1976 Film Blank Generation Documents CBGB Scene with Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie & More

in Film, Music | December 17th, 2013

Fans of brat­ty New York punk-turned-seri­ous writer Richard Hell or schlocky Ger­man hor­ror direc­tor Ulli Lom­mel or—why not—both, will like­ly know of Lommel’s 1980 Blank Gen­er­a­tion, a film unre­mark­able except for its cast­ing of Hell and his excel­lent Voidoids as fea­ture play­ers. (Their debut 1977 album and sin­gle are also called Blank Gen­er­a­tion.) The movie, as a review­er puts it, “seems as if each mem­ber of the pro­duc­tion was under the impres­sion they were work­ing on a dif­fer­ent film than the rest of their col­lab­o­ra­tors…. You can’t help but think that some­thing more watch­able could be pro­duced out of the raw footage with a good edi­tor.”

One might approach an ear­li­er film, also called Blank Gen­er­a­tion—the raw 1976 doc­u­men­tary about the bud­ding New York punk scene above—with sim­i­lar expec­ta­tions of coher­ent pro­duc­tion and nar­ra­tive clar­i­ty. But this would be mis­tak­en. The first Blank Gen­er­a­tion is a film that rewards no expec­ta­tions, except per­haps expect­ing to be con­stant­ly dis­ori­ent­ed. But that would seem to me a giv­en for a gen­uine doc­u­ment of what Lydia Lunch chris­tened “No Wave,” the delib­er­ate­ly taste­less 70s hybrid of punk, rock, new wave, noise, free jazz, and jar­ring com­bi­na­tion of ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al exper­i­men­ta­tion that came to define the sound of down­town for decades to come.

Shot and direct­ed by fre­quent Lunch and Pat­ti Smith col­lab­o­ra­tor Ivan Kral and pio­neer­ing indie film­mak­er Amos Poe, the doc­u­men­tary fea­tures Smith, The Ramones, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, Tele­vi­sion, The Heart­break­ers, Wayne/Jayne Coun­ty, and pret­ty much every­one else on the CBGB’s scene at the time. The Austin Film Soci­ety sums it up well. Kral and Poe’s Blank Gen­er­a­tion

exem­pli­fied a punk­ish atti­tude toward film struc­ture with hand­held zooms, angled com­po­si­tions, flood­light light­ing, extreme close-ups, ellip­ti­cal edit­ing, flash pans, and a gen­er­al in-your-face and “up-yours” stance. Sound and image pur­pose­ly do not synch. In many cas­es music and image were record­ed on sep­a­rate nights—more eco­nom­i­cal because of the high cost of raw film stock with sound, but also an aes­thet­ic nod to Jean-Luc Godard who had slashed the umbil­i­cal cord unit­ing sound and image. Out of the French New Wave came the New York No Wave.

The influ­ence is evi­dent, though it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful con­text. Real­ly, all you need to know is con­tained with­in the frame: in the lilt­ing rasp of Pat­ti Smith’s “Glo­ria,” in close-up shots of Joey Ramone’s crotch and filthy sneak­ers, in the youth­ful David Byrne’s jan­g­ly acoustic gui­tar and the sleazy lounge-punk of Television’s trib­ute to Iggy Pop, “Lit­tle John­ny Jew­el.” Of course lat­er No Wave stal­warts like Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Swans, Son­ic Youth, John Zorn, DNA, and Mars don’t appear—but some get their due else­where. And while the Hell/Lommel film might be worth a watch for curios­i­ty’s sake, the first Blank Gen­er­a­tion is a tru­ly incred­i­ble his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment that deserves repeat­ed view­ing.

It’ll get added to our col­lec­tion of 600 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

Deb­bie Har­ry Turns 68 Today. Watch Blondie Play CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

The Ramones in Their Hey­day, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

