Most peo­ple who saw Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hugo will recall its brief drama­ti­za­tion of a screen­ing of the Lumiere Broth­ers’ 1896 silent film  L’Ar­rivée d’un Train en Gare de la Cio­tat (pop­u­lar­ly known as Arrival of a Train at the Sta­tion). This short film doc­u­ments, quite sim­ply, a train arriv­ing at a sta­tion, but it sup­pos­ed­ly both thrilled and ter­ri­fied its first audi­ences, so much that they scram­bled from their seats as the loco­mo­tive bar­reled toward the cam­era, as though it might trans­gress the screen and plow into the the­ater. It’s hard to imag­ine a film hav­ing that much pow­er to phys­i­cal­ly shock an audi­ence out of its seats today, even with the cur­rent glut of 3‑D spec­ta­cles on IMAX screens, the beau­ti­ful Hugo includ­ed.

The medi­um may have lost its nov­el­ty, but its his­to­ry con­tin­ues to fas­ci­nate. Scors­ese’s love-let­ter to silent film won sev­er­al Acad­e­my Awards this year in tech­ni­cal cat­e­gories, and the cov­et­ed best pic­ture Oscar went to The Artist, the first silent film to win that award since 1927’s Wings, star­ring Clara Bow. (Wings actu­al­ly received the Best Pic­ture equivalent—Best Production—in 1929). 1927 is also the year the “talkies” came to town; Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer put silent film effec­tive­ly out of busi­ness. Hol­ly­wood: A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Amer­i­can Silent Film, a 13-part doc­u­men­tary series released in 1980, begins its first episode, “The Pio­neers” (above), with sev­er­al aged silent film­mak­ers’ reac­tions to Jol­son’s film, reac­tions which are almost uni­form­ly neg­a­tive, as one might expect giv­en their pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ment to a medi­um that trans­formed overnight and left most of them behind.

How­ev­er, the stars and direc­tors inter­viewed in the film don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly seem bit­ter over the loss of silent film. Instead, they dis­play a wist­ful rev­er­ence for the “inter­na­tion­al lan­guage” that film was before it learned to speak—in dozens of dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Nar­rat­ed by the inim­itable James Mason, Hol­ly­wood revis­its the grandeur of the silent film era and dis­abus­es view­ers of the stereo­typ­i­cal idea that all silent films were “jerky and flick­er­ing and a lit­tle absurd, mov­ing at the wrong speed with a tin­kling piano.” Instead, each episode of the doc­u­men­tary walks us through a series of incred­i­bly dra­mat­ic movies with elab­o­rate (often out­landish) sets and cos­tum­ing, and actors skilled in the “high art of pan­tomime.” It’s a riv­et­ing jour­ney, and an era well worth revis­it­ing what­ev­er one thought of this year’s Oscars.

The full doc­u­men­tary series is avail­able here. And don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Silent films avail­able online … for free.

H/T @brainpicker

2001: A Space Odyssey, so its fans will tell you, is awe­some, amaz­ing, aston­ish­ing, astound­ing — and that does­n’t even exhaust their list of “A” adjec­tives. But how­ev­er emphat­i­cal­ly they’re spo­ken, those words don’t tell you much. I fear they some­times even put off poten­tial 2001-lovers — or at least those who would enjoy a screen­ing or three — who fear them­selves unequal to the impos­ing labor of appre­ci­a­tion ahead. You’ll learn more mean­ing­ful things about Kubrick­’s film in 2001: The Mak­ing of a Myth (made in 2001), a 45-minute doc­u­men­tary on its con­cep­tion, its pro­duc­tion, and its undi­min­ished res­o­nance in our cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion.

Intro­duced by film­mak­er James Cameron — he of The Ter­mi­na­tor, Avatar, and Aliens, sci­ence-fic­tion spec­ta­cles of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent nature — the pro­gram brings in a host of the orig­i­nal con­trib­u­tors to 2001’s look, feel, and psy­cho­log­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal verisimil­i­tude. We hear from those involved in the pho­tog­ra­phy, design, edit­ing, and even tech­ni­cal con­sul­tan­cy. Actor Keir Dul­lea, still best known for his role as astro­naut Dave Bow­man, has much to say about work­ing with his co-star HAL, and even the fel­lows in the ape suits offer insights into their non-ver­bal craft. Crit­i­cal minds such as Elvis Mitchell and Camille Paglia weigh in on the pic­ture’s simul­ta­ne­ous vis­cer­al and intel­lec­tu­al impact, but Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote 2001 the book while Kubrick shot 2001 the film, puts it most sharply when describ­ing the intent of his direc­tor coun­ter­part: “He want­ed to make the prover­bial good sci­ence-fic­tion movie.” Mis­sion accom­plished.

