Watch a Screen Test of 21-Year-Old Orson Welles (1937)

in Film, History | May 5th, 2020

We remem­ber Orson Welles as a film direc­tor, and giv­en the influ­ence of Cit­i­zen Kane, we do it with good rea­son. It cer­tain­ly does­n’t hurt the image of Welles-as-auteur that he was only 25 years old when he made that movie, now con­sid­ered one of the great­est of all time. Not only did he direct, he co-wrote, pro­duced, and starred, show­cas­ing a set of act­ing skills he’d been hon­ing on radio and the stage since child­hood. If any man was ever born to give com­mand­ing per­for­mances, it was Welles; when silent film gave way to “talkies,” which favored actors with strong pres­ences and strong voic­es both, Hol­ly­wood stu­dios should have beat­en a path to his door. And yet, when he came to Hol­ly­wood, one of its biggest stu­dios turned him down.

These clips show a 21-year-old Welles doing a screen test for Warn­er Broth­ers in ear­ly 1937, by which time he had already estab­lished him­self as a radio and the­atre per­former. What­ev­er spark of genius we feel we can rec­og­nize in Welles’ line-read­ings today, the peo­ple at Warn­ers’ evi­dent­ly could­n’t see it then — or more char­i­ta­bly, they did­n’t know how to sell his preter­nat­ur­al grav­i­tas.

As his­to­ry shows, Welles could in any case make more of a mark with projects under his own con­trol. Lat­er that same year he would co-found the Mer­cury The­atre, the reper­to­ry com­pa­ny now best remem­bered for its radio broad­casts, specif­i­cal­ly the 1938 adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ alien-inva­sion nov­el War of the Worlds that, so the leg­end goes, proved a lit­tle too real for many lis­ten­ers across Amer­i­ca.

Mas­ter­ing the dra­mat­ic arts is one thing, but set­ting off nation­wide con­tro­ver­sy — now that’s the way to get the enter­tain­ment indus­try’s atten­tion. Welles found him­self able to par­lay the inter­est gen­er­at­ed by War of the Worlds into a his­tor­i­cal­ly gen­er­ous three-pic­ture deal with RKO Pic­tures, one that allowed him total cre­ative con­trol as well as the use of his actors from the Mer­cury The­atre. After com­ing to grips with the art of film­mak­ing as well as the art of putting togeth­er projects, Welles came up with the sto­ry of the rise and fall of char­ac­ter mod­eled on William Ran­dolph Hearst, Howard Hugh­es, and oth­er Amer­i­can tycoons. Released in 1941, Cit­i­zen Kane would mark the zenith of Welles’ fame, though over the next 44 years he would labor over many oth­er cin­e­mat­ic visions — efforts more acclaimed now than they were in his life­time, and all finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by the act­ing skills that nev­er desert­ed him.

via Eyes on Cin­e­ma

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Orson Welles’ First Ever Film, Direct­ed at Age 19

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Warhol’s Screen Tests of Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico & More

Mar­lon Bran­do Screen Tests for Rebel With­out A Cause (1947)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Jean-Luc Godard’s Filmmaking Masterclass on Instagram

in Current Affairs, Film | May 4th, 2020

As the last liv­ing major French New Wave direc­tor, Jean-Luc Godard has become a kind of ora­cle for younger film­mak­ers and cinéastes. Despite hav­ing turned 89 last Decem­ber, he remains in a sense what film schol­ar David Bor­d­well not long ago called “the youngest film­mak­er at work today.” When Godard start­ed work­ing in cin­e­ma just about 65 years ago, it did­n’t take him long to make his name by break­ing its rules. Ever since, he’s ward­ed off com­pla­cen­cy by con­tin­u­ing to rethink, at the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el, not just film but the nature of images, sounds and words them­selves. And he pur­sues this line of think­ing in any avail­able medi­um, includ­ing, as demon­strat­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion above on “images in the time of the coro­n­avirus,” Insta­gram Live.

