The Power of Silent Movies, with The Artist Director Michel Hazanavicius

in Film | February 29th, 2012

When The Artist won the top Oscar on Sun­day night, crit­ic Roger Ebert com­pared it to an episode of The Twi­light Zone. “The Acad­e­my Award for best pic­ture went to a silent film in black and white,” he wrote. “Its vic­to­ry will send Hol­ly­wood back to its think tanks.”

In this short film by Joe LaMat­ti­na of Last Call With Car­son Daly, the writer and direc­tor of The Artist, Michel Haz­anavi­cius, talks about the chal­lenge of hold­ing an audi­ence’s atten­tion with­out dia­logue, and the mag­ic that hap­pens when it’s done right. “There’s a very inter­est­ing process with silent movies,” Haz­anavi­cius says. “The black and white and the lack of sound cre­ates a mys­tery.”

The Artist has taught audi­ences in the 21st cen­tu­ry that silent films can be a delight. If you would like to explore some of the great films from the gold­en age of silent cin­e­ma, vis­it our col­lec­tion of 100 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics, which includes works by Char­lie Chap­lin, Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, F.W. Mur­nau, G.W. Pab­st and many more. They’re all part of our big­ger meta col­lec­tion of Free Movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Watch 10 of the Great­est Silent Films of All Time, All Free Online

Neil Young Busking in Glasgow, 1976: The Story Behind the Footage

in Film, Music | February 28th, 2012

The day was April 2, 1976. Neil Young was fly­ing into Glas­gow, and a local cam­era crew was wait­ing at the air­port to meet him. Direc­tor Mur­ray Grig­or and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er David Peat had been hired by Young through his record com­pa­ny. As they wait­ed there, at the air­port, they had no idea what to expect.

“The irony,” Peat told Open Cul­ture, “is that nei­ther Mur­ray or myself were par­tic­u­lar­ly knowl­edge­able about the rock world, and we knew lit­tle of this guy Neil Young. So we turned up at the air­port in sports jack­ets and ties to meet him!”

Young’s sched­uled flight from Lon­don arrived, but he was­n’t on it. When a sec­ond flight came in, Peat and Grig­or watched anx­ious­ly as all the pas­sen­gers cleared the ter­mi­nal. Still no Young. Final­ly, said Peat, “this tall bloke in a long coat came ambling down the cor­ri­dor.” The film­mak­ers intro­duced them­selves to Young and asked what he want­ed.

“Just give me some funky shit footage,” said Young.

“Nae both­er, as we say in Scot­land,” Peat said. So the film­mak­ers tagged along as the musi­cian and his band, Crazy Horse, head­ed into the city. At this point Mur­ray Grig­or picks up the sto­ry: “Our film­ing got off to a tricky start. When Neil and the band final­ly made it to their lunch in the Albany Hotel’s pent­house, one of them set fire to the paper table dec­o­ra­tions, which we filmed. ‘Just like Nam,’ anoth­er one said as he warmed his hands over the small infer­no lap­ping up towards the inflam­ma­ble ceil­ing.”

At that moment, Peat added, “this very Scot­tish floor man­ag­er leapt in and com­plete­ly cowed them with her rage.” The woman turned to the near­est per­son and demand­ed to know what was going on. “That hap­pened to be our sound recordist, Louis Kramer,” said Grig­or. “She then shout­ed at them to get every­thing burn­ing into the bathroom–and gen­er­al­ly gave them all a dress­ing down.”

As Grig­or explained, “Neil and the band were all stoned out of their skulls.”

When the smoke had cleared at the Albany Hotel, the crew fol­lowed Young out onto the streets, where he began accost­ing passers­by. “Excuse me,” he said. “Could you tell me where the Bank of Scot­land is?” He soon set­tled on a dif­fer­ent des­ti­na­tion. “It was entire­ly Neil’s idea,” Grig­or told us, “to flop down at the entrance to Glas­gow’s Cen­tral Sta­tion and then wait and see who would rec­og­nize him.”

