To most inter­na­tion­al cinephiles, the word Mos­film imme­di­ate­ly brings to mind two tow­er­ing names in Russ­ian motion pic­tures: Sergei Eisen­stein and Andrei Tarkovsky. Both direc­tors made not just impor­tant movies but took major steps to devel­op the visu­al lan­guage of film itself, and both worked for Mos­film, one of Rus­si­a’s largest and old­est film stu­dios. First estab­lished in 1923, it went on to pro­duce more than 3,000 films dur­ing the Sovi­et era, some of which now define the cin­e­ma of that peri­od. Now view­ers around the world can enjoy their aes­thet­ic lush­ness, his­tor­i­cal inter­est, and pure enter­tain­ment val­ue more eas­i­ly than ever on Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel, which offers among its many freely view­able pic­tures a selec­tion of 70 films in high def­i­n­i­tion.

You’ll want to start, of course, with Eisen­stein and Tarkovsky. Mos­film has made avail­able in HD the for­mer’s Alexan­der Nevsky (1938) and much of the lat­ter’s fil­mog­ra­phy: Ivan’s Child­hood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mir­ror (1975), and Stalk­er (1979).

For all their high artis­tic achieve­ment, how­ev­er, they may admit­ted­ly rein­force the West­’s Cold War-era image of Rus­sians as ter­ri­bly seri­ous peo­ple who sel­dom even crack a smile, let alone laugh. So why not fol­low those up with a dive into Mos­film’s con­sid­er­able HD selec­tion of beloved, light-heart­ed Sovi­et come­dies?

Of all Sovi­et com­e­dy direc­tors, Leonid Gaidai stands as by far the most suc­cess­ful. You can watch a fair few of his works, long and short, on Mos­film’s HD playlist, includ­ing Oper­a­tion Y and Shurik’s Oth­er Adven­tures (1965); the intrigu­ing­ly titled Kid­nap­ping, Cau­casian Style (1967); The Dia­mond Arm (1969), the most pop­u­lar soci­ety com­e­dy ever; The Twelve Chairs (1971); Ivan Vasilievich Changes Pro­fes­sion (1973), based on a play by Mikhail Bul­gakov; and It Can’t Be! (1975). It also offers sev­er­al films from Gaidai’s con­tem­po­rary Eldar Ryazanov, who worked in a more satir­i­cal vein (and showed a sur­pris­ing will­ing­ness to poke fun at the absur­di­ties of Sovi­et life): Car­ni­val Night (1956), the beloved musi­cal Hus­sar Bal­lad (1962), Beware of the Car (1966), Office Romance (1977), Sta­tion for Two (1982), and A Cru­el Romance (1984).

You may also notice the con­spic­u­ous pres­ence of a cer­tain high­ly notable non-Russ­ian film­mak­er: Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, who in 1975 worked with Mos­film to make Der­su Uza­la, an adap­ta­tion of the mem­oirs of a trap­per in Rus­si­a’s far east­ern wilder­ness. It came as just one of Mos­film’s many lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions, the most famous per­haps being Sergei Bon­darchuk’s 1969 vision of Leo Tol­stoy’s War and Peace. On Mos­film’s HD playlist you’ll also find two fea­tures draw­ing on the work of Anton Chekhov: Andrei Kon­chalovsky’s Uncle Vanya (1971), and Emil Loteanu’s My Ten­der and Affec­tion­ate Beast, or a Hunt­ing Acci­dent (1978), a fea­ture-length adap­ta­tion of A Hunt­ing Par­ty.

Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel fea­tures not just Sovi­et-era movies, but those from more recent years as well: the mighty film stu­dio sur­vived the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union itself, con­tin­u­ing to con­tribute to cin­e­ma as a qua­si-pri­vate fed­er­a­tion of inde­pen­dent stu­dios. Its cur­rent Direc­tor Gen­er­al, Karen Shakhnazarov, boasts an impres­sive fil­mog­ra­phy of his own. You can get an HD taste of his work by watch­ing Jazzmen (1983), Win­ter Evening in Gagra (1985), Couri­er (1986),  Zero­grad (1989), The Assas­sin of the Tsar (1991), Dreams (1993), Poi­sons, or the World His­to­ry of Poi­son­ing (2001), and The Van­ished Empire (2008), all of which weave togeth­er the threads — the vision­ary, the his­tor­i­cal, the every­day, the absurd — run­ning through Mos­film’s long his­to­ry.

NOTE: Though many of the titles on Mos­film’s HD playlist appear only in Russ­ian, most of the films them­selves come with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. Make sure to click the “CC” icon on the low­er right of the Youtube play­er to turn them on.

Some of the films men­tioned above will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch War and Peace: The Splen­did, Epic Film Adap­ta­tion of Leo Tolstoy’s Grand Nov­el (1969)

Free Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisen­stein & Oth­er Russ­ian Greats

When Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Watched Solaris with Andrei Tarkovsky: I Was “Very Hap­py to Find Myself Liv­ing on Earth”

Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Free Sergei Eisen­stein Films

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sovi­et Mon­tage The­o­ry: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.

Once upon a time, a film could impress sim­ply by using col­or at all. Now, with a wider field of visu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties open to cin­e­ma than ever, film­mak­ers must not sim­ply use col­or but mas­ter it, active­ly, as a way of con­vey­ing emo­tions, ideas, and even more besides. Chan­nel Criswell’s Lewis Bond, who describes col­or as his “favorite aspect of visu­al sto­ry­telling,” breaks down some of the main ways film­mak­ers have used it so far in his video essay on col­or in cin­e­ma.

“Since before we were even able to actu­al­ize sound in film, we’ve been obsessed with col­or,” Bond says, hav­ing shown us clips drawn from the work of Stan­ley Kubrick, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Hayao Miyaza­ki, Ang Lee, and oth­er direc­tors known for their visu­al­ly lush pic­tures.

