Watch Jeff Beck Smash His Guitar While Jimmy Page & the Yardbirds Jam By His Side: A Classic Scene from Antonioni’s Blowup (1966)

in Film, Music | November 27th, 2018

Art film and rock and roll have, since the 60s, been soul­mates of a kind, with many an acclaimed direc­tor turn­ing to musi­cians as actors, com­mis­sion­ing rock stars as sound­track artists, and film­ing scenes with bands. Before Nico­las Roeg, Jim Jar­musch, David Lynch, Mar­tin Scors­ese and oth­er rock-lov­ing auteurs did all of the above, there was Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni, who bar­reled into the Eng­lish-lan­guage mar­ket, under con­tract with Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, with a tril­o­gy of films steeped in the sights and sounds of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture.

Blowup, the first and by far the best of these, though scored by jazz pianist Her­bie Han­cock, promi­nent­ly fea­tured the Yardbirds—with both Jim­my Page and Jeff Beck. In the mem­o­rable scene above, Beck smash­es his gui­tar to bits after his amp goes on the fritz. The Ital­ian direc­tor “envi­sioned a scene sim­i­lar to that of Pete Townshend’s famous rit­u­al of smash­ing his gui­tar on stage,” notes Gui­tar­world’s Jonathan Gra­ham. “Anto­nioni had even asked The Who to appear in the film,” but they refused.

In stepped the Yard­birds, dur­ing a piv­otal moment in their career. The year before, they released mega-hit “For Your Love,” and said good­bye to lead gui­tarist Eric Clap­ton. Beck, his replace­ment, her­ald­ed a much wilder, more exper­i­men­tal phase for the band. Jeff Beck, it seemed, could play any­thing, but what he didn’t do much of onstage is emote. Next to the gui­tar-smash­ing Town­shend or the fire-set­ting Hen­drix (see both below), he was a pret­ty reserved per­former, though no less thrilling to watch for his vir­tu­os­i­ty and style.

But as he tells it, Anto­nioni wouldn’t let the band do their “most excit­ing thing,” a cov­er of “Smoke­stack Light­ning” that “had this incred­i­ble buildup in the mid­dle which was just pow!” That moment would have been the nat­ur­al pre­text for a good gui­tar smash­ing.

Instead, the set piece with the bro­ken amp gives the intro­vert­ed Beck a rea­son to get agi­tat­ed. As Gra­ham describes it, he also played a gui­tar spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a prop:

Due to issues over pub­lish­ing, the Yard­birds clas­sic “Train Kept A‑Rollin’,” was reworked as “Stroll On” for the per­for­mance, and as the scene involved the destruc­tion of an instru­ment, Beck’s usu­al choice of his icon­ic Esquire or Les Paul was swapped for a cheap, hol­low-body stand-in that he was direct­ed to smash at the song’s con­clu­sion.

The scene is more a tantrum than the orgias­tic onstage freak-out Town­shend would prob­a­bly have deliv­ered. Its chief virtue for Yard­bird’s fans lies not in the fun­ny, out-of-char­ac­ter moment (which SF Gate film crit­ic Mick LaSalle calls “one of the weird­est scenes in the movie”). Rather, it was “the chance,” as one fan tells LaSalle, “in the days before MTV and YouTube, to see the Yard­birds, with Jeff Beck and Jim­my Page.” Anto­nioni had seized the moment. In addi­tion to fir­ing “the open­ing sal­vo of the emerg­ing ‘film gen­er­a­tion,’” as Roger Ebert wrote, he gave con­tem­po­rary fans a rea­son (in addi­tion to explic­it sex and nudi­ty), to go see Blowup again and again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

13-Year-Old Jim­my Page Plays Gui­tar on TV in 1957, an Ear­ly Moment in His Spec­tac­u­lar Career

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

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

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How Nicolas Roeg (RIP) Used David Bowie, Mick Jagger & Art Garfunkel in His Mind-Bending Films

in Film, Music | November 27th, 2018

Crit­ics have applaud­ed Bradley Coop­er for the bold move of cast­ing Lady Gaga in his new remake of A Star Is Born, and as its tit­u­lar star at that. As much cin­e­mat­ic dar­ing as it takes to cast a high-pro­file musi­cian in their first star­ring role in the movies, the act has its prece­dents, thanks not least to film­mak­er Nico­las Roeg, who died last week. Hav­ing start­ed out at the bot­tom of the British film indus­try, serv­ing tea at Lon­don’s Maryle­bone Stu­dios the year after World War II end­ed, he became a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er (not least on David Lean’s Lawrence of Ara­bia) and then a direc­tor in his own-right. That chap­ter of Roeg’s career began with 1970’s Per­for­mance, which he co-direct­ed with Don­ald Cam­mell and in which he cast no less a rock star than Mick Jag­ger in his act­ing debut.

