How Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spectacular Stunts During Silent Film’s Golden Age

It can be tempt­ing to view the box office’s dom­i­na­tion by visu­al-effects-laden Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle as a recent phe­nom­e­non. And indeed, there have been peri­ods dur­ing which that was­n’t the case: the “New Hol­ly­wood” that began in the late nine­teen six­ties, for instance, when the old stu­dio sys­tem hand­ed the reins to inven­tive young guns like Peter Bog­danovich, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, and Mar­tin Scors­ese. But lest we for­get, that move­ment met its end in the face of com­pe­ti­tion from late-1970s block­busters like Jaws and Star Wars, a new kind of block­buster that sig­naled a return to the sim­ple thrills of silent cin­e­ma.

Even a cen­tu­ry ago, many movie­go­ers expect­ed two expe­ri­ences above all: to be wowed, and to be made to laugh. No won­der that era saw visu­al come­di­ans like Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Char­lie Chap­lin become not just the most famous actors in the world, but some of the most famous human beings in the world.

Stay­ing on top required not just seri­ous per­for­ma­tive skill, but also equal­ly seri­ous tech­ni­cal inge­nu­ity, as explained in the new Lost in Time video above. It breaks down just how Lloyd, Keaton, and Chap­lin pulled off some of their career-defin­ing stunts on film, putting the actu­al clips along­side CGI recon­struc­tions of the sets as they would have looked dur­ing shoot­ing.

When Lloyd hangs from the arms of a clock high above down­town Los Ange­les in Safe­ty Last! (1923), he’s real­ly hang­ing high above down­town Los Ange­les — albeit on a set con­struct­ed atop a build­ing, shot from a care­ful­ly cho­sen angle. When the entire façade of a house falls around Keaton in Steam­boat Bill, Jr. (1928), leav­ing him stand­ing unharmed in a win­dow frame, the façade actu­al­ly fell around him — in a pre­cise­ly chore­o­graphed man­ner, but with only a cou­ple of inch­es of clear­ance on each side. When a blind­fold­ed Chap­lin skates per­ilous­ly close to a mul­ti­sto­ry drop in Mod­ern Times (1936), he’s per­fect­ly safe, the edge of the floor being noth­ing more than a mat­te paint­ing: one of those ana­log tech­nolo­gies of movie mag­ic whose obso­les­cence is still bemoaned by clas­sic-film enthu­si­asts, from whom CGI, no mat­ter how expen­sive, nev­er quite thrills or amus­es in the same way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Watch the Only Time Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Per­formed Togeth­er On-Screen (1952)

Safe­ty Last!, the 1923 Movie Fea­tur­ing the Most Icon­ic Scene from Silent Film Era, Just Went Into the Pub­lic Domain

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

How Char­lie Chap­lin Used Ground­break­ing Visu­al Effects to Shoot the Death-Defy­ing Roller Skate Scene in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniversary

This year, YouTube cel­e­brat­ed its twen­ti­eth anniver­sary, prompt­ing younger users to won­der what life could have been like before it. The fifti­eth anniver­sary of Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail, which pre­miered in April of 1975, has inspired sim­i­lar reflec­tion among com­e­dy enthu­si­asts. It can be dif­fi­cult, at this point, to imag­ine one­self back in a cul­ture not yet dis­rupt­ed by Mon­ty Python’s rig­or­ous­ly absurd log­ic, scat­ter­shot satire, and delib­er­ate break­ing of nar­ra­tive and social con­ven­tion — a cul­ture, indeed, where that sort of thing could be feared too dan­ger­ous for tele­vi­sion and film.

It was their BBC sketch series Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus that intro­duced this comedic sen­si­bil­i­ty first to Britain, and then to the world. Between that show’s third and fourth sea­sons, the Pythons — Gra­ham Chap­man, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Ter­ry Jones, Michael Palin, and Ter­ry Gilliam — took on the side project of cre­at­ing their own cin­e­mat­ic re-inter­pre­ta­tion of Arthuri­an leg­end.

With a mod­est bud­get fur­nished by Led Zep­pelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son, and oth­er investors con­nect­ed to the music world, they plunged them­selves into a grimy, unglam­orous vision of the Mid­dle Ages, punc­tu­at­ed by inex­plic­a­ble anachro­nism and sat­u­rat­ed with an icon­o­clas­tic dis­re­gard for received wis­dom and trumped-up glo­ry.

