?si=adi1PWJM0Gm2wy5y

The image of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh togeth­er in Gone with the Wind is so firm­ly estab­lished in the iconog­ra­phy of pop­u­lar cul­ture that it seems almost impos­si­ble to imag­ine any­one else as Rhett But­ler and Scar­lett O’Hara.

Pro­duc­er David O. Selznick had his sights set on Gable almost from the start, but Leigh was cast only after a two-year search. Ever the oppor­tunist, Selznick turned his quest for the per­fect Scar­lett O’Hara into a grand pub­lic­i­ty stunt, inter­view­ing 1,400 unknown actress­es in a nation­wide cast­ing call and audi­tion­ing dozens of Hol­ly­wood actress­es.

In this fas­ci­nat­ing clip from the 1989 film Mak­ing of a Leg­end: Gone with the Wind, we see some of the 32 screen tests that were made for Scar­lett, along with a few for oth­er roles. Those try­ing out for Scar­lett include Tal­lu­lah Bankhead, Susan Hay­ward, Lana Turn­er, Joan Ben­nett, Jean Arthur and final­ist Paulette God­dard, who nar­row­ly missed get­ting the part. Selznick even­tu­al­ly chose Leigh, a rel­a­tive­ly unknown actress who he first thought was “too British” for the role of a south­ern belle. One thing Leigh had in com­mon with Scar­lett was self-assur­ance. In July of 1937–a year and a half before Selznick ever laid eyes on her–Leigh told a reporter for the Lon­don Evening News, “I’ve cast myself as Scar­lett O’Hara. What do you think?”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Audrey Hep­burn’s Screen Test for Roman Hol­i­day (1953)

Mar­lene Diet­rich’s Tem­pera­men­tal Screen Test for The Blue Angel

Paul New­man and James Dean Screen Test for East of Eden

Man Ray was one of the lead­ing artists of the avant garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key fig­ure in the Dada and Sur­re­al­ist move­ments, his works spanned var­i­ous media, includ­ing film. He was a lead­ing expo­nent of the Ciné­ma Pur, or “Pure Cin­e­ma,” which reject­ed such “bour­geois” con­ceits as char­ac­ter, set­ting and plot. Today we present Man Ray’s four influ­en­tial films of the 1920s.

Le Retour à la Rai­son (above) was com­plet­ed in 1923. The title means “Return to Rea­son,” and it’s basi­cal­ly a kinet­ic exten­sion of Man Ray’s still pho­tog­ra­phy. Many of the images in Le Retour are ani­mat­ed pho­tograms, a tech­nique in which opaque, or par­tial­ly opaque, objects are arranged direct­ly on top of a sheet of pho­to­graph­ic paper and exposed to light. The tech­nique is as old as pho­tog­ra­phy itself, but Man Ray had a gift for self-pro­mo­tion, so he called them “rayo­graphs.” For Le Retour, Man Ray sprin­kled objects like salt and pep­per and pins onto the pho­to­graph­ic paper. He also filmed live-action sequences of an amuse­ment park carousel and oth­er sub­jects, includ­ing the nude tor­so of his mod­el and lover, Kiki of Mont­par­nasse.

Emak-Bakia (1926):

The 16-minute Emak-Bakia con­tains some of the same images and visu­al tech­niques as Le Retour à la Rai­son, includ­ing rayo­graphs, dou­ble images and neg­a­tive images. But the live-action sequences are more inven­tive, with dream-like dis­tor­tions and tilt­ed cam­era angles. The effect is sur­re­al. “In reply to crit­ics who would like to linger on the mer­its or defects of the film,” wrote Man Ray in the pro­gram notes, “one can reply sim­ply by trans­lat­ing the title ‘Emak Bakia,’ an old Basque expres­sion, which was cho­sen because it sounds pret­ti­ly and means: ‘Give us a rest.’ ”

L’E­toile de Mer (1928):

L’E­toile de Mer (“The Sea Star”) was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Man Ray and the sur­re­al­ist poet Robert Desnos. It fea­tures Kiki de Mont­par­nasse (Alice Prin) and André de la Riv­ière. The dis­tort­ed, out-of focus images were made by shoot­ing into mir­rors and through rough glass. The film is more sen­su­al than Man Ray’s ear­li­er works. As Don­ald Faulkn­er writes:

In the mod­ernist high tide of 1920s exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing, L’E­toile de Mer is a per­verse moment of grace, a demon­stra­tion that the cin­e­ma went far­ther in its great silent decade than most film­mak­ers today could ever imag­ine. Sur­re­al­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Man Ray’s film col­lides words with images (the inter­ti­tles are from an oth­er­wise lost work by poet Robert Desnos) to make us psy­cho­log­i­cal wit­ness­es, voyeurs of a kind, to a sex­u­al encounter. A char­ac­ter picks up a woman who is sell­ing news­pa­pers. She undress­es for him, but then he seems to leave her. Less inter­est­ed in her than in the weight she uses to keep her news­pa­pers from blow­ing away, the man lov­ing­ly explores the per­cep­tions gen­er­at­ed by her paper­weight, a starfish in a glass tube. As the man looks at the starfish, we become aware through his gaze of metaphors for cin­e­ma, and for vision itself, in lyri­cal shots of dis­tort­ed per­cep­tion that imply hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, almost mas­tur­ba­to­ry sex­u­al­i­ty.

Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (1929):

The longest of Man Ray’s films, Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (the ver­sion above has apparenl­ty been short­ened by sev­en min­utes) fol­lows a pair of trav­el­ers on a jour­ney from Paris to the Vil­la Noailles in Hyères, which fea­tures a tri­an­gu­lar Cubist gar­den designed by Gabriel Geu­vrikain. “Made as an archi­tec­tur­al doc­u­ment and inspired by the poet­ry of Mal­lar­mé,” writes Kim Knowles in A Cin­e­mat­ic Artist: The Films of Man Ray, “Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé is the film in which Man Ray most clear­ly demon­strates his inter­dis­ci­pli­nary atti­tude, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its ref­er­ence to Stéphane Mal­lar­mé’s poem Un coup de dés jamais n’aboli­ra le hasard.”

The films will be list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

In 1998, Roger Ebert had this to say about Orson Welles’ 1941 clas­sic, Cit­i­zen Kane:

It is one of the mir­a­cles of cin­e­ma that in 1941 a first-time direc­tor; a cyn­i­cal, hard-drink­ing writer; an inno­v­a­tive cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, and a group of New York stage and radio actors were giv­en the keys to a stu­dio and total con­trol, and made a mas­ter­piece. “Cit­i­zen Kane’‘ is more than a great movie; it is a gath­er­ing of all the lessons of the emerg­ing era of sound, just as “Birth of a Nation” assem­bled every­thing learned at the sum­mit of the silent era, and “2001’’ point­ed the way beyond nar­ra­tive. These peaks stand above all the oth­ers.

Cit­i­zen Kane blazed many new trails. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the sto­ry telling, the spe­cial effects, the sound­track — they were all inno­v­a­tive. And they were all woven into an artis­tic whole by a 26 year old direc­tor mak­ing his first film. Years lat­er, Welles explained the alche­my of Kane. Igno­rance, he said, was per­haps the genius of the film. “I did­n’t know what you could­n’t do. I did­n’t delib­er­ate­ly set out to invent any­thing. It just seemed to me, why not? And there is a great gift that igno­rance has to bring to any­thing. That was the gift I brought to Kane, igno­rance.”

Of course, Welles is also quick to rec­og­nize that Gregg Toland — “the great­est cam­era­man who ever lived” — con­tributed to the great­ness of Cit­i­zen Kane too, pro­vid­ing the right spir­it and cin­e­mato­graph­ic touch. If you’re unfa­mil­iar with Toland’s work, we’ve pro­vid­ed a short mini doc­u­men­tary on the leg­endary cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er below.

Sev­er­al films direct­ed by and star­ring Orson Welles can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Orson Welles Nar­rates Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry, Kafka’s Para­ble, and Free­dom Riv­er

“Nobody could make a movie bet­ter than Stan­ley Kubrick–in his­to­ry,” says Steven Spiel­berg in this reveal­ing 1999 inter­view with British film­mak­er Paul Joyce. Spiel­berg sat down with Joyce just four months after Kubrick­’s sud­den death from a heart attack. He talks about the emo­tion­al effect Kubrick­’s films had on him when he was a young man, the friend­ship the two men shared after Spiel­berg became suc­cess­ful, and Kubrick­’s James Joyce-like abil­i­ty to rein­vent him­self with each new work. “He was a chameleon,” Spiel­berg says. “He nev­er made the same pic­ture twice. Every sin­gle pic­ture is a dif­fer­ent genre, a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, a dif­fer­ent risk. The only thing that bond­ed all of his films was the incred­i­ble vir­tu­oso that he was with craft.”

Note: Paul Joyce filmed sim­i­lar talks with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kid­man, the stars of Kubrick­’s final film Eyes Wide Shut. You can see those inter­views by fol­low­ing these links: Cruise; Kid­man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash’

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