The Top 100 American Films of All Time, According to 62 International Film Critics

Enter­tain­ment first, and art sec­ond? Has­n’t that always been the Amer­i­can way when it comes to film? And is that how the rest of the world sees it, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing France’s love of Jer­ry Lewis, Germany’s obses­sion with David Has­sel­hoff, and Chi­na tak­ing Nicholas Cage’s career choic­es more seri­ous­ly than he does him­self?

In this list of The 100 Great­est Amer­i­can Films, the BBC polled 62 inter­na­tion­al film crit­ics to see what they thought were the Unit­ed States’ endur­ing con­tri­bu­tions to cin­e­ma cul­ture. The films only need­ed to be fund­ed by Amer­i­can companies—the direc­tors could be from oth­er coun­tries. (If not, about a third of these choic­es would be dis­qual­i­fied. Five are by Hitch­cock alone.)

As for oth­er favorite direc­tors, Spiel­berg gets five (although the high­est entry, Jaws, comes in at 38) and Bil­ly Wilder gets five, with The Apart­ment the high­est ranked at 24. The most pop­u­lar decade for film is the 1970s, the top two being Coppola’s first two God­fa­ther films. (It would be inter­est­ing to know the medi­an age of these 62 crit­ics, just to see if their for­ma­tive years align with the decade.)

Of the 100, here’s the Top 10:

10. The God­fa­ther Part II (Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, 1974)
9. Casablan­ca (Michael Cur­tiz, 1942)
8. Psy­cho (Alfred Hitch­cock, 1960)
7. Sin­gin’ in the Rain (Stan­ley Donen and Gene Kel­ly, 1952)
6. Sun­rise (F.W. Mur­nau, 1927)
5. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1968)
3. Ver­ti­go (Alfred Hitch­cock, 1958)
2. The God­fa­ther (Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, 1972)
1. Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Com­par­ing this list to BFI’s 2012 list of the Top 100 films of all time, there isn’t much dif­fer­ence in the top spots. And, in the years to come, I sus­pect those top four films will switch places occa­sion­al­ly but nev­er real­ly leave.

Instead, the sur­pris­es come fur­ther down the list. Gone with the Wind used to be con­sid­ered a clas­sic, no doubt bol­stered by its box office suc­cess at the time. But its pol­i­tics have weak­ened its posi­tion, and, along with Birth of a Nation, it might not last anoth­er decade on such lists. On the flip side, black film­mak­ers have four films on the list and women direc­tors only one (Mesh­es of the After­noon one of the best exper­i­men­tal films of all time).

Oth­er inter­est­ing choic­es include The Lion King (the only ani­mat­ed film on the list), Sternberg’s The Shang­hai Ges­ture, and Minnelli’s The Band Wag­on (one of two musi­cals by the direc­tor on the list). What films would you like to see added or tak­en away? Is this a fair assess­ment of America’s worth? Let us know in the com­ments.

Above, you can watch a some­what idio­syn­crat­ic pre­sen­ta­tions of the films on the BBC list.

Relat­ed Con­tent:
The 100 Fun­ni­est Films of All Time, Accord­ing to 253 Film Crit­ics from 52 Coun­tries

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The 100 Funniest Films of All Time, According to 253 Film Critics from 52 Countries

Does com­e­dy come with an expi­ra­tion date? Schol­ars of the field both ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al have long debat­ed the ques­tion, but only one aspect of the answer has become clear: the best com­e­dy films cer­tain­ly don’t. That notion man­i­fests in the vari­ety of cin­e­mat­ic eras rep­re­sent­ed in BBC Cul­ture’s recent poll of 177 film crit­ics to deter­mine the 100 great­est com­e­dy films of all time. Most of us have seen Harold Ramis’ Ground­hog Day at some point (and prob­a­bly at more than one point) over the past 24 years; few­er of us have seen the Marx Broth­ers’ pic­ture Duck Soup, but even those of us who con­sid­er our­selves far too cool and mod­ern to watch the Marx Broth­ers have to acknowl­edge its genius.