There the Pythons told a sto­ry that, while per­haps lack­ing in nar­ra­tive struc­ture — to say noth­ing of his­tor­i­cal real­ism — more than com­pen­sates in sheer com­ic momen­tum. By all accounts, it holds up half a cen­tu­ry on, even for those view­ers who’ve already seen it so many times as to have invol­un­tar­i­ly com­mit­ted every joke to mem­o­ry. In cel­e­bra­tion of its anniver­sary, the film has become avail­able to stream free (albeit not in all regions of the world) on the offi­cial YouTube Movies & TV chan­nel, where the lat­est gen­er­a­tions of Mon­ty Python fans first dis­cov­ered their work. Even if lines like “I fart in your gen­er­al direc­tion” no longer raise any trans­gres­sive fris­son, there’s still lit­tle on that plat­for­m’s uni­verse of con­tent to match Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail’s mul­ti­lay­ered silli­ness, whose place in the annals of com­e­dy leg­end has long since been assured.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam’s Lost Ani­ma­tions from Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Are Now Online

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Cen­sor­ship Let­ter: We Want to Retain “Fart in Your Gen­er­al Direc­tion”

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imag­ined as an Epic, Main­stream Hol­ly­wood Film

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fascists Are Made

Dur­ing World War II, Walt Dis­ney entered into a con­tract with the US gov­ern­ment to devel­op 32 ani­mat­ed shorts. Near­ly bank­rupt­ed by Fan­ta­sia (1940), Dis­ney need­ed to refill its cof­fers, and mak­ing Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da films did­n’t seem like a bad way to do it. On numer­ous occa­sions, Don­ald Duck was called upon to deliv­er moral mes­sages to domes­tic audi­ences (see The Spir­it of ’43 and Der Fuehrer’s Face). But that was­n’t the case with Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi, a film shown in U.S. movie the­aters in 1943.

Based on a book writ­ten by Gre­gor Ziemer, this ani­mat­ed short used a dif­fer­ent line­up of char­ac­ters to show how the Nazi par­ty turned inno­cent youth into Hitler’s cor­rupt­ed chil­dren. Unlike oth­er top­ics addressed in Dis­ney war films (e.g. tax­es and the draft), this theme—the cul­ti­va­tion of young minds—hit awful­ly close to home. And it’s per­haps why it’s one of Dis­ney’s bet­ter wartime films.

Spiegel Online has more on Dis­ney’s WW II pro­pa­gan­da films here, and you can find some of these films in the Relat­eds below. Also find links to oth­er WWII pro­pa­gan­da films by Dr. Seuss, Mel Blanc, Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Capra and more.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Chill­ing Anti-Vene­re­al Dis­ease Poster Dur­ing World War II

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film, Rea­son and Emo­tion

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

The 1927 Film Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

Ultra-tall high-ris­es against dark skies. A huge dis­tance between the rich and the poor. Rob­ber barons at the helm of large-scale indus­tri­al oper­a­tions that turn man into machine. Machines that have become intel­li­gent enough to dis­place man. These have all been stan­dard ele­ments of dystopi­an visions so long that few of us could man­age to imag­ine a grim future with­out includ­ing at least a cou­ple of them. We’ve all seen these ele­ments used before, and they owe much of their stay­ing pow­er to the impact they first made in Fritz Lang’s cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cle Metrop­o­lis, which pre­miered 98 years ago. Many imi­ta­tions have since passed through pop­u­lar cul­ture, most of which haven’t mas­tered the tech­niques that gave the orig­i­nal its pow­er.

“Set in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia, the film por­trays a divid­ed soci­ety where the wealthy elite live in lux­u­ri­ous sky­scrap­ers while the oppressed work­ing class toil under­ground,” writes Pruethicheth Lert-udom­pruk­sa at the IAAC blog. “The film explores themes of class strug­gle, social inequal­i­ty, and the dehu­man­iz­ing effects of indus­tri­al­iza­tion.”

One of those the­me’s strongest icons is the Tow­er of Babel, a loom­ing sky­scraper that “sym­bol­izes the stark divi­sion between the priv­i­leged and the oppressed.” As Paul Bat­ters writes at the Sil­ver Screen Clas­sics blog, “like the zig­gu­rats of Ur, the pyra­mids and tem­ples of Egypt,” that build­ing and oth­er ele­ments real­ized by the film’s ground­break­ing visu­al design add up to a tit­u­lar “city that dom­i­nates human­i­ty.”

The loss of human­i­ty is the prime con­cern of the Junkies video essay at the top of the post, which explains sev­er­al ways Lang and his col­lab­o­ra­tors con­vey that phe­nom­e­non through light, shad­ow, and per­spec­tive — light, shad­ow, and per­spec­tive being the main tools avail­able to a black-and-white silent film. The One Hun­dred Years of Cin­e­ma video essay just above cov­ers more such aspects of the pic­ture’s con­struc­tion, as well as its his­tor­i­cal con­text: “In nine­teen-twen­ties Europe, a rad­i­cal form of nation­al­ism called fas­cism was com­ing to promi­nence, and six years after the film’s release, Lang found him­self exiled to Amer­i­ca for his refusal to join the Nazi par­ty.”

