First we have a film, the 1960 piece — some would say pin­na­cle — of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror, Psy­cho. Then we have a man, Alfred Hitch­cock, Psy­cho’s direc­tor, the famous­ly man­nered but seem­ing­ly trou­bled mas­ter crafts­man of mid­cen­tu­ry cin­e­mat­ic sus­pense. Then we have a book, Stephen Rebel­lo’s Alfred Hitch­cock and the Mak­ing of Psy­cho, which Antho­ny Perkins, who played the psy­cho, called “required read­ing not only for Psy­cho-files, but for any­one inter­est­ed in the back­stage world of movie-cre­ation.” And, next week, we’ll have a new peri­od dra­ma, set dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the film, based on the book, and cen­tered on the man. It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine the afi­ciona­do of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry motion pic­tures who would­n’t want to watch Antho­ny Hop­kins take on Hitch­cock’s title role. Behold the brief clip above, where­in Hop­kins-as-Hitch­cock explains to young Janet Leigh how, exact­ly, he plans to shoot the show­er scene, as his wife Alma looks ner­vous­ly on.

You’ll notice, in the roles of Janet Leigh and Alma Reville, two more well-respect­ed per­form­ers, Scar­lett Johans­son and Helen Mir­ren. Indeed, the list of actors involved in Hitchock and that of char­ac­ters they play look equal­ly inter­est­ing: A Seri­ous Man star Michael Stuhlbarg as tal­ent agent Lew Wasser­man, Karate Kid Ralph Mac­chio as screen­writer Joseph Ste­fano, Wal­lace Lang­ham as graph­ic artist and title design­er Saul Bass, and Michael Win­cott as real-life ser­i­al killer Ed Gein. In the clip just above, watch Hitch­cock explain to Alma his insis­tence upon self-financ­ing Psy­cho’s pro­duc­tion after get­ting turned down by Para­mount: “Do you remem­ber the fun we had when we start­ed out, all those years ago?” he asks. “We did­n’t have any mon­ey then, did we? We did­n’t have any time, either, but we took risks, do you remem­ber? We exper­i­ment­ed. We invent­ed new ways of mak­ing pic­tures, because we had to. I just want to feel that kind of free­dom again.” Before see­ing exact­ly how he enjoyed that free­dom again when Hitch­cock comes out on Novem­ber 23rd, be sure to revis­it our posts fea­tur­ing Psy­cho’s tan­ta­liz­ing orig­i­nal trail­er, and the film­mak­er’s own rules for watch­ing the movie.

Relat­ed con­tent:

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

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

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

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

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

Hats off to Lar­ry Gorm­ley, who spent the bet­ter part of five years cre­at­ing a zoomable graph­ic that “chron­i­cles the his­to­ry of fea­ture films from the ori­gins in the 1910s until the present day.” 2000 films, across 20 gen­res and 100 years, all pre­sent­ed in one art­ful dis­play. Nice­ly done.

You can pur­chase a print copy, or sim­ply enjoy the visu­al dis­play online. Enjoy.

via @coudal

For Frank Sina­tra’s 100 birth­day today, we’re bring­ing back to the top a post from our archive that high­lights the 1954 noir film, “Sud­den­ly.” In this pub­lic domain flick, Sina­tra played the role of a psy­chopath. And he played the role con­vinc­ing­ly, get­ting some very fine reviews from The New York Times. Enjoy the film and our orig­i­nal post from 2012 below:

Tricky busi­ness, cast­ing a world-famous musi­cian in a movie’s star­ring role: it seems you must either craft the part to per­fect­ly match their per­sona, or to run per­fect­ly against it. Nico­las Roeg, that inim­itable employ­er of singers to his own semi-fath­omable cin­e­mat­ic ends, has rig­or­ous­ly explored this range of pos­si­bil­i­ties. David Bowie seemed the only pos­si­ble choice for the ter­mi­nal­ly lone­ly alien of The Man Who Fell to Earth, just as Art Gar­funkel seemed the last pos­si­ble choice for the psy­cho­sex­u­al tor­men­tor of Bad Tim­ing.