You can see Jag­ger in action in Per­for­mance’s trail­er, which describes the pic­ture as “a film about mad­ness… mad­ness and san­i­ty. A film about fan­ta­sy. This is a film about fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty… and sen­su­al­i­ty. A film about death… and life. This is a film about vice… and ver­sa.”

Those words reflect some­thing real about not just Per­for­mance itself — which crash­es the end of the swing­ing 1960s into grim gang­ster­ism in a man­ner that draws equal­ly from Borges and Bergman — but Roeg’s entire body of work, and also the strug­gle that mar­keters went through to sell it to the pub­lic. But you don’t so much buy a tick­et to see a Nico­las Roeg film as you buy a tick­et to expe­ri­ence it, not least because of the par­tic­u­lar per­for­ma­tive qual­i­ties brought to the table by the music stars Roeg put onscreen.

In 1976 Roeg cast David Bowie as a space alien named Thomas Jerome New­ton in the “shock­ing, mind-stretch­ing expe­ri­ence in sight, in space, in sex” of The Man Who Fell to Earth, arguably the role he was born to play. “I thought of David Bowie when I first was try­ing to fig­ure out who would be Mr. New­ton, some­one who was inside soci­ety and yet awk­ward in it,” Roeg says in the doc­u­men­tary clip above. “David got more than into the char­ac­ter of Mr. New­ton. I think he put much more of him­self than we’d been able to get into the script. It was linked very much to his ideas in his music, and towards the end, I real­ized a big change had hap­pened in his life.” How much Bowie took from the role remains a mat­ter for fans to dis­cuss, though he him­self admits to tak­ing one thing in par­tic­u­lar: the wardrobe. “I lit­er­al­ly walked off with the clothes,” he says, “and I used the same clothes on the Sta­tion to Sta­tion tour.”

Even if step­ping between the con­cert stage and the cin­e­ma screen looks nat­ur­al in ret­ro­spect for the likes of Jag­ger and Bowie, can it work for a low­er-key but nev­er­the­less world-famous per­former? Roeg’s 1980 film Bad Tim­ing cast, in the star­ring role of an Amer­i­can psy­chi­a­trist in Cold War Vien­na who grows obsessed with a young Amer­i­can woman, Art Gar­funkel of Simon and Gar­funkel. (Play­ing the woman, inci­den­tal­ly, is There­sa Rus­sell, who would lat­er show up in Roeg’s Insignif­i­cance in the role of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.) The clip above shows a bit of how Roeg uses the per­sona of Gar­funkel, sure­ly one of the least Dionysian among all 1960s musi­cal icons, to infuse the char­ac­ter with a cere­bral chill. In Roeg’s New York Times obit­u­ary, Gar­funkel remem­bers — fond­ly — that the direc­tor “brought me to the edge of mad­ness.” Roeg, for his part, had already paid his musi­cian stars their com­pli­ments in that paper decades ear­li­er: “The fact is that Jag­ger, Bowie and Gar­funkel are all extreme­ly bright, intel­li­gent and well edu­cat­ed. A long way from the pub­lic stereo­type.” But will any direc­tor use per­form­ers like them in quite the same way again?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

Watch David Bowie Star in His First Film Role, a Short Hor­ror Flick Called The Image (1967)

When David Bowie Became Niko­la Tes­la: Watch His Elec­tric Per­for­mance in The Pres­tige (2006)

Mick Jag­ger Acts in The Nightin­gale, a Tele­vised Play from 1983

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

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Watch “The Midnight Parasites,” a Surreal Japanese Animation Set in the World of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1972)

in Animation, Art, Film | November 20th, 2018

Hierony­mus Bosch’s bizarre paint­ings might have looked per­fect­ly ordi­nary to his con­tem­po­raries, argues Stan­ley Meisler in “The World of Bosch.” Mod­ern view­ers may find this very hard to believe. We approach Bosch through lay­ers of Freudi­an inter­pre­ta­tion and Sur­re­al­ist appre­ci­a­tion. We can­not help “regard­ing the scores of bizarre monsters”—allegories for sins and pun­ish­ments far more leg­i­ble in 15th-cen­tu­ry Netherlands—“as a kind of dark and cru­el com­ic relief.”