That top ten runs as fol­lows:

  1. Some Like It Hot (Bil­ly Wilder, 1959)
  2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1964)
  3. Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
  4. Ground­hog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
  5. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
  6. Life of Bri­an (Ter­ry Jones, 1979)
  7. Air­plane! (Jim Abra­hams, David Zuck­er and Jer­ry Zuck­er, 1980)
  8. Play­time (Jacques Tati, 1967)
  9. This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Rein­er, 1984)
  10. The Gen­er­al (Clyde Bruck­man and Buster Keaton, 1926)

The BBC have pub­lished the top 100 results (the last spot being a tie between the late Jer­ry Lewis’ The Ladies Man and Mar­tin Scors­ese’s The King of Com­e­dy) on their site, accom­pa­nied by a full list of par­tic­i­pat­ing crit­ics and their votescrit­ics’ com­ments on the top 25, an essay on whether men and women find dif­fer­ent films fun­ny (most­ly not, but with cer­tain notable splits on movies like Clue­less and Ani­mal House), anoth­er on whether com­e­dy dif­fers from region to region, and anoth­er on why Some Like It Hot is num­ber one.

Though no enthu­si­ast of clas­sic Hol­ly­wood would ever deny Bil­ly Wilder’s gen­der-bend­ing 1959 farce any hon­or, it would­n’t have come out on top in a poll of Amer­i­can and Cana­di­an crit­ics alone: Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Dr. Strangelove wins that sce­nario hand­i­ly. “Intrigu­ing­ly, East­ern Euro­pean crit­ics were much more like­ly to vote for Dr Strangelove than West­ern Euro­pean crit­ics,” adds Chris­t­ian Blau­velt. “Per­haps the US and coun­tries that used to be behind the Iron Cur­tain appre­ci­ate Dr. Strangelove so much because it ruth­less­ly satiris­es the delu­sions of grandeur held by both sides. And per­haps Some Like It Hot is embraced more by Euro­peans than US crit­ics because, although it’s a Hol­ly­wood film, it has a con­ti­nen­tal flair and dis­tinct­ly Euro­pean atti­tude toward sex.”

Oth­er entries, such as Jacques Tati’s elab­o­rate moder­ni­ty-cri­tiquing 70-mil­lime­ter spec­ta­cle Play­time, have also been received dif­fer­ent­ly, to put it mild­ly, at dif­fer­ent times and in dif­fer­ent places. But if all com­e­dy ulti­mate­ly comes down to mak­ing us laugh, the only way to know your own posi­tion on the cul­tur­al comedic spec­trum is to sim­ply sit down and see what has that sin­gu­lar­ly enjoy­able effect on you. Why not start with Keaton’s The Gen­er­al, which hap­pens to be free to view online — and on some lev­el the pre­de­ces­sor of (and, in the eyes of may crit­ics, the supe­ri­or of) even the phys­i­cal come­dies that come out today?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Intel­li­gent Com­e­dy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Soundtrack for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Only American Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

There’s a good argu­ment to be made that some of the most insight­ful writ­ing about the Unit­ed States comes from artists observ­ing the coun­try from afar or through the eyes of a bemused new­com­er. For Euro­pean artists and thinkers, writ­ing about the behe­moth across the sea seems to have proven an irre­sistible chal­lenge from the start, even if, like Franz Kaf­ka, some nev­er set foot on the con­ti­nent. Alex­is de Toc­queville, Wern­er Her­zog, Mar­tin Amis, Wim Wen­ders, the list could go on and on, and would include many very enlight­en­ing per­spec­tives.

But not every such effort has been a suc­cess, in either crit­i­cal or com­mer­cial terms. Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970), for exam­ple, the Ital­ian director’s “only Amer­i­can movie,” writes Richard Met­zger at Dan­ger­ous Minds, “com­plete­ly missed its mark and failed to cap­ture the zeit­geist of the hip­pie New Left coun­ter­cul­ture of the era.”

When the film was released in 1970, “audi­ences and crit­ics alike hat­ed it, just hat­ed it.” The film’s young, unknown male lead Mark Frechette “dis­tanced him­self from the direc­tor,” writes Den­nis Lim at Slate, say­ing, “he wasn’t mak­ing a film about any Amer­i­ca I knew.” Gui­tarist John Fahey, in Rome to record a song for the film, almost came to blows with Anto­nioni “when the mae­stro launched into an anti-Amer­i­can rant.”

