In 1913, Ger­many, flush with a new nation’s patri­ot­ic zeal, looked like it might become the dom­i­nant nation of Europe and a real rival to that glob­al super­pow­er Great Britain. Then it hit the buz­z­saw of World War I. After the Ger­man gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in 1918 from the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al toll of a half-decade of sense­less car­nage, the Allies forced it to accept dra­con­ian terms for sur­ren­der. The entire Ger­man cul­ture was sent reel­ing, search­ing for answers to what hap­pened and why.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism came about to artic­u­late these lac­er­at­ing ques­tions roil­ing in the nation’s col­lec­tive uncon­scious. The first such film was The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (1920), about a malev­o­lent trav­el­ing magi­cian who has his ser­vant do his mur­der­ous bid­ding in the dark of the night. The sto­ry­line is all about the Freudi­an ter­ror of hid­den sub­con­scious dri­ves, but what real­ly makes the movie mem­o­rable is its com­plete­ly unhinged look. Marked by styl­ized act­ing, deep shad­ows paint­ed onto the walls, and sets filled with twist­ed archi­tec­tur­al impos­si­bil­i­ties — there might not be a sin­gle right angle in the film – Cali­gari’s look per­fect­ly mesh­es with the nar­ra­tor’s dement­ed state of mind.

Sub­se­quent Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies retreat­ed from the extreme aes­thet­ics of Cali­gari but were still filled with a mood of vio­lence, frus­tra­tion and unease. F. W. Mur­nau’s bril­liant­ly depress­ing The Last Laugh (1924) is about a proud door­man at a high-end hotel who is uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of his posi­tion and demot­ed to a low­ly bath­room atten­dant. When he hands over his uni­form, his pos­ture col­laps­es as if the jack­et were his exoskele­ton. You don’t need to be a semi­oti­cian to fig­ure out that the doorman’s loss of sta­tus par­al­lels Germany’s. Fritz Lang’s M (1931), a land­mark of ear­ly sound film, is the first ser­i­al killer movie ever made. But what starts out as a police pro­ce­dur­al turns into some­thing even more unset­tling when a gang of dis­tinct­ly Nazi-like crim­i­nals decide to mete out some jus­tice of their own.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism end­ed in 1933 when the Nazis came to pow­er. They weren’t inter­est­ed in ask­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions and viewed such dark tales of cin­e­mat­ic angst as unpa­tri­ot­ic. Instead, they pre­ferred bright, cheer­ful tales of Aryan youths climb­ing moun­tains. By that time, the movement’s most tal­ent­ed direc­tors — Fritz Lang and F.W. Mur­nau — had fled to Amer­i­ca. And it was in Amer­i­ca where Ger­man Expres­sion­ism found its biggest impact. Its stark light­ing, grotesque shad­ows and bleak world­view would go on to pro­found­ly influ­ence film noir in the late 1940s after anoth­er hor­rif­ic, dis­il­lu­sion­ing war. See our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films here.

You can watch 10 Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies – includ­ing Cali­gari, Last Laugh and M — for free below.

• Nos­fer­atu — Free — Ger­man Expres­sion­ist hor­ror film direct­ed by F. W. Mur­nau. An unau­tho­rized adap­ta­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. (1922)
• The Stu­dent of Prague — Free — A clas­sic of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film. Ger­man writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and Dan­ish direc­tor Stel­lan Rye bring to life a 19th-cen­tu­ry hor­ror sto­ry. Some call it the first indie film. (1913)
• Nerves — Free — Direct­ed by Robert Rein­ert, Nerves tells of “the polit­i­cal dis­putes of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­to­ry own­er Herr Roloff and Teacher John, who feels a com­pul­sive but secret love for Rolof­f’s sis­ter, a left-wing rad­i­cal.” (1919)
• The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari — Free — This silent film direct­ed by Robert Wiene is con­sid­ered one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist films and per­haps one of the great­est hor­ror movies of all time. (1920)
• Metrop­o­lis — Free — Fritz Lang’s fable of good and evil fight­ing it out in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia. An impor­tant clas­sic. (1927)
• The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — A fol­low-up to Paul Wegen­er’s ear­li­er film, “The Golem,” about a mon­strous crea­ture brought to life by a learned rab­bi to pro­tect the Jews from per­se­cu­tion in medieval Prague. Based on the clas­sic folk tale, and co-direct­ed by Carl Boese. (1920)
• The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — The same film as the one list­ed imme­di­ate­ly above, but this one has a score cre­at­ed by Pix­ies front­man Black Fran­cis. (2008)
• The Last Laugh - Free — F.W. Mur­nau’s clas­sic cham­ber dra­ma about a hotel door­man who falls on hard times. A mas­ter­piece of the silent era, the sto­ry is told almost entire­ly in pic­tures. (1924)
• Faust — Free - Ger­man expres­sion­ist film­mak­er F.W. Mur­nau directs a film ver­sion of Goethe’s clas­sic tale. This was Mur­nau’s last Ger­man movie. (1926)
• Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans — Free — Made by the Ger­man expres­sion­ist direc­tor F.W. Mur­nau. Vot­ed in 2012, the 5th great­est film of all time. (1927)
• M — Free — Clas­sic film direct­ed by Fritz Lang, with Peter Lorre. About the search for a child mur­der­er in Berlin. (1931)

For more clas­sic films, peruse our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2014.