While Bosch might have intend­ed his work as seri­ous ser­mo­niz­ing, it is impos­si­ble for us to inhab­it the medieval con­scious­ness of his time and place. There’s just no get­ting around the fact that Bosch is real­ly weird—weird­er even (or more imag­i­na­tive­ly alle­gor­i­cal) than near­ly any oth­er artist of his time. In some very impor­tant ways, he belongs to a 20th-cen­tu­ry aes­thet­ic of post-Freudi­an dream log­ic as much as he belonged to pecu­liar medieval visions of heav­en and hell.

Bosch “described ter­ri­ble, unbear­able holo­causts crush­ing mankind for its sins,” writes Meisler, visions that seemed both stranger and more famil­iar in the wake of so many man-made holo­causts whose absur­di­ties defy rea­son. What mod­ern hor­rors does famed Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Yōji Kuri invoke in his psy­che­del­ic 1972 film “The Mid­night Par­a­sites,” above, a sur­re­al­ist short set in the world of Bosch?

Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher describes the plot, such as it is:

Here Kuri imag­ines what would life might be like if we all lived in Bosch’s paint­ing “Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.” It’s a basi­cal­ly shit and death or rather a cycle of life where blue fig­ures live and die; eat shit and shit gold; are skew­ered, and devoured; are regur­gi­tat­ed and reborn to car­ry on the cycle once again.

Kuri’s satir­i­cal vision, in films long favored by counter-cul­tur­al audi­ences, has “bite,” writes Ani­ma­tion World Network’s Chris Robin­son: “he helped lift Japan­ese ani­ma­tion out of decades of cozy nar­ra­tive car­toons into a new era of graph­ic and con­cep­tu­al exper­i­men­ta­tion. His films mock and shock, attack­ing tech­nol­o­gy, pop­u­la­tion expan­sion, monot­o­ny of mod­ern soci­ety… Wit­ness­ing the sur­ren­der of Japan dur­ing WW2, the dev­as­ta­tion of his coun­try fol­lowed by the quick rise of West­ern inspired mate­ri­al­ist cul­ture and ram­pant con­sump­tion, Kuri, like many of his col­leagues at the time, ques­tioned the state and direc­tion of his soci­ety and world.”

His cre­ative appro­pri­a­tion of Bosch, “dark, dirty, odd­ly beau­ti­ful, with a groovy sound­track,” Gal­lagher writes, may not, as Meisler wor­ries of many mod­ern takes, get Bosch wrong at all. Though the Dutch artist’s sym­bol­ism may nev­er be comprehensible—or any­thing less than hallucinatory—to us mod­erns, Kuri’s half-play­ful reimag­in­ing uses Boschi­an fig­ures for some seri­ous mor­al­iz­ing, show­ing us a hell world gov­erned by grave laps­es and cru­el­ties Bosch could nev­er have imag­ined.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fig­ures from Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

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

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Watch the First Film Adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1910): It’s Newly Restored by the Library of Congress

in Film | November 19th, 2018

In his Cri­tique of Judg­ment Immanuel Kant made every attempt to sep­a­rate the Sublime—the phe­nom­e­non that inspires rev­er­ence, awe, and imagination—from ter­ror, hor­ror, and mon­stros­i­ty. But as Bar­bara Free­man argues, the dis­tinc­tions fall apart. Nowhere do we see this bet­ter dra­ma­tized, Free­man writes, than in Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, which “can be read almost as a par­o­dy of the Cri­tique of Judg­ment, for in it every­thing Kant iden­ti­fies with or as sub­lime… yield pre­cise­ly what Kant pro­hibits: ter­ror, mon­stros­i­ty, pas­sion, and fanati­cism.”