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

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From the Drain: A Creepy Comedy David Cronenberg Made in Film School (1967)

in Film | December 17th, 2013

You’d expect a bit of strange­ness from David Cro­nen­berg‘s stu­dent films, but for most of its short length, From the Drain, which he made in 1967 while attend­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, seems to deliv­er strange­ness of an unex­pect­ed kind. Play­ing more like Wait­ing for Godot than his lat­er vivid-to-the point of har­row­ing pic­tures like Crash, Video­drome, or The Fly, this thir­teen-minute black-and-white film, only Cro­nen­berg’s sec­ond, presents us with two fel­lows seat­ed, ful­ly clothed, in a bath­tub. The sit­u­a­tion looks bizarre, and as soon as the play­ers start talk­ing, it reveals itself as even more bizarre than we’d thought: evi­dent­ly, one of these men has mis­tak­en the tub for “the Dis­abled War Vet­er­ans’ Recre­ation Cen­ter.” The con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues with­out its par­tic­i­pants leav­ing their porce­lain con­fines, mak­ing a cer­tain kind of sense on the sur­face but none at all beneath. This feels almost like the realm of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, which would­n’t debut and begin exert­ing its vast influ­ence on young comedic film­mak­ers until 1969.

We’d feel more secure in our laugh­ter if we did­n’t know who its direc­tor would go on to become. These days, when you watch any­thing by Cro­nen­berg, per­haps the best-known liv­ing auteur of tech­no­log­i­cal men­ace, “body hor­ror,” and form­less dread, you can rest rea­son­ably assured that some­thing will soon­er or lat­er go hor­ri­bly, vis­cer­al­ly awry onscreen. So it comes to pass in From the Drain, whose title gives some sug­ges­tion as to the nature of the ulti­mate malev­o­lence. Don’t let the hyper-far­ci­cal dia­logue, the goofy per­for­mances, or the clas­si­cal gui­tar sound­track mis­lead you; here we def­i­nite­ly have a project by the king of unset­tle­ment, though at a time when he pre­sum­ably had yet to earn even the title of prince of unset­tle­ment, a point from which he could look for­ward to decades of more advanced and much creepi­er visu­al effects. At this point in his career, how­ev­er, with the bleak-look­ing Hol­ly­wood satire Maps to the Stars due out in the near future, he seems to need noth­ing so elab­o­rate, still unset­tling us, but pre­fer­ring to do it sub­tly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

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

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no, and Truf­faut

600 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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John Waters Makes Handmade Christmas Cards, Says the “Whole Purpose of Life is Christmas”

in Creativity, Film, Life | December 13th, 2013

WatersMugshot

Awk­ward as it feels to receive Christ­mas cards from peo­ple we don’t real­ly know, who among us would turn one down from the one and only John Waters? Then again, the direc­tor of such land­marks in delib­er­ate­ly taste-free cin­e­ma as Pink Flamin­gos and Female Trou­ble would pre­sum­ably delight in inject­ing a lit­tle aes­thet­ic dis­com­fort into our hol­i­day rou­tines. Waters, accord­ing to a New York Times Q&A about his tak­ing on the road “A John Waters Christ­mas,” his “staged mono­logue about all things mer­ry and dark,” has made and sent out his own inim­itable Christ­mas cards for almost fifty years. “I start­ed doing it in high school in 1964,” he explains. “I send out over 2,000 cards by now. Basi­cal­ly, I’m chan­nel­ing Pia Zado­ra, who used to send out the best pricey hol­i­day-relat­ed object to help spread her name and make it last all year.” His 2006 card above bears a gen­uine mugshot from the police depart­ment of Waters’ beloved Bal­ti­more; oth­er images have includ­ed a dra­mat­ic 1940s scene of Christ­mas ruined by a crim­i­nal San­ta, indie-film act­ing icon Steve Busce­mi made up con­vinc­ing­ly as Waters, and Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor shaven-head­ed after brain surgery. One year, he even attached a tree orna­ment con­tain­ing a dead cock­roach.

BuscemiasWaters

“Being a tra­di­tion­al­ist, I’m a rabid suck­er for Christ­mas,” Waters explains in his essay “Why I Love Christ­mas.” “Novem­ber 1 kicks off the jubilee of con­sumerism, and I’m so rid­dled with the hol­i­days sea­son that the mere men­tion of a stock­ing stuffer sex­u­al­ly arous­es me.” Pre­hol­i­day activ­i­ties he con­sid­ers “the fore­play of Christ­mas,” and nat­u­ral­ly, “Christ­mas cards are your first duty and you must send one (with a per­son­al, hand­writ­ten mes­sage) to every sin­gle per­son you ever met, no mat­ter how briefly.” And of course, “you must make your own cards by hand. ‘I don’t have time’ you may whine, but since the whole pur­pose of life is Christ­mas, you’d bet­ter make time, buster.” Waters has also assem­bled his very own Christ­mas album, fea­tur­ing a vari­ety of hol­i­day songs per­formed by Tiny Tim, Stormy Weath­er, and even Alvin and the Chip­munks. The selec­tion below, “First Snow­fall” by the Coc­tails, uses the clas­si­cal­ly kitschy singing saw as a lead:

You may well hear it again if you hap­pen to attend Waters’ own annu­al Christ­mas par­ty in Bal­ti­more, a tra­di­tion he’s kept up for near­ly as long as he’s sent out the cards. “Every­one comes, from the may­or to Pat Sajak to a judge and a well-known crim­i­nal I helped get out of jail,” as he describes it to the Times.” There’s a bar on every floor of the house and a buf­fet table where you’ll see the guy that played the singing anus in Pink Flamin­gos stand­ing next to the gov­er­nor.” For­get the cards; I need an invi­ta­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Watch Michel Gondry Animate Philosopher, Linguist & Activist Noam Chomsky

in Animation, Film, Philosophy, Science | December 13th, 2013

As an arts major who doo­dled my way through every required sci­ence course in high school and col­lege, I am deeply grat­i­fied by film­mak­er Michel Gondry’s approach to doc­u­ment­ing the ideas of Noam Chom­sky. Hav­ing filmed about three hours worth of inter­views with the activist, philoso­pher, and father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics in a ster­ile MIT con­fer­ence room, Gondry head­ed back to his charm­ing­ly ana­log Brook­lyn digs to spend three years ani­mat­ing the con­ver­sa­tions. It’s nice to see a film­mak­er of his stature using books to jer­ry-rig his cam­era set up. At one point, he hud­dles on the floor, puz­zling over some sequen­tial draw­ings on 3‑hole punch paper. Seems like the kind of thing most peo­ple in his field would tack­le with an iPad and an assis­tant.

Gondry may have felt intel­lec­tu­al­ly dwarfed by his sub­ject, but there’s a kind of genius afoot in his work too. Describ­ing the stop-motion tech­nique he used for Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py?, he told Amy Good­man of Democ­ra­cy Now, “I have a light­box, and I put paper on it, and I ani­mate with Sharpies, col­or Sharpies. And I have a 16-mil­lime­ter cam­era that is set up on a tri­pod and looks down, and I take a pic­ture. I do a draw­ing and take a pic­ture.”

A pret­ty apt summation—watch him in action above—but the curios­i­ty and human­i­ty so evi­dent in such fea­tures as Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind and The Sci­ence of Sleep is a mag­i­cal ingre­di­ent here, too. He attrib­ut­es bio­log­i­cal prop­er­ties to his Sharpie mark­ers, and takes a break from some of Chom­sky’s more com­plex thoughts to ask about his feel­ings when his wife passed away. He does­n’t seem to mind that he might seem a bit of a school­boy in com­par­i­son, one whose tal­ents lie beyond this par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sor’s scope.

As Chom­sky him­self remarks in the trail­er, below, “Learn­ing comes from ask­ing why do things work like that, why not some oth­er way?”

Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py? is avail­able on iTunes.

H/T @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Ayun Hal­l­i­day puts her life­long pen­chant for doo­dling to good use in her award-win­ning, hand­writ­ten, illus­trat­ed zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ultimate Cult Flick,” or Both?

in Film, Sci Fi | December 11th, 2013

plan-9

I had an ado­les­cent fas­ci­na­tion with Ed Wood. I mean that lit­er­al­ly: I spent a siz­able chunk of my ado­les­cence watch­ing the films of, read­ing about, and even read­ing the books by writer-direc­tor (and occa­sion­al cross-dress­er) Edward D. Wood Jr. What, I asked, could have dri­ven the man to make, and keep on mak­ing, the films that would ulti­mate­ly define the cat­e­go­ry, quite pop­u­lar dur­ing my teen years, of “so bad it’s good” cin­e­ma? None of his numer­ous, all unabashed­ly low-bud­get pic­tures have done more for that form than 1959’s Plan 9 from Out­er Space, a breath­less, near­ly bud­get­less tale in which Wood throws togeth­er aliens, zom­bies, loom­ing nuclear anni­hi­la­tion, and Bela Lugosi. Well, he almost throws in Bela Lugosi: as depict­ed in Tim Bur­ton’s 1994 biopic Ed Wood, he char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly spliced in exist­ing footage of the by-then deceased icon of hor­ror film, cast his wife’s chi­ro­prac­tor (instruct­ed to hold a cape over his face) as a dou­ble, billed Lugosi as the star, and hoped for the best.

