Jurassic Park Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Dangers of Global Capitalism

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics, Film, Philosophy | August 6th, 2013

For­get putting a bird on it. Put on a dinosaur on it for a sure­fire hit in our mar­ket-dri­ven econ­o­my. Direc­tor Stephen Spiel­berg cer­tain­ly did­n’t skimp on the “ter­ri­ble lizards” when adapt­ing Michael Crich­ton’s Juras­sic Park for the screen, and things turned out pret­ty well for him.

Mike Rugnetta, the fast-talk­ing host of PBS’s Idea Chan­nel, the­o­rizes that the 20-year-old film is a great, pos­si­bly inad­ver­tent com­men­tary on the dan­gers of glob­al mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism. His mer­ry spoil­er-packed video touch­es on such phe­nom­e­na as risky invest­ments, the sub­prime mort­gage cri­sis, and the hav­oc that can be wreaked by a dis­grun­tled employ­ee. He hales both Richard Atten­bor­ough’s park own­er char­ac­ter and Direc­tor Spiel­berg as ego­tis­ti­cal mad­men chas­ing mon­strous prof­its. His kitchen sink approach inevitably leads to appear­ances by both Bar­ney and Sloven­ian philoso­pher and cul­tur­al crit­ic Slavoj Žižek.

Rugnetta is quick (of course) to point out that he could come up with sim­i­lar hypothe­ses for such com­par­a­tive­ly fresh releas­es as World War Z (wage slav­ery), Iron Man (glo­ry be to the world-sav­ing entre­pre­neur), and Pacif­ic Rim (the glob­al mar­ket will unite us all)… but why, when Juras­sic Park’s got endur­ing, mar­ket-test­ed crowd-pleasers?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Does Math Objec­tive­ly Exist, or Is It a Human Cre­ation? A New PBS Video Explores a Time­less Ques­tion

Hen­ry Rollins: Edu­ca­tion is the Cure to “Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism”

Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels

Ayun Hal­l­i­day final­ly got around to see­ing this movie last spring. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday 

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Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Salvador Dalí

in Art, Film | August 6th, 2013

Just the oth­er day, I had a chat with a well-known poet who laid out for me his the­o­ry that Andy Warhol invent­ed our con­cep­tion of mod­ern Amer­i­ca. When we think about this coun­try, the poet explained, we think about this coun­try broad­ly in the way that Warhol (and thus his dis­ci­ples) envi­sioned it. We here at Open Cul­ture have cov­ered sev­er­al of the forms in which the artist pro­mul­gat­ed his dis­tinc­tive brand of Amer­i­cana, and today, for the 85th anniver­sary of his birth, we’ve round­ed up a few of his famous “screen tests,” the short films he made between 1963 and 1968 that offer por­traits of hun­dreds of fig­ures, famous and oth­er­wise, who hap­pened to pass through his studio/social club/subcultural hot zone, The Fac­to­ry. Just above, you can watch Warhol’s screen test with Nico, the Ger­man singer who would become an inte­gral part of the Fac­to­ry-formed band the Vel­vet Under­ground.

Lit­tle-heard at the time but ulti­mate­ly high­ly influ­en­tial, the Vel­vet Under­ground’s sound shaped much Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music — and giv­en pop­u­lar music’s cen­tral­i­ty back then, much of Amer­i­can cul­ture to come. You may not nec­es­sar­i­ly buy that argu­ment, but sure­ly you can’t argue against the influ­ence of a cer­tain singer-song­writer by the name of Bob Dylan, Warhol’s screen test with whom appears just above.

Com­ing from a Pol­ish immi­grant fam­i­ly, and seem­ing­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the cul­ti­va­tion of his own out­sider sta­tus his entire life, Warhol under­stood the impor­tance of for­eign­ers to the vital­i­ty of Amer­i­can cul­ture. Nat­u­ral­ly, he did­n’t miss his chance to shoot a screen test with Sal­vador Dalí, below, when the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist came to the Fac­to­ry.

See also our pre­vi­ous post on Warhol’s screen tests with Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Edie Sedg­wick, and oth­ers. When you’ve watched them all, con­sid­er con­tin­u­ing your cel­e­bra­tion of life in Andy Warhol’s 85th birth­day with the Earth­Cam and The Warhol Muse­um’s col­lab­o­ra­tion Fig­ment. It offers live cam­era feeds of not only his grave but the church where he was bap­tized. Com­par­isons to the view­ing expe­ri­ence of Empire are encour­aged.

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:

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

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The film Andy Warhol: A Mir­ror of the Six­ties has been added to our list of 550 Free 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.