Rea­son, even that as care­ful as Kan­t’s, begets mon­sters, Shel­ley sug­gests. It’s a theme that has become so com­mon­place in writ­ing about Franken­stein and its numer­ous prog­e­ny that it seems hard­ly worth repeat­ing. And yet, Shelley’s dark vision, like that of her con­tem­po­rary Fran­cis­co Goya, came at a time when elec­tric­i­ty was a new force in the world (one that her hus­band Per­cy used to con­duct exper­i­ments on him­self)… a time when Kant’s phi­los­o­phy had seem­ing­ly val­i­dat­ed empir­i­cal real­ism and the pri­ma­cy of abstract rea­son.

Steeped in the lat­est sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, and liv­ing on the oth­er side of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, Shel­ley saw the return of what Kant had sought to ban­ish. The mon­ster arrives as an omi­nous por­tent of atroc­i­ty. As Steven J. Kraftchick points out in a recent anthol­o­gy of Franken­stein essays pub­lished for the novel’s 200th anniver­sary, “the Eng­lish term ‘mon­ster’ (by way of French) like­ly derives from the Latin words mon­trare ‘to demon­strate’ and mon­ere ‘to warn.’” The mon­ster comes to show “the lim­its of the ordi­nary… expand­ing or con­tract­ing.”

As a being intend­ed to show us some­thing, it seems apt that Vic­tor Frankenstein’s cre­ation became ubiq­ui­tous in film and tele­vi­sion, first arriv­ing on screen in 1910 at the dawn­ing of film as a pop­u­lar medi­um. The first Franken­stein adap­ta­tion pre­dates the tech­no­log­i­cal hor­rors of the 20th cen­tu­ry (them­selves, of course, well doc­u­ment­ed on film). Rather than tak­ing tech­nol­o­gy to task direct­ly, this orig­i­nal cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion, direct­ed by J. Sear­le Daw­ley for Thomas Edison’s stu­dios, vague­ly illus­trates, as Rich Drees writes, “the dan­gers of tam­per­ing in God’s realm.”

It was a trite mes­sage tai­lored for cen­so­ri­ous moral reform­ers who had tak­en aim at the mov­ing image’s sup­pos­ed­ly cor­rupt­ing effect on impres­sion­able minds. And yet the film does more than inau­gu­rate a cin­e­mat­ic tra­di­tion of bet­ter Franken­stein adap­ta­tions, both faith­ful and lib­er­al­ly mod­ern­ized. The cre­ation of the mon­ster in the 13-minute short is some­what terrifying—and cer­tain­ly would have unset­tled audi­ences at the time. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, it takes place in giant black box, with a small win­dow through which Vic­tor peers as the spe­cial effects unfold.

The scene is not unlike a film direc­tor look­ing through a colos­sal camera’s lens, fur­ther sug­gest­ing the dan­ger­ous influ­ence of film, its abil­i­ty to pro­duce and cap­ture mon­strosi­ties. The Library of Congress’s Mike Mashon describes the Edi­son pro­duc­tion of Franken­stein as not “all that rev­e­la­to­ry.” Maybe with the ben­e­fit of 108 years of hind­sight, it is not. But as a cri­tique of the very tech­nol­o­gy that pro­duced it, we can see it updat­ing Shelley’s anx­i­eties, antic­i­pat­ing the ways in which Franken­stein-like sto­ries have come to tele­graph fears of com­put­er intel­li­gence, in films increas­ing­ly cre­at­ed by intel­li­gent machines.

This 1910 Franken­stein film has been restored by the Library of Con­gress, and Mashon’s sto­ry of how the only nitrate print was acquired by the library’s Packard Cam­pus for Audio Visu­al Con­ser­va­tion may be, he writes, “more inter­est­ing than the film itself.” Or it may not, depend­ing on your lev­el of inter­est in the twists and turns of library acqui­si­tions. But the film, which you can see in its restored glo­ry at the top, rewards view­ing as more than a cin­e­ma-his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. Its effects are crude, its sim­pli­fied sto­ry moral­is­tic, but this trun­cat­ed ver­sion can­ni­ly rec­og­nizes the hor­rif­ic crea­ture not as the exclud­ed oth­er but as the mon­strous mir­ror image of its cre­ator.