You can watch the fruit of that and oth­er high­ly unortho­dox film­mak­ing efforts on the part of Wood and his faith­ful bunch of long-suf­fer­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors at the top of the post. Just below, we have a clip from Ed Wood, which in large part deals with how its inde­fati­ga­ble pro­tag­o­nist, played by a whole­some­ly gung-ho John­ny Depp, came to make Plan 9 in the first place. This mon­tage recre­ates the shoot­ing of sequences Wood’s fans will have long since burned into their visu­al mem­o­ry: George “The Ani­mal” Steele as Swedish ex-wrestler Tor John­son ris­ing inept­ly from the grave, Bill Mur­ray as would-be trans­sex­u­al Bun­ny Breck­en­ridge affect­less­ly giv­ing his hench­man orders to exe­cute the title plan, a trio of toy fly­ing saucers low­ered on fish­ing wire into a mod­el Hol­ly­wood. In 1980, Michael and Har­ry Medved dubbed Plan 9 “worst movie ever made,” ini­ti­at­ing its ascent from decades of obscu­ri­ty to the sta­tus of, as John Wirt puts it, “the ulti­mate cult flick.” Crit­ics tend to regard Ed Wood as a “good” movie, and Wood’s projects, espe­cial­ly Plan 9, as “bad” movies, yet both enter­tain at very high lev­els indeed, mak­ing us ask an impor­tant ques­tion, anoth­er one I asked myself in the thick of my Wood peri­od: what makes a movie “good” or “bad,” any­way?

Plan 9 from Out­er Space can always be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Tim Bur­ton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Ingmar Bergman Names the 11 Films He Liked Above All Others (1994)

in Film | December 10th, 2013

bergman favorites

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You may remem­ber our Octo­ber post on Ing­mar Bergman’s eval­u­a­tion of his equal­ly titan­ic col­leagues in cin­e­ma, from Jean-Luc Godard (“affect­ed”) to Alfred Hitck­cock (“infan­tile”). Though the Bergman faith­ful and fans Andrei Tarkovsky often find much to dis­agree about, the Swedish direc­tor of pic­tures like Wild Straw­ber­ries and Per­sona had the absolute high­est praise for the Russ­ian direc­tor of pic­tures like Andrei Rublev and Solaris. (Watch Tarkovsky’s major films free online here.) “When film is not a doc­u­ment, it is dream,” said Bergman. “That is why Tarkovsky is the great­est of them all. He moves with such nat­u­ral­ness in the room of dreams. He does­n’t explain. He is a spec­ta­tor, capa­ble of stag­ing his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most will­ing of media. All my life I have ham­mered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so nat­u­ral­ly.”

And now we have a few more words the old­er mas­ter spoke about the younger, whom he phys­i­cal­ly out­lived — but, by his own admis­sion, could­n’t artis­ti­cal­ly out­do — thanks to a cer­tain Tyler Har­ris, who post­ed them to My Cri­te­ri­on. In his remarks there, Bergman con­tin­ues with the metaphor of Tarkovsky an an inhab­i­tant of a realm of dreams: “Sud­den­ly, I found myself stand­ing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, nev­er been giv­en to me,” Bergman said of first watch­ing Andrei Rublev, which he named at the Göte­borg Film Fes­ti­val 1994 as a favorite. “I felt encour­aged and stim­u­lat­ed: some­one was express­ing what I had always want­ed to say with­out know­ing how.” He also select­ed Fed­eri­co Fellini’s La Stra­da, which prompt­ed a back­ground sto­ry about his ill-fat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion with Felli­ni and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa under leg­endary pro­duc­er Dino de Lau­ren­ti­is. Kuro­sawa’s own Rashomon, which you can watch free online, also appears on this favorites list of Bergman’s, which runs, alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, as fol­lows:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Susan Sontag’s 50 Favorite Films (and Her Own Cinematic Creations)

