Ear­li­er this year we fea­tured the aes­thet­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal 1929 doc­u­men­tary A Man with a Movie Cam­era. In it, direc­tor Dzi­ga Ver­tov and his edi­tor-wife Eliza­ve­ta Svilo­va, as Jonathan Crow put it, glee­ful­ly use “jump cuts, super­im­po­si­tions, split screens and every oth­er trick in a filmmaker’s arse­nal” to craft a “dizzy­ing, impres­sion­is­tic, propul­sive por­trait of the new­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing Sovi­et Union.”

He men­tioned then that no less author­i­ta­tive a cinephilic insti­tu­tion than Sight and Sound named A Man with a Movie Cam­era, in their 2012 poll, “the 8th best movie ever made,” But now, in their new poll in search of the great­est doc­u­men­tary of all time, they gave Ver­tov’s film an even high­er hon­or, nam­ing it, well, the great­est doc­u­men­tary of all time. A Man with a Movie Cam­era, writes Bri­an Win­ston, “sign­posts noth­ing less than how doc­u­men­tary can sur­vive the dig­i­tal destruc­tion of pho­to­graph­ic image integri­ty and yet still, as Ver­tov want­ed, ‘show us life.’ Ver­tov is, in fact, the key to documentary’s future.”

High praise indeed, though Sight and Sound’s crit­ics make strong claims (with sup­port­ing clips) for the oth­er 55 doc­u­men­taries on the list as well. In the top ten alone, we have the fol­low­ing:

1. A Man with a Movie Cam­era (Dzi­ga Ver­tov, 1929)
2. Shoah (Claude Lanz­mann, France 1985). Lanz­man­n’s “550-minute exam­i­na­tion of the Jew­ish Holo­caust falls with­in the doc­u­men­tary tra­di­tion of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, but what he does with that form is so con­fronta­tion­al and relent­less that it demands to be described in philosophical/spiritual terms rather than sim­ply cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly.”
3. Sans soleil (Chris Mark­er, 1982). “It’s a cliché to say about a movie [ … ] that its true shape or tex­ture is in the eye of the behold­er – but it’s true of Sans soleil, which not only with­stands mul­ti­ple view­ings, but nev­er seems to be the same film twice. It address­es mem­o­ry even as its dif­fer­ent threads seem to for­get them­selves; it pars­es geopol­i­tics with­out betray­ing any affil­i­a­tion; it might be Marker’s most elab­o­rate­ly self-effac­ing film, or his most plan­gent­ly per­son­al.”
4. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955). “In 1945 movie­go­ers world­wide became famil­iar through week­ly news­reels in their local cin­e­mas with the unspeak­able con­di­tions in the recent­ly lib­er­at­ed Nazi exter­mi­na­tion camps. [ … ] Not, how­ev­er, until Night and Fog (Nuit et brouil­lard), com­mis­sioned to mark the tenth anniver­sary of the Allied lib­er­a­tion of the most noto­ri­ous camp, at Auschwitz, did film pro­duc­ers tru­ly con­front and define the moral and aes­thet­ic para­me­ters involved in treat­ing such an intractable sub­ject.”
5. The Thin Blue Line (Errol Mor­ris, 1989). “A good pros­e­cu­tor can put a guilty sus­pect behind bars, we hear in The Thin Blue Line, but it takes a great one to con­vict an inno­cent man. Some­thing sim­i­lar might be said of Errol Morris’s bril­liant­ly unsta­ble, high­ly influ­en­tial inves­ti­ga­tion into the 1976 road­side shoot­ing of a Texas cop and the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of one Ran­dall Adams.” Demon­strat­ing a mis­car­riage of jus­tice is impres­sive, but it’s quite anoth­er thing to under­mine the very notion of a sta­ble truth.”
6. Chron­i­cle of a Sum­mer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, 1961). Rouch and Morin “are the archi­tects of a social col­lab­o­ra­tion and are rig­or­ous­ly open-hand­ed with the mate­ri­als they’re using. Their loose vox-pop style, begin­ning each encounter by ask­ing whether the inter­vie­wee is hap­py, dis­arm­ing­ly mix­es with scenes that show how cin­e­ma, in any regard, must be arti­fi­cial – employ­ing clas­sic shot-reverse-shot tech­niques in oth­er­wise unevent­ful con­ver­sa­tion­al moments.”
7. Nanook of the North (Robert Fla­her­ty, 1922). “Nanook of the North is noto­ri­ous for its fak­ery, its open-faced igloo and cutesy depic­tion of the Inu­it as untouched by West­ern cul­ture. [But] Flaherty’s pho­tog­ra­phy is beau­ti­ful, and his make-believe meth­ods cap­tured the tra­di­tion­al skills of Allakariallak’s ances­tors on film before they died out alto­geth­er; to the cin­e­ma audi­ences of the time, Nanook was a jour­ney to a for­eign and fas­ci­nat­ing place.”
8. The Glean­ers and I (Agnès Var­da, 2000). Var­da’s “hand­held DV auto­por­trait of the artist as an old­er woman,” though it “seems small and sim­ple, albeit rig­or­ous in its inti­ma­cy, bril­liant­ly encom­pass­es agri­cul­ture, art his­to­ry, class pol­i­tics, ecol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics, recy­cling raps and (via an inter­view with a descen­dant of Louis Daguerre) the ori­gins of cin­e­ma.”
9. Dont Look Back (D.A. Pen­nebak­er, 1967). “The man born Robert Zim­mer­man knows well the val­ue of obscur­ing myths and shift­ing per­sonas, and part of the fas­ci­na­tion of Pennebaker’s pio­neer­ing Direct Cin­e­ma account of Dylan’s 1965 tour of Britain is the way it cap­tures the singer trans­form­ing on cam­era into ‘Dylan’, the unreach­ably cool, detached yet wired, light­ning-in-a-bot­tle young genius who, as Greil Mar­cus mem­o­rably wrote, ‘seemed less to occu­py a turn­ing point in cul­tur­al space and time than to be that turn­ing point.’ ”
10. Grey Gar­dens, (Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hov­de, Muffie Mey­er, 1975). “Imag­ine if John Waters shot a script by Ten­nessee Williams and it was broad­cast in a TV slot usu­al­ly reserved for The Hoard­er Next Door or How Clean Is Your House? [ … ] a fly-in-a-Har­vey-Wall­banger look at the world of Jack­ie O.’s eccen­tric cousins, Big Edie and Lit­tle Edie (and their inter­lop­er, ‘the Mar­ble Faun’). It’s fin­ger­nails-down-black­board won­der­ful, as the Edies rem­i­nisce, sing, dance, yell at each oth­er and watch approv­ing­ly as cats and rac­coons befoul their rot­ting Long Island retreat.”

