“Yasu­jiro Ozu, the man whom his kins­men con­sid­er the most Japan­ese of all film direc­tors, had but one major sub­ject, the Japan­ese fam­i­ly, and but one major theme, its dis­so­lu­tion.” So writes Don­ald Richie in Ozu: His Life and His Films, still the defin­i­tive Eng­lish-lan­guage study of this thor­ough­ly Japan­ese film­mak­er. (Richie, per­haps the most astute and expe­ri­enced liv­ing crit­ic of Japan­ese film, tells more of Ozu in the rel­e­vant seg­ment of Mark Cousins’ series The Sto­ry of Film.) Despite his Japan­ese­ness, or indeed because of it, Ozu con­tin­ues, near­ly fifty years after his pass­ing, to enthrall gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of west­ern cinephiles. Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a clip from Tokyo-Ga, the doc­u­men­tary where­in Wim Wen­ders makes a Tokyo jour­ney out of sheer need to seek out the spir­it of Ozu. Crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed French film­mak­er Claire Denis has also paid trib­ute, and above you’ll find a salute to Ozu as inspi­ra­tion from equal­ly laud­ed but res­olute­ly dead­pan Finnish auteur Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki. “Ozu-san, I’m Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki from Fin­land,” the Le Havre direc­tor explains, ready­ing a cig­a­rette. “I’ve made eleven lousy films, and it’s all your fault.”

What is it about Ozu? The dis­ci­plined econ­o­my of his sto­ries, dia­logue and images accounts for some of it. But he also deliv­ers some­thing less obvi­ous. “Just as there are no heroes in Ozu’s pic­tures,” writes Richie, “so there are no vil­lains. [ … ] In basic Zen texts one accepts and tran­scends the world, and in tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese nar­ra­tive art one cel­e­brates and relin­quish­es it. The aes­thet­ic term mono no aware is often used nowa­days to describe this state of mind.” And, whether in those words or not, Ozu’s fol­low­ers savor the expres­sion of mono no aware in his many films, such as An Autumn After­noon, Tokyo Sto­ry, Late Spring, and Good Morn­ing. This sort of thing being bet­ter expe­ri­enced than described, why not watch Ozu’s 1952 pic­ture The Fla­vor of Green Tea Over Rice? (Or 1941’s The Broth­ers and Sis­ters of the Toda Fam­i­ly, 1948’s A Hen in the Wind, 1950’s The Mureka­ta Sis­ters?) To my mind, noth­ing sums up Ozu’s appeal quite so well as his use of “pil­low shots” — sim­ple, sta­t­ic com­po­si­tions placed in his films for pure­ly rhyth­mic, non-nar­ra­tive pur­pos­es — of which you can watch one fan-made com­pi­la­tion below. How many film­mak­ers, Japan­ese or oth­er­wise, could pull those off?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

In a 1946 essay Jean Cocteau cau­tions against mak­ing a quick inter­pre­ta­tion of his first film, The Blood of a Poet, with a quote from Mon­taigne:

Most of Aesop’s fables have many dif­fer­ent lev­els and mean­ings. There are those who make myths of them by choos­ing some fea­ture that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first and most super­fi­cial aspect. There are oth­ers that are more vital, more essen­tial and pro­found, that they have not been able to reach.

Cocteau con­ceived The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète) in late 1929, soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of his nov­el Les Enfants Ter­ri­bles. He had just kicked his opi­um habit and was enter­ing one of the most pro­lif­ic peri­ods of his career. The film is often called a sur­re­al­ist work, but Cocteau reject­ed the asso­ci­a­tion, say­ing that he had set out “to avoid the delib­er­ate man­i­fes­ta­tions of the uncon­scious in favor of a kind of half-sleep through which I wan­dered as though in a labyrinth.” He goes on:

The Blood of a Poet draws noth­ing from either dreams or sym­bols. As far as the for­mer are con­cerned, it ini­ti­ates their mech­a­nism, and by let­ting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets mem­o­ries entwine, move and express them­selves freely. As for the lat­ter, it rejects them, and sub­sti­tutes acts, or alle­gories of these acts, that the spec­ta­tor can make sym­bols of if he wish­es.