With a scarf wrapped around his neck and a deer­stalk­er hat pulled down over his face, Young took out his ban­jo and har­mon­i­ca and sat on the pave­ment. Peat, whose forté is obser­va­tion­al film­mak­ing, panned his cam­era back and forth between the famous street musi­cian and the peo­ple pass­ing by. Kramer’s sound record­ing pro­vid­ed the con­ti­nu­ity that made it pos­si­ble for Peat to move around and cov­er the scene from dif­fer­ent angles. He noticed that Young was singing about an “Old Laugh­ing Lady,” so when he saw one, he filmed her. The whole thing last­ed only a few min­utes.

Lat­er that evening, Young and Crazy Horse opened their show at the Glas­gow Apol­lo with “The Old Laugh­ing Lady.” It was the last con­cert of their Euro­pean tour. The film crew doc­u­ment­ed the crowd going into the Apol­lo and the show itself. When it was over, Young asked Grig­or to syn­chro­nize the sound and film for lat­er edit­ing. Local edi­tor Bert Eeles did the synch work, Grig­or sent in the film, and that was about the last they ever heard of it. “I always under­stood Neil com­mis­sioned it for his own use as a kind of ‘home movie,’ ” said Peat.

The fire scene from the Albany Hotel resur­faced in Jim Jar­musch’s 1997 film, Year of the Horse: Neil Young and Crazy Horse Live. When the busk­ing scene at Cen­tral Sta­tion recent­ly appeared on the Inter­net, Peat was hap­py to see it, but dis­ap­point­ed with the state it was in (see above). “The qual­i­ty is poor and the sound appears to be slight­ly out of sync,” he said. “It looks as though the mate­r­i­al is in black and white, but I’m sure I shot it in col­or.”

Peat and Grig­or col­lab­o­rat­ed on a num­ber of oth­er projects, includ­ing the 1976 Bil­ly Con­nol­ly doc­u­men­tary Big Banana Feet, which was screened at the Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val last Sun­day for the first time in decades, and the 1983 film, The Archi­tec­ture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Archi­tec­ture has been a major focus of Grig­or’s work. Last month he received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his ser­vices to archi­tec­ture and film. Peat is the sub­ject of an upcom­ing spe­cial on BBC Two, A Life in Film: David Peat.

The strange assign­ment to shoot “funky shit footage” for a strung-out rock star was a minor foot­note in Peat’s long career, but he looks back on it with fond­ness. “The footage of Neil has achieved a sort of icon­ic sta­tus in Glas­gow,” he said. “I was in a music/video store recent­ly try­ing to find out if it exist­ed on any pub­lished DVD, and the guy behind the counter near­ly fell over when I revealed I had shot it. He prob­a­bly just saw an old bloke with a beard instead of the lithe young man who used to dance around with a cam­era!” H/T Dan­ger­ous Minds

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Futurist Ray Kurzweil, 17 Years Old, Appears on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1965)

in History, Technology | February 28th, 2012

Ray Kurzweil — he’s the futur­ist of our time, a prophet of tech­nol­o­gy who fore­sees a day when we will achieve Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, a moment when humans will enjoy super­in­tel­li­gence and longer life expectan­cies (per­haps even immor­tal­i­ty) thanks to rapid tech­no­log­i­cal advances. It’s heady stuff, and you can learn more about it by watch­ing his open­ing speech at the first Exec­u­tive Pro­gram at Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty.

Now we take you back to 1965, when Kurzweil was­n’t yet a futur­ist. Only 17 years old, he was a wun­derkind, a high school stu­dent immersed in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence who tin­kered away, and even­tu­al­ly fig­ured out how to pro­gram a com­put­er to pro­duce orig­i­nal musi­cal com­po­si­tions. When the pro­duc­ers of I’ve Got a Secret dis­cov­ered his tal­ents, they brought the young Kurzweil on the show. And the rest you can watch on the video­tape above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