in Film | December 4th, 2013

Susan Son­tag’s fans would each describe her a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly: many would call her a writer, of course, though some would opt for more speci­fici­ty, call­ing her a nov­el­ist if they like her fic­tion or a crit­ic if they don’t. Oth­ers, speak­ing more grand­ly, might pre­fer to sim­ply call her an “intel­lec­tu­al.” Under this wide umbrel­la Son­tag pro­duced a vari­ety of works for the page, the stage, and even the screen. Between 1969 and 1983, she made four films: 1969’s Duett för kan­ni­baler (Duet for Can­ni­bals), 1971’s Broder Carl (Broth­er Carl), 1974’s Promised Lands, and, above, 1983’s Unguid­ed Tour, also known as Let­ter from Venice. Son­tag adapt­ed the Ital­ian-lan­guage fea­ture from her sto­ry of the same name, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1977 in the New York­er. Promised Lands, her only doc­u­men­tary, med­i­tates on Arab-Israeli rela­tions at the end of the Yom Kip­pur War. The Bergmanesque, sym­bol­ism-filled Broth­er Carl takes place, suit­ably, at a Swedish island resort.

And her debut Duet for Can­ni­bals, accord­ing to Dan­ger­ous Minds, embod­ies — or, if you like, cin­e­ma­tizes — her tout­ed dis­taste for the inter­pre­ta­tion of art­works. Son­tag, they say, “sought to lib­er­ate art from inter­pre­ta­tion (which is a bit iron­ic, of course, for some­one who was essen­tial­ly an exalt­ed crit­ic). When it came to her own film, she made some­thing that intend­ed to delib­er­ate­ly con­found the notion that there was any sort of under­ly­ing mean­ing beyond exact­ly what the audi­ence was see­ing on the screen direct­ly in front of them.”

Son­tag’s famous 1966 essay “Against Inter­pre­ta­tion” counts here as essen­tial read­ing, not just before you watch her own films, but also before you watch through her list of favorite films. Richard Brody, post­ing in the New York­er, rec­om­mends accom­pa­ny­ing it with “The Decay of Cin­e­ma,” which Son­tag wrote three decades lat­er in the New York Times, and in which she declares that “you hard­ly find any­more, at least among the young, the dis­tinc­tive cinephilic love of movies that is not sim­ply love of but a cer­tain taste in films (ground­ed in a vast appetite for see­ing and resee­ing as much as pos­si­ble of cinema’s glo­ri­ous past).”

Read­ing over the top fifty films she con­sid­ered the great­est back in 1977 (and pub­lished in her vol­ume of jour­nals As Con­scious­ness is Har­nessed to Flesh), we find plen­ty of evi­dence Son­tag her­self, unsur­pris­ing­ly, had such a cinephilic love of and vast appetite for movies, espe­cial­ly for Euro­pean film­mak­ers but also the best-known Japan­ese ones of the day:

1. Bres­son, Pick­pock­et
2. Kubrick, 2001
3. Vidor, The Big Parade
4. Vis­con­ti, Osses­sione
5. Kuro­sawa, High and Low
6. [Hans-Jür­gen] Syber­berg, Hitler
7. Godard, 2 ou 3 Choses …
8. Rosselli­ni, Louis XIV
9. Renoir, La Règle du Jeu
10. Ozu, Tokyo Sto­ry
11. Drey­er, Gertrud
12. Eisen­stein, Potemkin
13. Von Stern­berg, The Blue Angel
14. Lang, Dr. Mabuse
15. Anto­nioni, L’Eclisse
16. Bres­son, Un Con­damné à Mort …
17. Gance, Napoléon
18. Ver­tov, The Man with the [Movie] Cam­era
19. [Louis] Feuil­lade, Judex
20. Anger, Inau­gu­ra­tion of the Plea­sure Dome
21. Godard, Vivre Sa Vie
22. Bel­loc­chio, Pug­ni in Tas­ca
23. [Mar­cel] Carné, Les Enfants du Par­adis
24. Kuro­sawa, The Sev­en Samu­rai
25. [Jacques] Tati, Play­time
26. Truf­faut, L’Enfant Sauvage
27. [Jacques] Riv­ette, L’Amour Fou
28. Eisen­stein, Strike
29. Von Stro­heim, Greed
30. Straub, …Anna Mag­dale­na Bach
31. Taviani bro[ther]s, Padre Padrone
32. Resnais, Muriel
33. [Jacques] Beck­er, Le Trou
34. Cocteau, La Belle et la Bête
35. Bergman, Per­sona
36. [Rain­er Wern­er] Fass­binder, … Petra von Kant
37. Grif­fith, Intol­er­ance
38. Godard, Con­tempt
39. [Chris] Mark­er, La Jetée
40. Con­ner, Cross­roads
41. Fass­binder, Chi­nese Roulette
42. Renoir, La Grande Illu­sion
43. [Max] Ophüls, The Ear­rings of Madame de …
44. [Iosif] Kheifits, The Lady with the Lit­tle Dog
45. Godard, Les Cara­biniers
46. Bres­son, Lancelot du Lac
47. Ford, The Searchers
48. Bertoluc­ci, Pri­ma del­la Riv­o­luzione
49. Pasoli­ni, Teo­re­ma
50. [Leon­tine] Sagan, Mäd­chen in Uni­form