For quite some time, the ver­sions of Metrop­o­lis that peo­ple could see were cen­sored or oth­er­wise incom­plete cuts; only in 2008 did it under­go a com­plete restora­tion. But now, it’s eas­i­er than ever to see that its “win­ning com­bi­na­tion of cam­era shots and angles, light­ing con­trasts, and shot com­po­si­tion real­ly do well to depict human­i­ty as becom­ing sub­servient to tech­nol­o­gy. And so, per­haps today, more so than in 1927, it is eas­i­er to read the mes­sage that Lang is try­ing to por­tray through the cin­e­mat­ic devices he employs.” Watch­ing the impov­er­ished work­ers of Metrop­o­lis become part of the machine they work for, while its idle rich “become part of the machine by sub­mis­sion [to] plea­sure,” we might reflect upon the astute­ness of the choice to set the film’s sto­ry in the year 2026.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fritz Lang First Depict­ed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence on Film in Metrop­o­lis (1927), and It Fright­ened Peo­ple Even Then

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

Behold Beau­ti­ful Orig­i­nal Movie Posters for Metrop­o­lis from France, Swe­den, Ger­many, Japan & Beyond

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Man Ray’s Surrealist Cinema: Watch Four Pioneering 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 pret­ty 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 appar­ent­ly 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 Guevrekian. “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.”

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

Spike Jonze Creates a New Short Film (aka Commercial) for Apple

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With his icon­ic Super Bowl ad in 1984, Rid­ley Scott began a tra­di­tion of accom­plished film­mak­ers cre­at­ing adver­tise­ments for Apple. In the years since, we’ve seen David Finch­er shoot an ad pro­mot­ing the iPhone 3GS, Michel Gondry direct a spot show­cas­ing the iPhone’s cin­e­mat­ic fea­tures, and Spike Jonze craft a mem­o­rable ad for the Home­Pod. Now, Jonze returns with a new com­mer­cial (above) for the Air­Pods 4 with Active Noise Can­cel­la­tion. The five-and-a-half-minute film, titled “Some­day,” stars Pedro Pas­cal and it fol­lows–writes Vari­ety–his char­ac­ter as he “nav­i­gates an emo­tion­al jour­ney of mov­ing on after a breakup. When the grief-strick­en man ini­ti­ates Active Noise Can­cel­la­tion on his Air­Pods 4, his world trans­forms: The cold, win­try palette flips into a vibrant dream­scape, and every­thing and every­one becomes part of the music.”

With a few clicks of the mouse and for $149.99, you, too, can trans­port your­self to your own sound-and-col­or filled world. It’s that easy.…


Relat­ed Con­tent 

Rid­ley Scott on the Mak­ing of Apple’s Icon­ic “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

Direc­tor Michel Gondry Makes a Charm­ing Film on His iPhone, Prov­ing That We Could Be Mak­ing Movies, Not Tak­ing Self­ies

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er: A Med­i­ta­tion on Pow­er

Watch Dziga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera: The 8th Best Film Ever Made

Of all the cin­e­mat­ic trail­blaz­ers to emerge dur­ing the ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union – Sergei Eisen­stein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Lev KuleshovDzi­ga Ver­tov (né Denis Arkadievitch Kauf­man, 1896–1954) was the most rad­i­cal.

Where­as Eisen­stein – as seen in that film school stan­dard Bat­tle­ship Potemkin – used mon­tage edit­ing to cre­ate new ways of telling a sto­ry, Ver­tov dis­pensed with sto­ry alto­geth­er. He loathed fic­tion films. “The film dra­ma is the Opi­um of the peo­ple,” he wrote. “Down with Bour­geois fairy-tale scenarios…long live life as it is!”  He called for the cre­ation of a new kind of cin­e­ma free of the counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary bag­gage of West­ern movies. A cin­e­ma that cap­tured real life.

At the begin­ning of his mas­ter­piece, A Man with a Movie Cam­era (1929) – which was named in 2012 by Sight and Sound mag­a­zine as the 8th best movie ever made – Ver­tov announced exact­ly what that kind of cin­e­ma would look like:

This film is an exper­i­ment in cin­e­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion of real events with­out the help of inter­ti­tles, with­out the help of a sto­ry, with­out the help of the­atre. This exper­i­men­tal work aims at cre­at­ing a tru­ly inter­na­tion­al lan­guage of cin­e­ma based on its absolute sep­a­ra­tion from the lan­guage of the­atre and lit­er­a­ture.