This form, as a film­mak­er like Godard would sure­ly appre­ci­ate, suits the sub­stance. No venue could be more of the moment than Insta­gram Live, as per­form­ers of all kinds have tak­en to stream­ing them­selves from home in the midst of the glob­al pan­dem­ic. But where many such fig­ures use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take view­ers’ minds off the coro­n­avirus, Godard and his inter­view­er Lionel Baier, head of the cin­e­ma depart­ment at Lau­san­ne’s ECAL Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design, use it as a start­ing point. What begins as a dis­cus­sion of Godard­’s news-watch­ing habits turns into a con­ver­sa­tion­al jour­ney across such sub­jects as film­mak­ing, writ­ing, paint­ing, phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, med­i­cine, law, and lan­guage. “I don’t believe in lan­guage,” goes one of Godard­’s char­ac­ter­is­tic pro­nounce­ments. “What needs to be changed is the alpha­bet. There are too many let­ters and we should delete lots of them.”

Per­haps that does­n’t come as a sur­prise from a direc­tor whose recent pic­tures include one called Good­bye to Lan­guage. But spo­ken or filmed, Godard­’s ideas on the mat­ter also reflect his per­son­al expe­ri­ence: he tells of hav­ing for a time lost the mem­o­ry of names of cer­tain fruits and veg­eta­bles, and con­se­quent­ly devel­op­ing a visu­al method of remem­ber­ing his gro­cery lists. Such every­day sto­ries come along with ref­er­ences to a wide range of artists, sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, and “adven­tur­ers” in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly from the his­to­ry of the Fran­coph­o­ne world. More than once aris­es the name of Nicéphore Niépce, the 19th-cen­tu­ry French inven­tor respon­si­ble for the first known pho­to­graph ever tak­en (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) and a sub­ject of one of Godard­’s cur­rent works-in-progress.

“In the film I’m going to make,” Godard explains, “I ask what Niépce believed he was doing or what his inten­tions were when he sim­ply want­ed to copy real­i­ty.” All through­out his decades as a film­mak­er, Godard has clear­ly kept ask­ing the same ques­tion about him­self: in mak­ing films, does he want to “copy real­i­ty” or do some­thing more inter­est­ing? For­tu­nate­ly for cin­e­ma, he always seems to have opt­ed for the lat­ter, back to his days with his Nou­velle Vague com­pa­tri­ots François Truf­faut, Jacques Riv­ette, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer, all of whom fig­ure into his rem­i­nis­cences here. And will COVID-19 fig­ure in a future Godard film? “It’ll have an influ­ence but not direct­ly,” he says. “The virus should def­i­nite­ly be talked about once or twice. With every­thing that comes with it, the virus is a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It does­n’t mean we’re going to die from it, but we might not live very well with it either.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejec­tion of Breath­less in Stride in 1960 Inter­view

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Picasso Create a Masterpiece in Just Five Minutes (1955)

in Art, Film | April 28th, 2020

“One day in Paris a wealthy woman goes into a café and sees Picas­so,” writes Alas­tair Dry­burgh in Every­thing You Know About Busi­ness Is Wrong.

After a few min­utes, she sum­mons up the courage to approach him. ‘Mon­sieur Picas­so,’ she asks, ‘would you make a por­trait of me? I’ll pay you any­thing you want.’ Picas­so nods, grabs a menu, and in five min­utes has sketched the wom­an’s por­trait on the back of it. He hands it to her.

‘Five thou­sand francs,’ he says.

‘But Mon­sieur Picas­so, it only took you five min­utes.’

‘No, Madam, it took me my whole life.’

This anec­dote has been ele­vat­ed, in books like Dry­burgh’s, to the sta­tus of a “Picas­so Prin­ci­ple.” Indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es alike, this prin­ci­ple states, should price their goods and ser­vices in accor­dance not just with the time and effort required to do the job, but the time and effort required to make doing the job pos­si­ble in the first place.

Whether Picas­so ever actu­al­ly charged a rich lady in a café 5,000 francs for an impromp­tu por­trait, nobody knows. But that he pos­sessed the skills to cre­ate a ful­ly real­ized work of art in five min­utes is a mat­ter of cin­e­mat­ic record, and you can wit­ness such an act in the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts video above.

