As a car­less cinephile, I’ve spent hours upon hours lis­ten­ing to film pod­casts while rid­ing my bike or the train. Bat­tle­ship Pre­ten­sion, host­ed by knowl­edge­able but still knowl­edge-hun­gry young crit­ics Tyler Smith and David Bax, has long held top pri­or­i­ty on these rides — and even if the title’s ref­er­ent doesn’t flood your mind with mem­o­ries of artis­tic awe, you prob­a­bly get the pun. But if you want to go deep­er and talk about how film edit­ing went from grunt work to art form, you have lit­tle choice but to talk about Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (1925) and its direc­tor, Sergei Eisen­stein. A Russ­ian dou­ble-threat of film­mak­er and film the­o­rist in the 1920s through the late 1940s, Eisen­stein pio­neered many now-essen­tial edit­ing tech­niques, fig­ur­ing out how images could be arranged to serve not just a film’s sto­ry but its rhythm, its tone, and even its themes.

Like cin­e­ma itself, Eisen­stein came from the the­ater. Unlike most of his con­tem­po­raries, he made great strides in drag­ging cin­e­ma out of the the­ater behind him, cast­ing off staid sto­ry­telling habits in favor of the vast pos­si­bil­i­ties of the then-new medi­um, most of which remain unchart­ed even today. Tasked by his gov­ern­ment with pro­duc­ing what came down to rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­pa­gan­da, Eisen­stein couldn’t push the the­mat­ic enve­lope very far. Even so, today’s film­mak­ers look­ing for ways to advance their form, or today’s film­go­ers eager to learn more about how movies work, would do well to look at what Eisen­stein man­aged to do 85 years ago, and how aes­thet­i­cal­ly exhil­a­rat­ing it all remains.

This you can do from the com­fort of your com­put­er by brows­ing Open Culture’s col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, where you’ll find links to Eisen­stein pic­tures view­able at the click of the mouse, includ­ing the sweep­ing Alexan­der Nevsky, the doomed ¡Que viva Méx­i­co!, and of course, the icon­ic Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (above). Watch a few, and you’ll see why Bat­tle­ship Pre­ten­sion’s lis­ten­ers vot­ed Eisen­stein into the top hun­dred direc­tors of all time. Smith and Bax called on yours tru­ly to write his blurb on the list, but don’t take my word for the filmmaker’s impor­tance; his movies, whether you catch them in a grand revival screen­ing or on your web brows­er right now, show you every­thing you need to know.

Com­plete list of free Eisen­stein films: Alexan­der Nevsky, Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, Octo­ber: Ten Days that Shook the World, Old and New, ¡Que viva Méx­i­co!, Romance Sen­ti­men­tale, andStrike.

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

An Ing­mar Bergman ret­ro­spec­tive begins next month here in Los Ange­les, and as I mark my cal­en­dar, I reflect on what turned me on to his films in the first place. Who can approach Bergman now with­out first run­ning a cul­tur­al gaunt­let of know­ing ref­er­ences, gush­ing appre­ci­a­tions, and con­trar­i­an broad­sides? What young cinephile could resist the temp­ta­tion to inflate an opin­ion about The Sev­enth Seal, or Wild Straw­ber­ries, or Per­sona after see­ing them for the first time — or indeed, before? We could all ben­e­fit from some­one to show us the way into the “Swedish mas­ter’s” loaded, time-con­sum­ing fil­mog­ra­phy, and as this BBC inter­view by film crit­ic Mark Ker­mode reveals (watch Part 1 above, and Part 2 here), Woody Allen could well be it.

Allen holds a sur­pris­ing­ly plau­si­ble claim to the title of Bergman’s num­ber-one fan, or at least his most promi­nent one. How to square his ded­i­ca­tion to these solemn Swedish med­i­ta­tions on mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith with his cre­ation of beloved light come­dies like Bananas, Sleep­er, and Annie Hall? But watch Allen’s fil­mog­ra­phy in full, espe­cial­ly pic­tures like Love and Death, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Shad­ows and Fog, and the answer comes into view. Mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith — Bergman’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions are Allen’s, but Allen grap­ples with the unan­swer­able ques­tions by mak­ing jokes about them. What Allen describes as a “the­mat­ic con­nec­tion” to Bergman ulti­mate­ly becomes a much more com­pli­cat­ed entan­gle­ment: his hir­ing of Bergman’s cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sven Nykvist to shoot Anoth­er Woman, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Celebri­ty, for instance, sug­gests some­thing beyond sim­ple influ­ence.

