I try to catch the Noir City film fes­ti­val when­ev­er it comes through Los Ange­les, not just because it uses the Egypt­ian, one of my favorite the­aters in town, but because it comes curat­ed by the experts. You’d have a hard time find­ing any group more knowl­edge­able about film noir than the Film Noir Foun­da­tion, who put Noir City on, and any­one in par­tic­u­lar more knowl­edge­able than its founder and pres­i­dent, “noir­chae­ol­o­gist” Eddie Muller.

The talks he some­times gives before screen­ings give a sense of the depth and scope of his knowl­edge of the genre; you can sam­ple it in a video clip where he intro­duces Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hik­er (above) at last year’s Noir City Seat­tle.

You may remem­ber Muller’s name from our post fea­tur­ing his list of the 25 noir films that will stand the test of time. I do rec­om­mend Noir City as the finest con­text in which to watch any of them, but you don’t have to wait until the fes­ti­val comes to your town to see a few, such as Fritz Lang’s Scar­let Street and Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour. (2nd and 3rd on this page.) They and var­i­ous oth­er impor­tant pieces of the film noir canon have fall­en into the pub­lic domain, mak­ing them eas­i­ly and legal­ly view­able free online. Watch The Hitch-Hik­er that way after you’ve seen Muller’s intro­duc­tion, and you can repli­cate a lit­tle of the Noir City expe­ri­ence in the com­fort of your own home.

Oth­er pub­lic-domain noirs of note include Orson Welles’ The Stranger, a sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy among Welles fans but one about which Noir of the Week says “you could­n’t make a bet­ter choice if you’re look­ing for a con­ven­tion­al, fan­tas­tic look­ing film noir thriller.”

And as the name of the fes­ti­val implies, when we talk about such a high­ly urban sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion as noir, we very often talk about the city as well. Rudolph Maté’s D.O.A. includes as a par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid depic­tion of 1940s Los Ange­les and one of the more dra­mat­ic uses of the beloved Brad­bury Build­ing in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. These five pic­tures should put you well on your way to a stronger grasp of film noir, and no doubt get you ready to explore our list of 60 free noir films online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noir­chael­o­gist” Eddie Muller

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Before Net­flix killed Block­buster, Block­buster killed the mom and pop video store. Maybe you had your favorite ma and pa shop, where under the sur­face of new releas­es you’d find the quirky, curat­ed selec­tions that reflect­ed the mind of the own­er.

When Allen Gins­berg lived in New York’s East Vil­lage, it was Kim’s Video, opened in 1987 by Yong­man Kim. With so many artists fre­quent­ing its St. Marks Place loca­tion, Kim asked its more famous cus­tomers to share their lists of top ten favorite films. Gins­berg oblig­ed. And you can now find his top 10 list online (in two parts: Part 1 — Part 2) thanks to The Allen Gins­berg Project.

Gins­berg’s old­est choice is Sergei Eisen­stein’s 1925 Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, which you can watch above. One must won­der if it was the very poet­ic edit­ing that drew Gins­berg to the film, or some­thing else, per­haps, maybe the film’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary nature?

Many of Gins­berg’s choic­es reflect his inter­est in poet­ic real­ism, the French film move­ment that com­bined sto­ries of real folks with some­times very impres­sion­ist cam­era work. Three of its most famous pro­po­nents, Julian Duvivi­er, Jean Renoir, and Mar­cel Carné appear on the Gins­berg list.

Julian Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937) is set in that most won­der­ful loca­tion for the Beat poets, Tang­iers, and inspired Gra­ham Greene to write The Third Man. Mar­cel Carné’s clas­sic Chil­dren of Par­adise (1945) makes the list, as does his 1938 film noir Port of Shad­ows. Jean Renoir’s The Grand Illu­sion, which still tops many top 10 film lists today, is here too.

Anoth­er French­man, Jean Cocteau gets on the list twice, with two films from his Orphic tril­o­gy, The Blood of a Poet (1930) and Orpheé (1950). The mix of the dream­like and the erot­ic make a per­fect choice for the poet.

Gins­berg saves space for Beat cin­e­ma, a lot of which is still not on DVD. Ron Rice’s The Flower Thief (1960) is often called one of the main films of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion, a large­ly impro­vised, low bud­get film about the artists and writ­ers of San Fran­cis­co. It sad­ly remains unavail­able on DVD, and one won­ders if the film was even avail­able at Kim’s, as it doesn’t appear to be on VHS either.

More avail­able are his final two choic­es, Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy (1959), which was named after (and exe­cut­ed in a style sim­i­lar to) an Exquis­ite Corpse-style poem writ­ten by Gins­berg, Jack Ker­ouac, and Neil Cas­sady in the late ‘40s. Also large­ly impro­vised, the film involves bohemi­an par­ty crash­ers who make life com­pli­cat­ed for a man and wife try­ing to impress a respectable bish­op who’s come for din­ner.

Last­ly, Gins­berg names Har­ry Smith’s vision­ary cut-up ani­ma­tion mas­ter­piece Heav­en and Earth Mag­ic (1957 — 1962), which you can see above. Smith was not just a superb film­mak­er, but a great influ­ence on the Beats through his inter­est in psy­che­delics and mys­ti­cism, as well as the man behind the Amer­i­can Anthol­o­gy of Folk Music on Folk­ways records. A great friend of Gins­berg, Har­ry Smith gets the final tip of the hat.

via The Allen Gins­berg Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

13 Lec­tures from Allen Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” Course (1975)

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Rare Footage of Allen Gins­berg, Jack Ker­ouac & Oth­er Beats Hang­ing Out in the East Vil­lage (1959)

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.