The video’s source is Le Mys­tère Picas­so, a doc­u­men­tary by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot, the film­mak­er best known for 1950s thrillers like The Wages of Fear and Les Dia­boliques. Offi­cial­ly declared a French nation­al trea­sure and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the film cap­tures Picas­so in action, cre­at­ing orig­i­nal art­works right before the cam­era. “Not many of the works he cre­at­ed for the doc­u­men­tary sur­vive,” say this video’s notes, but three of them were recent­ly dis­played in the Roy­al Acad­e­my’s exhi­bi­tion Picas­so and Paper, a vir­tu­al tour of which appears just above. In Le Mys­tère Picas­so the artist paints 1955’s Vis­age: Head of a Faun in just five min­utes, a severe time con­straint imposed by Clouzot’s sup­ply of film stock.

The direc­tor’s ten­sion comes across as clear­ly as the painter’s con­cen­tra­tion. While Clouzot puffs away on his pipe, Picas­so gets right down to work. “Picas­so plays with the draw­ing,” says the video’s onscreen com­men­tary, “tak­ing it from flower to fish to chick­en to face and builds up from a mono­chrome draw­ing with bright, sat­u­rat­ed col­ors.” As the rolling counter on Clouzot’s cam­era ticks off the final meters of film, Picas­so trans­forms the work-in-progress almost com­plete­ly, con­jur­ing up a wild-eyed fig­ure in sil­hou­ette, nei­ther man nor beast, to dom­i­nate the fore­ground. He exe­cutes every brush­stroke unflinch­ing­ly, filled with the con­fi­dence of a painter long since assured of his mas­tery. In one sense, Vis­age: Head of a Faun took Picas­so five min­utes; more truth­ful­ly, it took him 74 years and five min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Picas­so Makes Won­der­ful Abstract Art

How To Under­stand a Picas­so Paint­ing: A Video Primer

The Mys­tery of Picas­so: Land­mark Film of a Leg­endary Artist at Work, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch 12 Classic Chinese Films Online, Complete with English Subtitles (1920s-1940s)

in Film | April 27th, 2020

The Chi­nese film indus­try began around the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, but unfor­tu­nate­ly noth­ing sur­vives of those first two decades–films lost to fire, to age, and just plain lost. Any per­son want­i­ng to study this his­to­ry must make do with syn­opses, pho­tos, and imag­i­na­tion. How­ev­er, after that? This YouTube playlist curat­ed by the Depart­ment of Asian Stud­ies of the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia fea­tures a dozen notable films and influ­en­tial clas­sics from two and half decades of Chi­nese his­to­ry, some of the most tumul­tuous years for that nation. Chi­na oust­ed the British, fought off the Japan­ese, and began a rev­o­lu­tion under Mao. The print qual­i­ty varies here and there, but all are enter­tain­ing, from musi­cals to hor­ror movies to social dra­mas.

The col­lec­tion begins with the old­est sur­viv­ing film in the series, Labourer’s Love, a two-reel­er from 1922 direct­ed by Zhang Shichuan. Most of the orig­i­nal Chi­nese film­mak­ers were trained by Amer­i­cans, so ear­ly shorts like this tend­ed to be silent come­dies filled with visu­al gags–this one fea­tures a car­pen­ter who opens up a fruit stand to woo a woman, and uses his wood­work­ing skills and tools to increase his busi­ness.

By the late 20s how­ev­er, Chi­na was already devel­op­ing its own gen­res and styles, just as it was devel­op­ing a mod­ern nation­al­ist pride away from colo­nial influ­ence. The first mar­tial arts film would be pro­duced in 1928. Oth­er stu­dios opt­ed for folk­lore tales or fam­i­ly melo­dra­mas.

