“A 2500 m. d’alti­tude, dans le Val des Dix, un mil­li­er d’homme dresse un mur de béton aus­si haut que la Tour Eif­fel: le bar­rage de la ‘GRANDE-DIXENCE’.” So begins Jean-Luc Godard­’s very first film, Opéra­tion béton. You Fran­coph­o­nes will have gath­ered that, for the debut that would begin his long, pas­sion­ate career in film­mak­ing, Godard chose to shoot the con­struc­tion of “a wall as high as the Eif­fel Tow­er” by a thou­sand men and out of con­crete — a great deal of con­crete indeed. Valais’ Grande Dix­ence dam not only pro­vid­ed Godard the direc­tor the sub­ject of his first movie, but the funds to make it as well. Despite hav­ing already gained some momen­tum writ­ing crit­i­cal pieces for Cahiers du ciné­ma, the 23-year-old Godard took hard man­u­al work on the dam’s job site, join­ing his friend Jean-Pierre Laub­sch­er already employed there. Then the idea came to him: why not shoot a doc­u­men­tary about all of this?

Arrang­ing a trans­fer through Laub­sch­er to a less tax­ing place on the dam as a switch­board oper­a­tor, Godard then bor­rowed a 35-mil­lime­ter cam­era from a friend of a friend and got to work — his real work, that of cin­e­ma. “The orig­i­nal com­men­tary for La Cam­pagne du beton (The Cam­paign of Con­crete or The Con­crete Coun­try­side), writ­ten by Laub­sch­er and dat­ed Octo­ber 17, 1954, was two pages long and con­cise; it mere­ly labeled the action,” writes crit­ic Richard Brody in Every­thing is Cin­e­ma: The Work­ing Life of Jean-Luc Godard. “But Godard gave the film a rhyming title instead, Opéra­tion béton (Oper­a­tion Con­crete) and rewrote the com­men­tary. Though he kept sev­er­al of Laub­scher’s felic­i­tous turns of phrase, Godard­’s ver­sion, which he record­ed in his own voice, great­ly ampli­fied the ver­biage and resem­bled, instead of a series of pho­to cap­tions, a per­son­’s enthu­si­as­tic, digres­sive account of his expe­ri­ence at work.” Cer­tain die-hard Godard-heads may also iden­ti­fy hints of the auteur’s favorite themes: labor, cap­i­tal, nation­al­ism, the machine-like sys­tems that sur­round human­i­ty. Cer­tain­ly the indus­try-admir­ing tone seems suit­ably, er, breath­less.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in 26 Minute Film

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

525 Free Movies Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

“The only Wes Ander­son movie I like is Bot­tle Rock­et,” declares the char­ac­ter Beat­nik Vam­pire in Dorothy Gam­brel­l’s com­ic strip Cat and Girl. He does so in a bid for suprema­cy dur­ing a cul­tur­al “slap fight” con­sist­ing of a vol­ley of claims like “I saw Mod­est Mouse in Berlin in 1999” and “Cuban food made by Mex­i­cans is bet­ter than Ital­ian food made by Alba­ni­ans.” Even if we’ve avoid­ed par­tic­i­pat­ing in such one-ups­man­ship ses­sions dis­guised as con­ver­sa­tions, we’ve all wit­nessed them. But should you one day need your own trump card, I give you Wes Ander­son­’s first short film above. Watch it, and you can then cred­i­bly insist the fol­low­ing: “The only Wes Ander­son movie I like is Bot­tle Rock­et. No, the orig­i­nal.”

In the late nineties, Ander­son and his col­lab­o­ra­tors found them­selves in a posi­tion to make their beloved break­through Rush­more on the strength of its pre­de­ces­sor Bot­tle Rocket, their 1996 fea­ture debut. But even that film, a now-appre­ci­at­ed but then lit­tle-seen sto­ry of three deeply ama­teur crim­i­nals on the run through the green open spaces of Texas star­ring now-famous act­ing broth­ers Owen and Luke Wil­son, fol­lowed anoth­er. Four years ear­li­er, Ander­son and Owen Wil­son, who’d met in a play­writ­ing class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin, put togeth­er the thir­teen-minute short you see here. It tries out the con­cept of thieves in train­ing, albeit in a very dif­fer­ent style from the one we’ve come to regard, over twen­ty years lat­er, as Ander­son­ian. Wes, if you read this, know that I’d like to see you do some­thing in black-and-white again. With a jazz score.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son from Above. Quentin Taran­ti­no From Below

Bill Mur­ray Intro­duces Wes Anderson’s Moon­rise King­dom (And Plays FDR)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

No Amer­i­can film­mak­er com­mands such over­whelm­ing crit­i­cal respect and pop­u­lar acclaim as Stan­ley Kubrick. A hero to art house film stu­dents and every­day lovers of sci-fi, hor­ror, and war movies, Kubrick’s metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship and vision­ary reimag­in­ing of genre films are leg­endary, and his genius is cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art. Or at least it is until the end of the month.

The trav­el­ing Kubrick exhib­it, housed at LACMA since Novem­ber, will move on June 30, so if you’re in the area, don’t delay. The Kubrick exhib­it cov­ers his work as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Look mag­a­zine in the 1940s through his film­mak­ing achieve­ments from the 50s to the 90s. LACMA fur­ther describes the col­lec­tion on its site:

His films are rep­re­sent­ed through a selec­tion of anno­tat­ed scripts, pro­duc­tion pho­tog­ra­phy, lens­es and cam­eras, set mod­els, cos­tumes, and props. In addi­tion, the exhi­bi­tion explores Napoleon and The Aryan Papers, two projects that Kubrick nev­er com­plet­ed, as well as the tech­no­log­i­cal advances devel­oped and uti­lized by Kubrick and his team.

