When Quentin Taran­ti­no hit it big in the 1990s with Reser­voir Dogs, and then much big­ger with Pulp Fic­tion, he became known as the auteur who’d received his film edu­ca­tion by work­ing as a video-store clerk. But like much Hol­ly­wood hype, that sto­ry was­n’t quite true. “No, I was already a movie expert,” says the man him­self in a clip from the 1994 BBC doc­u­men­tary Quentin Taran­ti­no: Hol­ly­wood’s Boy Won­der. “That’s how I got hired at Video Archives.” Locat­ed in the South Bay — a com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle-seen region of Los Ange­les Coun­ty lat­er paid lov­ing trib­ute with Jack­ie Brown — the store was, in the words of one of its own­ers, “one of the few places that Quentin could come as a reg­u­lar guy and get a job and become like a star.”

“Me and the oth­er guys would walk into the local movie the­ater and we’d be head­ing toward our seats and we’d hear, ‘There go the guys from Video Archives,’ ” says Taran­ti­no in Tom Ros­ton’s I Lost It at the Video Store. On one lev­el, the expe­ri­ence con­sti­tut­ed “a primer to what it would be like to be famous.” Hav­ing begun as a Video Archives cus­tomer, Taran­ti­no wound up work­ing there for five years, offer­ing volu­mi­nous and force­ful rec­om­men­da­tions by day and, after clos­ing, putting on staff-only film fes­ti­vals by night. “That time is cap­tured per­fect­ly in True Romance,” which Tony Scott direct­ed but Taran­ti­no wrote, and one of those co-work­ers, Roger Avary, would col­lab­o­rate with him on the screen­play for Pulp Fic­tion.

Video Archives was a bea­con to all the South Bay’s “film geeks.” Then as now, most such peo­ple “devote a lot of mon­ey and they devote a lot of their life to the fol­low­ing of film, but they don’t real­ly have that much to show for all this devo­tion,” oth­er than their strong­ly held cin­e­mat­ic opin­ions. “What you find out fair­ly quick­ly in Hol­ly­wood is, this is a com­mu­ni­ty where hard­ly any­body trusts their own opin­ion. Peo­ple want peo­ple to tell them what is good, what to like, what not to like.” Hence the abil­i­ty of the young Taran­ti­no,  brim­ming with opin­ions and unafraid to state them and pos­sessed of an unwa­ver­ing resolve to make movies of his own, to go from video-store clerk­ing prac­ti­cal­ly straight to the top of the indus­try. Though he did­n’t need film school — nor col­lege, or indeed high school — he could hard­ly have found a more suit­able alma mater.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last Video Store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on How the World’s Old­est Video Store Still Sur­vives Today

Quentin Taran­ti­no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Reviews Movies: From Dunkirk and King of New York, to Soul Broth­ers of Kung Fu & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Some of the most influ­en­tial direc­tors of the French New Wave, like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truf­faut, and Éric Rohmer, first stepped into the world of film as crit­ics. They found their voic­es by pub­lish­ing in the Paris cinephile insti­tu­tion of Cahiers du ciné­ma; a few decades lat­er, Quentin Taran­ti­no found his own by work­ing at the Man­hat­tan Beach cinephile insti­tu­tion of Video Archives. Sto­ries of all the myr­i­ad ways in which he would express his enthu­si­asm for and exper­tise on cin­e­ma there have passed into leg­end. But just like the crit­ics Godard, Truf­faut, and Rohmer, the video-store clerk Taran­ti­no ulti­mate­ly seems to have signed on to the old propo­si­tion that the best response to a work of art is anoth­er work of art.

Taran­ti­no’s endorse­ments of and intro­duc­tions to the work of oth­er direc­tors (for exam­ple, the one he record­ed for Wong Kar-wai’s Chungk­ing Express) have giv­en us a sense of his cin­e­mat­ic taste. So, in an even more telling man­ner, do the ele­ments he steals — by his own admis­sion — from oth­er movies.

A look at the dance scene in Pulp Fic­tion, for exam­ple, reveals a film­mak­er well acquaint­ed with the French New Wave, and even more so with the work of Italia mas­ter Fed­eri­co Felli­ni that came out in the same era. And even if you think you could go head-to-head with Taran­ti­no on mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean auteurs, could you match his under­stand­ing of A Man Called Tiger, Fatal Nee­dles vs. Fatal Fists, or Soul Broth­ers of Kung Fu?

Those are just three of the films Taran­ti­no has reviewed at the web site of the New Bev­er­ly Cin­e­ma, the the­ater he owns in Los Ange­les. Pub­lished in a low-pro­file man­ner, these short essays on the kind of 1970s Hong Kong mar­tial-arts pic­tures that right­ful­ly belong on down­town triple-bills (and that Taran­ti­no sure­ly first saw on down­town triple-bills) exude the kind of fan-crit­ic ener­gy that brings to mind bygone days of the inter­net.

