—as a news­room clerk and again lat­er in a crowd. He would make two appear­ances in three more films: Sus­pi­cion, Rope, and Under Capri­corn. Most of his cameos are very brief, some shot at a dis­tance, and oth­ers with his back to the cam­era. To spot Hitch­cock in your favorite of his films [you can watch 23 for free in our col­lec­tion of Free Hitch­cock films], see AMC’s com­plete list, which fea­tures thumb­nails and approx­i­ma­tions of how many min­utes into the film he appears. Also don’t miss The Tele­graph’s com­pre­hen­sive gallery of stills of Hitchcock’s cameos, like that of his Rear Win­dow appear­ance above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online 

1000 Frames of Hitch­cock: See Each of Alfred Hitchcock’s 52 Films Reduced to 1,000 Artis­tic Frames

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

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

I’m not sure if it’s still the case today, in fact, I’m almost sure it isn’t, but in my day the ethos of an entire gen­er­a­tion could be tidi­ly summed up by ref­er­ence to a hand­ful of movies. Or at least that’s what we were led to believe, those of us who came of age in the ear­ly-to-mid 90s, when films like Richard Linklater’s Slack­er (watch free online), Ben Stiller’s Real­i­ty Bites, and Kevin Smith’s Clerks achieved almost instant cult sta­tus as totems of mid­dle class ennui—that of overe­d­u­cat­ed nar­cis­sists and direc­tion­less dream­ers and cyn­ics with ser­i­al roman­tic dis­as­ters and a gnaw­ing sense of the dwin­dling returns on their heavy invest­ment in cul­tur­al cap­i­tal.

Of this ad hoc tril­o­gy of 90s slack­er­dom, it’s Smith’s 1994 low-bud­get, black and white paean to the lives of low-wage con­ve­nience and video store clerks, their clue­less cus­tomers, and a com­ic duo of stoned hang­ers-on that per­haps holds up best, and this is because the film’s comedy—ranging from gal­lows humor to gross-out slap­stick to obser­va­tion­al geekery—seems most ground­ed in the every­day expe­ri­ences of real, absurd­ly bored, work­ing stiffs every­where. So it’s for the best that Smith decid­ed not to fin­ish the film with the orig­i­nal end­ing he shot, which you can see above. In it, the movie’s main char­ac­ter, Quick Stop clerk Dante Hicks, is killed in a rob­bery. The last image we see in this version’s har­row­ing dénoue­ment is of his corpse, awk­ward­ly wedged behind the Quick Stop counter.

It’s an end­ing that makes lit­tle sense tonal­ly. Despite the movie’s detours into the macabre, it nev­er gets seri­ous enough to jus­ti­fy this kind of heav­i­ness. As Men­tal Floss puts it, “the alter­nate end­ing to Kevin Smith’s break­through film turned a light­heart­ed vul­gar com­e­dy [see above] into a dark tragedy of Ing­mar Bergman-ish pro­por­tions.” Actor Bri­an O’Halloran, who played Dante, thought as much. “I hat­ed that end­ing,” Rolling Stone quotes him as say­ing, “I just thought it was too quick of a twist.” I guess it’s a good thing for Smith (and O’Hal­lo­ran) that he final­ly agreed, since with­out the Clerks universe’s main char­ac­ter, there may have been no Clerks 2, for what it’s worth, though Jay and Silent Bob would cer­tain­ly have gone on to their post-Clerks revenge.

Smith’s choice to keep it light also speaks to the spir­it of the time—or the spir­it of these filmed rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the time, which are ulti­mate­ly about a lack of res­o­lu­tion, a meta-lack of res­o­lu­tion, that becomes its own brand of tragi­com­e­dy. Clerks is loose­ly mod­eled on Dante’s vision of pur­ga­to­ry, but feels more like Samuel Beck­ett trans­posed to sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey. The char­ac­ters in Smith’s films for­ev­er live their lives in what post-hard­core band Fugazi so anthem­i­cal­ly called the “wait­ing room”—the kind of place where, in the midst of a per­son­al cri­sis, the most log­i­cal thing to do is debate the ethics of killing off inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors on Return of the Jedi’s Death Star.

The Clerks alter­nate end­ing appears on the 10th anniver­sary DVD of the film. You’ll prob­a­bly agree the movie works much bet­ter with­out this fatal­ly abrupt turn, but watch­ing it gives us a glimpse of a world where death—always hov­er­ing on the edges of slackerdom—intrudes to break the spell of ter­mi­nal inac­tion and emo­tion­al paral­y­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Kevin Smith’s Clever First Film, Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary (1992)

The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Pod­cast

Hear Kevin Smith’s Three Tips For Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers (NSFW)

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

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

From Nation­al Geo­graph­ic comes this: A short time­lapse film that lets you watch “the eeri­ly beau­ti­ful growth of lar­vae into bees.” Shot by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Anand Var­ma, the mes­mer­iz­ing video starts with the lar­vae of work­er bees just hatch­ing from eggs, then fol­lows their mat­u­ra­tion into adult bees. The video cov­ers an 11-day process in one short minute.

