A few days ago, we linked to the recent Col­lid­er inter­view with Mal­colm McDow­ell, the star of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1971 clas­sic, A Clock­work Orange. One of the high­lights of the piece is a short video clip in which the now 68-year-old actor describes the ori­gins of the film’s icon­ic — and hor­rif­i­cal­ly vio­lent — “Singing in the Rain” scene.

You can catch a much younger McDow­ell dis­cussing that same scene in 1972, start­ing at minute 6:30 of the inter­view below. For kicks, slide back to minute 4:15, and watch the cocky 28-year-old give his inter­locu­tor a sharp dress­ing down for dar­ing to sug­gest that Mr. Kubrick could be “dif­fi­cult” to work with:

via @DangerMindsBlog

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Fil­mog­ra­phy Ani­mat­ed

Killer’s Kiss: Where Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Film­mak­ing Career Real­ly Begins

Kubrick vs. Scors­ese Mon­tage

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Can you iden­ti­fy the man in this pic­ture? The archivists at Lost Films hope you can. The image is tak­en from footage of a vin­tage film that no one has been able to iden­ti­fy. Accord­ing to the descrip­tion that goes with the still, all we know now is that this odd­ly-dressed  char­ac­ter is an escaped con­vict named “Hem Lock.” The movie is prob­a­bly Amer­i­can, and it was most like­ly shot some­where around 1923. If you think you can add some more infor­ma­tion, it’s time for you to sign up.

More than 80 per­cent of silent films and a high per­cent­age of old sound films have been lost or are now unac­count­ed for. Lost Films is a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort among film soci­eties in Ger­many, France, Poland, New Zealand, and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries to help iden­ti­fy and locate some 3,500 lost or miss­ing films through crowd­sourc­ing. Any­one can become a mem­ber and then upload clips and images from “mys­tery movies” to the site, and also com­ment on the as-yet-unti­tled stills and images that have already been uploaded. The site also con­tains a heart­en­ing list of films that have been recent­ly been recov­ered.

The project is fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Cul­tur­al Asso­ci­a­tion.

Be sure to find many silent and ear­ly sound movies (among oth­er things) in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Lars von Tri­er stepped on the third rail Wednes­day when he called him­self a Nazi and Hitler sym­pa­thiz­er in jest. The joke did­n’t go over so well, and, his apolo­gies (some­times sound­ing sin­cere, some­times not so much) did­n’t win peo­ple over. Today, Cannes offi­cials took an unprece­dent­ed step, declar­ing him per­sona non gra­ta at the fes­ti­val. This marks the first time Cannes has exiled a direc­tor in its 64 year his­to­ry. What will Lars do next? The prova­ca­teur sug­gests that he will return to his native Den­mark and shoot porn films:

I want to be sur­round­ed by porn peo­ple who love me for what I am, who say, ‘Where do you want the erec­tion, where do you want the pen­e­tra­tion.’ Where it’s not com­pli­cat­ed. There would­n’t be a porn star run­ning out there say­ing ‘Lars said this or Lars said that.’

He also might want to add hir­ing a few good han­dlers to the to-do list. Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a few clas­sic Dan­ish films, we have Vampyr and La Pas­sion de Jeanne d’Arc, both by Carl Theodor Drey­er, in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Romance and real­ism are mixed togeth­er in sur­pris­ing and unfor­get­table ways in Jacques Demy’s 1964 mas­ter­piece, The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg. At first glance the film appears to be anoth­er piece of escapist fluff—a bright­ly col­ored musi­cal about a beau­ti­ful girl who falls in love with a hand­some young man. But as the sto­ry unfolds, those fairy tale trappings—the col­ors, the melodies, the impos­si­bly beau­ti­ful faces—carry a gath­er­ing weight of irony.

As film crit­ic A.O. Scott of the New York Times says in the video above, the film is one of the most roman­tic ever made, yet at the same time the sto­ry is “pure kitchen sink real­ism, suit­able maybe for a Ray­mond Carv­er sto­ry or a Bruce Spring­steen song.” It fea­tures Cather­ine Deneuve as a 17-year-old girl who works in her mother’s umbrel­la shop and falls in love with a 20-year-old garage mechan­ic, played by Nino Castel­n­uo­vo. “All of the char­ac­ters face very dif­fi­cult, very real prob­lems,” says Scott, “and all of them try to do the right thing, which turns out to be pret­ty defin­i­tive­ly unro­man­tic.”

Unlike Hol­ly­wood musi­cals, in which the char­ac­ters speak dia­logue and peri­od­i­cal­ly break into song, every word in The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg is sung. The film received the Palme d’Or at the 1964 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, and was an inter­na­tion­al hit. Despite all the suc­cess, the film has been wide­ly mis­un­der­stood, as Pauline Kael lament­ed dur­ing a 2000 inter­view. “One of the sad things about our time, I think,” Kael said, “is that so many peo­ple find a movie like that friv­o­lous and neg­li­gi­ble. They don’t see the beau­ty in it, but it’s a love­ly film—original and fine.”

The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg has recent­ly become avail­able for free view­ing on the Inter­net, and we have added it to our archive of free movies. You can watch it here.