Not that Taran­ti­no eschews more recent movies and movie media. In late 2019 and ear­ly 2010, he appeared three times on The Ringer’s The Rewatch­ables pod­cast to share his thoughts on three pic­tures worth see­ing again: Christo­pher Nolan’s Dunkirk from 2017, Tony Scot­t’s Unstop­pable from 2010, and Abel Fer­rara’s King of New York from 1990. Lis­ten and you may just feel like a Video Archive cus­tomer in the 1980s, get­ting rec­om­men­da­tions from an odd­ly per­sua­sive clerk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Releas­es His First Nov­el: A Pulpy Nov­el­iza­tion of Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” That quote is usu­al­ly attrib­uted to Anaïs Nin, who counts among the most famous Parisi­ennes despite only hav­ing spent a rel­a­tive­ly short stretch of her life there. Cléo Vic­toire must also occu­py those same ranks, despite being a whol­ly fic­tion­al char­ac­ter. We know her as the pro­tag­o­nist of 1962’s Cléo from 5 to 7, the break­out fea­ture by French New Wave auteur Agnès Var­da — anoth­er of the great Parisi­ennes of our time, if one reluc­tant enough to have arrived for her edu­ca­tion at the Sor­bonne see­ing Paris as a “grey, inhu­mane, sad city.” Still, as Cléo’s per­am­bu­la­tions through and inter­ac­tions with Paris reveal, Var­da cer­tain­ly knew how to use the place.

As the film plays out in real time, “we fol­low Cléo through an after­noon as she jour­neys across real loca­tions in Paris, wait­ing for her dread­ed test results to be ready.” So says Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, in his new video essay “Through Agnes Var­da’s Look­ing Glass.” A promis­ing singer, Cléo has under­gone a med­ical exam­i­na­tion to deter­mine whether or not she has can­cer, and not until the final scene will she have the answer.

In the mean­time, Var­da takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to “paint a com­plex pic­ture of a com­plex woman on a stress­ful day in her life.” This stress prompts Cléo “to exam­ine and ulti­mate­ly con­front her self-image,” a jour­ney that takes her past, among oth­er things, more than a few mir­rors.

Begin­ning the film as a self-regard­ing char­ac­ter — in the most lit­er­al sense — Cléo nev­er pass­es up a chance to check her own reflec­tion, and thus con­firm her own exis­tence. “If she’s not a beau­ti­ful, healthy, up-and-com­ing singer,” as Puschak artic­u­lates the ques­tion that descends upon her, “who is she?” Com­posed only of out­side per­cep­tions, Cléo’s cen­ter can­not hold; even­tu­al­ly “she dis­cards the iden­ti­ty she’s made for oth­ers. She ceas­es to be an object, looked at even by her­self and becomes a sub­ject, the one who looks.” Her cri­sis forces her to “observe the world as it is, not as a reflec­tion of peo­ple’s expec­ta­tion of her.” Var­da’s cin­e­mat­ic vision of her trans­for­ma­tion shows what it is to see things not as we are, but as they are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

How Michel Legrand (RIP) Gave the French New Wave a Sound: Revis­it the Influ­en­tial Music He Com­posed for Jean-Luc Godard & Jacques Demy’s Films

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

How David Lynch Manip­u­lates You: A Close Read­ing of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve

What Andrei Tarkovsky’s Most Noto­ri­ous Scene Tells Us About Time Dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The hulk­ing black-caped fig­ure, “a walk­ing iron lung,” as George Lucas called him in 1977, Darth Vad­er more than right­ly tops a list of the 50 best movie vil­lains of all time as the “gold stan­dard of vil­lainy,” but it took more than inspired cos­tum­ing to make him so. Vad­er is a com­pos­ite cre­ation of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent tal­ents. The qual­i­ty by which we most know (and fear) him – the boom­ing voice that com­mands and kills from afar — came, of course, from James Earl Jones. As one of the 20th century’s great­est actors, it’s fair to say that Jones not only pro­vid­ed Vader’s voice, but he also pro­vid­ed the vil­lains soul, inas­much as the Sith Lord had one left.

Although he redeemed him­self at the end of Return of the Jedi, Vader’s human­i­ty was an open ques­tion through­out most of the tril­o­gy. When he “nat­u­ral­ly … want­ed to make Darth Vad­er more inter­est­ing, more sub­tle, more psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed,” Jones says,” Lucas report­ed­ly replied, “No, no. What we’re find­ing out is you’ve got to keep his voice on a very nar­row band of inflec­tion because he ain’t human, real­ly.”

While he wor­ried about cast­ing the only Black actor in the first Star Wars film in the role of a dehu­man­ized vil­lain, Lucas ulti­mate­ly decid­ed that no one else, not even Orson Welles, could con­vey Vader’s seri­ous intent.