You can read up on the rest of the 50 great­est doc­u­men­taries of all time, which range across the world, across his­to­ry, and across the spec­trum of truth and fic­tion, at Sight and Sound.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

Free: Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, the 8th Best Film Ever Made

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

Ever since the advent of YouTube and the release of Thom Ander­sen’s Los Ange­les Plays Itself, the video essay about film­mak­ing has blos­somed on the inter­net. When these essays are good, they force you to look at movies anew. Kog­o­na­da’s bril­liant inter­ro­ga­tion of Stan­ley Kubrick’s use of one-point per­spec­tive, Matt Zoller Seitz’s dis­sec­tion of Wes Anderson’s cin­e­mat­ic style and, in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent tone, Red Let­ter Media’s blis­ter­ing, exhaus­tive take down of George Lucas’s regret­table Star Wars pre­quels, all argue con­vinc­ing­ly that per­haps the best way to dis­cuss the mer­its and flaws of a movie or film­mak­er is through the medi­um of film itself.

Add to this list Tony Zhou’s Every Frame a Pic­ture. An edi­tor by trade, Zhou has cre­at­ed a series of videos about how the mas­ters of cin­e­ma use the basic ele­ments of cin­e­ma – the dura­tion of a shot, the appli­ca­tion of sound, the use of a track­ing shot. In his ele­gant videos he makes argu­ments that are unex­pect­ed. Mar­tin Scors­ese, for instance, who is famous for his ground­break­ing use of music, is just as bril­liant with his judi­cious use of silence. You can watch it above.

And below, Zhou argues that Steven Spiel­berg, a film­mak­er not com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with restraint, is actu­al­ly a mas­ter of the under­stat­ed long take.

And in this video, he argues that while Michael Bay might make ado­les­cent, over-stuffed, soul­less spec­ta­cles, he does know how to con­struct a shot.

You can nerd out and watch even more of Zhou’s films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:
The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

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 pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.

Mar­tin Scorsese’s mean streets are as long gone as graf­fi­ti-fes­tooned sub­way trains, the real Max’s Kansas City, and Yogi Berra’s pen­nant-win­ning Mets. But while the 1973 film that broke open his career is now over forty years old, Scors­ese hasn’t looked back, nor has he stayed trapped in the rough milieu of New York gang­ster films. He’s adapt­ed Edith Whar­ton, told sto­ries of the Dalai Lama, Howard Hugh­es, hand­fuls of rock and blues stars, and cin­e­mat­ic hero Georges Méliès (sort of).

Last year’s The Wolf of Wall Street fur­ther cement­ed Scorsese’s rep­u­ta­tion as a direc­tor with more breadth than almost any of his con­tem­po­raries. But it would per­haps be a mis­take to call Scorsese’s genre-hop­ping an evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­ment. The series of sto­ry­boards here for an imag­ined widescreen Roman epic called The Eter­nal City— drawn by 11-year-old Scorsese—show us that his vision always exceed­ed the cramped Lit­tle Italy streets of his youth.

