What with all that has, over the past 36 years, grown out of it — sequels, pre­quels, toys, nov­els, radio pro­duc­tions, video games, LEGO sets, LEGO set-themed video games, con­ven­tions, PhD the­ses, and an entire uni­verse of con­tent besides — we can only with dif­fi­cul­ty remem­ber how Star Wars began. The whole thing came pre­ced­ed by the promise of noth­ing grander, more pro­found, or minu­tia-packed than a rol­lick­ing myth­ic space opera, and above, we have a reminder of that fact in the form of the first film’s orig­i­nal teas­er trail­er. “Some­where in space, this may all be hap­pen­ing right now,” intones its faint­ly haunt­ing nar­ra­tor. “The sto­ry of a boy, a girl, and a uni­verse. It’s a big, sprawl­ing saga of rebel­lion and romance. It’s a spec­ta­cle light-years ahead of its time. It’s an epic of heroes and vil­lains and aliens from a thou­sand worlds. Star Wars: a bil­lion years in the mak­ing… and it’s com­ing to your galaxy this sum­mer.”

Since noth­ing suits Star Wars quite like com­pletism, we’ve also includ­ed the teasers for the rest of the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy: The Empire Strikes Back, just above, and Return of the Jedi, below. “In the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Star Wars saga,” booms the more tra­di­tion­al voice-over about the sec­ond film over hand-drawn imagery of its scenes, “the Empire strikes back, and Luke, Han, and Leia must con­front its awe­some might. In the course of the odyssey, they trav­el with their faith­ful friends, droids and wook­iees, to exot­ic worlds where they meet new alien crea­tures and evil machines, cul­mi­nat­ing in an awe­some con­fronta­tion between Luke Sky­walk­er and the mas­ter of the dark side of the Force, Darth Vad­er.” By 1983, the time of the third pic­ture, then titled Revenge of the Jedi, the series had amassed such a fol­low­ing that the nar­ra­tor need­ed only rat­tle off the famil­iar heroes, vil­lains, and var­i­ous space crit­ters we’d encounter once again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Revis­its Aban­doned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Oth­er Clas­sic Films in North Africa

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars Gets Dubbed into Nava­jo: a Fun Way to Pre­serve and Teach a Fad­ing Lan­guage

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

Who killed Mar­i­on Crane? If you’ve watched Psy­cho, the best-known film by British mas­ter of cin­e­mat­ic sus­pense Alfred Hitch­cock, you have the answer. And giv­en that the pic­ture came out in 1960, even if you haven’t seen it, you prob­a­bly know the answer any­way. But today’s Hitch­cock-lov­ing cinéastes and enthu­si­asts of design have anoth­er impor­tant ques­tion to con­sid­er: who direct­ed Mar­i­on Crane get­ting killed? We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured some­thing of a mas­ter class in edit­ing from Hitch­cock him­self in which he explains the mechan­ics of cut­ting togeth­er the “show­er scene” of the unsus­pect­ing sec­re­tary’s death. But that part of the process obvi­ous­ly began with all its com­po­nents — Janet Leigh, the raised knife, the cur­tain pulled off of its rings, the choco­late syrup cir­cling the drain — already cap­tured on cel­lu­loid. To know the ori­gins of this most famous sequence in Hitch­cock­’s oeu­vre, and one of the most famous sequences in 20th cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma, you have to begin with its sto­ry­boards, straight from the hand of graph­ic-design leg­end Saul Bass, who also put togeth­er the film’s title sequence.

“After Hitch­cock­’s death, Bass assert­ed that he had direct­ed the scene at Hitch­cock­’s invi­ta­tion — a claim defin­i­tive­ly con­tra­dict­ed by both Janet Leigh and Assis­tant Direc­tor Hilton Green,” writes Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Amer­i­ca Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Glen John­son on the com­pan­ion page to his Hitch­cock course. “Bass’s par­ti­sans have sub­se­quent­ly held that Hitch­cock mere­ly mechan­i­cal­ly filmed shots already laid out by Bass. Com­par­ing the sto­ry­boards to the filmed scene shows that to be untrue. On the oth­er hand, the most cru­cial ele­ments of the scene, such as the drain-eye match­cut and the track­ing shot that fol­lows it, are in the sto­ry­boards. That proves noth­ing about the author of the scene, how­ev­er, since Bass drew the sto­ry­boards after exten­sive dis­cus­sions with Hitch­cock about the design of the scene.” Though it appears that no sin­gle cre­ator “made” the show­er scene — or made any giv­en ele­ment of most motion pic­tures — its place in the endur­ing lega­cy of mid-20th-cen­tu­ry cul­ture goes undis­put­ed. Below, you can watch this so often quot­ed, imi­tat­ed, and par­o­died sequence play out in anoth­er form, com­bin­ing sto­ry­boards, clips, and mak­ing-of drama­ti­za­tion, in last year’s fea­ture film Hitch­cock:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Hitch­cock (Antho­ny Hop­kins) Pitch­es Janet Leigh (Scar­lett Johans­son) on the Famous Show­er Scene

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

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

What liv­ing direc­tor has drawn the descrip­tor “sur­re­al” more often than David Lynch? If you’ve seen, or rather expe­ri­enced, a few of his films — par­tic­u­lar­ly Eraser­head, Lost High­way, Mul­hol­land Dr., or Inland Empire, or even the first half of his tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks — you know he’s earned it. Like any sur­re­al­ist worth his salt, Lynch cre­ates his own ver­sion of real­i­ty, with its own set of often unfath­omable and inex­plic­a­bly but emo­tion­al­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly res­o­nant qual­i­ties. In 1987, the year after his break­through Blue Vel­vet opened in the­aters, the BBC appar­ent­ly thought him enough of an author­i­ty on the mat­ter of cin­e­mat­ic sur­re­al­ism to enlist him to present an episode of Are­na on the sub­ject.