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Film Adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, a Thomas Edi­son Pro­duc­tion (1910)

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts of Franken­stein Now Online for the First Time

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Manor of the Dev­il (1896)

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

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Criterion Announces New Streaming Service To Replace FilmStruck: Become a Charter Subscriber Today

in Film | November 16th, 2018

Late last month, Turn­er and Warn­er Bros. Dig­i­tal Net­works announced–much to the cha­grin of cinephiles–that it planned to close Film­struck, a stream­ing ser­vice that spe­cial­ized in art­house and clas­sic films. Fans and celebrities–from Christo­pher Nolan to Guiller­mo del Toro–quickly got behind a peti­tion to save the stream­ing ser­vice. And today their wish came true, more or less.

The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion and Warn­er­Me­dia just issued a press release, declar­ing that “the Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel will launch as a free-stand­ing stream­ing ser­vice” in the spring of 2019. This will effec­tive­ly allow the Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel to “pick up where Film­Struck left off, with the­mat­ic pro­gram­ming, reg­u­lar film­mak­er spot­lights, and actor ret­ro­spec­tives, fea­tur­ing major clas­sics and hard-to-find dis­cov­er­ies from Hol­ly­wood and around the world, com­plete with spe­cial fea­tures like com­men­taries, behind-the-scenes footage and orig­i­nal doc­u­men­taries.”

WERNER HERZOG TEACHES FILMMAKING. LEARN MORE.

If you want to demon­strate your appre­ci­a­tion and sup­port, you can become a Char­ter Sub­scriber and gain the fol­low­ing ben­e­fits:

  • A 30-day free tri­al.
  • A reduced sub­scrip­tion fee for as long as you keep your sub­scrip­tion active. The reg­u­lar fee will be $10.99 a month or $100 a year, but as a Char­ter Sub­scriber you’ll pay $9.99 a month or $89.99 a year.
  • Concierge cus­tomer ser­vice from the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, includ­ing a cus­tomer ID and a spe­cial e‑mail address.
  • A hol­i­day gift-cer­tifi­cate present, for use on the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion web­site.
  • A Char­ter Sub­scriber mem­ber­ship card.
  • The sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing you’re keep­ing the best of film alive and avail­able.

Hope this helps you have a great week­end.

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:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Names His 21 Favorite Art Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

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David Lynch Releases a Disturbing, New Short Film: Watch “Ant Head” Online

in Film | November 15th, 2018

David Lynch has just released a new short film, and it’s not very long on plot. Pre­miered at the Fes­ti­val of Dis­rup­tion ear­li­er this year, “Ant Head” runs 13 min­utes and features–writes IndieWire–“one shot that depicts a block of cheese in the shape of a head being over­tak­en by an army of crawl­ing ants.” And it’s all set to music by Thought Gang, Lynch’s exper­i­men­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er Ange­lo Badala­men­ti. You can pick up a copy of their brand new album, epony­mous­ly called Thought Gang, here.

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:

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called “Rab­bits”: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

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The Top 100 Foreign-Language Films of All-Time, According to 209 Critics from 43 Countries

in Film | November 6th, 2018

What qual­i­fies as a “for­eign-lan­guage film” is in the ear of the behold­er, even if the glob­al dom­i­nance of Hol­ly­wood effec­tive­ly makes the cat­e­go­ry refer to any film in a lan­guage oth­er than Eng­lish. The sheer cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic diver­si­ty in world cin­e­ma can seem to ren­der the term too all-encom­pass­ing to be of much crit­i­cal use. From the point of view of cinema’s purest, ear­li­est aspirations—to be an inter­na­tion­al visu­al lan­guage that tran­scends lin­guis­tic barriers—emphasizing spo­ken lan­guage dif­fer­ences can seem to miss the point of filmic art.

On the oth­er hand, these days mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar pop­corn block­busters are cre­at­ed with inter­na­tion­al audi­ences fore­most in mind. But that impulse, too—purely, venal­ly, commercial—doesn’t begin to get at what makes film both a cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic and a uni­ver­sal medi­um.

We go to the movies to be enter­tained, but also to be shocked, sur­prised, intrigued, to be let in on the lives of peo­ple we might nev­er meet. Inter­na­tion­al film, even in its most exper­i­men­tal devi­a­tions, respects the uni­ver­sal con­ven­tions that give audi­ences entry to those lives, no mat­ter what lan­guage they hear.

