“To steal a char­ac­ter or a sto­ry isn’t real theft. But to steal a land­scape, that is a very, very seri­ous crime.” There we have one of the propo­si­tions agreed upon by film­mak­ers Wern­er Her­zog and Errol Mor­ris in a con­ver­sa­tion they had for the Believ­er. Though their fil­mo­gra­phies may not look ter­ri­bly sim­i­lar — Mor­ris with his inter­view-based doc­u­men­taries on pet ceme­ter­ies, emer­gent sys­tems, and old Sec­re­taries of Defense, Her­zog with his bare­ly defin­able, dis­tinc­tion-between-fact-and-fic­tion-repu­di­at­ing stud­ies of aggres­sive dwarfs, doomed nat­u­ral­ists, death row inmates, and con­quis­ta­dors and rub­ber barons aggran­diz­ing them­selves in the jun­gle — their work has much in com­mon under the sur­face. Don’t believe me? First watch through the list we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured of 30 Errol Mor­ris movies stream­able online, assem­bled on Metafil­ter by a mem­ber known as “Going to Maine.”  Then watch Going to Maine’s new list of 43 Wern­er Her­zog movies stream­able online, com­pare, and con­trast.

At the top of the post, you can spend nine min­utes watch­ing Her­ak­les, Her­zog’s very first cin­e­mat­ic effort, a mash-up (if it does­n’t stretch the def­i­n­i­tion too far to apply the word to some­thing made in 1962) of mus­cle men and rac­ing-car wrecks. Just above, we have 1969’s Pre­cau­tions Against Fanat­ics, anoth­er ear­ly exer­cise in Her­zo­gian form-bend­ing which repur­pos­es footage of real peo­ple, real places, and real ani­mals to absurd ends — in this case, to envi­sion a real­i­ty in which hired men work tire­less­ly to pro­tect hors­es from “horse fanat­ics.” The list also rounds up a few shorts that even true Her­zog fanat­ics may nev­er have had the chance to see, includ­ing 1976’s No One Will Play With Me (part one, part two) below, the sto­ry of a preschool social out­cast based upon expe­ri­ences relat­ed by the real chil­dren them­selves — the sort of thing we’d all have grown up watch­ing on tele­vi­sion, in oth­er words, if Wern­er Her­zog had made after-school spe­cials. If works like these don’t give you quite enough insight into the mind of this inim­itable, uncom­pro­mis­ing, and seem­ing­ly tire­less, Bavar­i­an film­mak­er, don’t for­get to check out his own favorite films as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Favorite Films

30 Errol Mor­ris Movies That Can Be Streamed Online

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.

If one can char­ac­ter­ize Stan­ley Kubrick by his com­plete con­trol over the medi­um and his dogged insis­tence on stay­ing with­in 30 miles of his house when shoot­ing a movie, even if it means dress­ing up a Lon­don fac­to­ry to look like Hue, Viet­nam as he did for Full Met­al Jack­et, then Wern­er Her­zog can be char­ac­ter­ized as his oppo­site.

Herzog’s movies are strange, messy and ecsta­t­ic, a far cry from the chilly aloof­ness of Kubrick. In both his fea­ture films and his doc­u­men­taries, Her­zog uses his cam­era to uncov­er new lay­ers of nature, expe­ri­ence and the human psy­che. And there have been few film­mak­ers more will­ing to shoot films in rugged, exot­ic places as Her­zog — from Antarc­ti­ca to the Ama­zon­ian rain­for­est. In fact, a num­ber of his most noto­ri­ous shoots seem more designed to test the endurance of the cast and crew than to pro­duce a movie.

His film Fitz­car­ral­do, for exam­ple, is about a guy who has the vision­ary idea to haul a river­boat over a moun­tain in the Ama­zon rain­for­est. Her­zog decid­ed, for the pur­pos­es of real­ism, that he would actu­al­ly drag a river­boat over a moun­tain. The pro­duc­tion, which is in the run­ning for the most mis­er­able film shoot ever, is the sub­ject of the absolute­ly riv­et­ing doc­u­men­tary The Bur­den of Dreams. At point one in the doc, Her­zog quips, “I should­n’t make movies any­more. I should go to a lunatic asy­lum.” And by the end of the movie, you think that he’s prob­a­bly right.

Of course, that crazed bravu­ra has always been at the cen­ter of Herzog’s mys­tique. After all, this is the guy who actu­al­ly ate a shoe after los­ing a bet with doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris (find 30 of his films online).

In 2009, when Her­zog released Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he was asked by the folks over at Rot­ten Toma­toes to list his top 5 movies. This is a direc­tor who once said, “I believe the com­mon denom­i­na­tor of the Uni­verse is not har­mo­ny, but chaos, hos­til­i­ty and mur­der.” So it’s a pret­ty safe bet that The Lion King didn’t make the cut.

The list starts with Nos­fer­atu from 1922 (up top). Her­zog liked this movie so much that he shot his own ver­sion in 1979.

In my opin­ion, the great­est of great films is Nos­fer­atu by [F.W.] Mur­nau, which I should include in the great­est five films of all time.

Intol­er­ance (1916)

D.W. Grif­fith’s epic was his response to the pub­lic out­cry fol­low­ing his epi­cal­ly racist Birth of a Nation. The movie also hap­pened to rev­o­lu­tion­ize film­mak­ing.