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:

What Is Ger­man Expres­sion­ism? A Crash Course on the Cin­e­mat­ic Tra­di­tion That Gave Us Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Gave Rise to the “Dutch” Angle, the Cam­era Shot That Defined Clas­sic Films by Welles, Hitch­cock, Taran­ti­no & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

It’s Fri­day, which means that tonight, many of us will sit down to watch a movie with our fam­i­ly, our friends, our sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, or — for some cinephiles, best of all — by our­selves. If you haven’t yet lined up any home-cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence in par­tic­u­lar, con­sid­er tak­ing a look at this playlist of 31 fea­ture films just made avail­able to stream by Warn­er Bros. You’ll know the name of that august Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, of course, but did you know that it put out True Sto­ries, the musi­cal plunge into tabloid Amer­i­ca direct­ed by Talk­ing Heads’ David Byrne? Or Wait­ing for Guff­man, the first impro­vised movie by Christo­pher Guest and his troupe of crack comedic play­ers like Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Cather­ine O’Hara, and Park­er Posey?

That may already strike many Open Cul­ture read­ers as the mak­ings of a fine dou­ble fea­ture, though some may pre­fer to watch the ear­ly work of anoth­er kind of auteur: Michel Gondry’s The Sci­ence of Sleep, say, or Richard Lin­klater’s Sub­Ur­bia (a stage-play adap­ta­tion that could well be paired with Sid­ney Lumet’s Death­trap).

If you’re in more of a mood for crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed his­tor­i­cal dra­ma, you have your pick of The Wind and the Lion, Mutiny on the Boun­ty, The Year of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly, The Mis­sion, and Michael Collins. And if you’d been mean­ing to get around to such nine­teen-eight­ies lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions as The Bon­fire of the Van­i­ties or The Acci­den­tal Tourist, well, your chance has final­ly come.

“It’s a fair­ly wild selec­tion,” The Verge’s Jess Weath­erbed writes of this playlist, point­ing out its “dread­ful flops like 2000’s Dun­geons & Drag­ons movie, Bob­cat Goldthwait’s Hot to Trot (1988), and Eddie Murphy’s The Adven­tures of Plu­to Nash (2002).”

But if you’re just look­ing to have some fun, there’s no rea­son you could­n’t fire up the likes of Mr. Nice Guy, Jack­ie Chan’s first Eng­lish-lan­guage pic­ture. Should that prove too refined, Warn­er Bros. has also gen­er­ous­ly made avail­able Amer­i­can Nin­ja V — a non-canon­i­cal entry in that series, we should note, star­ring not orig­i­nal Amer­i­can Nin­ja Michael Dudikoff, but direct-to-video mar­tial-arts icon David Bradley. On Fri­day night, after all, any view­ing goes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Kino Lor­ber Lets You Stream 146 Films on YouTube: Til­da Swin­ton, Samuel L. Jack­son, Steve Busce­mi, Buster Keaton & More

365 Free Movies Stream­ing on YouTube

Watch 99 Movies Free Online Cour­tesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al & More

How to Watch Hun­dreds of Free Movies on YouTube

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

Char­lie Chap­lin start­ed appear­ing in his first films in 1914—40 films, to be precise—and, by 1915, the Unit­ed States had a major case of “Chap­lini­tis.” Chap­lin mus­tach­es were sud­den­ly pop­ping up every­where–as were Chap­lin imi­ta­tors and Chap­lin look-alike con­tests. A young Bob Hope appar­ent­ly won one such con­test in Cleve­land. Chap­lin Fever con­tin­ued burn­ing hot through 1921, the year when the Chap­lin look-alike con­test, shown above, was held out­side the Lib­er­ty The­atre in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton.

Accord­ing to leg­end, some­where between 1915 and 1921, Chap­lin decid­ed to enter a Chap­lin look-alike con­test, and lost, bad­ly.

A short arti­cle called “How Char­lie Chap­lin Failed,” appear­ing in The Straits Times of Sin­ga­pore in August of 1920, read like this:

Lord Des­bor­ough, pre­sid­ing at a din­ner of the Anglo-Sax­on club told a sto­ry which will have an endur­ing life. It comes from Miss Mary Pick­ford who told it to Lady Des­bor­ough, “Char­lie Chap­lin was one day at a fair in the Unit­ed States, where a prin­ci­pal attrac­tion was a com­pe­ti­tion as to who could best imi­tate the Char­lie Chap­lin walk. The real Char­lie Chap­lin thought there might be a chance for him so he entered for the per­for­mance, minus his cel­e­brat­ed mous­tache and his boots. He was a fright­ful fail­ure and came in twen­ti­eth.

