When Amer­i­can soci­ety relin­quished cig­a­rettes, Amer­i­can cin­e­ma lost one of its most dra­mat­ic visu­al devices. You still see smok­ing in the movies, but its mean­ing has changed. “A cig­a­rette wasn’t always a state­ment,” wrote David Sedaris when he him­self kicked the habit. “Back when I start­ed, you could still smoke at work, even if you worked in a hos­pi­tal where kids with no legs were hooked up to machines. If a char­ac­ter smoked on a TV show, it did not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that he was weak or evil. It was like see­ing some­one who wore a striped tie or part­ed his hair on the left — a detail, but not a telling one.”

These two short films show Amer­i­can auteurs keep­ing the cin­e­mat­ic cen­tral­i­ty of the cig­a­rette alive well after its hey­day had end­ed. At the top of the post, you can watch Jim Jar­musch’s 1986 short Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes, which stars Steven Wright and Rober­to Benig­ni sit­ting down for and talk­ing about those very same con­sum­ables. It began a long-term project that cul­mi­nat­ed in Jar­musch’s 2003 fea­ture of the same name, which com­pris­es eleven such cof­fee- and cig­a­rette-cen­tric short films (one of them fea­tur­ing Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, anoth­er fea­tur­ing Bill Mur) shot over those eigh­teen years.

While one might nat­u­ral­ly have met a friend specif­i­cal­ly to enjoy caf­feine and nico­tine in the mid-1980s, a decade lat­er the sit­u­a­tion had changed: only in Amer­i­ca’s seed­i­er cor­ners could you even find a cof­fee-serv­ing estab­lish­ment to smoke in. Paul Thomas Ander­son used this very set­ting to begin his career with Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee below. Eschew­ing film school, he gath­ered up his col­lege fund, some gam­bling win­nings, his girl­friend’s cred­it card, and var­i­ous oth­er bits and pieces of fund­ing in order to com­mit this short sto­ry to film.

It worked: Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee scored Ander­son an invi­ta­tion to the Sun­dance Film­mak­ers Lab, a set­ting that allowed him to adapt the short into his fea­ture debut Hard Eight. Like Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee, Hard Eight stars Philip Bak­er Hall, a favorite actor of Ander­son­’s that he went on to use in both Boo­gie Nights and Mag­no­lia. The­mat­i­cal­ly, this tale of a group of low-liv­ing but in their own ways hard-striv­ing char­ac­ters all con­nect­ed by a $20 bill presages the themes that, in his pic­tures of high­er and high­er pro­file, he con­tin­ues to work with today.

And can it be an acci­dent that Ander­son has, in the main, set his films in past eras that not only accept­ed smok­ing, but expect­ed it? Jar­musch, for his part, seems to pre­fer milieus at increas­ing dis­tance from our every­day expe­ri­ence, amid urban samu­rai, assas­sins in for­eign lands, immor­tal vam­pires in Detroit, that sort of thing. So if these film­mak­ers want to keep using smok­ing, they have ways. I just hope cof­fee does­n’t fall out of style. That would bring about a world that, as a film­go­er and a human being, I doubt I’d be pre­pared to live in.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Paul Thomas Ander­son Dropped Out of NYU Film School in 2 Days; Stud­ied Lit­er­a­ture with David Fos­ter Wal­lace

John Cleese Stars in a Mor­bid­ly Fun­ny Anti-Smok­ing Cam­paign (1992–1994)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Bertrand Rus­sell: “I Owe My Life to Smok­ing”

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.

I hope Orson Welles got used to see­ing his name on top-ten-films-of-all-time lists. He became a main­stay as soon as crit­i­cal con­sen­sus declared his debut Cit­i­zen Kane prob­a­bly the most impor­tant motion pic­ture ever made, and some cinephiles give spe­cial notice to his sub­se­quent works, such as The Lady from Shang­hai, Touch of Evil, F for Fake, and — for true con­trar­i­ans only — The Tri­al. So what does a man whose projects appear on so many top-ten lists from crit­ics and oth­er film­mak­ers alike put on his own?