“She was wrong,” Brody writes of Son­tag’s epi­taph for her kind of enthu­si­asm for film. “Cinephil­ia was there, but, for cer­tain prac­ti­cal rea­sons, it was rel­a­tive­ly qui­et. It’s not qui­et any­more, and great, dis­tinc­tive movies were issu­ing from around the world.” As ever, “the nar­ra­tive of nos­tal­gia for a lost gold­en age is real­ly one of the writer’s own nos­tal­gia for youth” — but in her youth as well as after­ward, Son­tag saw some aston­ish­ing movies indeed.

Find a wide range of avant-garde films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Watch Jean Genet’s Only Film, the Censored A Song of Love (1950)

in Film, Literature | December 3rd, 2013

Pet­ty crim­i­nal, out­law writer, polit­i­cal rad­i­cal, gay icon—the name Jean Genet means many things to many peo­ple, but film­mak­er isn’t usu­al­ly one of them. Yet Genet did direct a short film, A Song of Love (Un chant d’amour), in 1950. Silent and shot in grainy black and white, the film presents a pas­sion­ate rela­tion­ship between inmates, sep­a­rat­ed from each oth­er by the prison walls. The pris­on­ers express their estranged desire for each oth­er in increas­ing­ly sen­su­al ways until the frame is filled with writhing bod­ies. All the while, a lone guard watch­es, men­ac­ing and jeal­ous.

Despite the fact that the film was banned for many years, and that Genet him­self dis­owned it, it’s a foun­da­tion­al work for lat­er gay film­mak­ers, from Andy Warhol to the ear­ly Derek Jar­man, whose first fea­ture Sebas­tiane (1976) sure­ly owes a debt to A Song of Love. Genet’s choice of set­ting is no mere auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal detail; the pre­vi­ous year he faced a life sen­tence after his tenth con­vic­tion, and was only saved by the inter­ven­tion of his respect­ed sup­port­ers Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picas­so, and Jean Cocteau, who peti­tioned the pres­i­dent on his behalf. It’s pos­si­ble to read A Song of Love in many ways, but it’s hard not to see it at least as Genet’s pro­jec­tion of the frus­trat­ed (yet hot­house) sex­u­al ten­sion he would know if incar­cer­at­ed for the rest of his days.

Of course Genet began his writ­ing career in prison, draft­ing his first nov­el, the pulpy yet pro­found­ly lyri­cal Our Lady of the Flow­ers, while serv­ing out a sen­tence in the ear­ly for­ties. Genet’s erot­i­cal­ly charged, some might say deca­dent, fic­tion worked to reclaim and reval­ue his iden­ti­ty as a homo­sex­u­al, social out­cast, and crim­i­nal. In his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el, The Thief’s Jour­nal, writ­ten in 1949 while his fate was being decid­ed, Genet defined him­self thus:

Lim­it­ed by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more hand­some and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jag­ging more cru­el.

The quote could almost serve as an epi­graph for Genet’s only film, which, writes Fer­nan­do Croce, draws its “pre­sid­ing image… of flesh against stone” from The Thief’s Jour­nal. It’s an image Croce inter­prets as “metaphor for soci­ety-enforced divi­sion imposed on gay men, and also of the need for con­nec­tion which encom­pass­es all human exis­tence.” Like all Genet’s work, A Song of Love takes plea­sure from pain and finds arrest­ing inti­ma­cy and unabashed­ly lib­er­at­ing sex­u­al ful­fill­ment in the Parisian sew­ers, gar­rets, and jails.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean Genet, France’s Out­law Poet, Revealed in a Rare 1981 Inter­view

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

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

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