Liv­ing, as many do, in Los Ange­les, and lov­ing, as many do, the films of Stan­ley Kubrick, I man­aged to attend last year’s acclaimed Kubrick exhib­it at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art more than once. The first time there, I mar­veled at all the arti­facts they’d col­lect­ed from the pro­duc­tion of my favorite Kubrick films, the ones I’ve seen sev­en, eight, nine times: Dr. Strangelove, Bar­ry Lyn­don, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc. But the sec­ond time, I focused on the rooms ded­i­cat­ed to the Kubrick films I’d nev­er seen — the ones, in fact, that nobody has ever seen.

Sev­er­al of his unfin­ished projects got far enough into pre-pro­duc­tion to leave behind a con­sid­er­able amount of intrigu­ing research mate­ri­als, script notes, shoot­ing sched­ules, design sketch­es, and screen tests. The sto­ry of each pro­jec­t’s ori­gin and demise reveals qual­i­ties of not just Kubrick­’s much-exam­ined work­ing meth­ods, but of his per­son­al­i­ty. “He was a man of such var­ied inter­ests that he was always busy,” says for­mer Warn­er Broth­ers exec­u­tive John Cal­ley in the short doc­u­men­tary above, Lost Kubrick. And if Kubrick had an inter­est, he instinc­tive­ly threw him­self into the mak­ing of a motion pic­ture to do with it.

“Napoleon was one of the abid­ing inter­ests of Stan­ley’s life,” says Antho­ny Frewin, Kubrick­’s assis­tant on 2001, “along with extrater­res­tri­al intel­li­gence, the Holo­caust, con­cen­tra­tion camps, Julius Cae­sar, Eng­lish place name ety­mol­o­gy, and three thou­sand oth­er things.” We’ve fea­tured Kubrick­’s Napoleon before, but Lost Kubrick also includes an exam­i­na­tion of The Aryan Papers, his aban­doned Hol­caust project from the 1990s. I do won­der how it would have com­pared to Schindler’s List, Steven Spiel­berg’s com­plet­ed Holo­caust project from the 1990s, which itself had an influ­ence on Kubrick­’s drop­ping The Aryan Papers. But Juras­sic Park, Spiel­berg’s dinosaur project from that same time, con­vinced Kubrick that spe­cial effects tech­nol­o­gy had come far enough for him to move for­ward on A.I., which he would lat­er hand over to Spiel­berg him­self. The younger direc­tor seems to have fall­en into the role of execu­tor of Kubrick­’s many ideas; just last year, he even announced plans to turn Kubrick­’s Napoleon script into a tele­vi­sion series. Per­son­al­ly, it makes me won­der less what Spiel­berg will do with the sto­ry of Napoleon than what Kubrick could have accom­plished in this age of the tele­vi­sion-series auteur.

Lost Kubrick will be added to our list, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

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

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

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 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.

Image by Sound Opin­ions, via Flickr Com­mons

Roger Ebert seems to have resent­ed star rat­ings, which he had to dish out atop each and every one of his hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of reg­u­lar news­pa­per movie reviews. He also empha­sized, every once in a while, his dis­dain for the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” sys­tem that became his and Gene Siskel’s tele­vi­sion trade­mark. And he could hard­ly ever abide that run-of-the-mill crit­ic’s stand­by, the top-ten list. Film­go­ers who nev­er paid atten­tion to Ebert’s career will like­ly, at this point, insist that the man nev­er real­ly liked any­thing, but those of us who read him for years, even decades, know the true depth and scope of his love for movies, a pas­sion he even expressed, reg­u­lar­ly, in list form. He did so for, as he put it, “the one sin­gle list of inter­est to me. Every 10 years, the ancient and ven­er­a­ble British film mag­a­zine, Sight & Sound, polls the world’s direc­tors, movie crit­ics, and assort­ed pro­duc­ers, cin­e­math­eque oper­a­tors and fes­ti­val direc­tors, etc., to deter­mine the Great­est Films of All Time.”