It is no emp­ty say­ing that “the lan­guage of film is uni­ver­sal,” as the BBC writes in the intro­duc­tion to its list of “The 100 Great­est For­eign-Lan­guage Films.” Nor is it con­tra­dic­to­ry to also point out that “the cin­e­ma of an indi­vid­ual nation is inevitably tied to its unique iden­ti­ty and his­to­ry.” The lat­ter qual­i­ty is what makes non-West­ern film chal­leng­ing, even for­bid­ding, for view­ers with more insu­lar per­spec­tives. The for­mer is what makes world cin­e­ma acces­si­ble to them nonethe­less.

If you’ve some­how avoid­ed see­ing some of the world’s great­est “for­eign-lan­guage films”—for rea­sons of sub­ti­tle-aver­sion or oth­er­wise, it’s nev­er too late to over­come your resis­tance and dis­cov­er how the cul­tur­al rich­ness of world cin­e­ma still speaks an inter­na­tion­al lan­guage. And you can hard­ly go wrong with the BBC list as a guide. Com­piled by 209 crit­ics from 43 dif­fer­ent coun­tries who speak a total of 41 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, the list seems about as inclu­sive as it gets, with some qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

“French can claim to be the inter­na­tion­al lan­guage of acclaimed cin­e­ma,” with 27 of the high­est-rat­ed films in that lan­guage, “fol­lowed by 12 in Man­darin, and 11 each in Ital­ian and Japan­ese.” A full quar­ter of the list of films come from East Asia—Japan, Chi­na, Tai­wan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. “If there’s any­thing dis­ap­point­ing about the final list,” the BBC notes, “it’s the pauci­ty of films direct­ed or co-direct­ed by women,” just four out of 100. But female crit­ics made up 45 per­cent of the respon­dents.

Just below see the first ten films on the list. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa makes the top ten twice, with Sev­en Samu­rai at num­ber one and Rashomon com­ing in at num­ber four. Kuro­sawa “was loved by crit­ics every­where,” except, per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly, in Japan, where the six crit­ics who vot­ed “didn’t go for a sin­gle Kuro­sawa film between them,” a reminder that film may be uni­ver­sal but crit­i­cism is not. Or as the great John Car­pen­ter once put it, “In France, I’m an auteur. In Eng­land, I’m a hor­ror movie direc­tor. In Ger­many, I’m a film­mak­er. In the U.S., I’m a bum.”

You can dive into the full list of top 100 “for­eign-lan­guage” films at the BBC here.

  1. Sev­en Samu­rai (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1954)
  2. Bicy­cle Thieves (Vit­to­rio de Sica, 1948)
  3. Tokyo Sto­ry (Yasu­jirô Ozu, 1953)
  4. Rashomon (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1950)
  5. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
  6. Per­sona (Ing­mar Bergman, 1966)
  7. 8 1/2 (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1963)
  8. The 400 Blows (François Truf­faut, 1959)
  9. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
  10. La Dolce Vita (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1960)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

The Top 100 Amer­i­can Films of All Time, Accord­ing to 62 Inter­na­tion­al Film Crit­ics

The Best 100 Movies of the 21st Cen­tu­ry (So Far) Named by 177 Film Crit­ics

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

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The Exhilarating Filmmaking of Robert Bresson Explored in Eight Video Essays

in Film | November 6th, 2018

“Who’s afraid of Robert Bres­son?” New York­er film crit­ic Antho­ny Lane once asked. “Me, for a start.” But he did­n’t mean that he dread­ed screen­ings of Au hasard Balt­haz­ar, Diary of a Coun­try Priest, A Man Escaped, The Dev­il, Prob­a­bly, or any oth­er acclaimed work in the auteur’s fil­mog­ra­phy. “It’s not that I don’t look for­ward to a Bres­son pic­ture,” Lane clar­i­fied. “It’s just that as I shuf­fle into the the­atre I feel like a pupil approach­ing the prin­ci­pal’s door, won­der­ing what crimes I may have com­mit­ted and how I must answer for them.”

Even now, 35 years after his final pic­ture, Bres­son intim­i­dates with his rig­or — rig­or of the moral vari­ety, cer­tain­ly, but even more so of the aes­thet­ic vari­ety — often described (not least by the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky) in the terms of asceti­cism. Nev­er­the­less, Indiewire offers a brief and friend­ly intro­duc­tion to his cin­e­ma in the three-minute video essay at the top of the post.