In con­ver­sa­tion with Ker­mode, Allen remem­bers join­ing the van­guard of New York Bergman enthu­si­asm after see­ing Sum­mer with Moni­ka and The Naked Night, films that, to his mind, dis­played an obvi­ous­ly high­er lev­el of craft than any­thing else play­ing in town. The days when dis­cov­er­ing Bergman real­ly meant dis­cov­er­ing Bergman have long passed, but it will nev­er be too late to feel the same excite­ment Allen did about Bergman’s abil­i­ty to express inter­nal con­flicts — “inner states of anx­i­ety,” Allen calls them — so rich­ly and dra­mat­i­cal­ly on film. The Woody Allen-approved points of entry for the Bergman novice: The Sev­enth Seal, Wild Straw­ber­ries, and Cries and Whis­pers “for sure.” And maybe The Magi­cian. H/T @opedr

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Also don’t miss Hubert Drey­fus’ course on Exis­ten­tial­ism & Film (iTunes) in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

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

Cin­e­ma went into its death throes on Sep­tem­ber 31, 1983. The instru­ment of its demise? The video remote con­trol. When the “zap­per” endowed the view­er with the abil­i­ty to play, pause, stop, fast-for­ward, and rewind at will, the medi­um’s artists lost their absolute con­trol over the rhythm, dura­tion, and oth­er chrono­log­i­cal sub­tleties of the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. Or so film­mak­er Peter Green­away claims in this lec­ture at UC Berke­ley. Any­one fan enough to read all the inter­views the direc­tor has grant­ed — and I count myself in the group — will by now be famil­iar with, even weary of, Green­away’s ideas about cin­e­ma’s tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic strait­jack­et­ing, its arbi­trary aes­thet­ic bound­aries, and its squan­dered poten­tial as a free­stand­ing art form. Nowhere else, though, does he explain and elab­o­rate upon these ideas in such detail, or in such an enter­tain­ing­ly ora­tor­i­cal man­ner.

“The death of cin­e­ma,” though? Real­ly? Know­ing how dra­mat­ic that sounds, Green­away frames what’s hap­pened in anoth­er way: per­haps cin­e­ma has yet to be born. What if the last cen­tu­ry or so has offered only the pro­logue to cin­e­ma, and mod­ern film­mak­ers must take it upon them­selves to bring the real thing into the world? These may strike you as the thoughts of a crack­pot, and maybe they are, but watch and lis­ten as Green­away recounts the stunt­ed devel­op­ment of the art form in which he works. We’ve grown so accus­tomed to the lim­i­ta­tions of cin­e­ma, so his argu­ment goes, that we don’t even feel the pres­sure of the “four tyran­nies” that have lord­ed over it since the begin­ning: the frame, the text, the actor, and the cam­era. Even if you loathe Green­away’s films, can you help ask­ing your­self whether the rarely ques­tioned dom­i­nance of an elite class of essen­tial­ly the­atri­cal per­form­ers, fol­low­ing tex­tu­al­ly con­ceived instruc­tions, viewed from one per­spec­tive at a time through a sim­ple rec­tan­gle, holds the movies back?

Since his fea­ture-length debut The Falls in 1980, Green­away has strug­gled against what he sees as the bar­ri­ers put up by cin­e­ma’s unhealthy entan­gle­ment with the nar­ra­tive-dri­ven forms of the­ater and lit­er­a­ture. Trained orig­i­nal­ly as a painter, he won­ders explic­it­ly in pub­lic and implic­it­ly through his work why films can’t enjoy the same free­dom to explore the cre­ative space at their dis­pos­al that paint­ings do. All his pic­tures, even the best-known like The Draughts­man­’s Con­tract; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; and 8½ Women, use set­tings, actors, images, words, and sounds like col­ors on a palette, apply­ing them with infini­tude of strokes, cre­at­ing a whole from which no one ele­ment can be eas­i­ly sep­a­rat­ed. In this lec­ture, Green­away mar­shals footage from his projects con­duct­ed even far­ther out at the medi­um’s edge: his trans­for­ma­tion of an actu­al Ital­ian palace into one big non-nar­ra­tive film, his col­lab­o­ra­tions with avant-garde com­pos­er David Lang, and, of course, his VJ-ing ses­sions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dar­win, A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

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