You can get a behind-the-scenes account of the mak­ing of this video over at Nat Geo. When you’re there, you might also want to check out these pret­ty amaz­ing por­traits of bees.

via Kot­tke/This is Colos­sal

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We’ve post­ed a lot of stuff on this site by Tony Zhou, the cre­ator of the bril­liant video essay series Every Frame a Paint­ing. He deliv­ered an insight­ful essay on David Fincher’s visu­al econ­o­my and he did a tru­ly mas­ter­ful take on move­ment in the films of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. And, in the piece above, he delves into the work of British direc­tor Edgar Wright, who direct­ed such cult mas­ter­pieces as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pil­grim vs. the World.

As Zhou notes, come­dies are bor­ing these days. In movies like Brides­maids and The Hang­over, the cam­era often­times just records the actors riff­ing. The humor is almost entire­ly depen­dent on the dia­logue. And while that might yield some yuks, in terms of moviemak­ing, these movies are woe­ful­ly lim­it­ed. Film is a visu­al medi­um after all.

Wright, on the oth­er hand, is a ter­rif­i­cal­ly inven­tive film­mak­er who knows how to tell jokes visu­al­ly. One of the rea­sons Shaun of the Dead and his oth­er films are so damned fun­ny is because he is able to cram jokes into moments where oth­er movies would be con­tent with just push­ing the plot for­ward. “This is what sep­a­rates mediocre direc­tors from great ones,” says Zhou. “The abil­i­ty to take the most sim­ple, mun­dane scenes and find new ways to do them.”

Like Eisen­stein and Ozu and just about every oth­er cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter out there, Wright is keen­ly aware of not just what is in the frame but what is not in the frame. Unlike Eisen­stein — who, let’s face it, is not fun­ny – Wright knows how to mine the com­ic poten­tial of the frame.

Zhou ends his spiel with a chal­lenge to Hol­ly­wood direc­tors out there. He rat­tles off eight things that Wright does with pic­ture and sound that he would like oth­er film­mak­ers to work into their movies.

1. Things enter­ing the frame in fun­ny ways
2. Peo­ple leav­ing the frame in fun­ny ways.
3. There and back again.
4. Match­ing scene tran­si­tions.
5. The per­fect­ly timed sound effect.
6. Action syn­chro­nized to the music.
7. Super-dra­mat­ic light­ing cues.
8. Fence gags

And the bonus point

9. Imag­i­nary gun fights.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Learn the Ele­ments of Cin­e­ma: Spielberg’s Long Takes, Scorsese’s Silence & Michael Bay’s Shots

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

You may remem­ber that when we fea­tured the favorite films of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, the 8 1/2 direc­tor’s top-ten list includ­ed… well, 8 1/2. But then, no film­mak­er before Felli­ni or after him has had quite the same sen­si­bil­i­ty, so if Felli­ni made the kind of movies he him­self want­ed to watch — and I sus­pect he made only that kind of movie — then we might won­der why his list did­n’t include even more of his own work. And maybe we should won­der the same about this list of favorites from Luis Buñuel, the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist who start­ed doing for vivid, dream­like, and grotesque Euro­pean cin­e­ma in the 1920s what Felli­ni kept doing for it until the 1990s:

1. Under­world (1927, Josef von Stern­berg)
2. The Gold Rush (1925, Charles Chap­lin)
3. The Bicy­cle Thief (1947, Vit­to­rio De Sica)
4. Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisen­stein)
5. Por­trait of Jen­nie (1948, William Dieter­le)
6. Cav­al­cade (1933, Frank Lloyd)
7. White Shad­ows in the South Seas (1928, W.S. Van Dyle/Robert Fla­her­ty)
8. Dead of Night (1945, Alber­to Cavalcanti/Charles Crichton/Basil Deardon/Robert Hamer)
9. L’Age d’Or (1930, Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali)
10. I Am a Fugi­tive from a Chain Gang (1932, Mervyn LeRoy)

At the top of the post, you can watch Buñuel’s num­ber-one pick, Josef von Stern­berg’s silent pro­to-gang­ster pic­ture Under­world. Just above, you’ll find his num­ber-nine pick, and the one he had a hand in him­self: L’Age d’Or, the 1930 soci­etal satire on which he col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Span­ish artist Sal­vador Dalí. It came as the fol­low-up to their 1929 silent short Un Chien Andalou, a work wide­ly rec­og­nized as the foun­da­tion stone of sur­re­al­ist cin­e­ma (see also our post on both films), and it came with much greater ambi­tions.

Nei­ther Buñuel’s own direc­to­r­i­al style nor the medi­um of cin­e­ma itself had quite found their form yet; those con­di­tions pro­duced a film that still retains many strik­ing and even cut­ting qual­i­ties today, albeit not, per­haps, to the same degree that they caused con­tem­po­rary right-wingers to toss ink at the screen and start brawls in the aisles. Watch the pre-1930 films on the list, like Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and The Gold Rush, to under­stand what formed Buñuel’s cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty; watch L’Age d’Or to under­stand why, when it comes to his own work, he prefers the ear­ly stuff.

via Com­bustible Cel­lu­loid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Read Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel’s Recipe for the Per­fect Dry Mar­ti­ni, and Then See Him Make One

Fed­eri­co Fellini’s List of His 10 Favorite Films … Includes One of His Own

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.