If Anto­nioni came off to his crit­ics as a “clue­less tourist” cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, he also passed up an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty musi­cal­ly. In the stu­dio when the Doors record­ed “L’America” for L.A. Woman, he “inex­plic­a­bly turned down the track, which could have worked spec­tac­u­lar­ly well in his film.” Instead, thanks in large part to his co-writer and cur­rent girl­friend Clare Peploe, Anto­nioni chose Pink Floyd to score the film, after hear­ing Peploe’s copy of Ummagum­ma. He loved the album, and lis­tened to it obses­sive­ly, espe­cial­ly the dra­mat­ic, psy­che­del­ic “Care­ful with that Axe, Eugene.”

In the end, how­ev­er, only three songs from the band made the final cut. Anto­nioni instead filled out the sound­track with music by Fahey, The Young­bloods, Roy Orbi­son, The Grate­ful Dead, and oth­ers. The com­plete record­ing of the orig­i­nal Floyd sound­track was nev­er com­mer­cial­ly released and has only offi­cial­ly exist­ed in frag­ments. One fan in a music forum notes that the 2 CD Zabriskie Point sound­track includes the three songs from the film and four unused bonus tracks. The huge, and huge­ly expen­sive, Floyd box set The Ear­ly Years con­tains 16 out­takes, none of them on the sound­track CD.

The only way fans have been able to hear the com­plete, orig­i­nal sound­track has been through a series of bootlegs, some fea­tur­ing only the eight intend­ed final songs, oth­ers includ­ing some or all of the known out­takes. One such com­pi­la­tion, above, col­lects sev­er­al songs and out­takes, but does­n’t include the full com­plet­ed sound­track. Despite this disco­graph­ic dis­ar­ray, the dis­card­ed orig­i­nal sound­track, in its many forms, has proven “an extreme­ly sat­is­fy­ing lis­ten,” Met­zger writes. If it sounds “like a ‘lost’ Pink Floyd album record­ed at the end of 1969,” it’s “because that’s exact­ly what it is.”  Remind­ing us at times of Atom Heart Moth­er, or Med­dle, or Ummagum­ma, it both looks back at pre­vi­ous work and ahead toward what’s to come.

The band turned out some unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly straight-ahead elec­tric bar­room blues (above). “Heart Beat, Pig Meant,” which appears over the film’s open­ing cred­its (top) “was Pink Floyd’s first time using a human heart­beat as a musi­cal instru­ment (but it would not be the last).” Richard Wright’s “The Vio­lent Sequence,” fur­ther up, may have been scrapped by Anto­nioni, but it would lat­er “be retooled as ‘Us and Them’ on Dark Side of the Moon.” Aside from that album’s unin­tend­ed life as uncan­ny son­ic accom­pa­ni­ment to The Wiz­ard of Oz, the band did some of its most exper­i­men­tal, and tran­si­tion­al, work through film sound­tracks, such as those for Bar­bet Schroeder’s 1969 More and 1972 film The Val­ley. Their work with Anto­nioni is no excep­tion, but Zabriskie Point, like­ly because of its many con­fus­ing states of exis­tence, has not received as much atten­tion.

Per­haps it’s time to revis­it Zabriskie Point, the film, as well as its orig­i­nal sound­track. As fans of Pink Floyd, we can see what inspired the band to cre­ate music that would help deter­mine the direc­tion of their epic albums to come. As fans of Anto­nioni, per­haps, we may come to a greater appre­ci­a­tion of his much-maligned flop, which Lim con­tends “is of a piece with Antonioni’s best work: a lux­u­ri­ant por­trait of spir­i­tu­al alien­ation with a sense of place far more expres­sive than its blankly beau­ti­ful char­ac­ters.” Giv­en that descrip­tion, it’s no won­der Anto­nioni found Pink Floyd such an intrigu­ing choice, even if nei­ther the Ital­ian direc­tor nor Eng­lish band had said much of any­thing in their work about the caul­dron of polit­i­cal unrest, sex­u­al exper­i­men­ta­tion, and cul­tur­al dis­af­fec­tion of the U.S. in the late 60s.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Syd Barrett’s “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant” Comes to Life in a New Retro-Style Ani­ma­tion

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

A Short Documentary on Artist Jeff Koons, Narrated by Scarlett Johansson

If you don’t move, noth­ing hap­pens. — Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, the sub­ject of Oscar Boyson’s recent pop video essay, above, is sure­ly one of the most wide­ly known liv­ing artists. As with fel­low artists Damien Hirst and Cindy Sher­man the spot­light has pro­duced an army of detrac­tors who know very lit­tle about him, or his large, far-rang­ing body of work.