Young Scors­ese described his Cecil B. Demille-like pro­duc­tion as “A fic­ti­tious sto­ry of Roy­al­ty in Ancient Rome,” and though he didn’t give us char­ac­ter names, he made sure to spec­i­fy the film’s actors, cast­ing Mar­lon Bran­do, Richard Bur­ton, Vir­ginia Mayo, and Alec Guin­ness, among oth­ers. As for Scorsese’s own role, The Inde­pen­dent notes, “it is strik­ing that he has giv­en him­self a big­ger cred­it as pro­duc­er-direc­tor than any of the stars.” Repro­duced in David Thompson’s series of inter­views, Scors­ese on Scors­ese, the draw­ings’ impres­sive lev­el of detail demon­strate a pre­co­cious eye for shot com­po­si­tion and the dra­mat­ic per­spec­tives that char­ac­ter­ize his mature work.

The direc­tor of such metic­u­lous­ly com­posed films as Taxi Dri­ver and Good­fel­las has had much to say about the impor­tance of sto­ry­boards to his process. (We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his hand-drawn sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver.) They are, he’s said, “the way to visu­al­ize the entire movie in advance,” to “show how I would imag­ine a scene and how it should move to the next.” And while many direc­tors would make sim­i­lar claims about this essen­tial pro­duc­tion tool, Scors­ese cher­ish­es the craft as well as the util­i­ty of the sto­ry­board. “Pen­cil draw­ing is my favorite,” he remarks. “The pen­cil line leaves lit­tle impres­sion on the paper, so if the sto­ry­board is pho­to­copied it los­es some­thing. I refer back to my orig­i­nal draw­ings in order for me to con­jure up the idea I had when I saw the pen­cil line made.”

Can we look for­ward to Scors­ese look­ing back, just once, to his plans for The Eter­nal City? He’d have to recast, of course, but giv­en how con­fi­dent­ly he sketch­es out each of his films on paper, the 71-year-old direc­tor might find much to work with in this youth­ful cin­e­mat­ic vision of antiq­ui­ty.

View the sto­ry­boards in a larg­er for­mat here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Saul Bass’ Vivid Sto­ry­boards for Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus (1960)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

At the 1984 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, dis­co trail­blaz­er and Oscar-win­ning com­pos­er Gior­gio Moroder unveiled a restored ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent epic Metrop­o­lis — the first time that the ground­break­ing movie had been restored since it pre­miered. Though Moroder labored for years with some of the lead­ing archivists in the world to cre­ate the most com­plete ver­sion of the film to date, his adap­ta­tion also stream­lined the movie’s sto­ry­line, added sound effects, col­orized the movie’s mono­chrome pic­ture and, most con­tro­ver­sial­ly, added a synth pop sound­track fea­tur­ing music by Pat Benatar, Bil­ly Squier, Adam Ant and Fred­die Mer­cury. You can watch it above.

The result­ing film, as you might expect, is a pro­found­ly odd col­li­sion between pop and art. Lang’s pun­gent imagery exists uneasi­ly along­side Moroder’s MTV treat­ment. Crit­ic Thomas Elsaess­er in his BFI book­let on the movie called Moroder’s ver­sion “some­where between a remake and a post-mod­ern appro­pri­a­tion.” And though the songs are uni­form­ly cringe-induc­ing – to say that they didn’t age well is a big under­state­ment — Moroder’s ver­sion still works.

The rea­son that Lang’s movie influ­enced film­mak­ers from George Lucas to Ter­ry Gilliam to Stan­ley Kubrick is because of its visu­al bril­liance, not because of its sto­ry. The script, penned by Lang’s wife and future Nazi Par­ty pro­pa­gan­dist, Thea von Har­bou, is stuffed full of allu­sions to Franken­stein and Ger­man folk­tales along with plen­ty of maudlin melo­dra­ma. But Lang’s high mod­ernist visu­als – evok­ing both the Bauhaus move­ment and Hen­ry Ford’s new brand of indus­tri­al­ism – tran­scend­ed the movie’s sto­ry, becom­ing a last­ing vision of total­i­tar­i­an dystopia.

In 2010, a painstak­ing­ly researched “com­plete” ver­sion of Metrop­o­lis came out, clock­ing in at almost three hours. It might be an achieve­ment of film preser­va­tion but, com­pared to Moroder’s ver­sion, it shows how bloat­ed and mean­der­ing Von Harbou’s script was. Moroder’s more svelte ver­sion might be cheesy, but at least it’s fun. The great film crit­ic Pauline Kael described Lang’s movie as “a won­der­ful, stu­pe­fy­ing fol­ly.” Moroder’s ver­sion is a fol­ly on top of a fol­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Metrop­o­lis Restored: Watch a New Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Free Film Noir Movies (34 Films in Total)

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 pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.