About a year ago, a cer­tain kind of cinephile took note of obit­u­ar­ies for Ted Kotch­eff, a tele­vi­sion-turned-film direc­tor who worked steadi­ly from the mid-fifties to the mid-nineties. Even to read­ers only casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with movies, more than one title pops out from his fil­mog­ra­phy: The Appren­tice­ship of Dud­dy Kravitz, Fun with Dick and Jane, North Dal­las Forty, Week­end at Bernie’s. The focus on gen­res, and their vari­ety, sug­gests not an auteur but a jour­ney­man, the kind of effi­cient, ver­sa­tile prob­lem-solver that used to keep Hol­ly­wood afloat. But occa­sion­al­ly, the work of a jour­ney­man can achieve its own kind of tran­scen­dence: that moment came with First Blood, in Kotch­ef­f’s case, which launched the Ram­bo series in 1982.

Those who remem­ber Sylvester Stal­lone’s John Ram­bo as a head­band­ed one-man army bent on re-fight­ing and win­ning the Viet­nam War, one bout of ultra-vio­lence at a time, will be sur­prised by the rel­a­tive meek­ness of his first onscreen incar­na­tion.

As First Blood’s sto­ry is sum­ma­rized by the Cin­e­maS­tix video above, Ram­bo drifts into a small Wash­ing­ton town after a search for his Viet­nam com­rades comes to a fruit­less end. Hos­tile­ly eject­ed by the local sher­iff, he nev­er­the­less walks right back into city lim­its. Arrest­ed and booked at the police sta­tion, he turns on the cops in a PTSD-trig­gered rage. When he makes his escape into the for­est, the law pur­sues him, leav­ing him no choice — at least in his own mind — but to declare war on the police, the town, and per­haps the whole of Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion.

This is a promis­ing enough nar­ra­tive for a post-Viet­nam genre pic­ture, as a vari­ety of pro­duc­ers must have thought while David Mor­rel­l’s orig­i­nal nov­el was cir­cu­lat­ing through Hol­ly­wood. But only the star pow­er of Stal­lone, with the first cou­ple of Rocky pic­tures under his belt, could get it made. And indeed, he almost got it un-made: dis­mayed by its ini­tial three-and-a-half hour cut, he decid­ed to buy the rights and destroy the neg­a­tive. The solu­tion that end­ed up sav­ing the movie was­n’t much less dras­tic, pro­duc­ing a 93-minute cut that excised most of Ram­bo’s dia­logue. The result, as Cin­e­maS­tix cre­ator Dan­ny Boyd explains, pos­sess­es the good kind of ambiva­lence, which lets the audi­ence share not just the belea­guered pro­tag­o­nist’s per­spec­tive but also that of his increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed pur­suers, who esca­late the bat­tle out of all pro­por­tion to his actions. 44 years on, First Blood still offers sur­pris­es, not the least of which is that Ram­bo — for the last time in his career — nev­er actu­al­ly kills any­one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock–And How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the War

Muham­mad Ali Explains Why He Refused to Fight in Viet­nam: “My Con­science Won’t Let Me Go Shoot My Broth­er… for Big Pow­er­ful Amer­i­ca” (1970)

Mick­ey Mouse in Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

How Edit­ing Saved Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Clas­sic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Chi­nese film­mak­er Wang Bing’s ‘Til Mad­ness Do Us Part, a doc­u­men­tary about a men­tal insti­tu­tion in Yun­nan, runs three hours and 48 min­utes. Beau­ty Lives in Free­dom, on the life of impris­oned artist Gao Ertai, is five and a half hours long; Dead Souls, on the sur­vivors of a hard-labor camp in the Gobi Desert, eight hours and fif­teen min­utes. Even if you know noth­ing else of his work, you may get the impres­sion that Wang isn’t the most shame­less­ly com­mer­cial of film­mak­ers. The extreme dura­tion of some of his movies sure­ly make them a hard sell, as do his grim choic­es of sub­ject mat­ter. But if you want to under­stand the trans­for­ma­tion of mod­ern Chi­na, you could hard­ly find a rich­er body of cin­e­mat­ic work.

In the video essay above, YouTu­ber Ken Dai extols the virtues of Wang’s first film: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, whose more than nine hours of footage depict the last years of the tit­u­lar indus­tri­al dis­trict of Shenyang. Wang draws them from the more than 300 hours he shot in the years between 1999 and 2001, by which time a shift in eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy had made redun­dant what had once been not just a con­cen­tra­tion of state-owned enter­pris­es, but “a mon­u­ment to a vision of the future.”

Tie Xi employed count­less many in the foundries and fac­to­ries that made pos­si­ble the dra­mat­ic ear­ly decades of Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic rise, but for its work­ers and their fam­i­lies alike, it had also become a stage on which gen­er­a­tions of life played out.