Trained and edu­cat­ed in the Unit­ed Stat­ed, Sun Yu was one of the major film­mak­ers of the 1930s (a group of direc­tors known as the Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion film­mak­ers) until the inva­sion of Japan sent him flee­ing Shang­hai for the inte­ri­or. But the films he made for the left­ist film stu­dio Lian­hua are now clas­sics. Three of his are rep­re­sent­ed here: 1933’s Day­break, a tale of a young coun­try cou­ple who get cor­rupt­ed in the big city; Queen of Sports, a 1934 dra­ma of a plucky track star who has to nav­i­gate class stratas as well as com­pe­ti­tions; and maybe Sun Yu’s most famous film The Big Road (above), a sto­ry of six young men build­ing a road for the Chi­nese army to bat­tle the Japan­ese. Yes, it’s wartime pro­pa­gan­da, but Sun Yu was always focused on work­ing men and women. These three films also star Li Lili, con­sid­ered by some to be the “Chi­nese Mae West,” and who lived to a ripe age (as did Sun Yu). She has a role in Stan­ley Kwan’s Cen­ter Stage from 1992, his ode to the movie stars of the 1930s.

China’s first hor­ror film is also in this list: 1937’s Song at Mid­night, Ma-Xu Weibang’s retelling of Phan­tom of the Opera (with a bit of Franken­stein thrown in–the Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios influ­ence is very appar­ent here). It’s also a musi­cal, with karaoke-like subs for you to sing along if you know Can­tonese.

Last­ly, Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town from 1947 is one of the most influ­en­tial on this list. A sick­ly man’s friend vis­its in the after­math of the Sino-Japan­ese war, and the wife rec­og­nizes him as a lover from long ago. Roman­tic ten­sions soon begin to smol­der. Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love bor­rowed its repressed, long­ing mood. And film­mak­er Tian Zhuangzhaung remade it in 2002, keep­ing the orig­i­nal set­ting. Many Chi­nese film­mak­ers and crit­ics con­sid­er it one of the best of all time, China’s Casablan­ca.

Hope­ful­ly this dozen will whet your appetite for more Chi­nese cin­e­ma and pro­vide an alter­na­tive to watch­ing anoth­er binge-wor­thy but shal­low Net­flix series.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Chi­nese Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film, Princess Iron Fan, Made Under the Strains of WWII (1941)

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

An Epic Retelling of the Great Chi­nese Nov­el Romance of the Three King­doms: 110 Free Episodes and Count­ing

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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New Hilma af Klint Documentary Explores the Life & Art of the Trailblazing Abstract Artist

in Art, Film, History | April 24th, 2020

It’s not often an entire chap­ter of art his­to­ry text­books needs rewrit­ing, but as fans of Hilma af Klint see it, one such time has come. A Swedish artist and mys­tic who lived from the mid-19th to the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, af Klint left behind a body of work amount­ing to more than 1,200 paint­ings — all of which she insist­ed not be tak­en out of stor­age until 20 years after her death. She sus­pect­ed the pub­lic would­n’t be ready for them before then, and she was more right than she knew: offered the paint­ings as a dona­tion in the 1970s, Stock­holm’s Mod­er­na Museet turned them down. Only in the fol­low­ing decade did the art his­to­ry world begin to under­stand that, far from just a pro­duc­tive ama­teur paint­ing in obscu­ri­ty, af Kint might be the very first abstract artist.

Today af Klin­t’s abstract paint­ings, the first of which she pro­duced in mid­dle-age in 1906, have appre­ci­a­tors all over the world. Some, we’d like to think, came because of all the times we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured her here on Open Cul­ture; oth­ers were brought in by the Guggen­heim’s recent ret­ro­spec­tive Hilma af Klint: Paint­ings for the Future.

These paint­ings, says the muse­um’s web site, “were like lit­tle that had been seen before: bold, col­or­ful, and unteth­ered from any rec­og­niz­able ref­er­ences to the phys­i­cal world. It was years before Vasi­ly Kandin­sky, Kaz­imir Male­vich, Piet Mon­dri­an, and oth­ers would take sim­i­lar strides to rid their own art­work of rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al con­tent.” This year the sto­ry of af Klint and her work is told cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly in Beyond the Vis­i­ble, a new doc­u­men­tary by Ger­man film­mak­er Hali­na Dyrsch­ka whose trail­er appears at the top of the post.