The choice of Scar­lett Johans­son to pro­vide snarky sec­ond-per­son nar­ra­tion might not jol­ly Koons’ naysay­ers into sus­pend­ing judg­ment long enough for a prop­er rein­tro­duc­tion. (His show-and-tell dis­play of his Venus of Wil­len­dorf cof­fee mug caus­es her to quip, “You sexy moth­er­fuck­er.” Ugh.)

On the oth­er hand, there’s rap­per Phar­rell Williams’ onscreen obser­va­tion that, “We need haters out there. They’re our walk­ing affir­ma­tions that we’re doing some­thing right.”

The poten­tial for clam­orous neg­a­tive reac­tion has nev­er pro­pelled Koons to shy away from doing things on the grand scale in the pub­lic are­na, as the giant open air dis­play of such sculp­tures as “Seat­ed Bal­le­ri­na,” “Bal­loon Flower,” and “Pup­py” will attest.

Sure­ly, the genial affect he brings to the film is not what those who abhor “Made in Heav­en,” a series of erot­ic 3‑D self-por­traits co-star­ring his then-wife, porn-star Ilona “Cic­ci­oli­na” Staller, would have expect­ed.

Nor does he come off as a pan­der­ing, high priest of kitsch, some­thing cer­tain to dis­ap­point those who abhor “Michael Jack­son and Bub­bles,” his gaudy, larg­er-than-life glazed porce­lain sculp­ture of the King of Pop and his pet chimp.

“Kitsch is a word I real­ly don’t believe in,” he smiles (pos­si­bly all the way to the bank).

Instead, he veers toward reflec­tion, a fit­ting pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for an artist giv­en to mir­ror-pol­ished stain­less steel and more recent­ly, gaz­ing balls of the sort com­mon­ly found on 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can lawns. He wants view­ers to take a good look at them­selves, along with his work.

Those whose hearts are set against him are unlike­ly to be swayed, but the unde­cid­ed and open-mind­ed might soft­en to a list of influ­ences includ­ing Duchamp, Dali, DaVin­ci, Frag­o­nard, Berni­ni, and Manet.

Dit­to the opin­ions of a diverse array of talk­ing heads like Frank Gehry, Lar­ry Gagosian, and fel­low post-mod­ernist David Salle, who prais­es Koons’ artis­tic ded­i­ca­tion to “every­day Amer­i­can-style hap­pi­ness.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Cindy Sherman’s Insta­gram Account Goes Pub­lic, Reveal­ing 600 New Pho­tos & Many Strange Self-Por­traits

Teens Pon­der Mean­ing of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Jared Leto Stars in a New Prequel to Blade Runner 2049: Watch It Free Online

Blade Run­ner, as any­one who’s seen so much as its first shot knows, takes place in the Los Ange­les of Novem­ber 2019. Though the film flopped when it came out in 1982, the acclaim and fans it has drawn with each of the 35 years that have passed since did­n’t take long to reach the kind of crit­i­cal mass that demands a sequel. After numer­ous rumors and false starts, the Octo­ber release of Blade Run­ner 2049, pro­duced by Blade Run­ner direc­tor Rid­ley Scott and direct­ed by Arrival direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve, now fast approach­es. The new movie’s pro­mo­tion­al push, which has so far includ­ed trail­ers and mak­ing-of fea­turettes, has now begun to tell us what hap­pened between 2019 and 2049.

“I decid­ed to ask a cou­ple of artists that I respect to cre­ate three short sto­ries that dra­ma­tize some key events that occurred after 2019, when the first Blade Run­ner takes place, but before 2049, when my new Blade Run­ner sto­ry begins,” says Vil­leneuve in his intro­duc­tion to the brand new short above.