A vari­a­tion on the same sto­ry appeared in a New Zealand news­pa­per, the Pover­ty Bay Her­ald, again in 1920. As did anoth­er sto­ry in the Aus­tralian news­pa­per, the Albany Adver­tis­er, in March, 1921.

A com­pe­ti­tion in Char­lie Chap­lin imper­son­ations was held in Cal­i­for­nia recent­ly. There was some­thing like 40 com­peti­tors, and Char­lie Chap­lin, as a joke, entered the con­test under an assumed name. He imper­son­at­ed his well known film self. But he did not win; he was 27th in the com­pe­ti­tion.

Did Chap­lin come in 20th place? 27th place? Did he enter a con­test at all? It’s fun to imag­ine that he did. But, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, many con­sid­er the sto­ry the stuff of urban leg­end. When one researcher asked the Asso­ci­a­tion Chap­lin to weigh in, they appar­ent­ly had this to say: “This anec­dote told by Lord Des­bor­ough, who­ev­er he may have been, was quite wide­ly report­ed in the British press at the time. There are no oth­er ref­er­ences to such a com­pe­ti­tion in any oth­er press clip­ping albums that I have seen so I can only assume that this is the source of that rumour, urban myth, what­ev­er it is. How­ev­er, it may be true.”

I’d like to believe it is.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in ear­ly 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6o+ Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

What Would the World of Char­lie Chap­lin Look Like in Col­or?: Watch a Col­or­ful­ly Restored Ver­sion of A Night at the Show (1915)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

Char­lie Chap­lin Gets Strapped into a Dystopi­an “Rube Gold­berg Machine,” a Fright­ful Com­men­tary on Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Char­lie Chap­lin Films a Scene Inside a Lion’s Cage in 200 Takes

Whether or not we believe in auteur­hood, we each have our own men­tal image of what a film direc­tor does. But if we’ve nev­er actu­al­ly seen one at work, we’re liable not to under­stand what the actu­al expe­ri­ence of direct­ing feels like: mak­ing deci­sion after deci­sion after deci­sion, dur­ing the shoot and at all oth­er times besides. (Wes Ander­son made light of that gaunt­let in an Amer­i­can Express com­mer­cial years ago.) Not all of these deci­sions are eas­i­ly made, and it can actu­al­ly be the sim­plest-sound­ing ones that cause the worst headaches. Where, for exam­ple, do you put the cam­era?

That’s the sub­ject of the new video essay above from Tay­lor Ramos and Tony Zhou’s YouTube chan­nel Every Frame a Paint­ing, which con­sid­ers how the deci­sion of cam­era place­ment has been approached by such famous direc­tors like Steven Soder­bergh, Gre­ta Ger­wig, Guiller­mo del Toro, and Mar­tin Scors­ese, as well as mas­ter cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins.

Tech­nol­o­gy may have mul­ti­plied the choic­es avail­able for any giv­en shot, but that cer­tain­ly has­n’t made the task any eas­i­er. Some film­mak­ers find their way by ask­ing one espe­cial­ly clar­i­fy­ing ques­tion: what is this scene about? The answer can sug­gest what the cam­era should be look­ing at, and even how it should be look­ing at it.

Hav­ing become film­mak­ers them­selves dur­ing Every Frame a Paint­ing’s hia­tus, Ramos and Zhou now under­stand all this as more than an intel­lec­tu­al inquiry. “Some­times, the thing in our way is equip­ment,” says Zhou. “Some­times it’s the weath­er. Some­times it’s a lack of resources. And some­times, the thing in our way is us.” Any direc­tor would do well to bear in mind the brac­ing advice once giv­en by John Ford to a young Steven Spiel­berg, as dra­ma­tized (with a tru­ly aston­ish­ing cast­ing choice) in the lat­ter’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal pic­ture The Fabel­mans: “When the hori­zon’s at the bot­tom, it’s inter­est­ing. When the hori­zon’s at the top, it’s inter­est­ing.” As for what it is when the hori­zon is in the mid­dle, well, you’ll have to watch the movie.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass

The Cin­e­matog­ra­phy That Changed Cin­e­ma: Explor­ing Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Stan­ley Kubrick, Peter Green­away & Oth­er Auteurs

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Gave Rise to the “Dutch” Angle, the Cam­era Shot That Defined Clas­sic Films by Welles, Hitch­cock, Taran­ti­no & More

Every Acad­e­my Award Win­ner for Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy in One Super­cut: From 1927’s Sun­rise to 2016’s La La Land

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Every Frame a Paint­ing Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sus­tained Two-Shot Van­ished from Movies

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