And so we’ve high­light­ed, just above in two parts, the fruit of their col­lab­o­ra­tion, with apolo­gies for the straight-from-the-VHS qual­i­ty of the video. (I just think of the slight mud­dled­ness as adding anoth­er wel­come lay­er of unre­al­i­ty to the pro­ceed­ings.)

Lynch’s duties on the broad­cast include pro­vid­ing facts about the films and film­mak­ers excerpt­ed through­out to tell the his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ist film. (He also pro­vides sev­er­al choice opin­ions, as when he calls Philadel­phia “one of the sick­est, most cor­rupt, deca­dent, fear-rid­den cities that exists.”) We see bits and pieces of pic­tures like Luis Buñuel and Sal­vador Dali’s 1929 Un Chien Andalou (above), Jean Cocteau’s 1932 Blood of a Poet, Fer­nand Léger’s 1947 The Girl with the Pre­fab­ri­cat­ed Heart, and Chris Marker’s 1962 La Jetée. Not only does Lynch con­tex­tu­al­ize them, he dis­cuss­es their influ­ence on his own work. Casu­al film­go­ers who’ve caught a Lynch movie or two and tak­en them as the imag­in­ings of an enter­tain­ing weirdo will, after watch­ing this episode, come to under­stand how long a tra­di­tion they fit into — and they’ll no doubt want to see not just more of Lynch’s work, but his sources of inspi­ra­tion as well. (They may, how­ev­er, after hear­ing all he has to say here, still regard him as a weirdo.)

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

Un Chien Andalou: Revis­it­ing Buñuel and Dalí’s Sur­re­al­ist Film

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

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

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

Silent films had a respectable show­ing, as it were, on Sight & Sound mag­a­zine’s last big crit­ics poll. The votes, cast to deter­mine the great­est motion pic­tures of all time, placed three silents among the top ten over­all: F.W. Mur­nau’s Sun­rise, Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s Man with a Movie Cam­era, and Carl Theodor Drey­er’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. These, of course, also rank at the top of Sight & Sound’s sep­a­rate list of the ten great­est silent films of all time, which came out as fol­lows:

1. Sun­rise (F.W. Mur­nau, 1927)
2. Man with a Movie Cam­era (Dzi­ga Ver­tov, 1929)
3. The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Drey­er, 1928)
4. Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (Sergei Eisen­stein, 1925)
5. The Gen­er­al (Buster Keaton, 1926)
6. Metrop­o­lis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
7. City Lights (Char­lie Chap­lin, 1931)
8. Sher­lock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
9. Greed (Erich von Stro­heim, 1923)
10. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1928) and Intol­er­ance (D.W. Grif­fith, 1916)

Though all of these pic­tures came out with­in the seem­ing­ly short 15-year span between 1916 and 1921, they rep­re­sent a wide cin­e­mat­ic diver­si­ty: in form, in theme, in genre, in place of ori­gin (of both the films and the film­mak­ers), in sen­si­bil­i­ty, in aes­thet­ics. You prob­a­bly rec­og­nize all of their names, espe­cial­ly if you’ve tak­en a film stud­ies course, and you may think of them all as famil­iar, but how many have you watched? Even we avowed cinephiles have a way of trick­ing our­selves into believ­ing we’ve seen all the most impor­tant movies in their entire­ty, when in real­i­ty we know only about, albeit some­times a lot about, their place in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma and their cur­rents of influ­ence that flow into films made today.

But thanks to the inter­net, we can catch up with ease. Giv­en the age of works from the silent era, most of them have passed into the pub­lic domain. You can there­fore watch almost all of the top ten great­est silent films of all time, as select­ed by the 2012 Sight & Sound crit­ics poll, for free, online, right now. Some you can even watch right here, with­out leav­ing Open Cul­ture: at the top of the post, you’ll find Sun­rise. Just above, we’ve fea­tured Man with a Movie Cam­era. Below, The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. To watch the oth­ers, sim­ply click their linked titles on the list. After you’ve enjoyed every­thing from Mur­nau’s Ger­man-Expres­sion­ist-by-way-of-Hol­ly­wood romance to Keaton’s epic com­e­dy to Buñuel’s sur­re­al­ist pro­ces­sion of still-trou­bling visions, you’ll not just know where many mod­ern cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques came from, you’ll feel how they’ve evolved over the decades. All of the films list­ed above appear on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

100 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics 

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

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

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