Errol Morris Captures Competitive Eating Champion “El Wingador”

in Film | February 28th, 2012

You might know Errol Mor­ris from his doc­u­men­taries like Fast, Cheap, and Out of Con­trol, on emer­gent sys­tems in top­i­ary gar­dens and naked mole-rat colonies; The Fog of War, on the shad­owy career of Robert McNa­ma­ra; and Gates of Heav­en, on com­pet­ing pet ceme­ter­ies (which no less a crit­i­cal author­i­ty than Roger Ebert has called one of the great­est films of all time). You might remem­ber Mor­ris’ inter­view-dri­ven tele­vi­sion series First Per­son with fond­ness — and, giv­en its episodes on ser­i­al-killer groupies, cry­on­ic head-freez­ers, and pro­fes­sion­al high-school stu­dents, per­haps a dash of dis­be­lief. If noth­ing else, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen Mor­ris’ com­mer­cials for the likes of PBS, Volk­swa­gen, and Miller High Life. In the last few years, he’s put out a new film, Tabloid, a book on the rela­tion­ship of pho­tog­ra­phy to real­i­ty, Believ­ing is See­ing, and many a post on his New York Times blog. For Errol Mor­ris fans, these are hearty times indeed.

As the newest addi­tion to this Moriss­ian abun­dance, the ten-minute doc­u­men­tary El Wingador pro­files five-time Philadel­phia Wing Bowl cham­pi­on eater Bill “El Wingador” Sim­mons. To win the Wing Bowl, you must sim­ply eat as many chick­en wings as pos­si­ble in the short­est amount of time. Such a man­date stretch­es the def­i­n­i­tion of “eat” to its break­ing point; the trick, as Sim­mons tells Mor­ris, is to train your jaw and esoph­a­gus not to chew, per se, but to bite and swal­low, bite and swal­low, bite and swal­low — “don’t wor­ry about chok­ing.” For a man like El Wingador, eat­ing, like any every­day activ­i­ty tak­en to the lev­el of elite com­pe­ti­tion, makes demands that would strike out­siders as grotesque: con­sum­ing eleven pounds of food per day, putting in hours-long ses­sions with base­ball-sized wads of Toot­sie Rolls, shov­el­ing down hand­fuls of sear­ing-hot piz­za cheese, gnaw­ing on rawhide bones meant for Ger­man Shep­herds. And some­times even insid­ers seem flum­moxed by it all: asked if he would real­ly con­sid­er his reg­i­men an eat­ing dis­or­der, Sim­mons replies, “It’s got­ta be a dis­or­der, ‘cause it’s crazy, man.”

As a seem­ing­ly mar­gin­al sub­cul­ture with its own rules, cus­toms, hier­ar­chies, and per­son­al­i­ties, com­pet­i­tive eat­ing would seem to com­fort­ably inhab­it Mor­ris’ wheel­house; it wouldn’t have sur­prised me if he’d opt­ed to make a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary about it. But even in the brief min­utes with Sim­mons El Wingador offers us, we glimpse enough of this world and its lead­ing lights — the young hot­shot Joey Chest­nut, the eeri­ly skin­ny Sonya Thomas and Takeru Kobayashi — to sus­pect that the sub­stan­tive dif­fer­ences between com­pet­i­tive eat­ing and “real” ath­let­ics may amount to less than we’d assumed. One might make a solemn point here about star­va­tion in the devel­op­ing world even as the Philadel­phia Wing Bowl puts deca­dent ancient Rome to shame. But it gives me just as much pause to pon­der the unset­tling lack of dif­fer­ences between cram­ming chick­en wings down your throat in the cen­ter of a roar­ing sta­di­um and most oth­er forms of human endeav­or.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Trib­ute to Stephen Hawk­ing, A Brief His­to­ry of Time

Errol Mor­ris: Two Essen­tial Truths About Pho­tog­ra­phy

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Earth-Size Tornadoes On The Sun

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 27th, 2012

What a sight to behold. Ear­li­er this month, NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry (SDO) beamed back stun­ning images of the sun’s plas­ma mov­ing vio­lent­ly around the star’s mag­net­ic field for 30 some hours, cre­at­ing a tor­na­do as large as the Earth itself, with gusts reach­ing up to 300,000 miles per hour. That’s accord­ing to Ter­ry Kucera, a solar physi­cist with NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. NPR has more on the mak­ings of solar storms. Find more awe-inspir­ing footage in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