Every­thing that [D.W.] Grif­fith made: Bro­ken Blos­soms, Intol­er­ance, Birth of a Nation, you just name it. Every­thing. He’s the Shake­speare of cin­e­ma. Peri­od. Watch his films and you’ll know instant­ly.

Next is Freaks, Tod Brown­ing’s 1932 cult mas­ter­piece that fea­tured actu­al cir­cus per­form­ers and dwarves. No doubt the movie was an influ­ence on Her­zog’s 1970 film Even Dwarves Start­ed Out Small. “It’s just for­mi­da­ble, it’s phe­nom­e­nal,” says Her­zog. “You’ve got­ta see it. It would take me an hour to explain.”

The last two films on Her­zog’s list? Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987), Abbas Kiarostami’s qui­et tale of a kid who is just look­ing to return a note­book to his friend. And Rashomon (1950), Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s first true mas­ter­piece, the film that intro­duced Japan­ese film to the west­ern world after it won a Gold­en Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Fes­ti­val. The movie also clear­ly impressed Her­zog:

It is prob­a­bly the only film that I’ve ever seen which has some­thing like a per­fect bal­ance, which does not occur in film­mak­ing very often. You sense it some­times in great music, but I haven’t expe­ri­enced it in cin­e­ma, and it’s mind bog­gling. I don’t know how [Aki­ra] Kuro­sawa did it. It’s still a mys­tery to me. That’s great­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

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.

Even the great­est film­mak­ers out there some­times need to pay the bills.

In the 1990s, Swiss tobac­co com­pa­ny F. J. Bur­rus hired name brand art house direc­tors to make com­mer­cials for their Parisi­enne brand of cig­a­rettes. The com­pa­ny gave free rein to the film­mak­ers both in terms of con­tent and approach. And the tal­ent they man­aged to attract is aston­ish­ing: David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers, Emir Kus­turi­ca, Roman Polan­s­ki and, most puz­zling­ly, Jean-Luc Godard.

Wait a sec­ond, you might say. Wasn’t Godard an avowed Maoist at one point in his life? Wasn’t he one of the most con­sis­tent­ly anti-bour­geois, anti-cap­i­tal­ist fig­ures in film­dom? Yes. And he also did cig­a­rette com­mer­cials. He did a few for Nike too.

You can see his ad for Parisi­enne above. Typ­i­cal with late peri­od Godard, the com­mer­cial is both lit­er­ary, polit­i­cal and will­ful­ly dif­fi­cult. Cred­it­ed to both Godard and his long time cre­ative and roman­tic part­ner Anne-Marie Miéville, the com­mer­cial fea­tures a skate­board­er slalom­ing between large box­es of cig­a­rettes, some guy in bare feet shuf­fling through a floor lit­tered with Parisi­enne pack­ages and a well-to-do woman read­ing a nov­el called Parisi­enne Peo­ple. On the sound­track, Godard reads a quote from Racine. It’s prob­a­bly noth­ing that Don Drap­er would have been hap­py with, but Bur­rus was pleased.

Ads by oth­er film­mak­ers sim­i­lar­ly show off their quirks and obses­sions. The Coen broth­ers’ com­mer­cial, for instance, looks less like an advert than a scene from one of their movies. A dandy smok­ing a cig from a hold­er is deeply moved by a sweaty vaude­ville per­for­mance. When it ends, he whis­pers, “Again.” It’s a res­o­lu­tion that rais­es as many ques­tions as it answers. It’s a whole short sto­ry in 30 sec­onds.

Emir Kusturica’s ad is packed with magi­cians, acro­bats, Balkan pas­tiche and gor­geous ingénues in black. Just like his movies. Side note: Kus­turi­ca has a suc­cess­ful side career play­ing in a band called The No Smok­ing Orches­tra.

Roman Polanski’s com­mer­cial is a jokey tale about a vam­pire that has an unset­tling­ly under­cur­rent of men­ace and sex­u­al vio­lence. Just like his movies.

And David Lynch’s ad plays out like a night­mare from some­one who fell asleep read­ing a Wal­ter Mosley nov­el.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

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.

In 2006, a jury of 1,500 film­mak­ers, actors, actress­es, crit­ics and his­to­ri­ans cre­at­ed a list of the 100 Most Inspir­ing Films of All Time. It’s a Won­der­ful Life, Frank Capra’s 1946 Christ­mas tale star­ring Jim­my Stew­art, took top hon­ors. And per­haps you know that the film fell into the pub­lic domain for some years, before being yanked back out. But anoth­er Frank Capra film, Meet John Doe, remains in the com­mons. And it ranks 49th on the same list of Inspi­ra­tional Films.

Called “a fable that deals with the dan­gers of home grown fas­cism, and the pow­er of the ordi­nary man and lit­tle peo­ple to pre­vent the tri­umph of dark forces,” Meet John Doe can be “grouped into a pop­ulist tril­o­gy of Capra films about Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism,” along with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton (1939). Star­ring Gary Coop­er and Bar­bara Stan­wyck, Meet John Doe (1941) was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Sto­ry.

You can watch the uplift­ing film above, or find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. More pris­tine copies can be found on Ama­zon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online