Even if you don’t know the myth by name, you know the sto­ry. In Greek mythol­o­gy, Sisy­phus, King of Corinth, was pun­ished “for his self-aggran­diz­ing crafti­ness and deceit­ful­ness by being forced to roll an immense boul­der up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeat­ing this action for eter­ni­ty.” In mod­ern times, this sto­ry inspired Albert Camus to write “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” an essay where he famous­ly intro­duced his con­cept of the “absurd” and iden­ti­fied Sisy­phus as the absurd hero. And it pro­vid­ed the cre­ative mate­r­i­al for a breath­tak­ing­ly good ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Mar­cell Jankovics in 1974. The film, notes the anno­ta­tion that accom­pa­nies the ani­ma­tion on YouTube, is “pre­sent­ed in a sin­gle, unbro­ken shot, con­sist­ing of a dynam­ic line draw­ing of Sisy­phus, the stone, and the moun­tain­side.” Fit­ting­ly, Jankovics’ lit­tle mas­ter­piece was nom­i­nat­ed for the Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film at the 48th Acad­e­my Awards.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

The Greek Mythol­o­gy Fam­i­ly Tree: A Visu­al Guide Shows How Zeus, Athena, and the Ancient Gods Are Relat­ed

Mythol­o­gy Expert Reviews Depic­tions of Greek & Roman Myths in Pop­u­lar Movies and TV Shows

Yasu­jirō Ozu was born in 1903, and made films from the late nine­teen-twen­ties up until his death in 1963. Though not an espe­cial­ly long life, it spanned Japan’s pre- and post­war eras, mean­ing that in many ways, it end­ed in a very dif­fer­ent coun­try than it began. Not that you’d know it from Ozu’s films, whose dis­tinc­tive form and style must have changed less through the decades than those of any of his col­leagues. For view­ers only casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with his oeu­vre, it’s easy to joke that if you’ve seen one of his pic­tures, you’ve seen them all. But true Ozu enthu­si­asts, whose num­bers have steadi­ly grown all around the world since the film­mak­er’s death, under­stand that each phase of his career offers dis­tinc­tive plea­sures of its own.

In fact, Ozu per­sist­ed through sweep­ing changes in not just world his­to­ry, but also the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. His first 34 films were silent, the next four­teen were sound in black-and-white, and his last six were in col­or. It is to the domes­tic mas­ter’s third act that Tony Zhou and Tay­lor Ramos have devot­ed their lat­est Every Frame a Paint­ing video essay.

As with most film­mak­ers, it took Ozu a few years to make col­or his own: in Equinox Flower, from 1958, “some of the scenes are so bright that it looks like an MGM musi­cal,” owing to his stu­dio’s desire to show­case the actress Fujiko Yamamo­to. And it’s not just the hues of her kimono that dom­i­nate the images: so does the red of Ozu’s sig­na­ture teapot when­ev­er it finds its way into the frame.

Ozu’s next col­or film Good Morn­ing makes use of a “much more nat­ur­al, earth-toned col­or palette. The images feel more bal­anced, and there isn’t one visu­al ele­ment that sticks out from all the oth­ers.” In his project after that, Float­ing Weeds (itself a remake of his 1934 silent A Sto­ry of Float­ing Weeds), he worked with the acclaimed cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Kazuo Miya­gawa, who’d also col­lab­o­rat­ed with the likes of Kuro­sawa and Mizoguchi. Using strong light and shad­ow, Miya­gawa showed how, “by shap­ing the light, he could change how col­ors were per­ceived,” often in dif­fer­ent scenes framed in exact­ly the same way. At this point, any­one doing an Ozu binge-watch will feel that col­or itself is being adapt­ed to the rig­or­ous objec­tiv­i­ty of his work.

