We didn’t real­ize it at the time, but Michel Gondry was one of the last great music video direc­tors, cre­at­ing mini-epics just before the music indus­try col­lapsed, bud­gets dis­ap­peared, and now your cousin with a Canon 7D is fol­low­ing his friend’s band around in a field and putting *that* up on Vimeo. Maybe Gondry too saw the writ­ing on the wall, because, by the begin­ning of the ‘aughts, he was inch­ing his way into Hol­ly­wood, first with Human Nature and then strik­ing pay­dirt with the Char­lie Kauf­man-script­ed Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, one of the best French films ever made that wasn’t French (apart from the direc­tor).

But in the twi­light of music videos, Gondry’s best work com­bined new tech­nol­o­gy with the home­made, DIY aes­thet­ic. His inter­est in frac­tals, math­e­mat­ics, and log­i­cal para­dox­es and loops went into the mix. As did his inter­est in the machin­ery and arti­fice of movie mak­ing. And as did his roman­tic, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal side. What fol­lows is a small selec­tion of some of his best, most com­plex music videos.

Gondry direct­ed sev­er­al videos for Björk, start­ing with “Human Behav­ior,” her first solo sin­gle, but 1997’s “Bach­e­lorette” (top) goes beyond play­ful into heart­break­ing. A riff on an infi­nite­ly recur­sive poem, a sto­ry that is about the telling of itself, the video finds Björk dis­cov­er­ing a book in the woods that begins to write itself. As she finds a pub­lish­er, gains suc­cess, and sees the book turned into a musi­cal, the sto­ry is told again, and then again, a play with­in a play with­in a play. But each ver­sion is ana­log, not dig­i­tal, and los­es some­thing in the process, and the for­est creeps back in to claim its work.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in this video for The Chem­i­cal Broth­ers’ song “Let For­ev­er Be” (1999) Gondry sets up two worlds, one on dig­i­tal video, where our hero­ine attempts to wake up and go to work at a depart­ment store; and anoth­er shot on film, where the girl’s numer­ous dop­pel­gängers par­o­dy her strug­gle and her grip on san­i­ty through chore­o­graphed dance num­bers. This illus­trates a famil­iar Gondry equa­tion: If A and B, then A+B equals freak­out mad­ness time. The col­or­bars of video pro­duc­tion loom near­by to fur­ther the idea of irre­al­i­ty, and a cheesy VideoToast­er-style effect res­cues us at the end.

As far as we know, Radiohead’s “Knives Out” (2001) has noth­ing to do with hos­pi­tals, but Gondry took this can­ni­bal­is­tic song and made one of his most per­son­al videos. Here Thom Yorke stands in for the direc­tor, as Gondry offers a mea cul­pa about a rela­tion­ship that went past its expi­ra­tion date, when his girl­friend devel­oped an ill­ness and he couldn’t bear to break up with her. All of that is laid out, in sad, fever-dream detail, in this sin­gle-take video that fea­tures a lot of his obses­sions: toys, tele­vi­sion, loops, and a shuf­fling of sym­bols and motifs. Look for Gondry’s son briefly play­ing on the floor.

And final­ly:

Not to go out with a sour note, here’s Gondry’s adven­tur­ous 1994 video for the swal­lowed-by-his­to­ry Lucas. “Lucas with the Lid Off” is one of Gondry’s first one-take mas­ter­pieces that shows how the mag­ic is made while still being mag­i­cal. (The cur­rent kings of sin­gle-take music videos, OK Go, owe their suc­cess to Gondry.) It’s also a video that tries to give each sam­pled loop its own ele­ment with­in the video, look­ing for­ward to his work for Daft Punk (“Around the World”) and The Chem­i­cal Broth­ers (“Star Gui­tar”).

Gondry con­tin­ues to make videos–he made one last year for Metronomy’s “Love Let­ters,” but his atten­tion is real­ly else­where. Enjoy these gems from his clas­sic era.

Note: Gondry’s 1988 short ani­mat­ed film, Jazzmos­phere, an explo­ration of jazz and images, has been added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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

So much of the writ­ing done about the films of Wes Ander­son focus­es on their visu­als — and with good cause. We’ve fea­tured pieces on every­thing from the design of their set­tings to the sym­me­try of their shots to their quo­ta­tion of oth­er movies. You can’t talk about the aes­thet­ic dis­tinc­tive­ness of Ander­son­’s work unless you talk about its visu­al dis­tinc­tive­ness, but you also miss out on a lot if you focus sole­ly on that. We must­n’t for­get the impor­tance of sound in all of this, and specif­i­cal­ly the impor­tance of music.

Casu­al Ander­son fans might here think of one kind of music before all oth­ers: the British Inva­sion. The Cre­ation’s “Mak­ing Time” in Rush­more, the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tues­day” in The Roy­al Tenen­baums, and, to take the con­cept in as Ander­son­ian a direc­tion as pos­si­ble, Por­tuguese-lan­guage cov­ers of David Bowie songs in The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou.

Yet Ander­son­’s projects have made use of quite a few oth­er musi­cal tra­di­tions besides, as you’ll already know if you remem­ber the jazz-scored short ver­sion of Bot­tle Rock­et we fea­tured a cou­ple years ago.

But get­ting the clear­est sense of the music might require tem­porar­i­ly sep­a­rat­ing it from the movies. To that end, we offer you “From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel,” a Spo­ti­fy playlist by Michael Park bring­ing togeth­er 172 of the songs includ­ed in Ander­son­’s eight fea­tures so far, com­ing to over nine and a half hours of immac­u­late­ly curat­ed, 20th cen­tu­ry coun­ter­cul­ture-root­ed music, from not just the Stones and Bowie-via-Seu Jorge but Horace Sil­ver, the Kinks, the Vince Guaral­di Trio, Elliott Smith, Yves Mon­tand, Nick Drake, and the Vel­vet Under­ground. (To lis­ten, you need only down­load and reg­is­ter for Spo­ti­fy.)

While you lis­ten, why not read through Oscar Rick­et­t’s Vice inter­view with Ander­son­’s music super­vi­sor Ran­dall Poster? “Wes always talks about how those guys would wear coats and ties on the cov­er of their records but that the music was so aggres­sive and rebel­lious,” says Poster of the direc­tor’s last­ing pen­chant for the British Inva­sion. “I think that cor­re­spond­ed to [Rush­more pro­tag­o­nist] Max Fis­ch­er because he was this kid who, under­neath it all, was look­ing to break through. The music speaks to his char­ac­ter, who is out of time with the world, and I think that’s a run­ning theme in our movies and you can see it with M. Gus­tave in Grand Budapest Hotel, who is hold­ing on to a more man­nered, gen­teel era.” And what cur­rent works of art have expressed gen­teel rebel­lion, or rebel­lious gen­til­i­ty, so well as Ander­son­’s?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

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