“I don’t like cin­e­ma,” goes one per­haps-apoc­ryphal Welles quote. “I like mak­ing cin­e­ma.” (Some­times-heard vari­a­tion: “I don’t like cin­e­ma unless I shoot it.”) But even if he actu­al­ly said and believed that, he still man­aged to put togeth­er the fol­low­ing list of favorites in the ear­ly 1950s, about a decade after hav­ing entered the film­mak­ing game but with most of the cin­e­ma he would make still to come:

1. City Lights (Char­lie Chap­lin)
2. Greed (Erich von Stro­heim, 1924)
3. Intol­er­ance (D.W. Grif­fith, 1916)
4. Nanook of the North (Robert Fla­her­ty, 1992)
5. Shoe Shine (Vit­to­rio De Sica, 1946)
6. The Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (Sergei Eisen­stein, 1925)
7. La Femme du Boulanger (Mar­cel Pag­nol, 1938)
8. Grand Illu­sion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
9. Stage­coach (John Ford, 1939)
10. Our Dai­ly Bread (King Vidor, 1934)

If Cit­i­zen Kane opened up the pos­si­bil­i­ties of cin­e­ma — and to get an idea of just how much influ­ence it has had from its release to this day, sim­ply watch any film made before it — the pic­tures Welles puts onto his list, in large part a clas­si­cist’s even in the 50s, gave cin­e­ma its form in the first place. If you plan on doing a self-admin­is­tered course in film his­to­ry, you could do much worse than begin­ning with the favorite films of Orson Welles — then mov­ing on, of course, to the films of Orson Welles.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Dis­cov­er the Lost Films of Orson Welles

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

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.

Toward the end of 2013, we fea­tured a series of video essays by Matt Zoller Seitz on the films of Wes Ander­son. They first came out to accom­pa­ny The Wes Ander­son Col­lec­tion, the crit­ic’s cof­fee-table ret­ro­spec­tive of that auteur of whim­si­cal hand­craft­ed films’ career to date — to the date of late 2013, any­way. Even then, fans had already geared them­selves up in antic­i­pa­tion of the then-immi­nent release of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ander­son­’s eighth and lat­est pic­ture, which at the moment has resur­faced in awards-sea­son buzz.

The dimin­ish­ing num­ber of you who have proven still imper­vi­ous to Ander­son­’s pecu­liar brand of movie mag­ic might, actu­al­ly, feel you’ve heard a bit too much about The Grand Budapest Hotel over the past year or so. What, pray tell, is the big deal? Here to answer that ques­tion, we have Zoller Seitz’s brand new video essay on Ander­son­’s tale of that tit­u­lar once-grand moun­tain hotel and the 20th-cen­tu­ry Europe of the imag­i­na­tion (even­tu­al­ly giv­ing way to the 20th-cen­tu­ry Europe of his­to­ry) that swirls around and through it.

“All of Wes Ander­son­’s films are come­dies,” says Zoller Seitz, “and none are.” Through­out the fol­low­ing fif­teen min­utes, he ana­lyzes exact­ly how, with The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ander­son climbs to the top of both of his per­son­al twin peaks of friv­o­li­ty and seri­ous­ness — or seri­ous­ness expressed through friv­o­li­ty, or vice ver­sa. In the direc­tor’s “most struc­tural­ly ambi­tious film,” we see not just lay­ers of com­e­dy and melan­choly but of his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, artistry, and anx­i­ety, all tied in with the Ander­son­ian char­ac­ters’ end­less quest to mas­ter their own sense of loss by mas­ter­ing the world around them — which Ander­son shows us, to a fuller extent in The Grand Budapest Hotel, than in any of his live-action movies before, with his own mas­tery of the world he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors cre­ate.