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

in Film | August 2nd, 2013

woody allen clarinet

Image by Col­in Swan, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve looked this week at the favorite movies select­ed by such respect­ed film­mak­ers as Stan­ley Kubrick and Mar­tin Scors­ese. Today we round out this trio of emi­nent direc­tors with the great­est films of all time accord­ing to Woody Allen, vot­ing in the almighty Sight and Sound poll. The direc­tor of Annie Hall, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Mid­night in Paris select­ed, in no par­tic­u­lar order, the fol­low­ing:

  • The 400 Blows (François Truf­faut, 1959)
  • 8½ (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1963)
  • Amar­cord (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1972)
  • The Bicy­cle Thieves (Vit­to­rio de Sica, 1948)
  • Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
  • The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)
  • Grand Illu­sion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
  • Paths of Glo­ry (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1957)
  • Rashomon (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1950)
  • The Sev­enth Seal (Ing­mar Bergman, 1957)

It comes as no shock that Ing­mar Bergman makes the list, giv­en Allen’s well-doc­u­ment­ed and open­ly admit­ted enthu­si­asm for (and, in cas­es like Inte­ri­ors, direct imi­ta­tion of) the man who made The Sev­enth Seal. If that vote rep­re­sents Allen’s con­tem­pla­tive, moral­ly seri­ous side, then the vote for Luis Buñuel’s endur­ing­ly fun­ny sur­re­al­ist farce The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie rep­re­sents his well-known predilec­tion for humor, often class-based, which occa­sion­al­ly melts into silli­ness.

Like Scors­ese, Allen includes Kubrick, though for his ear­ly Paths of Glo­ry rather than the more wide­ly-seen 2001. Like both Scors­ese and Kubrick, he picks a Felli­ni — two, in fact — and all three of their lists illus­trate that it would take a con­trar­i­an film­go­er indeed to deny Orson Welles’ Cit­i­zen Kane a vote. Kubrick, you’ll recall, also had great praise for Vit­to­rio de Sica and François Truf­faut, and their ear­ly pic­tures show up among Allen’s selec­tions. Take Kubrick, Scors­ese, and Allen’s lists togeth­er, and you have a few prin­ci­ples to guide your view­ing: con­cen­trate on the mid­cen­tu­ry mas­ters. Cit­i­zen Kane real­ly does mer­it all those acco­lades. And above all, make sure you watch your Felli­ni. But which films did Felli­ni love?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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)

How Woody Allen Dis­cov­ered Ing­mar Bergman, and How You Can Too

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions He Has Nev­er Been Asked Before

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

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.

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The Masterful Polaroid Pictures Taken by Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky

in Film, Photography | August 1st, 2013

Tarkovskypol1

Today, dig­i­tal­ly empow­ered to take, view, and share a pho­to­graph in the span of sec­onds, we think noth­ing of the phrase “ïnstant cam­era.” But to cel­e­brat­ed Russ­ian film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky, who died in 1986 after liv­ing almost his entire life in the Sovi­et Union, the tech­nol­o­gy came as a rev­e­la­tion. He had, of course, to use a prim­i­tive Polaroid cam­era, but, Tarkovsky being Tarkovsky, his aes­thet­ic sense still came through its lit­tle square, self-devel­op­ing frames loud and clear — or rather, it came through, rich, pen­sive, solemn, and autum­nal.

tark photo

In 2006, Thames & Hud­son pub­lished Instant Light, a book col­lect­ing “a selec­tion of col­or Polaroids the film­mak­er took from 1979 to 1984 of his home, fam­i­ly, and friends in Rus­sia and of places he vis­it­ed in Italy,” and you can see some of these images on the blog Poe­mas del río Wang, or on this Face­book page.

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The post quotes Tarkovsky’s friend Toni­no Guer­ra, remem­ber­ing the auteur’s Polaroid peri­od: “In 1977, on my wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny in Moscow, Tarkovsky appeared with a Polaroid cam­era. He had just short­ly dis­cov­ered this instru­ment and used it with great plea­sure among us. [ … ] Tarkovsky thought a lot about the ‘flight’ of time and want­ed to do only one thing: to stop it — even if only for a moment, on the pic­tures of the Polaroid cam­era.”

tark photo2

Now that we find our­selves in a new wave of Polaroidism — you can even buy the cam­eras and their film at Urban Out­fit­ters — we’d do well to study these pic­tures tak­en by a man who mas­tered their form just as thor­ough­ly as he mas­tered cin­e­ma. And if you want evi­dence of the lat­ter, look no fur­ther than our col­lec­tion of Tarkovsky films free online.

Tarkovskypol3

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revis­it­ed

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

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.