“Film has always been about the visu­al, and the pri­mor­dial age of cin­e­ma dis­plays the lengths we were will­ing to go to just to cap­ture its essence.” Then came Tech­ni­col­or: when Dorothy passed into the land of Oz, “we became com­plete­ly free to use col­or how­ev­er we want­ed, and artists began to under­stand the dis­ci­plines of aes­thet­ics and sym­bol­ism.”

Yet “the meth­ods of the silent era,” a time when film­mak­ers had to hand-tint each black-and-white frame they shot with the prop­er­ly evoca­tive col­or, “have held through to the 21st cen­tu­ry.” Red, per­haps the strongest col­or, sig­nals “hate and cru­el­ty” just as force­ful­ly as it does “pas­sion and love.” And while “a lus­cious green field gives us hope and shows us fer­til­i­ty,” oth­er green loca­tions “show the mun­dane and life­less, and the green on a per­son” — again, The Wiz­ard of Oz pro­vides the go-to exam­ple — “tells us who the mon­ster is.”

Bond finds tra­di­tions in the use of col­or that con­nect the films of the clas­sic era to those of mod­ern mas­ters like the appar­ent­ly col­or-obsessed Wes Ander­son, whose use of non-con­trast­ing greens, browns, and yel­lows in Moon­rise King­dom “suits the film’s nos­tal­gic tone,” and who fills The Roy­al Tenen­baums and The Grand Budapest Hotel of pinks and beiges in order not to pile on emo­tion­al weight, but to reduce it, to tell us not to take the events of the sto­ry too seri­ous­ly.

Quentin Taran­ti­no, a fan of both the sub­tle and the unsub­tle, uses col­or in a vari­ety of ways, from the code­names of the thieves in Reser­voir Dogs to the bright yel­low track suit (itself a trib­ute to the films of Bruce Lee) worn by the pro­tag­o­nist of Kill Bill. In Apoc­a­lypse Now, sub­ject of anoth­er Chan­nel Criswell essay recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Vit­to­rio Storaro “used a bal­anced col­or scheme in kurtz’s com­pound, but the orange mist gave a feel­ing of tox­i­c­i­ty in the air.”

In Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci’s The Last Emper­or, “as the char­ac­ter dis­cov­ers more about the world around him, the col­or palette shifts. The world of tra­di­tion and the char­ac­ter’s naiveté is dis­played by the world of red. How­ev­er, as the char­ac­ter begins to learn more, the col­or goes from red to orange, yel­low, and final­ly, once he becomes ful­ly com­pre­hen­sive of his sur­round­ings, he’s bound­ed to green.” And so, by the end of the movie, “both the char­ac­ter and the wheel have turned 180 degrees.” Bond means the col­or wheel, a cir­cu­lar dia­gram of the col­ors first devel­oped by Isaac New­ton and still cen­tral to col­or the­o­ry.

If cinephiles give that sub­ject a lit­tle study, they’ll see how their favorite films tell sto­ries in a more, well, vivid way. No mat­ter how many times you’ve seen Ver­ti­go, for exam­ple, a work­ing knowl­edge of col­or will help you appre­ci­ate exact­ly why it has such an impact when Scot­tie first sees Madeleine in a green dress sur­round­ed by a field of red. Alfred Hitch­cock­’s mas­ter­piece stands, of course, as one of the most effec­tive cin­e­mat­ic exam­ples of col­or as a sto­ry­telling device. Should any film­mak­er work­ing today both­er try­ing to top it? Bond quotes cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins as say­ing “that it’s easy to make col­or look good, but hard­er to make it ser­vice a sto­ry. He’s prob­a­bly right, but let’s try and prove him wrong.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free MIT Course Teach­es You to Watch Movies Like a Crit­ic: Watch Lec­tures from The Film Expe­ri­ence

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Strik­ing Super­cut of the Vivid Col­ors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Obses­sion with the Col­or Red: A Super­cut

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.

Speak­ing at an Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute sem­i­nar in 1970, Alfred Hitch­cock revealed the essen­tial ingre­di­ents that went into mak­ing his films. When he stripped every­thing away, what Hitch­cock real­ly cared about was cre­at­ing sus­pense films (not mys­tery films) and get­ting the sus­pense ele­ment right. In the clip above, the direc­tor explains why sus­pense­ful scenes have to sim­mer for a time and then cool down prop­er­ly. Things can’t be brought to a rapid boil and then be quick­ly tak­en off the stove. Hitch­cock once made that mis­take in his 1936 film, Sab­o­tage. (Watch the offend­ing scene right below or find the full film here.)

Of course, Hitch­cock learned from his mis­take, and there­after shot count­less scenes where the sus­pense builds in the right way. But we par­tic­u­lar­ly want­ed to find one scene that pulls off the bomb sce­nario, and so here it goes. From 1957 to 1959, Hitch­cock pro­duced Sus­pi­cion, a tele­vi­sion series for NBC, and he per­son­al­ly direct­ed one episode called “Four O’Clock”. It fea­tures a watch­mak­er who sus­pects his wife of hav­ing an affair, and so, filled with jeal­ousy, he decides to mur­der her with a bomb made by his own hands. Things take an unex­pect­ed turn, how­ev­er, when two bur­glars tie him up in the base­ment with the tick­ing bomb. We leave you with the final, cli­mac­tic scene. You can watch the full episode on YouTube here.

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:

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitch­cock Explains the Plot Device He Called the ‘MacGuf­fin’

The Eyes of Hitch­cock: A Mes­mer­iz­ing Video Essay on the Expres­sive Pow­er of Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films

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