For anoth­er look into what this requires in film­mak­ing terms, see also “Here’s How Wes Ander­son Uses Mat­te Paint­ings in His Incred­i­ble Set Designs” by The Cre­ators Pro­jec­t’s Beck­ett Muf­son. That inter­view with Grand Budapest Hotel mat­te painter Simone de Sal­va­tore reveals, by look­ing at just one aspect of the whole, how much goes into the design of a Wes Ander­son pro­duc­tion. View­ers who love Ander­son­’s pic­tures, of course, love them in large part for exact­ly that, and even view­ers who hate them have to con­cede their impec­ca­bil­i­ty on that count. Both groups now have only to wait for this Sun­day to see how the Acad­e­my feels about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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.

Agnès Var­da claimed to have seen few­er than ten movies before she made her first film at age 25. At the time, she had some pret­ty naïve ideas about film. “I thought if I added sound to pho­tographs, that would be cin­e­ma,” she recalled. She learned the essence of film­mak­ing and, by all accounts, learned it well. The result­ing film, La Pointe-Courte (1954), a self-financed doc­u­men­tary-fic­tion hybrid, is con­sid­ered one of the fore­run­ners of the French New Wave.

Fast for­ward a few years. Var­da is shoot­ing her fol­low up fea­ture Cleo from 5 to 7. The film would prove to be her break­out hit and a clas­sic of the New Wave along­side the likes of 400 Blows and Breath­less.

The film, which unspools almost in real time, is about a beau­ti­ful young singer who waits anx­ious­ly for the results of a med­ical test. We watch her as she talks with well-mean­ing friends, finds com­fort with a stranger, and even takes some time to watch a movie. In the wrong hands, the sto­ry has the poten­tial for being an unleav­ened exer­cise in exis­ten­tial angst. But, as she lat­er proved in sub­se­quent movies, she was nev­er one to let things get too dark. The movie that the hero­ine watch­es is a silent com­e­dy – one that Var­da shot her­self.

Les Fiancés Du Pont Mac­don­ald cen­ters on a Buster Keaton­sque dandy in a flat straw hat who waves good-bye to his doll-like girl­friend. Yet when he dons a pair of sun­glass­es, every­thing goes wrong. He wit­ness­es his beloved get­ting injured in an acci­dent only to be hauled off by a hearse. When he takes off the glass­es to wipe away the tears, he real­izes that he saw it all wrong. The glass­es make every­thing seem metaphor­i­cal­ly dark. No won­der the movie’s sub­ti­tle is “Beware of Dark Glass­es.” You can watch it above.

Les Fiancés is inter­est­ing not just because of Varda’s spot on pas­tiche of silent movies but also because of its cast. None oth­er than Jean-Luc Godard plays the dandy. His wife Anna Kari­na plays the girl, of course. Gen­er­al­ly, Godard’s onscreen appear­ances run the gamut from being sober and aloof to being hec­tor­ing and indig­nant. It’s fun to watch him ham it up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Rais­ing Ari­zona; The Big Lebows­ki; O Broth­er, Where Art Thou? — Joel and Ethan Coen have made more than a few movies not just wide­ly beloved, but also wide­ly thought of as eccen­tric. One thus would­n’t imag­ine their sen­si­bil­i­ty trans­lat­ing well to adver­tis­ing, that means of occa­sion­al sup­port for many an uncom­pro­mis­ing auteur. But just as the Coen broth­ers have brought Hol­ly­wood at least par­tial­ly over to their way of cre­at­ing, they’ve also, on sev­er­al occa­sions, bent the form of the com­mer­cial to their advan­tage.