“Why do I val­ue this poll more than oth­ers?” Ebert asks. “It has sen­ti­men­tal val­ue. The first time I saw it in the mag­a­zine, I was much impressed by the names of the vot­ers, and felt a thrill to think that I might some­day be invit­ed to join their num­bers. I was teach­ing a film course in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Fine Arts Pro­gram, and taught class­es of the top ten films in 1972, 1982 and 1992.” His dream came true, and when he wrote this reflec­tion on send­ing in his list every decade, he did so a year near­ly to the day before his death in 2013, mak­ing his entry in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll a kind of last top-ten tes­ta­ment:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1968)
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Wern­er Her­zog, 1972)
• Apoc­a­lypse Now (Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, 1979)
• Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
• La dolce vita (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1960)
• The Gen­er­al (Buster Keaton, 1926) — free online
• Rag­ing Bull (Mar­tin Scors­ese, 1980)
• Tokyo Sto­ry (Yasu­jirô Ozu, 1953)
• The Tree of Life (Ter­rence Mal­ick, 2010)
• Ver­ti­go (Alfred Hitch­cock, 1958)

Decid­ing that he must vote for “one new film” he had­n’t includ­ed on his 2002 list, Ebert nar­rowed it down to two can­di­dates: The Tree of Life and Char­lie Kauf­man’s Synec­doche, New York. “Like the Her­zog, the Kubrick and the Cop­po­la, they are films of almost fool­hardy ambi­tion. Like many of the films on my list, they were direct­ed by the artist who wrote them. Like sev­er­al of them, they attempt no less than to tell the sto­ry of an entire life. [ … ] I could have cho­sen either film — I chose The Tree of Life because it’s more affir­ma­tive and hope­ful. I realise that isn’t a defen­si­ble rea­son for choos­ing one film over the oth­er, but it is my rea­son, and mak­ing this list is essen­tial­ly impos­si­ble, any­way.”  That did­n’t stop his cinephil­ia from pre­vail­ing — not that much ever could.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roger Ebert Talks Mov­ing­ly About Los­ing and Re-Find­ing His Voice (TED 2011)

The Two Roger Eberts: Emphat­ic Crit­ic on TV; Inci­sive Review­er in Print

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

We all know that Robert De Niro has nev­er cut cor­ners when it comes to prepar­ing for roles in films. Need him to gain 60 pounds to play the retired Jake LaM­ot­ta in Rag­ing Bull? No prob­lem. How about drop­ping down to a lean 4% body fat for Cape Fear? Con­sid­er it done. And while we’re at it, let’s pay a den­tist $20k to grind the actor’s teeth down, you know, to achieve the men­ac­ing look of Max Cady. When it comes to Taxi Dri­ver, the least a method actor can do is learn to dri­ve a cab. Above, behold the hack license obtained by Bob­by D. in 1976. As part of De Niro’s metic­u­lous prepa­ra­tion for Taxi Dri­ver, writes Andrew J. Rausch in The Films of Mar­tin Scors­ese and Robert De Niro, the actor spent some week­ends as a cab­bie. On one occa­sion, a pas­sen­ger rec­og­nized him and asked him if he was Robert De Niro. The pas­sen­ger, who also hap­pened to be an actor, then quipped: “Well, that’s act­ing. One year the Oscar, the next you’re dri­ving a cab!” (I’d real­ly like to believe that sto­ry is true.) The license per­ma­nent­ly resides at the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter in Austin, Texas.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Young Robert De Niro Appears in 1969 AMC Car Com­mer­cial

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Cast­ing of The God­fa­ther with Cop­po­la, Paci­no, De Niro & Caan

Before Alfred Hitch­cock freaked out audi­ences every­where by killing off the pro­tag­o­nist halfway through Psy­cho, before he was praised as a great mas­ter of cin­e­ma by a bunch of French crit­ics who would them­selves go on to become cin­e­mat­ic mas­ters, before the adjec­tive “Hitch­cock­ian” entered the lan­guage, Hitch­cock was sim­ply a guy strug­gling to make a go of it as a direc­tor.

He start­ed his career in film when he was bare­ly out of his teens in 1919. Hitch­cock soon found him­self work­ing in the largest and most influ­en­tial stu­dio in Europe, Germany’s Uni­ver­sum Film AG (UFA). There he not only watched Fritz Lang and F. W. Mur­nau direct, but he also worked as a writer, art direc­tor, assis­tant direc­tor on a num­ber of silent films includ­ing The White Shad­ow (1924) and The Black­guard (1925). Though Hitch­cock got his first director’s cred­it with the 1926 movie The Plea­sure Gar­den, the first movie to tru­ly feel Hitch­cock­ian was The Lodger: A Sto­ry of Lon­don Fog (1927). You can watch it above.

Based on a nov­el by Marie Bel­loc Lown­des, The Lodger opens with a blonde woman scream­ing in ter­ror. She is the vic­tim of a shad­owy Jack the Rip­per-like ser­i­al killer who leaves a call­ing card announc­ing him­self as ‘The Avenger.’ Cut to Daisy, a blonde mod­el whose par­ents are jubi­lant over final­ly find­ing a board­er for their spare room. The guy is hand­some, mys­te­ri­ous and has a weird thing for blondes. You think he might have some­thing to do with the mur­ders?