Wang bears wit­ness to that stage’s dis­man­tle­ment. In the film’s first part, Dai says, “we watch the work­ers show up, day after day, to a sys­tem that has already decid­ed they’re no longer nec­es­sary.” The sec­ond turns to “the fam­i­lies, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the teenagers”; the third “fol­lows a freight rail­way that once con­nect­ed all of it, and two men, a son and a father, who live and scav­enge for scrap met­als.” They and the many oth­er remain­ing Tie Xi denizens who pass before Wang’s cam­era speak for them­selves. At no point does the film incor­po­rate nar­ra­tion, inter­views, or even non-diegetic music. (There is, how­ev­er, an impromp­tu per­for­mance by a nude gui­tar-play­ing man in a bar­racks.) In its refusal to use its peo­ple as metaphor­i­cal fig­ures or polit­i­cal props, Tie Xi Qu stands as an exam­ple of “direct cin­e­ma” at its most direct — except, per­haps, for Wang’s lat­er cloth­ing-fac­to­ry doc­u­men­tary, the apt­ly titled 15 Hours.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

50 Must-See Doc­u­men­taries, Select­ed by 10 Influ­en­tial Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ers

A Chi­nese Painter Spe­cial­iz­ing in Copy­ing Van Gogh Paint­ings Trav­els to Ams­ter­dam & Sees Van Gogh’s Mas­ter­pieces for the First Time

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

Watch the Film That Invent­ed Cin­e­ma: Work­ers Leav­ing the Lumière Fac­to­ry in Lyon (1895)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Much has been writ­ten late­ly about the cri­sis in Hol­ly­wood, which has left many appar­ent­ly sure-fire block­busters floun­der­ing, the­aters emp­ty, and pro­duc­tion jobs lost. There are many fac­tors in play — some of them, as few diag­noses fail to point out, struc­tur­al — but can we ignore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fatigue, per­haps even bore­dom, with film itself? We’ve post­ed in recent years here on Open Cul­ture about the decay of cin­e­ma, the rise of “visu­al muzak” on Net­flix, why movies don’t feel real any­more, and why movies don’t even feel like movies any­more. Even if they’ve lim­it­ed their expo­sure to big-bud­get spec­ta­cles, most once-avid cinephiles will have felt all those phe­nom­e­na for them­selves by now, and many will be con­sid­er­ing whether to look for a new art form to enjoy. But some will won­der: maybe there’s a cure?

There could well be, and a brac­ing one. If you seek a re-enchant­ment with film, there could be few bet­ter places to look than in the work of film­mak­ers who have bro­ken that medi­um down to its very com­po­nents and put it togeth­er again in uncon­ven­tion­al ways. Some of the results shocked audi­ences fifty, six­ty, sev­en­ty, even a hun­dred years ago — and indeed, some retain that pow­er today.

You can take a jour­ney through the his­to­ry of such exper­i­men­tal, avant-garde, and sur­re­al motion pic­tures with the YouTube playlist at the top of the post, which com­pris­es 434 such videos. The exact num­ber will vary depend­ing upon your region of the world, as well as upon how many of them have come and gone since the playlist’s cre­ation. What­ev­er the total, not even a fringe-cin­e­ma habitué will have seen every­thing on it (at least, not more than once).

Long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers may rec­og­nize on the playlist the work of Dadaist Hans Richter and Mar­cel Duchamp, abstrac­tion pio­neer Viking Eggeling, ear­ly fem­i­nist film­mak­er Ger­maine Dulac, and ani­ma­tor (as well as city sym­phon­ist) Wal­ter Ruttmann, not to men­tion Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel.

They may or may not already have encoun­tered the cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy of, say, Shūji Ter­aya­ma, the all-around avant-gardist and provo­ca­teur whose influ­ence is still felt in Japan­ese art today; Stan Brakhage, who forewent even the use of a cam­era and cre­at­ed his own cin­e­ma by manip­u­lat­ing film direct­ly; or Michael Snow, whose Wave­length tells a sto­ry with­out leav­ing a sin­gle room in which very lit­tle hap­pens. But then, after enough of these exper­i­men­tal, avant-garde, and sur­re­al view­ing expe­ri­ences, you’ll remem­ber that there are many ways for a film to tell a sto­ry — and much, much more that film can do besides sto­ry­telling, if only we’d let it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from Ear­ly Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

The Evoca­tive­ness of Decom­pos­ing Film: Watch the 1926 Hol­ly­wood Movie The Bells Become the Exper­i­men­tal 2004 Short Film Light Is Call­ing

Watch the Med­i­ta­tive Cinepo­em “H20”: A Land­mark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

Watch 3000 Years of Art, a 1968 Exper­i­men­tal Film That Takes You on a Visu­al Jour­ney Through 3,000 Years of Fine Art

Watch Mesh­es of the After­noon, the Exper­i­men­tal Short Vot­ed the 16th Best Film of All Time

Paul Schrad­er Cre­ates a Dia­gram Map­ping the Pro­gres­sion of Art­house Cin­e­ma: Ozu, Bres­son, Tarkovsky & Oth­er Auteurs

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.