“His films are full of rep­e­ti­tions and small vari­a­tions,” Zhou says. “He will show the same hall­way again, and again, and again.” Seem­ing­ly minor ele­ments in one scene match visu­al­ly with ele­ments in oth­ers. “As a result, Ozu’s movies rhyme. One shot will mir­ror anoth­er, one per­son­’s behav­ior will be repeat­ed,” across not just an indi­vid­ual pic­ture, but his whole fil­mog­ra­phy. Watch through it, and “you’re struck by how sim­i­lar two peo­ple can be, how often one place resem­bles anoth­er, how life itself is cycli­cal, and Ozu used col­or as anoth­er way to build these pat­terns.” Though sub­tly expressed, these themes would cer­tain­ly have res­onat­ed with audi­ences in a soci­ety forced to rein­vent itself after los­ing the Sec­ond World War. Whether Ozu sus­pect­ed that they could draw even more atten­tion from future gen­er­a­tions far from Japan is a ques­tion not even his diaries, now the sub­ject of a doc­u­men­tary them­selves, can answer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Yasu­jirō Ozu, “the Most Japan­ese of All Film Direc­tors”

How One Sim­ple Cut Reveals the Cin­e­mat­ic Genius of Yasu­jirō Ozu

The Gold­en Age of Japan­ese Cin­e­ma: Kuro­sawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi & Beyond

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

Every Frame a Paint­ing Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sus­tained Two-Shot Van­ished from Movies

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

About a year ago, a cer­tain kind of cinephile took note of obit­u­ar­ies for Ted Kotch­eff, a tele­vi­sion-turned-film direc­tor who worked steadi­ly from the mid-fifties to the mid-nineties. Even to read­ers only casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with movies, more than one title pops out from his fil­mog­ra­phy: The Appren­tice­ship of Dud­dy Kravitz, Fun with Dick and Jane, North Dal­las Forty, Week­end at Bernie’s. The focus on gen­res, and their vari­ety, sug­gests not an auteur but a jour­ney­man, the kind of effi­cient, ver­sa­tile prob­lem-solver that used to keep Hol­ly­wood afloat. But occa­sion­al­ly, the work of a jour­ney­man can achieve its own kind of tran­scen­dence: that moment came with First Blood, in Kotch­ef­f’s case, which launched the Ram­bo series in 1982.

Those who remem­ber Sylvester Stal­lone’s John Ram­bo as a head­band­ed one-man army bent on re-fight­ing and win­ning the Viet­nam War, one bout of ultra-vio­lence at a time, will be sur­prised by the rel­a­tive meek­ness of his first onscreen incar­na­tion.

As First Blood’s sto­ry is sum­ma­rized by the Cin­e­maS­tix video above, Ram­bo drifts into a small Wash­ing­ton town after a search for his Viet­nam com­rades comes to a fruit­less end. Hos­tile­ly eject­ed by the local sher­iff, he nev­er­the­less walks right back into city lim­its. Arrest­ed and booked at the police sta­tion, he turns on the cops in a PTSD-trig­gered rage. When he makes his escape into the for­est, the law pur­sues him, leav­ing him no choice — at least in his own mind — but to declare war on the police, the town, and per­haps the whole of Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion.

This is a promis­ing enough nar­ra­tive for a post-Viet­nam genre pic­ture, as a vari­ety of pro­duc­ers must have thought while David Mor­rel­l’s orig­i­nal nov­el was cir­cu­lat­ing through Hol­ly­wood. But only the star pow­er of Stal­lone, with the first cou­ple of Rocky pic­tures under his belt, could get it made. And indeed, he almost got it un-made: dis­mayed by its ini­tial three-and-a-half hour cut, he decid­ed to buy the rights and destroy the neg­a­tive. The solu­tion that end­ed up sav­ing the movie was­n’t much less dras­tic, pro­duc­ing a 93-minute cut that excised most of Ram­bo’s dia­logue. The result, as Cin­e­maS­tix cre­ator Dan­ny Boyd explains, pos­sess­es the good kind of ambiva­lence, which lets the audi­ence share not just the belea­guered pro­tag­o­nist’s per­spec­tive but also that of his increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed pur­suers, who esca­late the bat­tle out of all pro­por­tion to his actions. 44 years on, First Blood still offers sur­pris­es, not the least of which is that Ram­bo — for the last time in his career — nev­er actu­al­ly kills any­one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock–And How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the War

Muham­mad Ali Explains Why He Refused to Fight in Viet­nam: “My Con­science Won’t Let Me Go Shoot My Broth­er… for Big Pow­er­ful Amer­i­ca” (1970)

Mick­ey Mouse in Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

How Edit­ing Saved Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Clas­sic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.