Movie audi­ences love dinosaurs. Ask the mak­ers of Juras­sic World, a reboot of Steven Spielberg’s ven­er­a­ble fran­chise that raked in over $1.5 bil­lion this year. There is some­thing about see­ing humanity’s ambi­tions crum­ble in the face of a mas­sive, toothy lizard (or are they sup­posed to be a giant feath­er­less bird now?) that just cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion of the inner 5 year-old in all of us.

So if you enjoyed Juras­sic World, you will dig The Lost World (1925), the grand­dad­dy of giant mon­ster movies. Adapt­ed from Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 nov­el, the sto­ry of The Lost World should be famil­iar to any­one who has watched King Kong or The Lost World: Juras­sic Park. The film is about an eccen­tric sci­en­tist, Pro­fes­sor Chal­lenger (played by Wal­lace Beery in a Karl Marx beard), who ven­tures to a South Amer­i­can plateau deep in the heart of the Ama­zon­ian jun­gle where dinosaurs still exist. When he cap­tures a Bron­tosaurus and lugs it back to Lon­don, the beast escapes and runs wild in the streets, smash­ing build­ings, stomp­ing on peo­ple and trash­ing cher­ished nation­al land­marks. Exot­ic loca­tions filled with equal­ly exot­ic crea­tures? Check. Implic­it cri­tique of man’s hubris­tic ambi­tion? Check. Way cool spe­cial effects? Check. Lost World has all the hall­marks of the genre even though it came out 90 years ago.

Audi­ences at the time were blown away by footage of tricer­atops, allosaurus­es and stegosaurus­es. Though they might seem about as ter­ri­fy­ing to today’s jad­ed audi­ences as a Gum­by car­toon, they were noth­ing short of a rev­e­la­tion in the 1920s. In 1922, Conan Doyle showed clips of the movie with­out reveal­ing its ori­gins to The Soci­ety of Amer­i­can Magi­cians, an audi­ence that includ­ed none oth­er than Har­ry Hou­di­ni. The next day, The New York Times breath­less­ly wrote that Conan Doyle’s “mon­sters of the ancient world, or of the new world which he has dis­cov­ered in the ether, were extra­or­di­nar­i­ly life­like. If fakes, they were mas­ter­pieces.” In fact, the dinosaurs were the handy work of Willis O’Brien who would take his expe­ri­ence on this film and make the 1933 mas­ter­piece King Kong.

You can watch the full movie above. And it will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:
Kim Jong-il’s Godzil­la Movie & His Free Writ­ings on Film The­o­ry

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

After the great direc­tor F.W. Mur­nau died in a car crash in Cal­i­for­nia at the young age of 42, his body was flown back to his native Ger­many to be buried, and that’s where he has rest­ed since 1931.

Until this week, that is, when some­body made off with the director’s skull.

Reports are sketchy and rely on this report from Ger­man news out­let BZ, but, accord­ing to police, some­body opened up Murnau’s met­al cof­fin and removed the head from the embalmed corpse. Wax and a can­dle were found at the scene, sug­gest­ing to some that the theft had occult ties.

It’s not the first time that Murnau’s grave has been dis­turbed. The cof­fin was van­dal­ized in the 1970s, but this time the theft has Olaf Ihle­feldt, the cemetery’s man­ag­er, call­ing it a scan­dal. (The ceme­tery also holds the bod­ies of com­pos­er Engel­bert Humperdinck and Bauhaus School mem­ber Wal­ter Gropius.)

It’s rare for an artist’s grave to be robbed–fans pre­fer to cov­er grave­stones with mean­ing­ful graffiti–while it is world lead­ers that usu­al­ly get their bits stolen, like Geronimo’s skull, Mussolini’s brain, and, for some rea­son, Napoleon’s penis.

Mur­nau is best known for the spook­i­est Drac­u­la tale ever told in cel­lu­loid, 1922’s Nos­fer­atu, which had coffins aplen­ty. It is also, by the way, free to view above. He also delved into the Satan­ic with his ver­sion of Faust (1926), which fea­tures a march­ing band of skele­tons, among oth­er appari­tions:

Murnau’s fil­mog­ra­phy con­tains a 1920 ver­sion of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Hunch­back and the Dancer from the same year, though both films are lost. The direc­tor did tend towards hor­ror, but two of his finest films did not.

The Last Laugh (1924) is a poignant tale about a hotel door­man who can’t bear the shame of being fired, and con­tains one of cinema’s finest “direc­tor ex machi­na” with an improb­a­ble but hap­py end­ing. Once Mur­nau moved to Hol­ly­wood, he direct­ed Sun­rise (1927), which blend­ed the director’s expres­sion­is­tic style with a Tin­sel Town bud­get, a tale of a love near­ly lost then res­ur­rect­ed. Four years and anoth­er three films lat­er, Murnau’s career would be over. He died in a San­ta Bar­bara hos­pi­tal after a traf­fic acci­dent by the Rincon–now a famous surf­ing location–just a few miles from where I now write these words, 84 years lat­er.

You can find Mur­nau’s films added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: F. W. Murnau’s Sun­rise, the 1927 Mas­ter­piece Vot­ed the 5th Best Movie of All Time

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

Watch Häx­an, the Clas­sic Cin­e­mat­ic Study of Witch­craft Nar­rat­ed by William S. Bur­roughs (1922)

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.