Take the Coen broth­ers’ Parisi­enne cig­a­rette com­mer­cial at the top, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture (along­side David Lynch, Emir Kus­turi­ca, Roman Polan­s­ki and, Jean-Luc Godard’s work for the same appar­ent­ly auteur-lov­ing brand). But if they felt guilty about thus encour­ag­ing the befoul­ing of the air, they sure­ly cleared their own con­sciences with the satir­i­cal spot about “clean coal” just above. And in the slight­ly more straight­for­ward Gap ad below, they used the main­stream-yet-alter­na­tive icons Christi­na Ric­ci and Den­nis Hop­per:

And even if you keep up with the Coen broth­ers’ short film work, you may nev­er have seen the spot below, which orig­i­nal­ly aired dur­ing the 2002 Super Bowl. Work­ing for H&R Block, they use per­haps the least promis­ing set­ting imag­in­able, a slow-mov­ing tax law lec­ture, to cre­ate a dystopi­an vision not a mil­lion miles from the one Rid­ley Scott used to intro­duce the Apple Mac­in­tosh eigh­teen Super Bowls before.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cig­a­rette Com­mer­cials from David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers and Jean Luc Godard

Tui­leries: A Short, Slight­ly Twist­ed Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

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.

It’s a tru­ism to say that Hol­ly­wood is a boy’s club but Dr. Sta­cy L. Smith of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia put this say­ing into stark, empir­i­cal terms: a mere 4.4% of the top 100 box-office releas­es in the USA were direct­ed by women. That’s it. It’s a per­cent­age that should be used to describe the amount of cream in whole milk, not half the human race.

The truth is that the film indus­try in gen­er­al, not just Hol­ly­wood, is dom­i­nat­ed by men. In books on cin­e­ma and class­es on film his­to­ry, female direc­tors fre­quent­ly get over­looked.

Over at MUBI, some­one apt­ly named Ally the List­mak­er has tak­en great pains to counter that. She has com­piled an exhaus­tive col­lec­tion of movies by women. The list runs the gamut from pop­corn fare like Amy Heckerling’s Clue­less (1995), to for­eign art house films like Chan­tal Akerman’s The Cap­tive (2000), to chal­leng­ing exper­i­men­tal movies (any­thing by Peg­gy Ahwesh).

Ally’s list con­tains over 1400 movie titles, most­ly films made with­in the past 20 years. Yet with­in this list are oth­ers lists – “Films Direct­ed by Dan­ish Women,” “Actress­es Who Have Tried Their Hand at Direct­ing” – reveal­ing a mind-bog­gling range and diver­si­ty of movies. Here are a few favorites:

• The Glean­ers & I (2000) – Agnes Var­da
  A fas­ci­nat­ing med­i­ta­tion on art, aging and for­ag­ing off left­overs of oth­ers. Var­da turns the act of hunt­ing for pota­toes into a polit­i­cal act. You can watch the first four min­utes of the film above.
• The Apple (1998) – Sami­ra Makhmal­baf
  The daugh­ter of Mohsen Makhmal­baf, one of the true trail­blaz­ers of the Iran­ian new wave, Sami­ra proved to be a cin­e­mat­ic tal­ent in her own right with this movie that blurs the line between doc­u­men­tary and nar­ra­tive.
• Wendy and Lucy (2008) – Kel­ly Reichardt
  A woman at the mar­gins of soci­ety whose life utter­ly comes apart after her car breaks down. Riechardt’s direc­tion is slow, qui­et and ulti­mate­ly dev­as­tat­ing.
• The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma (2006) – Sophie Fiennes
  Slavoj Zizek, the reign­ing rock star/comedian of the cul­tur­al the­o­ry world, riffs on some of the great­est films ever made.
• Amer­i­can Psy­cho (2000) – Mary Har­ron
  Per­haps the best por­trait out there on the mind­set of the 1%. You’ll nev­er lis­ten to Huey Lewis and the News in the same way.

Check out the full list here. And if you’re inter­est­ed in more, take a look at this sub­list – Female Direc­tors Present on the Jonathan Rosen­baum 1000 Essen­tials List.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Hitch-Hik­er by Ida Lupino (the Only Female Direc­tor of a 1950s Noir Film)

Alice Guy-Blaché: The First Female Direc­tor & the Cin­e­mat­ic Trail­blaz­er You Like­ly Nev­er Heard Of

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.