But first, actor David Prowse under­stand­ably thought he had the role when he put on the heavy black suit, hel­met, and cape. Best known for his role as the Green Cross Code Man, a well-loved pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment hero in the UK, the for­mer body­builder Prowse per­formed Vader’s lines from inside the cos­tume, his voice muf­fled, as you can hear in the clips above, by the mask. Dur­ing the film­ing of Star Wars: A New Hope, Prowse was told that Vader’s lines would be re-record­ed. He did not know that some­one else would play the role.

Jones him­self asked for no cred­it and did not receive any until Return of the Jedi. Paid $7,500, he thought of the 2 ½ hours spent in the record­ing booth for the first film as “just spe­cial effects.” (The real effects artist, sound design­er Ben Burtt, cre­at­ed Vader’s icon­ic mechan­i­cal breath­ing sound by sync­ing record­ings of his scu­ba gear to Jones’ breaths.) Jones once told Star Wars Insid­er that David Prowse “is Vad­er.” And while the six-foot-sev­en Prowse, who passed away last Novem­ber, might have been per­fect­ly cast as the impos­ing form, no one on set could hear him as Darth Vad­er.

“With a strong Devon­shire accent that earned him the nick­name ‘Darth Farmer’ from the crew,” Force Mate­r­i­al notes, “the real­i­ty is that Dave Prowse was nev­er going to be called upon to pro­vide the voice of Darth Vad­er.” We might digress on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of accents in the Star Wars uni­verse. Maybe Prowse wasn’t the right Eng­lish­man to play the part, but why didn’t Lucas cast anoth­er British actor, as he had for every oth­er major bad guy in the film, begin­ning a tra­di­tion that con­tin­ues in Star Wars movies and relat­ed media over forty years lat­er?

There’s hard­ly any ques­tion. No one can com­mand atten­tion with his voice like James Earl Jones. And per­haps no oth­er actor could give such endur­ing­ly human men­ace to a char­ac­ter described by its cre­ator as a walk­ing iron lung.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

The Orig­i­nal Star Wars Tril­o­gy Adapt­ed into a 14-Hour Radio Dra­ma by NPR (1981–1996)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

For quite a stretch, the late Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do was France’s biggest movie star. He also, in what now looks like the greater achieve­ment, stub­born­ly remained the most French of all movie stars. In France of the 1960s, an actor of Bel­mon­do’s gen­er­a­tion and lev­el of suc­cess would have been expect­ed to try mak­ing a go of it in Hol­ly­wood. And as he him­self admit­ted at the time, “every French­man dreams of mak­ing a West­ern.” But “Amer­i­ca has plen­ty of good actors. I’m not being false­ly mod­est, but why would they need me? I pre­fer a nation­al film to an inter­na­tion­al film.” When a cin­e­ma detach­es from its coun­try, “some­thing is lost. Look at what hap­pened to Italy when they went inter­na­tion­al.”

Though he nev­er did time as Hol­ly­wood’s token French­man, Bel­mon­do did appear in a few Ital­ian pic­tures (includ­ing the work of such mas­ters as Vit­to­rio De Sica and Mau­ro Bologni­ni) ear­ly in the 1960s, right after he shot to star­dom. His launch vehi­cle was, of course, Jean-Luc Godard­’s Breath­less, a har­bin­ger of La Nou­velle Vague and its exhil­a­rat­ing­ly delib­er­ate break­age of cin­e­ma’s rules.

Bel­mon­do would go on to make two more fea­tures with Godard: A Woman Is a Woman and Pier­rot le Fou, in both of which he starred along­side Anna Kari­na (anoth­er of the French New Wave icons we’ve lost in this decade). Oth­er auteurs also came call­ing: François Truf­faut, Alain Resnais, Jean-Pierre Melville.

Melville sits along­side Bel­mon­do in the 1962 inter­view clip above to dis­cuss their col­lab­o­ra­tion Le Dou­los, “a good old gang­ster film.” But Bel­mon­do’s pro­tag­o­nist, the tit­u­lar police informer, is hard­ly a con­ven­tion­al gang­ster. “He’s an ele­gant guy,” says the actor. “He’s ele­gant in every­thing he does, in his ges­tures and actions, despite appear­ances to the con­trary.” The same could be said of many of the char­ac­ters Bel­mon­do played through­out his career, even dur­ing his time as a Burt Reynolds-style action hero in the 1970s and 80s (dur­ing which, it must be not­ed, he did all his own stunts). We’re unlike­ly to see his like of nation­al super­star again — and cer­tain not to see anoth­er with such savoir-faire.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

How Anna Kari­na (RIP) Became the Mes­mer­iz­ing Face of the French New Wave

How Michel Legrand (RIP) Gave the French New Wave a Sound: Revis­it the Influ­en­tial Music He Com­posed for Jean-Luc Godard & Jacques Demy’s Films

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.