Many of its first spec­ta­tors saw anti-Chris­t­ian sym­bol­ism in the film. Although pro­duc­tion end­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1930, Cocteau was not able to get his film shown pub­licly until Jan­u­ary of 1932. The Blood of a Poet fea­tures the only film appear­ance by Lee Miller, a not­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er and mod­el of Man Ray. (She plays a stat­ue.) The film is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic of exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma and is the first in what came to be known as Cocteau’s “Orphic Tril­o­gy,” which includes Orphée (1950) and Tes­ta­ment of Orpheus (1959). The Blood of a Poet will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Anémic Ciné­ma: Mar­cel Ducham­p’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

Bal­let Méchanique: The His­toric Cin­e­mat­ic Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Fer­nand Legér and George Antheil

You can’t say that Hitch­cock did­n’t think through the angles when he released Psy­cho in 1960. As you may recall, Hitch­cock tight­ly con­trolled the pro­mo­tion for the film. The stars of the now clas­sic movie — Antho­ny Perkins and Janet Leigh — did­n’t talk to the media. Crit­ics weren’t giv­en pri­vate screen­ings. And Hitch­cock put a firm “no late admis­sion” pol­i­cy in place. If you did­n’t see the film from the begin­ning, you didn’t see it all. It’s a hard­ball approach that the direc­tor pub­li­cized in a video out­lin­ing The Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho.

But then there was a car­rot to accom­pa­ny the stick — a play­ful trail­er (above) that gave view­ers a light-heart­ed tour of the Psy­cho set. You know, the infa­mous Bates Motel. In the trail­er, Hitch­cock teas­es the audi­ence, almost giv­ing away spoil­er details, but nev­er quite goes that far. The cheer­ful music play­ing in the back­ground comes from Hitch­cock­’s lost mas­ter­piece The Trou­ble with Har­ry. And, it all ends with .… ok we won’t tell … but just keep in mind that what you see is not Janet Leigh. It’s actu­al­ly Vera Miles, who played a sup­port­ing role in the film, sport­ing a blonde wig and look­ing like Janet Leigh.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can’t watch Psy­cho on the web, but you can catch 22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

In 1968, Steven Spiel­berg was 21 years old and the hip­pie coun­ter­cul­ture was swirling all around, but his mind was focused on one thing only: mak­ing movies.

Spiel­berg had been crank­ing out 8mm films since he was 12 years old, and he had been hang­ing around the sound stages and edit­ing rooms of Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures as an unpaid clerk and errand boy since the sum­mer after his junior year in high school, absorb­ing every­thing he could about the process of film­mak­ing. He hoped some­one would give him a chance to direct a project–any project. He tried to gen­er­ate inter­est by tak­ing his child­hood films around to pro­duc­ers. “I would bun­dle the pic­tures in a brief­case and lit­er­al­ly car­ry my pro­jec­tor over to some­body’s office,” Spiel­berg told Enter­tain­ment Week­ly last year. “It was like I was a very young Willy Loman; box­ing up my wares and going from stu­dio office to stu­dio office. Not a lot, but maybe 10 per­cent of the pro­duc­ers that I tried to get to see my films did see my films.”

Spiel­berg real­ized he need­ed some­thing more pro­fes­sion­al to show. He found a busi­ness­man to finance a 35mm short film. Denis C. Hoff­man, who ran an opti­cal effects house called Cine­fx, read a script Spiel­berg had writ­ten and agreed to give the young man $10,000 to make the film , so long as it fea­tured music by a band he man­aged, called Octo­ber Coun­try. The film was to be called Amblin’.

“It was going to be a tone poem about a boy and a girl who meet in the desert, hitch­hik­ing their way to the Pacif­ic Ocean,” Spiel­berg told EW. “Very sim­ple sto­ry. I wrote it in a day.” Spiel­berg asked Richard Levin, a young man work­ing at the Bev­er­ly Hills library, to play the male lead. He found the female lead, Pamela McMyler, in a direc­to­ry of actors. The sto­ry is told in pic­tures and sound effects, with no dia­logue. Spiel­berg would lat­er dis­miss Amblin’ as lit­tle more than a “Pep­si com­mer­cial,” but the film clear­ly shows Spiel­berg’s gift for visu­al sto­ry­telling. His ear­ly men­tor at Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures, Chuck Sil­vers, said of his reac­tion to Amblin’: “I looked at what I still feel is the per­fect motion pic­ture.”

Although Spiel­berg would go on to name his film and tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Amblin Enter­tain­ment, he’s not all that fond of Amblin’ the film. “I can’t look at it now,” he said in 1978. “It real­ly proved how apa­thet­ic I was dur­ing the Six­ties. When I look back at that film, I can eas­i­ly say, ‘No won­der I did­n’t go to Kent State,’ or ‘No won­der I did­n’t go to Viet­nam or I was­n’t protest­ing when all my friends were car­ry­ing signs and get­ting clubbed in Cen­tu­ry City.’ I was off mak­ing movies, and Amblin’ is the slick by-prod­uct of a kid immersed up to his nose in film.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

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

Steven Spiel­berg on the Genius of Stan­ley Kubrick