Tak­ing place in the Los Ange­les of 2036, the Luke Scott-direct­ed piece “revolves around Jared Leto’s char­ac­ter, Nian­der Wal­lace,” writes Col­lid­er’s Adam Chit­wood, who “intro­duces a new line of ‘per­fect­ed’ repli­cants called the Nexus 9, seek­ing to get the pro­hi­bi­tion on repli­cants repealed,” the gov­ern­ment hav­ing shut repli­cant pro­duc­tion down thir­teen years before due to a dev­as­tat­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack for which repli­cants took the blame.

A time­line appeared at Com­ic-Con this past sum­mer cov­er­ing the events of the thir­ty years between Blade Run­ner and Blade Run­ner 2049, though in very broad strokes: in 2020 “the Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion intro­duces a new repli­cant mod­el, the Nexus 8S, which has extend­ed lifes­pans,” in 2025 “a new com­pa­ny, Wal­lace Corp., solves the glob­al food short­age and becomes a mas­sive super pow­er,” in 2049 “life on Earth has reached its lim­it and soci­ety divides between Repli­cant and human.” The two oth­er short films to come should just about tide over fans until the release of Blade Run­ner 2049 — not that those who’ve been wait­ing for a new Blade Run­ner movie since the 1980s can’t han­dle anoth­er month.

The short Blade Run­ner 2049 pre­quel, enti­tled “Nexus: 2036,” will be added to our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blade Run­ner 2049’s New Mak­ing-Of Fea­turette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Await­ed Sequel

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Man Ray and the Cinéma Pur: Watch Four Groundbreaking Surrealist Films From the 1920s


Man Ray was one of the lead­ing artists of the avant garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key fig­ure in the Dada and Sur­re­al­ist move­ments, his works spanned var­i­ous media, includ­ing film. He was a lead­ing expo­nent of the Ciné­ma Pur, or “Pure Cin­e­ma,” which reject­ed such “bour­geois” con­ceits as char­ac­ter, set­ting and plot. Today we present Man Ray’s four influ­en­tial films of the 1920s.

Le Retour à la Rai­son (above) was com­plet­ed in 1923. The title means “Return to Rea­son,” and it’s basi­cal­ly a kinet­ic exten­sion of Man Ray’s still pho­tog­ra­phy. Many of the images in Le Retour are ani­mat­ed pho­tograms, a tech­nique in which opaque, or par­tial­ly opaque, objects are arranged direct­ly on top of a sheet of pho­to­graph­ic paper and exposed to light. The tech­nique is as old as pho­tog­ra­phy itself, but Man Ray had a gift for self-pro­mo­tion, so he called them “rayo­graphs.” For Le Retour, Man Ray sprin­kled objects like salt and pep­per and pins onto the pho­to­graph­ic paper. He also filmed live-action sequences of an amuse­ment park carousel and oth­er sub­jects, includ­ing the nude tor­so of his mod­el and lover, Kiki of Mont­par­nasse.

Emak-Bakia (1926):

The 16-minute Emak-Bakia con­tains some of the same images and visu­al tech­niques as Le Retour à la Rai­son, includ­ing rayo­graphs, dou­ble images and neg­a­tive images. But the live-action sequences are more inven­tive, with dream-like dis­tor­tions and tilt­ed cam­era angles. The effect is sur­re­al. “In reply to crit­ics who would like to linger on the mer­its or defects of the film,” wrote Man Ray in the pro­gram notes, “one can reply sim­ply by trans­lat­ing the title ‘Emak Bakia,’ an old Basque expres­sion, which was cho­sen because it sounds pret­ti­ly and means: ‘Give us a rest.’ ”

L’E­toile de Mer (1928):

L’E­toile de Mer (“The Sea Star”) was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Man Ray and the sur­re­al­ist poet Robert Desnos. It fea­tures Kiki de Mont­par­nasse (Alice Prin) and André de la Riv­ière. The dis­tort­ed, out-of focus images were made by shoot­ing into mir­rors and through rough glass. The film is more sen­su­al than Man Ray’s ear­li­er works. As Don­ald Faulkn­er writes:

