Agnès Var­da claimed to have seen few­er than ten movies before she made her first film at age 25. At the time, she had some pret­ty naïve ideas about film. “I thought if I added sound to pho­tographs, that would be cin­e­ma,” she recalled. She learned the essence of film­mak­ing and, by all accounts, learned it well. The result­ing film, La Pointe-Courte (1954), a self-financed doc­u­men­tary-fic­tion hybrid, is con­sid­ered one of the fore­run­ners of the French New Wave.

Fast for­ward a few years. Var­da is shoot­ing her fol­low up fea­ture Cleo from 5 to 7. The film would prove to be her break­out hit and a clas­sic of the New Wave along­side the likes of 400 Blows and Breath­less.

The film, which unspools almost in real time, is about a beau­ti­ful young singer who waits anx­ious­ly for the results of a med­ical test. We watch her as she talks with well-mean­ing friends, finds com­fort with a stranger, and even takes some time to watch a movie. In the wrong hands, the sto­ry has the poten­tial for being an unleav­ened exer­cise in exis­ten­tial angst. But, as she lat­er proved in sub­se­quent movies, she was nev­er one to let things get too dark. The movie that the hero­ine watch­es is a silent com­e­dy – one that Var­da shot her­self.

Les Fiancés Du Pont Mac­don­ald cen­ters on a Buster Keaton­sque dandy in a flat straw hat who waves good-bye to his doll-like girl­friend. Yet when he dons a pair of sun­glass­es, every­thing goes wrong. He wit­ness­es his beloved get­ting injured in an acci­dent only to be hauled off by a hearse. When he takes off the glass­es to wipe away the tears, he real­izes that he saw it all wrong. The glass­es make every­thing seem metaphor­i­cal­ly dark. No won­der the movie’s sub­ti­tle is “Beware of Dark Glass­es.” You can watch it above.

Les Fiancés is inter­est­ing not just because of Varda’s spot on pas­tiche of silent movies but also because of its cast. None oth­er than Jean-Luc Godard plays the dandy. His wife Anna Kari­na plays the girl, of course. Gen­er­al­ly, Godard’s onscreen appear­ances run the gamut from being sober and aloof to being hec­tor­ing and indig­nant. It’s fun to watch him ham it up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

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.

Rais­ing Ari­zona; The Big Lebows­ki; O Broth­er, Where Art Thou? — Joel and Ethan Coen have made more than a few movies not just wide­ly beloved, but also wide­ly thought of as eccen­tric. One thus would­n’t imag­ine their sen­si­bil­i­ty trans­lat­ing well to adver­tis­ing, that means of occa­sion­al sup­port for many an uncom­pro­mis­ing auteur. But just as the Coen broth­ers have brought Hol­ly­wood at least par­tial­ly over to their way of cre­at­ing, they’ve also, on sev­er­al occa­sions, bent the form of the com­mer­cial to their advan­tage.

Take the Coen broth­ers’ Parisi­enne cig­a­rette com­mer­cial at the top, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture (along­side David Lynch, Emir Kus­turi­ca, Roman Polan­s­ki and, Jean-Luc Godard’s work for the same appar­ent­ly auteur-lov­ing brand). But if they felt guilty about thus encour­ag­ing the befoul­ing of the air, they sure­ly cleared their own con­sciences with the satir­i­cal spot about “clean coal” just above. And in the slight­ly more straight­for­ward Gap ad below, they used the main­stream-yet-alter­na­tive icons Christi­na Ric­ci and Den­nis Hop­per:

And even if you keep up with the Coen broth­ers’ short film work, you may nev­er have seen the spot below, which orig­i­nal­ly aired dur­ing the 2002 Super Bowl. Work­ing for H&R Block, they use per­haps the least promis­ing set­ting imag­in­able, a slow-mov­ing tax law lec­ture, to cre­ate a dystopi­an vision not a mil­lion miles from the one Rid­ley Scott used to intro­duce the Apple Mac­in­tosh eigh­teen Super Bowls before.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cig­a­rette Com­mer­cials from David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers and Jean Luc Godard

Tui­leries: A Short, Slight­ly Twist­ed Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

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

It’s a tru­ism to say that Hol­ly­wood is a boy’s club but Dr. Sta­cy L. Smith of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia put this say­ing into stark, empir­i­cal terms: a mere 4.4% of the top 100 box-office releas­es in the USA were direct­ed by women. That’s it. It’s a per­cent­age that should be used to describe the amount of cream in whole milk, not half the human race.