I per­son­al­ly regret that Roeg nev­er got to work with Frank Sina­tra, used to such strik­ing effect by John Franken­heimer in The Manchuri­an Can­di­date and Otto Pre­minger in The Man with the Gold­en Arm. To hold those pic­tures up against, say, the Rat Pack free-for-all of Ocean’s Eleven is to under­stand that cast­ing against per­sona, though on aver­age the riski­er option, pro­duces more fas­ci­nat­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry per­for­mances. In the 1954 noir Sud­den­ly, avail­able free on Archive.org, you can watch an ear­ly exam­ple of this in Sina­tra’s career, when direc­tor Lewis Allen turns him into a psy­chopath bent on assas­si­nat­ing none oth­er than the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

Giv­en the pro­jec­t’s unques­tioned B‑movie con­text, crit­ics regard­ed Sina­tra as hav­ing made a rea­son­ably rich meal of this vil­lain­ous part. “Mr. Sina­tra deserves a spe­cial chunk of praise,” wrote the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther. “In Sud­den­ly he proves a melo­dra­mat­ic tour de force.” Vari­ety also looked favor­ably upon him: “Thesp inserts plen­ty of men­ace into a psy­cho char­ac­ter, nev­er too heav­i­ly done, and gets good back­ing from his costar, Ster­ling Hay­den, as sher­iff, in a less showy role but just as author­i­ta­tive­ly han­dled.” Yes, you read that right: this movie pits Frank Sina­tra against Ster­ling Hay­den. Sina­tra and his crew of killers take over a small-town hill­top fam­i­ly home, the ide­al van­tage point from which to shoot the pass­ing Pres­i­dent. Then Hay­den, the town’s sher­iff, turns up to check things out. How will this clash of titan­ic per­son­al­i­ties resolve? Hit play and find out whether “the num­ber-one man in the nation,” as Sud­den­ly’s sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic poster puts it, falls vic­tim to this “kill-hun­gry hood­lum.”

You will find Sud­den­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films and also our larg­er list 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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

Hal­loween has long since passed, grant­ed. But giv­en the over­abun­dance of Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions even now aris­ing all around us, a brac­ing splash of hor­ror won’t go amiss. This goes dou­ble when the splash comes from George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead, urtext of the mod­ern zom­bie movie. It goes triple when you can watch it free online. (It’s been uploaded in high-def­i­n­i­tion video, no less, an absolute essen­tial for lo-fi, low-bud­get gorefests.) Though only released in 1968, the movie appears on the inter­net legal­ly due to its dis­trib­u­tor not indi­cat­ing their copy­right on the film prints. They removed the orig­i­nal title cards, which dis­played the con­sid­er­ably less catchy orig­i­nal title Night of the Flesh Eaters, but for­got to put the copy­right state­ment back in with the new ones.

If Night of the Liv­ing Dead strikes you as some­what déclassé for a site like Open Cul­ture, ask your­self whether you’ve actu­al­ly seen the movie. If you haven’t, then it seems you suf­fer from a vast gap — a vast, zom­bie filled gap — in your aware­ness of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma cul­ture. The film has even won insti­tu­tion­al val­i­da­tion. Just read the titles of these real arti­cles: “Rewrit­ing the Dead: The Ten­sion between Nos­tal­gia and Per­ver­sion in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Inner-City Exhi­bi­tion and the Genre Film: Dis­trib­ut­ing Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Greek Gifts: Vision and Revi­sion in Two Ver­sions of Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “A Mod­ern Med­i­ta­tion on Death: Iden­ti­fy­ing Bud­dhist Teach­ings in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead.” If you’re look­ing for a PhD. the­sis top­ic, you may have turned up too late to this par­tic­u­lar movie. But it’ll cer­tain­ly take your mind off gift shop­ping.

You can always find Night of the Liv­ing Dead in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Look in the Noir, Thriller, Hor­ror and Hitch­cock sec­tion.

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 the Quin­tes­sen­tial Vam­pire Film Nos­fer­atu Free Online as Hal­loween Approach­es

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

The First Unin­tend­ed Hor­ror Film (1895)?

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

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

“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.