Just above, in “Robert Bres­son: The Essence of Cin­e­ma,” A‑Bit­ter­Sweet-Life gets deep­er into the Bres­son­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty by show­ing clips of his films along­side clips of him work­ing and speak­ing, all nar­rat­ed with his own words.

“I always like to see and hear the film before I shoot it, to come up with things by work­ing on my own, things from my mem­o­ry or imag­i­na­tion, even if I don’t end up film­ing them,” Bres­son says in one piece of inter­view footage. “These are often things I can’t come up with on the set, so I believe it’s impor­tant to cre­ate a sol­id ground­work, a set of con­straints with­in which the film will take shape. Because I’m aware of these con­straints, I can ask my actors, non­pro­fes­sion­al actors, to sur­prise me. Unlim­it­ed sur­pris­es but with­in a lim­it­ed con­text.”

Those worlds will sound famil­iar to any­one who has read Notes sur le ciné­matographe (var­i­ous­ly trans­lat­ed as Notes on Cin­e­matog­ra­phy or Notes on the Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er), Bres­son’s col­lec­tion of max­ims lay­ing out his view of his art. If obser­va­tions like “To set up a film is to bind per­sons to each oth­er and to objects by looks,” “Emp­ty the pond to get the fish,” and “Be sure of hav­ing used to the full all that is com­mu­ni­cat­ed by immo­bil­i­ty and silence” seem abstract on the page, Film­scalpel’s “Notes on Pick­pock­et” illus­trates their enor­mous rel­e­vance to the effec­tive­ness of Bres­son’s work by weav­ing them direct­ly into scenes of one of his best-known works.

Film schol­ar David Bor­d­well exam­ines the same movie, but takes a much less apho­ris­tic and much more tech­ni­cal tack, in “Con­struc­tive Edit­ing in Robert Bresson’s Pick­pock­et,” which con­tex­tu­al­izes Bres­son’s tech­nique of con­struc­tive edit­ing, or build­ing a space while show­ing only small pieces of it at a time, as opposed to “ana­lyt­i­cal edit­ing” that first estab­lish­es the entire space and then moves with­in it. Just above, crit­ic and well-known Bres­son enthu­si­ast James Quant breaks down the much lat­er L’Ar­gent — or at least its use of reflec­tions and rep­e­ti­tion, just the R in the longer “L’Ar­gent, A to Z” video essay Quandt cre­at­ed for the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion’s release of the film.

The video essay­ist Kog­o­na­da, now a respect­ed film­mak­er in his own right, has so far put out two trib­utes to Bres­son: “Hands of Bres­son” just above, which con­cen­trates on the direc­tor’s use of those body parts, and “Once There Was Every­thing,” about the great cin­e­mat­ic effect to which he put doors all through­out his career. “Why should­n’t I put ten times more doors in my films if I feel like it?” the essay quotes him as say­ing. But then, the true fan knows that Bres­son could hard­ly have coun­te­nanced using even one more door than absolute­ly nec­es­sary — or one more of any­thing else, for that mat­ter.

In Bres­son’s world, to put it in dras­ti­cal­ly reduced terms, less is more: Julian Palmer’s short video essay above even takes that phrase as its title. Bres­son’s work has many virtues, few as name­able as their sim­plic­i­ty, but for the man him­self it always had to be just the right kind of sim­plic­i­ty. In Notes sur le ciné­matographe he iden­ti­fies two types: “The bad: sim­plic­i­ty as start­ing-point, sought too soon. The good: sim­plic­i­ty as end-prod­uct, rec­om­pense for years of effort.” Or, as he he writes else­where, “It is with some­thing clean and pre­cise that you will force the atten­tion of inat­ten­tive eyes and ears.” A cin­e­ma that has for­got­ten these lessons of Bres­son’s — now there’s a tru­ly fright­en­ing propo­si­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Doors Open onto Philo­soph­i­cal Mys­ter­ies in Robert Bresson’s Films: A Short Video Essay by Kog­o­na­da

Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals His Favorite Film­mak­ers: Bres­son, Anto­nioni, Felli­ni, and Oth­ers

The Eyes of Hitch­cock: A Mes­mer­iz­ing Video Essay on the Expres­sive Pow­er of Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

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