For a film that came out decades before Ver­ti­go and Rear Win­dow, The Lodger has just about all of Hitchcock’s cin­e­mat­ic ticks. A fetishis­tic obses­sion with blondes? Check. An unset­tling min­gling of sex and death? Check. A man wrong­ly accused? Check. The only thing it real­ly lacks is a nation­al land­mark as the back­drop of a showy action set piece.

On the oth­er hand, The Lodger feels decid­ed­ly Ger­man. The claus­tro­pho­bic light­ing, the grotesque shad­ows and the gen­er­al­ly mor­bid sto­ry­line all would be per­fect­ly at home at Uni­ver­sum Film AG. In fact, The Lodger, in terms of sto­ry, tone and looks, feels like a cin­e­mat­ic cousin to Fritz Lang’s 1931 ear­ly sound mas­ter­piece M.

Of course, Hitch­cock was just a young direc­tor in 1927. And like many young film­mak­ers, he had a hard time with his pro­duc­ers. While the book leaves it ambigu­ous whether or not the lodger is the killer, the han­dlers of the movie’s star Ivor Nov­el­lo couldn’t pos­si­bly have the actor play a vil­lain and demand­ed a change to the end­ing. When Hitch turned in the final movie, Michael Bal­con, the movie’s main pro­duc­er, was unim­pressed and almost shelved the flick, and, with it, Hitchcock’s career. But after a lit­tle bit of tin­ker­ing, the movie was final­ly released. And when The Lodger became a huge box office hit, Hitchcock’s career was assured.

You can find The Lodger on our list of 23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online, as well as in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The White Shad­ow, the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered and Ear­li­est-Sur­viv­ing Hitch­cock Film

23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

The 39 Steps: Hitchcock’s 1935 Clas­sic Online

37 Hitch­cock Cameo Appear­ances Over 50 Years: All in One Video

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.

Does Wim Wen­ders, one of my favorite direc­tors, make per­fect films? Hard­ly — and there­in, at least for me, lies the appeal. Per­fec­tion strikes me as a sin­gu­lar­ly unin­ter­est­ing goal for art, and Wen­ders has made some of the most inter­est­ing pieces of motion pic­ture art going for the past thir­ty years: Wings of Desire; Paris, Texas; Note­book on Cities and Clothes; Tokyo-Ga. Per­haps, it occurs to me, he has achieved his own kind of very spe­cif­ic, inim­itable per­fec­tion. But if you seek to imi­tate it nev­er­the­less, have a look at “Wim Wen­ders’ Rules of Cin­e­ma Per­fec­tion” above. In this video (actu­al­ly a kind of spot for Stel­la Artois, a brand with which the auteur has worked before), we see humor­ous­ly revealed sev­er­al of Wen­ders’ best film­mak­ing prac­tices: “You need a good title from the begin­ning,” “Con­ti­nu­ity is clear­ly over­rat­ed,” “Try to wel­come and incor­po­rate” the unex­pect­ed, and “If you like foot­ball, don’t shoot dur­ing the world cham­pi­onship.”

If you’ve done your read­ing on Wen­ders, you can prob­a­bly tell that the clip draws from a pub­lished list of the direc­tor’s “50 Gold­en Rules of Film­mak­ing.” Oth­er help­ful rec­om­men­da­tions include “Before you say ‘cut,’ wait five more sec­onds,” “A ‘beau­ti­ful image’ can very well be the worst thing that can hap­pen to a scene,” and “There are no rules.” Will fol­low­ing these if-n0t-rules-then-guide­lines turn you into the next Wim Wen­ders? Unlike­ly. Will drink­ing Stel­la Artois do it? Cer­tain­ly not. But it could hurt none of us, what­ev­er our cre­ative endeav­or of choice, to emu­late his will­ing­ness on dis­play here to learn from his mis­takes (based on his list, I’d say he’s tak­en his share of hard knocks hir­ing cou­ples, adapt­ing nov­els, and work­ing with ani­mals); to share his wis­dom; and (maybe most impor­tant­ly of all) to learn not to take our­selves too seri­ous­ly. Sure, his detrac­tors tend to accuse him of pre­ten­tious­ness, but we true fans (who pay close atten­tion even to his com­mer­cial act­ing gigs) know the truth.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Wim Wen­ders and Cel­e­brat­ed Direc­tors Talk About the Future of Cin­e­ma (1982)

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.