Dhani Harrison Presents The George Harrison Guitar App for the iPad

in iPad, Music | February 26th, 2012

About a month back, we fea­tured George Har­rison’s long lost gui­tar solo on “Here Comes the Sun,” and you went gaga for it. Lit­tle did we know that George Har­rison’s son, Dhani, was just about ready to unveil a new iPad app called The Gui­tar Col­lec­tion: George Har­ri­son. It runs $9.99, and it’s only avail­able on the iPad, which hard­ly makes it an instance of Open Cul­ture. But we love The Bea­t­les around here, and the app does some­thing fair­ly spe­cial. It gives you a high-tech intro­duc­tion to sev­en George Har­ri­son gui­tars, using 360° images, sound files, videos, and lots of text and fac­toids. The video above offers a quick tour of the app. In the video below, Dhani Har­ri­son explains how the the app came togeth­er on the Conan O’Brien Show. Thanks for the heads up Liz.

Jim Henson Pilots The Muppet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Violence” (1975)

in Comedy, Television | February 24th, 2012

In the ear­ly 1970s, Jim Hen­son was wor­ried that the Mup­pets were becom­ing type­cast as chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment. So in Decem­ber of 1974 he pro­duced a pilot episode for The Mup­pet Show and gave it a name that was about as far away from Sesame Street as you could get: “Sex and Vio­lence.”

The half-hour pilot was first broad­cast on ABC in March of 1975. It’s a fast-mov­ing series of vignettes, fea­tur­ing a mot­ley cast of characters–many of whom would become famil­iar in lat­er years–appearing and reap­pear­ing through­out. Sam the Eagle, Sgt. Floyd Pep­per, The Swedish Chef, Statler and Wal­dorf, and a wrestler named The San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake all make an appear­ance. At one point, Ker­mit the Frog propo­si­tions a female with the line, “I might be able to get you a job on an edu­ca­tion­al show for kids.” The sto­ry, to the extent there is one, cen­ters around prepa­ra­tions for a “Sev­en Dead­ly Sins Pageant.” Alas, the pageant nev­er quite gets off the ground. As Sam the Eagle sage­ly asks: “Do we real­ly want to get into a ‘dead­ly sins’ sit­u­a­tion?”

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:

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Primer

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Jefferson Airplane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Captures It (1968)

in Film, Music | February 24th, 2012

Just when you think you’ve seen every­thing Jean-Luc Godard has ever shot, some­thing like this sur­faces. If you’re only now con­sid­er­ing tuck­ing into the feast that is Godard­’s fil­mog­ra­phy, don’t let his abun­dance of uncol­lect­ed odds, ends, clips, and shorts intim­i­date you. Not only do they promise a lit­tle thrill down the road when you’ve already digest­ed his major works, but they offer quick bursts at any time of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cin­e­mat­ic zest with which the film­mak­er took on the world. With the man alive and work­ing, I should per­haps say “the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cin­e­mat­ic zest with which the film­mak­er takes on the world,” but that gets into one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tions that swirls around him: has Godard still got it?

Some say yes, that his lat­est pic­ture Film Social­isme presents the log­i­cal con­tin­u­a­tion of all Godard has ever rep­re­sent­ed; some say no, that the Godard to watch remains the scrap­py star of the 1960s’ French New Wave. In his study Every­thing is Cin­e­ma: The Work­ing Life of Jean-Luc Godard, New York­er film blog­ger Richard Brody some­how makes both claims.