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Martin Scorsese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies

in Film | July 31st, 2013

kubrick listCin­e­ma as we’ve almost always known it — “Edi­son, the Lumière broth­ers, Méliès, Porter, all the way through Grif­fith and on to Kubrick”  — has “real­ly almost gone.” So writes Mar­tin Scors­ese in his recent essay for the New York Review of Books, “The Per­sist­ing Vision: Read­ing the Lan­guage of Cin­e­ma.” He argues that tra­di­tion­al film forms have “been over­whelmed by mov­ing images com­ing at us all the time and absolute­ly every­where, even faster than the visions com­ing at the astro­naut” in Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “We have no choice but to treat all these mov­ing images com­ing at us as a lan­guage. We need to be able to under­stand what we’re see­ing and find the tools to sort it all out.” Only nat­ur­al that Scors­ese, as one of the best-known, high­est-pro­file auteurs alive, would ref­er­ence Kubrick, his gen­er­a­tional pre­de­ces­sor in the untir­ing fur­ther­ance of cin­e­mat­ic vision and craft.

We just yes­ter­day fea­tured a post about Kubrick­’s 1963 list of ten favorite films. Scors­ese, for his part, has impressed many as one of the most enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly cinephilic direc­tors work­ing in Amer­i­ca today: his essays about and appear­ances on the DVDs of his favorite movies stand as evi­dence for the sur­pris­ing breadth of his appre­ci­a­tion. Today, why not have a look at Scors­ese’s list, which he put togeth­er for Sight and Sound mag­a­zine, and which begins with the Kubrick selec­tion you might expect:

In “The Per­sist­ing Vision,” he cham­pi­ons com­pre­hen­sive film preser­va­tion, cit­ing the case of Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go, the final entry on his list, now named the great­est film of all time by Sight and Sound’s crit­ics poll. “When the film came out some peo­ple liked it, some didn’t, and then it just went away.” When, after decades of obscu­ri­ty, Ver­ti­go came back into cir­cu­la­tion,  the col­or was com­plete­ly wrong,” and “the ele­ments — the orig­i­nal pic­ture and sound neg­a­tives — need­ed seri­ous atten­tion.” A restora­tion of the “decay­ing and severe­ly dam­aged” film even­tu­al­ly hap­pened, and “more and more peo­ple saw Ver­ti­go and came to appre­ci­ate its hyp­not­ic beau­ty and very strange, obses­sive focus.” I, per­son­al­ly, could­n’t imag­ine the world of cin­e­ma with­out it — nor with­out any of the oth­er pic­tures Scors­ese calls his favorites.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

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

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

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

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.

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

in Film | July 30th, 2013

Image by Moody Man, via Flickr Com­mons

When, over the past week­end, I noticed the words “Stan­ley Kubrick” had risen into Twit­ter’s trend­ing-top­ics list, I got excit­ed. I fig­ured some­one had dis­cov­ered, in the back of a long-neglect­ed stu­dio vault, the last extant print of a Kubrick mas­ter­piece we’d some­how all for­got­ten. No suck luck, of course; Kubrick schol­ars, giv­en how much they still talk about even the auteur’s nev­er-real­ized projects like Napoleon, sure­ly would­n’t let an entire movie slip into obscu­ri­ty. The burst of tweets actu­al­ly came in hon­or of Kubrick­’s 85th birth­day, and hey, any chance to cel­e­brate a direc­tor whose fil­mog­ra­phy includes the likes of Dr. Strangelove, The Shin­ing, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’ll seize. The British Film Insti­tute marked the occa­sion by post­ing a lit­tle-seen list of Kubrick­’s top ten films.

“The first and only (as far as we know) Top 10 list Kubrick sub­mit­ted to any­one was in 1963 to a fledg­ling Amer­i­can mag­a­zine named Cin­e­ma (which had been found­ed the pre­vi­ous year and ceased pub­li­ca­tion in 1976),” writes the BFI’s Nick Wrigley. It runs as fol­lows:

1. I Vitel­loni (Felli­ni, 1953)
2. Wild Straw­ber­ries (Bergman, 1957)
3. Cit­i­zen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre (Hus­ton, 1948)
5. City Lights (Chap­lin, 1931)
6. Hen­ry V (Olivi­er, 1944)
7. La notte (Anto­nioni, 1961)
8. The Bank Dick (Fields, 1940—above)
9. Rox­ie Hart (Well­man, 1942)
10. Hell’s Angels (Hugh­es, 1930)

But see­ing as Kubrick still had 36 years to live and watch movies after mak­ing the list, it nat­u­ral­ly pro­vides some­thing less than the final word on his pref­er­ences. Wrigley quotes Kubrick con­fi­dant Jan Har­lan as say­ing that “Stan­ley would have seri­ous­ly revised this 1963 list in lat­er years, though Wild Straw­ber­ries, Cit­i­zen Kane and City Lights would remain, but he liked Ken­neth Branagh’s Hen­ry V much bet­ter than the old and old-fash­ioned Olivi­er ver­sion.” He also quotes Kubrick him­self as call­ing Max Ophuls the “high­est of all” and “pos­sessed of every pos­si­ble qual­i­ty,” call­ing Elia Kazan “with­out ques­tion the best direc­tor we have in Amer­i­ca,” and prais­ing hearti­ly David Lean, Vit­to­rio de Sica, and François Truf­faut. This all comes in handy for true cinephiles, who can nev­er find sat­is­fac­tion watch­ing only the film­mak­ers they admire; they must also watch the film­mak­ers the film­mak­ers they admire admire.