In the mod­ernist high tide of 1920s exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing, L’E­toile de Mer is a per­verse moment of grace, a demon­stra­tion that the cin­e­ma went far­ther in its great silent decade than most film­mak­ers today could ever imag­ine. Sur­re­al­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Man Ray’s film col­lides words with images (the inter­ti­tles are from an oth­er­wise lost work by poet Robert Desnos) to make us psy­cho­log­i­cal wit­ness­es, voyeurs of a kind, to a sex­u­al encounter. A char­ac­ter picks up a woman who is sell­ing news­pa­pers. She undress­es for him, but then he seems to leave her. Less inter­est­ed in her than in the weight she uses to keep her news­pa­pers from blow­ing away, the man lov­ing­ly explores the per­cep­tions gen­er­at­ed by her paper­weight, a starfish in a glass tube. As the man looks at the starfish, we become aware through his gaze of metaphors for cin­e­ma, and for vision itself, in lyri­cal shots of dis­tort­ed per­cep­tion that imply hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, almost mas­tur­ba­to­ry sex­u­al­i­ty.

Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (1929):

The longest of Man Ray’s films, Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (the ver­sion above has apparenl­ty been short­ened by sev­en min­utes) fol­lows a pair of trav­el­ers on a jour­ney from Paris to the Vil­la Noailles in Hyères, which fea­tures a tri­an­gu­lar Cubist gar­den designed by Gabriel Geu­vrikain. “Made as an archi­tec­tur­al doc­u­ment and inspired by the poet­ry of Mal­lar­mé,” writes Kim Knowles in A Cin­e­mat­ic Artist: The Films of Man Ray, “Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé is the film in which Man Ray most clear­ly demon­strates his inter­dis­ci­pli­nary atti­tude, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its ref­er­ence to Stéphane Mal­lar­mé’s poem Un coup de dés jamais n’aboli­ra le hasard.”

The films will be list­ed in our 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 April, 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920 (and It’s Now Re-Issued for the Rest of Us)

Man Ray Cre­ates a “Sur­re­al­ist Chess­board,” Fea­tur­ing Por­traits of Sur­re­al­ist Icons: Dalí, Bre­ton, Picas­so, Magritte, Miró & Oth­ers (1934)

Man Ray’s Por­traits of Ernest Hem­ing­way, Ezra Pound, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­er 1920s Icons

Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hopper & Francis Bacon Influenced David Lynch’s Cinematic Vision

When an artist becomes an adjective—think Orwellian, Kafkaesque, or Joycean—one of two things can hap­pen: their work can be super­fi­cial­ly appro­pri­at­ed, reduced to a col­lec­tion of obvi­ous ges­tures clum­si­ly com­bined in bad pas­tiche. Or their dis­tinc­tive style can inspire artists with more skill and depth to make orig­i­nal cre­ations that may them­selves become touch­stones for the future. What might dis­tin­guish one from the oth­er is the degree to which we under­stand not only the work of Orwell, Kaf­ka, or Joyce, but also the work that influ­enced them.

When it comes to David Lynch, there’s no doubt that the “Lynchi­an” stands as a mod­el for so much con­tem­po­rary film and tele­vi­sion. But while some direc­tors make excel­lent use of Lynch’s influ­ence, oth­ers strive for Lynchi­an atmos­phere only to reach a kind of unin­spired, unin­ten­tion­al par­o­dy. The sub­lime bal­ance of humor and hor­ror Lynch has achieved over the course of his extra­or­di­nary career seems like the kind of thing one shouldn’t attempt with­out seri­ous study and prepa­ra­tion.

With­out Lynch’s sur­re­al­ist vision, odd­ball char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and dia­logue fall flat—as in Twin Peaks’ sec­ond sea­son, which Lynch him­self says “sucked.” So what defines the Lynchi­an? A very dis­tinc­tive use of music, for one thing. And as the video essay above by Men­no Koois­tra demon­strates, the sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence of paint­ing. Lynch him­self began paint­ing and draw­ing at a young age and stud­ied art at the School of the Muse­um of Fine Arts in Boston in the six­ties. While he found his call­ing in film, his art edu­ca­tion pre­pared him to dream up the unfor­get­table com­po­si­tions of the Lynchi­an world.

Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per, Arnold Böck­lin, and the mas­ter of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror, Fran­cis Bacon—all of these painters have direct­ly informed Lynch’s night­mar­ish mise-en-scène. As you’ll see in Kooistra’s video, in side by side com­par­isons, Lynch adapts the work of his favorite artists for his own pur­pos­es. In an inter­view clip, he says he dis­cov­ered Bacon at a gallery in 1966 and found the expe­ri­ence “thrilling”—later using the painter’s work as inspi­ra­tion for The Ele­phant Man and Twin Peak’s dis­ori­ent­ing Red Room.