Glee­ful­ly using jump cuts, super­im­po­si­tions, split screens and every oth­er trick in a filmmaker’s arse­nal, Ver­tov, along with his edi­tor (and wife) Eliza­ve­ta Svilo­va, crafts a dizzy­ing, impres­sion­is­tic, propul­sive por­trait of the new­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing Sovi­et Union. The lengths to which Ver­tov goes to cap­ture this “cin­e­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion of real events” are star­tling: His cam­era soars over cities and gazes up at street­cars; it films machines chug­ging away and even records a woman giv­ing birth. “I am eye. I am a mechan­i­cal eye,” Ver­tov once famous­ly wrote. “I, a machine, am show­ing you a world, the likes of which only I can see.”

Yet Vertov’s stroke of genius was to expose the entire arti­fice of film­mak­ing with­in the movie itself. In A Man with a Movie Cam­era, Ver­tov shoots footage of his cam­era­men shoot­ing footage. There’s a recur­ring shot of an eye star­ing through a lens. We see images from ear­li­er in the movie get­ting edit­ed into the film. This sort of cin­e­mat­ic self-reflex­iv­i­ty was decades ahead of its time, influ­enc­ing such future exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ers as Chris Mark­er, Stan Brakhage and espe­cial­ly Jean-Luc Godard who in 1968 formed a rad­i­cal film­mak­ing col­lec­tive called The Dzi­ga Ver­tov Group.

A Man with a Movie Cam­era is noth­ing short of exhil­a­rat­ing. Check it out above.

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

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

Hear Dzi­ga Vertov’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Exper­i­ments in Sound: From His Radio Broad­casts to His First Sound Film

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.

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Watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Groundbreaking, Six-Minute Trailer for Psycho (1960)

The ear­ly trail­er for Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Psy­cho above describes the film as “the pic­ture you MUST see from the begin­ning… or not at all!” That’s good advice, giv­en how ear­ly in the film its first big twist arrives. But it was also a pol­i­cy: “Every the­atre man­ag­er, every­where, has been instruct­ed to admit no one after the start of each per­for­mance of Psy­cho,” declares Hitch­cock him­self in its print adver­tise­ments. “We said no one — not even the man­ager’s broth­er, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States or the Queen of Eng­land (God bless her).” Even in 1960, ordi­nary movie­go­ers still had the habit of enter­ing and leav­ing the the­ater when­ev­er they pleased. With Psy­cho’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign, Hitch­cock meant to alter their rela­tion­ship to cin­e­ma itself.

As for the trail­er’s form and con­tent, audi­ences would nev­er have seen any­thing like it before. Con­tain­ing no actu­al footage from the film — and indeed, con­sti­tut­ing some­thing of a short film itself — it instead offers a tour of its main loca­tions per­son­al­ly guid­ed by Hitch­cock. Those are, of course, the Bates Motel and its pro­pri­etor’s house, “which is, if I may say so, a lit­tle more sin­is­ter look­ing, less inno­cent-look­ing than the motel itself. And in this house, the most dire, hor­ri­ble events took place.”

In his telling, these build­ings are not film sets, but the gen­uine sites of heinous crimes, about which he proves only too hap­py to pro­vide sug­ges­tive details. We com­plain that today’s trail­ers “give the movie away,” and that seems to be Hitch­cock­’s enter­prise here.

But after these six min­utes, what, in a world that had yet to see Psy­cho, would you real­ly know about the movie? It would seem to involve some sort of gris­ly mur­ders, and you’d sure­ly be dying, as it were, to know of what sort and how gris­ly. Who, more­over, could fail to be star­tled and intrigued by Hitch­cock­’s sud­den reveal of a scream­ing blonde woman behind the motel-room show­er cur­tain? Hitch fans might have rec­og­nized her as Vera Miles, who’d been in The Wrong Man in 1956 and the first episode of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents the next year. They might also have noticed the name of no less a movie star than Janet Leigh, and won­dered what she was doing in such a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic-look­ing genre pic­ture. One thing is cer­tain: when they final­ly did take their seat for Psy­cho — before show­time, of course — they had no idea what they were in for.

Relat­ed con­tent:

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

Alfred Hitchcock’s Strict Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho in The­aters (1960)

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

Hitch­cock (Antho­ny Hop­kins) Pitch­es Janet Leigh (Scar­lett Johans­son) on the Famous Show­er Scene

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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