In his review of the film, New York Times crit­ic A.O. Scott briefly recounts af Klin­t’s ear­ly years: “Born in 1862 to an aris­to­crat­ic Swedish fam­i­ly and raised part­ly on the grounds of the mil­i­tary acad­e­my where her father was an instruc­tor, she trained at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Stock­holm, mas­ter­ing the tra­di­tion­al gen­res of por­trait, still life and land­scape. By the late 1880s, her note­books and paint­ings began incor­po­rat­ing forms that, while they some­times evoked nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na (like snail shells, flower petals and insect wings), did not resem­ble any­thing in the vis­i­ble world.” This change in the artist’s aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty came along with her grow­ing inter­est in mys­ti­cism and ways of access­ing a realm beyond human sens­es. (She even offered a paint­ing to the Anthro­po­soph­i­cal Soci­ety founder Rudolf Stein­er, who reject­ed it.)

Scott calls Beyond the Vis­i­ble “a chap­ter in the whole­sale revi­sion of the crit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal record that began only recent­ly, and it enlists a pas­sion­ate and knowl­edge­able cadre of cura­tors, schol­ars, sci­en­tists and artists to press the argu­ment for af Klint’s impor­tance.” But “the paint­ings them­selves are the best evi­dence — even through the medi­a­tion of a home screen, their vibran­cy, wit and for­mal com­mand is thrilling.” With many movie the­aters tem­porar­i­ly shut down by the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic, you can watch the doc­u­men­tary through Kino Mar­quee’s “vir­tu­al cin­e­ma,” a ser­vice that streams over the inter­net but also sup­ports local art hous­es. Most of us may be no clos­er to the unseen world into which af Klint yearned to tap than were any of her every­day com­pa­tri­ots. But as far as his­tor­i­cal moments in which her work and life can find a fas­ci­nat­ed audi­ence, there’s nev­er been a bet­ter one.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Hilma af Klint: Pio­neer­ing Mys­ti­cal Painter and Per­haps the First Abstract Artist

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

Who Paint­ed the First Abstract Paint­ing?: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky? Hilma af Klint? Or Anoth­er Con­tender?

Steve Mar­tin on How to Look at Abstract Art

An Inter­ac­tive Social Net­work of Abstract Artists: Kandin­sky, Picas­so, Bran­cusi & Many More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii Streaming Free on YouTube Today Only

in Film, Music | April 24th, 2020

Pink Floyd is help­ing you get through the coro­n­avirus by stream­ing free con­cert films on YouTube. First came Pulse, a 22-song set from the 1994 Divi­sion Bell tour. Now comes Pink Floyd: Live at Pom­peii, a 1972 con­cert film fea­tur­ing the band per­form­ing with­in the ancient Roman amphithe­atre at Pom­peii. It’s a clas­sic. Watch it above. And learn more about the film in our pri­or post here.

Note: The film is only stream­ing free on YouTube for 24 hours. So watch it while you can. Once the film goes dark, you can watch out­takes here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

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10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More

in Film | April 22nd, 2020

In 1913, Ger­many, flush with a new nation’s patri­ot­ic zeal, looked like it might become the dom­i­nant nation of Europe and a real rival to that glob­al super­pow­er Great Britain. Then it hit the buz­z­saw of World War I. After the Ger­man gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in 1918 from the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al toll of a half-decade of sense­less car­nage, the Allies forced it to accept dra­con­ian terms for sur­ren­der. The entire Ger­man cul­ture was sent reel­ing, search­ing for answers to what hap­pened and why.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism came about to artic­u­late these lac­er­at­ing ques­tions roil­ing in the nation’s col­lec­tive uncon­scious. The first such film was The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (1920), about a malev­o­lent trav­el­ing magi­cian who has his ser­vant do his mur­der­ous bid­ding in the dark of the night. The sto­ry­line is all about the Freudi­an ter­ror of hid­den sub­con­scious dri­ves, but what real­ly makes the movie mem­o­rable is its com­plete­ly unhinged look. Marked by styl­ized act­ing, deep shad­ows paint­ed onto the walls, and sets filled with twist­ed archi­tec­tur­al impos­si­bil­i­ties — there might not be a sin­gle right angle in the film – Cali­gari’s look per­fect­ly mesh­es with the nar­ra­tor’s dement­ed state of mind.