If you can’t make it to L.A., a YouTube user has cre­at­ed the won­der­ful three-part video tour of the exhib­it above, set to clas­sic Kubrick-ian film scores. Also, be sure to flip through the 100 pho­tos of the exhib­it—includ­ing shots of famous props, Kubrick’s cam­eras, lens­es, and scripts, and his director’s chair—at Jamie & Adam Test­ed.

Note: In con­junc­tion with the exhi­bi­tion, LACMA has cre­at­ed a free app for iPhone, iPad and Android. It “fea­tures pho­tographs, script notes, an inter­ac­tive time­line of Kubrick­’s career, and orig­i­nal inter­views with Stan Dou­glas, Elvis Mitchell, Chris Nolan, Ter­ry Semel, David Slade and Dou­glas Trum­bull about the direc­tor’s life and lega­cy. Excerpts from a rare 1965 inter­view with Kubrick, cour­tesy of Jere­my Bern­stein, are also includ­ed.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

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

If a Japan­ese cinephile likes Amer­i­can movies, they prob­a­bly love David Lynch. I don’t mean to present this as an iron­clad rule, but it cer­tain­ly holds true among my friends. Just as many Amer­i­cans find some­thing inter­est­ing­ly askew in the fruits of mod­ern Japan­ese cul­ture, pre­sum­ably Lynch’s Japan­ese fans expe­ri­ence his brand of off-kil­ter Amer­i­cana — some­times far off-kil­ter Amer­i­cana — just as rich­ly. Observers not par­tic­u­lar­ly famil­iar with David Lynch have dis­missed him as “weird,” just as those not par­tic­u­lar­ly famil­iar with Japan have dis­missed it as “weird.” But those of us famil­iar with both the film­mak­er and the coun­try know that they sim­ply oper­ate on dif­fer­ent, and fas­ci­nat­ing, sets of sen­si­bil­i­ties.

You can see these worlds col­lide in Bib­liok­lep­t’s post on Japan­ese posters adver­tis­ing David Lynch films. At the top of the post, we have the omi­nous­ly intrigu­ing one-sheet for Mul­hol­land Dri­ve (or, ren­dered here in katakana script, “Maruho­ran­do Doraibu”), Lynch’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed 2001 pic­ture that, con­cep­tu­al­ly, began as a tele­vi­sion series to fol­low up Twin Peaks. “Watashi no ata­ma wa dou­ka shiteiru,” reads the text between the faces of stars Lau­ra Har­ring and Nao­mi Watts, which I trans­late to “Some­thing is the mat­ter with my head” — a viable tagline, come to think of it, for most of Lynch’s works. Just above you’ll find the poster for a per­son­al Lynch favorite, Lost High­way (“Rosu­to Haiuei”), clear­ly also pitched across the Pacif­ic as the direc­tor’s mid-nineties come­back. And the chill­ing near­ly abstract image below rep­re­sents the chill­ing, abstract movie that start­ed it all, 1977’s Eraser­head — or, Ireiza­a­hed­do:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eraser­head Sto­ries: David Lynch on the Mak­ing of His Famous­ly Night­mar­ish Movie

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch in Four Move­ments: A Video Trib­ute

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The movies and jour­nal­ism have had a long rela­tion­ship in Amer­i­ca, not least because, in Hol­ly­wood’s hey­day, so many screen­writ­ers began their careers in news­rooms. The pro­lif­ic Ben Hecht, now known as “the Shake­speare of Hol­ly­wood,” start­ed off as a reporter at the Chica­go Jour­nal. His col­lab­o­ra­tor Charles MacArthur first worked over at the Chica­go Tri­bune. They, along with son of the film indus­try Charles Led­er­er, co-wrote His Girl Fri­day, the clas­sic 1940 screw­ball com­e­dy of steely sto­ry-chas­ing and elab­o­rate roman­tic intrigue at The Morn­ing Post. Since the film fell into the pub­lic domain in 1968 — and this being Fri­day, after all — why not get a shot of Cary Grant, Ros­alind Rus­sell, and Howard Hawks free online today?

His Girl Fri­day stands out for many rea­sons, espe­cial­ly by refus­ing, unlike many Hol­ly­wood pic­tures writ­ten by for­mer news­pa­per­men, to instinc­tive­ly glo­ri­fy jour­nal­ism, a mis­take more recent films about the news still make. As the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane wrote about Shat­tered Glass, Bil­ly Ray’s drama­ti­za­tion of the fall of infa­mous New Repub­lic fab­ri­ca­tor Stephen Glass, “Glass may be a rot­ten apple in the bar­rel, but the con­tention of Ray’s film is that the bar­rel itself, the noble call­ing of the reporter, is as stur­dy and as pol­ished as ever. Give me a break. On sec­ond thought, give me His Girl Fri­day. Five min­utes of Howard Hawks’s speedy and cyn­i­cal view of hacks in sharp suits, as they them­selves bend the world to fit the shape of their own cyn­i­cism, is a more brac­ing sight than nine­ty-four min­utes of Stephen Glass and his trag­ic slide from grace.”

His Girl Fri­day appears in our col­lec­tion of 535 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made, Free Online. Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

26 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.