We see Lynch’s homage to his favorite painters in Eraser­head and Blue Vel­vet, as well as the cur­rent, third sea­son of Twin Peaks, over which he has (as he well should) com­plete cre­ative con­trol. You may not find Fran­cis Bacon’s dis­turb­ing por­traits quite as thrilling as Lynch does, or draw on Edward Hop­per for a warped ver­sion of 1950’s Amer­i­cana. These are Lynch’s ref­er­ences; they res­onate on his par­tic­u­lar fre­quen­cy, and hence pro­vide him with visu­al frames for his own per­son­al dream log­ic.

But what we might take away from “The Art of David Lynch” is that the Lynchi­an is nec­es­sar­i­ly tied to a painter­ly sen­si­bil­i­ty, and that with­out the influ­ence of fine art on com­po­si­tion, col­or, and fram­ing, a Lynchi­an pro­duc­tion may be in dan­ger of looking—as he says of that dis­ap­point­ing Twin Peaks’ sec­ond season—“stupid and goofy.”

via IndieWire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

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

The Dune Coloring & Activity Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Created Countless Hours of Peculiar Fun for Kids

David Lynch’s Dune, the $40 mil­lion cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cle based on Frank Her­bert’s sci­ence-fic­tion epic, faced more than its fair share of chal­lenges: Lynch’s lack of artis­tic con­trol, elab­o­rate but not quite suc­cess­ful spe­cial effects, source mate­r­i­al so unsuit­ed to fea­ture-film adap­ta­tion that audi­ences had to read glos­saries before the first screen­ings. In an attempt to get ahead of bad buzz, the mas­sive adver­tis­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing blitz had begun well before the movie’s Christ­mas 1984 release, but none of its flaks seemed to under­stand the enter­prise of Dune any bet­ter than most of those view­ers did.

Case in point: the Dune col­or­ing and activ­i­ty books, evi­dence that, as Comics Alliance’s Jason Miche­litch writes, “what Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures want­ed was a Star Wars of their very own — a whiz-bang space adven­ture for eight-year-olds that they could mer­chan­dise the heck out of to the wide-eyed kids that just a year pre­vi­ous had whee­dled their par­ents into buy­ing plush ewok dolls and toy lightsabers. Instead, Lynch and pro­duc­er Dino De Lau­ren­tis pro­vid­ed them with a dark epic actu­al­ly fit for con­sump­tion by think­ing adults. Imag­ine their cha­grin.”

Mered­ith Yanos at Coil­house offers a more detailed write­up of the hours of fun on offer in these tonal­ly bizarre books: “First, there’s the Dune Col­or­ing Book, 44 pages of lurid scenes fea­tur­ing con­spir­a­to­r­i­al char­ac­ters from the film. Then there’s the Dune Activ­i­ty Book. 60 pages of puz­zles and games, mazes and more pic­tures for col­or­ing,” includ­ing a recipe for “No-Bake Spice Cook­ies” that sub­sti­tutes com­mon cin­na­mon for Dune’s Spice, a  “wacky aware­ness spec­trum nar­cot­ic that con­trols the uni­verse.” Oth­er vol­umes con­tain Dune-themed paper dolls, Dune-themed word puz­zles, and even Dune-themed math prob­lems.

Though Dune remains pri­mar­i­ly remem­bered as one of the worst flops in cin­e­ma his­to­ry (and even Lynch him­self usu­al­ly refus­es to dis­cuss it), a few fans have also come to its defense over the past 32 years. Some of them have no doubt want­ed to pass this revi­sion­ist appre­ci­a­tion down to their chil­dren, a task the Dune col­or­ing and activ­i­ty books may (or may not) make eas­i­er. If you buy them on Ama­zon, you’ll have to pay between $45 and $75 each — noth­ing com­pared to the cost of any­thing in the actu­al pro­duc­tion of Dune, of course, but still, you may want to keep an eye on eBay instead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The Met, New York Pub­lic Library, Smith­son­ian & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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