Sub­se­quent Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies retreat­ed from the extreme aes­thet­ics of Cali­gari but were still filled with a mood of vio­lence, frus­tra­tion and unease. F. W. Mur­nau’s bril­liant­ly depress­ing The Last Laugh (1924) is about a proud door­man at a high-end hotel who is uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of his posi­tion and demot­ed to a low­ly bath­room atten­dant. When he hands over his uni­form, his pos­ture col­laps­es as if the jack­et were his exoskele­ton. You don’t need to be a semi­ol­o­gist to fig­ure out that the doorman’s loss of sta­tus par­al­lels Germany’s. Fritz Lang’s M (1931), a land­mark of ear­ly sound film, is the first ser­i­al killer movie ever made. But what starts out as a police pro­ce­dur­al turns into some­thing even more unset­tling when a gang of dis­tinct­ly Nazi-like crim­i­nals decide to mete out some jus­tice of their own.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism end­ed in 1933 when the Nazis came to pow­er. They weren’t inter­est­ed in ask­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions and viewed such dark tales of cin­e­mat­ic angst as unpa­tri­ot­ic. Instead, they pre­ferred bright, cheer­ful tales of Aryan youths climb­ing moun­tains. By that time, the movement’s most tal­ent­ed direc­tors — Fritz Lang and F.W. Mur­nau — had fled to Amer­i­ca. And it was in Amer­i­ca where Ger­man Expres­sion­ism found its biggest impact. Its stark light­ing, grotesque shad­ows and bleak world­view would go on on to pro­found­ly influ­ence film noir in the late 1940s after anoth­er hor­rif­ic, dis­il­lu­sion­ing war. See our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films here.

You watch can 10 Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies – includ­ing Cali­gari, Last Laugh and M — for free below.

  • Nos­fer­atu — Free — Ger­man Expres­sion­ist hor­ror film direct­ed by F. W. Mur­nau. An unau­tho­rized adap­ta­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. (1922)
  • The Stu­dent of Prague — Free — A clas­sic of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film. Ger­man writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and Dan­ish direc­tor Stel­lan Rye bring to life a 19th-cen­tu­ry hor­ror sto­ry. Some call it the first indie film. (1913)
  • Nerves — Free — Direct­ed by Robert Rein­ert, Nerves tells of “the polit­i­cal dis­putes of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­to­ry own­er Herr Roloff and Teacher John, who feels a com­pul­sive but secret love for Rolof­f’s sis­ter, a left-wing rad­i­cal.” (1919)
  • The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari — Free — This silent film direct­ed by Robert Wiene is con­sid­ered one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist films and per­haps one of the great­est hor­ror movies of all time. (1920)
  • Metrop­o­lis — Free — Fritz Lang’s fable of good and evil fight­ing it out in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia. An impor­tant clas­sic. An alter­nate ver­sion can be found here. (1927)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — A fol­low-up to Paul Wegen­er’s ear­li­er film, “The Golem,” about a mon­strous crea­ture brought to life by a learned rab­bi to pro­tect the Jews from per­se­cu­tion in medieval Prague. Based on the clas­sic folk tale, and co-direct­ed by Carl Boese. (1920)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — The same film as the one list­ed imme­di­ate­ly above, but this one has a score cre­at­ed by Pix­ies front­man Black Fran­cis. (2008)
  • The Last Laugh - Free — F.W. Mur­nau’s clas­sic cham­ber dra­ma about a hotel door­man who falls on hard times. A mas­ter­piece of the silent era, the sto­ry is told almost entire­ly in pic­tures. (1924)
  • Faust — Free - Ger­man expres­sion­ist film­mak­er F.W. Mur­nau directs a film ver­sion of Goethe’s clas­sic tale. This was Mur­nau’s last Ger­man movie. (1926)
  • Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans — Free — Made by the Ger­man expres­sion­ist direc­tor F.W. Mur­nau. Vot­ed in 2012, the 5th great­est film of all time. (1927)
  • M — Free — Clas­sic film direct­ed by Fritz Lang, with Peter Lorre. About the search for a child mur­der­er in Berlin. (1931)