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:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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.

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Spike Lee Shares His NYU Teaching List of 87 Essential Films Every Aspiring Director Should See

in Education, Film | July 29th, 2013

I’m sure you’ve heard by now: wealthy, suc­cess­ful film direc­tor Spike Lee hopes to fund his next film via a Kick­starter cam­paign. Yes, that’s right, he wants you to pay for his art. His cam­paign, per­haps need­less to say, is hard­ly pop­u­lar with the aver­age film fan, many of whom find it hard enough to scrounge up the sky­rock­et­ing prices of tick­ets these days. Lee has respond­ed to his crit­ics, but some­how I doubt his rea­son­ing will go over well.

But we’re not here to talk about alleged crowd­fund­ing abus­es (have at it in the com­ments if you must). Instead, today we have for you—in the tra­di­tion of our many posts on famous teach­ers’ syl­labi—one of Lee’s teach­ing tools in his role as an NYU pro­fes­sor. Where all of our pre­vi­ous posts have fea­tured read­ing lists, Lee’s is a list of films, which he hands out to all of the stu­dents who take his grad­u­ate class–not required view­ing, but rec­om­mend­ed as “essen­tial” for every aspir­ing direc­tor.

lee essential.jpg.CROP.article568-large

In the video at the top of the post, see Lee intro­duce the list of what he con­sid­ers, “the great­est films ever made.” “If you want to be a film­mak­er,” he says, “you should see these films.” The list, above and con­tin­ued below, includes some of the usu­al crit­i­cal favorites—Rashomon, Ver­ti­go, On the Water­front—and some pret­ty left field choic­es, like Mel Gibson’s Apoc­a­lyp­to.

Slate, which first pub­lished the list, notes the omis­sion of usu­al­ly revered direc­tors like Howard Hawks, John Ford, Fritz Lang, and Yasu­jirō Ozu as well as the paucity—or near non-existence—of female direc­tors (only one makes the list, the co-direc­tor of City of God). In addi­tion to pos­si­bly rant­i­ng about, or defend­ing, Lee’s use of Kick­starter, many of you may find your­selves quib­bling over, or defend­ing, his def­i­n­i­tion of “essen­tial.” And so, I say again, have at it, read­ers!

Note: When Spike orig­i­nal­ly released this list, many not­ed the lack of female film­mak­ers. Lee accept­ed that cri­tique and released an updat­ed list. Find it here.

lee essential 2.jpg.CROP.article568-large

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

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

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Watch D.W. Griffith’s Silent Masterpiece Intolerance Free Online — It’s the “Ulysses of the Cinema!”

in Film | July 28th, 2013

In 1915, D.W. Grif­fith shot one of the most con­tro­ver­sial films in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. Birth of a Nation “was a deci­sive­ly orig­i­nal work of art—in effect, the found­ing work of cin­e­mat­ic real­ism,” writes Richard Brody in The New York­er. But, despite being “titan­i­cal­ly orig­i­nal,” the film was out­ra­geous­ly racist in the way that it depict­ed African-Amer­i­cans dur­ing the Recon­struc­tion Era. Even in 1915, audi­ences knew that the film had crossed a line. The NAACP protest­ed against the film’s fab­ri­ca­tions and inac­cu­ra­cies. Riots broke out in Boston, Philadel­phia and oth­er major cities. And Grif­fith’s lega­cy nev­er recov­ered, even if he tried to atone (some say) in 1916 with the release of Intol­er­ance, anoth­er mas­ter­piece of the Silent Era.

film-intolerance-1916

Billed as a “colos­sal spec­ta­cle,” Intol­er­ance fea­tured mas­sive sets, extrav­a­gant peri­od cos­tumes, and more than 3,000 extras, and, in grand fash­ion, it wove togeth­er “four dis­tinct but par­al­lel sto­ries that demon­strat­ed mankind’s intol­er­ance dur­ing four dif­fer­ent ages in world his­to­ry.” A cen­tu­ry lat­er, Birth of a Nation might not get many pub­lic view­ings. But this past week­end a restored ver­sion of Intol­er­ance began a week­long run at the Film Forum in New York City. If the restored ver­sion does­n’t make it to a city near you, you can view the orig­i­nal film, all three epic hours of it, online for free. Intol­er­ance is cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

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

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

25 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

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