The truth is that the film indus­try in gen­er­al, not just Hol­ly­wood, is dom­i­nat­ed by men. In books on cin­e­ma and class­es on film his­to­ry, female direc­tors fre­quent­ly get over­looked.

Over at MUBI, some­one apt­ly named Ally the List­mak­er has tak­en great pains to counter that. She has com­piled an exhaus­tive col­lec­tion of movies by women. The list runs the gamut from pop­corn fare like Amy Heckerling’s Clue­less (1995), to for­eign art house films like Chan­tal Akerman’s The Cap­tive (2000), to chal­leng­ing exper­i­men­tal movies (any­thing by Peg­gy Ahwesh).

Ally’s list con­tains over 1400 movie titles, most­ly films made with­in the past 20 years. Yet with­in this list are oth­ers lists – “Films Direct­ed by Dan­ish Women,” “Actress­es Who Have Tried Their Hand at Direct­ing” – reveal­ing a mind-bog­gling range and diver­si­ty of movies. Here are a few favorites:

• The Glean­ers & I (2000) – Agnes Var­da
  A fas­ci­nat­ing med­i­ta­tion on art, aging and for­ag­ing off left­overs of oth­ers. Var­da turns the act of hunt­ing for pota­toes into a polit­i­cal act. You can watch the first four min­utes of the film above.
• The Apple (1998) – Sami­ra Makhmal­baf
  The daugh­ter of Mohsen Makhmal­baf, one of the true trail­blaz­ers of the Iran­ian new wave, Sami­ra proved to be a cin­e­mat­ic tal­ent in her own right with this movie that blurs the line between doc­u­men­tary and nar­ra­tive.
• Wendy and Lucy (2008) – Kel­ly Reichardt
  A woman at the mar­gins of soci­ety whose life utter­ly comes apart after her car breaks down. Riechardt’s direc­tion is slow, qui­et and ulti­mate­ly dev­as­tat­ing.
• The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma (2006) – Sophie Fiennes
  Slavoj Zizek, the reign­ing rock star/comedian of the cul­tur­al the­o­ry world, riffs on some of the great­est films ever made.
• Amer­i­can Psy­cho (2000) – Mary Har­ron
  Per­haps the best por­trait out there on the mind­set of the 1%. You’ll nev­er lis­ten to Huey Lewis and the News in the same way.

Check out the full list here. And if you’re inter­est­ed in more, take a look at this sub­list – Female Direc­tors Present on the Jonathan Rosen­baum 1000 Essen­tials List.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Hitch-Hik­er by Ida Lupino (the Only Female Direc­tor of a 1950s Noir Film)

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

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.

Most film fans I know have played this game: which movie, if you called the shots over there, would you bring into the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion? While the fun con­ver­sa­tions that result nec­es­sar­i­ly elide all the dif­fi­cul­ties — acquir­ing the rights, find­ing restor­able mate­ri­als, design, dis­tri­b­u­tion — of actu­al­ly get­ting a film onto Cri­te­ri­on’s ros­ter of high-qual­i­ty, fea­ture-inten­sive home video releas­es, they do illu­mi­nate one’s own cin­e­mat­ic val­ues, even if only with idle talk.