For more clas­sic films, peruse our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is Ger­man Expres­sion­ism? A Crash Course on the Cin­e­mat­ic Tra­di­tion That Gave Us Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Expres­sion­ist Dance Cos­tumes from the 1920s, and the Trag­ic Sto­ry of Lavinia Schulz & Wal­ter Holdt

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.

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Netflix Makes Documentaries Free to Stream: Design, Politics, Sports, Sir David Attenborough & More

in Education, Film | April 20th, 2020

Many of us kept indoors by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for days — or rather weeks, or per­haps months — have been imbued with a new sense of won­der about our world. Specif­i­cal­ly, we’re won­der­ing what’s going on in it. At the same time as the glob­al sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles to deter­mine the nature of the new and still poor­ly under­stood virus tak­ing lives and immo­bi­liz­ing economies, we hear dig­i­tal word of con­se­quent phe­nom­e­na also pre­vi­ous­ly unknown in our life­times: wild ani­mals, for instance, mak­ing their way into the streets of major cities. We live, it turns out, in a stranger, more mys­te­ri­ous real­i­ty than we’d imag­ined. For­tu­nate­ly, the inter­net makes it pos­si­ble for us to start get­ting a grip on that real­i­ty here in our homes, not least through free stream­ing Net­flix doc­u­men­taries.

“In the Before Times, Net­flix let teach­ers stream their pro­gram­ming in the class­room,” writes Jason Kot­tke. With schools out of ses­sion, “Net­flix has decid­ed to put some of their edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming on YouTube for free (full playlist here). For instance, they’ve put all 8 episodes of David Attenborough’s nature series Our Plan­et online in their entire­ty.”

Released just last year, that Net­flix debut of the high­ly respect­ed nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and broad­cast­er cov­ers in great visu­al detail — and, need­less to say, with high­ly evoca­tive nar­ra­tion — every­where from forests and deserts to jun­gles and high seas. If as a start­ing point that all seems a bit epic, as they say, Net­flix has also made free sin­gle-serv­ing doc­u­men­tary shorts on sub­jects like the stock mar­ket, the excla­ma­tion point, and crick­et (the British Empire sport, not the insect).

Those come from the series Explained, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Net­flix and Vox, a site known for its brief “explain­er” videos on cul­ture, sci­ence, and cur­rent events — one of which, on the coro­n­avirus itself, we fea­tured last month here on Open Cul­ture. Net­flix has also made free to stream on Youtube oth­er series like Abstract, which looks at the art of design (and whose debut we fea­tured here a few years ago), and Babies, a five-part jour­ney into the life of the human infant. If you pre­fer a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary expe­ri­ence to a dai­ly view or a binge-watch, you’ll also find on the playlist Ava DuVer­nay’s 13th, Rachel Lears’ Knock Down the House, and Jeff Orlowski’s Chas­ing Coral. When the orders of “stay home” and “social-dis­tance” come to an end, many of us will feel a stronger desire to explore and learn about the world than ever before — in part because of how much of the time indoors we’ve spent stok­ing our curios­i­ty with doc­u­men­taries like these. Access the playlist of doc­u­men­taries here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

265 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

200 Free Doc­u­men­taries: A Super Rich List of Fine­ly-Craft­ed Doc­u­men­taries on the Web

Cours­era Makes Cours­es & Cer­tifi­cates Free Dur­ing Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine: Take Cours­es in Psy­chol­o­gy, Music, Well­ness, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment & More Online

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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