H/T Maria Popo­va (aka Brain­Pick­er)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Inter­view with The New York­er

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net & PC in 1974

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

Dur­ing the 1940s, Warn­er Broth­ers bought the rights to Robert Lind­ner’s book, Rebel With­out a Cause: The Hyp­no­analy­sis of a Crim­i­nal Psy­chopath, and began turn­ing it into a film. A par­tial script was writ­ten, and a 23-year old Mar­lon Bran­do was asked to do a five-minute screen test in 1947. For what­ev­er rea­son, the stu­dio aban­doned the orig­i­nal project, and even­tu­al­ly revived it eight years lat­er with a new script and a new actor — James Dean, of course. Dean’s own screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause appears here.

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:

The God­fa­ther With­out Bran­do?: It Almost Hap­pened

The James Dean Sto­ry by Robert Alt­man (Com­plete Film)

Paul New­man and James Dean Screen­test for East of Eden

Cha­cun son ciné­ma (To Each His Own Cin­e­ma) is a 2007 French anthol­o­gy film that brings togeth­er short films by 36 acclaimed direc­tors. Lars von Tri­er, Jane Cam­pi­on, Gus Van Sant, and Abbas Kiarosta­mi all con­tributed to the project. Meant to com­mem­o­rate the 60th anniver­sary of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the film orig­i­nal­ly aired on Canal+ in France. And, for rea­sons that remain unknown to us, that broad­cast did­n’t include the short film con­tributed by Joel and Ethan Coen, World Cin­e­ma. Nor did it appear on a lat­er DVD release. If you wait long enough, these kinds of films even­tu­al­ly sur­face on YouTube. And, as luck would have it, you can watch World Cin­e­ma above. Fans of the Coen Broth­ers will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize Josh Brolin, who played a very sim­i­lar char­ac­ter in their Acad­e­my Award-win­ning film, No Coun­try for Old Men. Grant Heslov and Brooke Smith also make appear­ances. H/T Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tui­leries: A Short, Slight­ly Twist­ed Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

40 Great Film­mak­ers Go Old School, Shoot Short Films with 100 Year Old Cam­era

The best chil­dren’s sto­ries can be a delight for adults, too. That’s cer­tain­ly the case with Albert Lam­or­is­se’s 1956 short film, The Red Bal­loon. The sto­ry is set in the run-down Ménil­montant neigh­bor­hood of Paris. A lit­tle boy, played by the direc­tor’s son Pas­cal, is walk­ing to school one morn­ing when he dis­cov­ers a red bal­loon tan­gled around a lamp post. He “res­cues” it and takes it to school with him. Along the way, the boy dis­cov­ers that the bal­loon has a mind of its own. It fol­lows him like a stray dog, and togeth­er they face the ter­rors, and tedi­um, of child­hood.

The film, shown above in its entire­ty, earned Lam­or­isse an Acad­e­my Award for Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play and a Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, along with near-uni­ver­sal praise from crit­ics. “The Red Bal­loon is a won­der­ful movie for chil­dren,” says New York Times film crit­ic A.O. Scott in the “Crit­ics’ Picks” video below. “It’s also a unique­ly insight­ful movie about child­hood.” In a 2008 essay, “The Red Bal­loon: Writ­ten on the Wind,” the chil­dren’s author Bri­an Selznick writes of his life-long appre­ci­a­tion for the film:

As a child, I longed for two spe­cif­ic things that I now real­ize Lam­or­is­se’s movie embod­ies: the pres­ence of a lov­ing friend and the knowl­edge that real mag­ic exists in the world. Child­hood, in so many ways, is about learn­ing to nav­i­gate the world around us, to make sense of what seems over­whelm­ing and gigan­tic. Hav­ing a spe­cial com­pan­ion makes that expe­ri­ence more man­age­able and less ter­ri­fy­ing. To kids, the world of grown-ups is often alien and untrans­lat­able, and so mag­ic becomes a lens through which the incom­pre­hen­si­ble uni­verse (as Ein­stein once called it) becomes com­pre­hen­si­ble.

Many Amer­i­cans remem­ber see­ing The Red Bal­loon for the first time as a 16mm film pro­ject­ed in ele­men­tary school class­rooms and cafe­te­rias. With the 2008 release of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion DVD, many are redis­cov­er­ing the movie–and per­haps over-ana­lyz­ing it–from the per­spec­tive of adult­hood. “An adult watch­ing The Red Bal­loon will not find it dif­fi­cult to see the title char­ac­ter as a sym­bol of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, friend­ship, love, tran­scen­dence, the tri­umph of good over evil, or any of the count­less oth­er things that a sim­ple, round red bal­loon can rep­re­sent,” writes Selznick. “But per­haps we’re bet­ter off enjoy­ing some things the way a child under­stands them: not as metaphors but as sto­ries. In the end, I think there’s some­thing nice about allow­ing the bal­loon to just be. I guess that’s what you do with good friends–you let them be them­selves.”

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!