Japan-based film­mak­er, artist, design­er, and gal­lerist Robert Nishimu­ra plays the game too, but he does­n’t do it idly. On his blog, he fea­tures the high­ly con­vinc­ing DVD cas­es he’s designed for such dream Cri­te­ri­on releas­es as Kim Ki-young’s The House­maid, Akio Jissoji’s Life of a Court Lady, and Wern­er Her­zog’s Fitz­car­ral­do. He also has a Vimeo chan­nel called For Cri­te­ri­on Con­sid­er­a­tion, where he goes so far as to craft new “trail­ers” of the films he’d like to see in the Col­lec­tion, each offer­ing three rea­sons why they qual­i­fy. His pitch for Bar­ry Son­nen­feld’s 1997 Men in Black cites its sta­tus as a “galac­ti­cal­ly fun­ny block­buster,” visu­als enhanced by “Rick Bak­er’s spe­cial FX,” and a script even more enhanced with “Ed Solomon’s one-lin­ers.”

Evi­dent­ly a lover of less­er-seen Japan­ese pic­tures and the idio­syn­crat­ic qua­si-Hol­ly­wood releas­es of the 1970s (but then again, aren’t all cinephiles?), he’s also made videos argu­ing for films like Hiroshi Teshi­ga­hara’s Kobo Abe nov­el adap­ta­tion The Man With­out a Map (the log­i­cal fol­low-up to Cri­te­ri­on­s’s real box set of Teshi­ga­hara-Abe col­lab­o­ra­tions) and Michael Cimi­no’s faint­ly homo­erot­ic heist pic­ture Thun­der­bolt and Light­foot. And all the way on the oth­er end of the spec­trum from Men in Black, he advo­cates for the likes of Per­fumed Night­mare, Kid­lat Tahimik’s “play­ful cri­tique of Amer­i­can cul­tur­al dom­i­nance,” “exer­cise in mag­i­cal real­ism,” “semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal explo­ration of inno­cence,” and cor­ner­stone of inde­pen­dent Philip­pine cin­e­ma.

Nishimu­ra’s out­put of videos and cov­er designs seems to have slowed in recent years, and I hope for one expla­na­tion and one expla­na­tion only: that he’s spent the time nego­ti­at­ing a healthy salary from peo­ple at Cri­te­ri­on eager to hire him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion)

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

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

Nev­er has the work of so pop­u­lar a film­mak­er felt so dis­tant from the main­stream than in the case of Stan­ley Kubrick. Just think­ing of the man who direct­ed movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shin­ing, Full Met­al Jack­et, and Eyes Wide Shut in the same cul­tur­al con­text as a rom-coms and explo­sion-inten­sive block­busters gets one chuck­ling. But Robert Ryang took it to the next lev­el when he cut togeth­er the trail­er above, which con­verts The Shin­ing, one of the most haunt­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror pic­tures ever made, into Shin­ing, a gar­den-vari­ety feel-good dram­e­dy.

Ryang, then a young edi­tor, pulled off this aston­ish­ing con­ver­sion as his win­ning sub­mis­sion for an Asso­ci­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Cre­ative Edi­tors con­test, which asked for new trail­ers for exist­ing films that put them into dif­fer­ent gen­res. The Shin­ing trail­er’s suc­cess has spawned many imi­ta­tors, includ­ing quite a few based on Kubrick­’s work alone. Just above, we have 2001 turned into an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of sci­ence-fic­tion movie — the kind that try to over­whelm us with their sheer inten­si­ty sum­mer after tir­ing sum­mer.

This trail­er pro­duces anoth­er light­heart­ed Kubrick, this time out of per­haps Kubrick­’s most dark-heart­ed piece, the unre­lent­ing Viet­nam pic­ture Full Met­al Jack­et. Here it plays a lot more like Stripes with­out the satir­i­cal edge. Below, Kubrick­’s fam­i­ly-unfriend­ly Christ­mas film Eyes Wide Shut becomes a fam­i­ly-friend­ly Christ­mas film. Ulti­mate­ly, though, it speaks to the qual­i­ty of the orig­i­nal movies that, try as they might to con­vert them into the bland­est of stan­dard Hol­ly­wood fare, these trail­ers still can’t ful­ly con­ceal the pres­ence of some­thing cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly intrigu­ing indeed. I know I’d still buy a tick­et.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Explore the Mas­sive Stan­ley Kubrick Exhib­it at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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