In the chap­ter “Rev­o­lu­tion (1968–1972)” he describes Godard­’s impro­vised method of shoot­ing a 1968 Jef­fer­son Air­plane con­cert:

He took over from the spe­cial­ists and oper­at­ed the cam­era from the win­dow of Lea­cock-Pen­nebak­er’s office on West Forty-fifth street, shoot­ing the band on the roof of the Schuyler Hotel across the street. (Pen­nebak­er recalled him to be an ama­teur­ish cam­era­man who could not avoid the begin­ner’s pit­fall of fre­quent zoom­ing in and out.) The per­for­mance took place with­out a per­mit, at stan­dard rock vol­ume: as singer Grace Slick lat­er wrote, “We did it, decid­ing that the cost of get­ting out of jail would be less than hir­ing a pub­li­cist…”

Ama­teur­ish or not, a piece of the footage has sur­faced on YouTube. Lis­ten to the Air­plane per­form “The House at Pooneil Cor­ners,” watch Godard­’s dra­mat­ic swings of focus and zoom as he attempts to con­vey the spec­ta­cle of the band and the spec­ta­cle of count­less sur­prised Man­hat­tan­ites at once, and think for your­self about this pecu­liar inter­sec­tion of two bold lines in the era’s alter­na­tive zeit­geist. As Jef­fer­son Air­plane co-founder Paul Kant­ner said in a 1986 inter­view, “Just for a while there, maybe for about 25 min­utes in 1967, every­thing was per­fect.” But these sev­en min­utes in Novem­ber 1968, from open­ing shouts to inevitable arrest, don’t seem so dull them­selves.

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:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 BestAmer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Classic Jazz 625 Show

in Music, Television | February 22nd, 2012

In April of 1964, the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion launched BBC Two as a high­brow alter­na­tive to its main­stream TV chan­nel. One of the new chan­nel’s first pro­grams was Jazz 625, which spot­light­ed many of the great­est Jazz musi­cians of the day. Dizzy Gille­spie, Thelo­nious Monk, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans and oth­ers per­formed on the show, which fea­tured straight-for­ward cam­era work and a min­i­mal­ist set. The focus was on the music.

The title of the show referred to the chan­nel’s 625-line UHF band­width, which offered high­er res­o­lu­tion than the 405-line VHF trans­mis­sion on BBC One. Among the sur­viv­ing episodes is Thelo­nious Monk’s March 14, 1965 per­for­mance at the Mar­quee Club in Lon­don. You can watch a 35-minute excerpt above. The quar­tet fea­tures Monk on piano, Char­lie Rouse on tenor sax­o­phone, Lar­ry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums. They per­form four num­bers:

1. Straight No Chas­er
2. Hack­en­sack
3. Rhythm-A-Ning
4. Epistro­phy

You can learn the sto­ry behind Jazz 625 by read­ing an arti­cle by Louis Barfe at Trans­d­if­fu­sion. And to see more from the shows, scroll down.

The Oscar Peter­son Trio:

Above is a 25-minute excerpt from the Oscar Peter­son Tri­o’s Octo­ber 1, 1964 per­for­mance. The orig­i­nal show, like oth­er episodes of Jazz 625, was over an hour long. The trio fea­tures Peter­son on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thig­pen on drums.

The Bill Evans Trio:

Above are two 35-minute episodes, shown back-to-back, fea­tur­ing the Bill Evans Trio. The two sets were record­ed on March 19, 1965 and fea­ture Evans on piano, Chuck Israels on bass and Lar­ry Bunker on drums.

The Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet:

The Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet per­formed for Jazz 625 on April 28, 1964. Above is a 27-minute except, fea­tur­ing the Quar­tet’s musi­cal direc­tor John Lewis on piano, Milt Jack­son on vibra­phone, Per­cy Heath on bass and Con­nie Kay on drums. Brazil­ian gui­tarist Lau­rindo Almei­da makes a spe­cial appear­ance.

How Woody Allen Discovered Ingmar Bergman, and How You Can Too

in Film | February 22nd, 2012

An Ing­mar Bergman ret­ro­spec­tive begins next month here in Los Ange­les, and as I mark my cal­en­dar, I reflect on what turned me on to his films in the first place. Who can approach Bergman now with­out first run­ning a cul­tur­al gaunt­let of know­ing ref­er­ences, gush­ing appre­ci­a­tions, and con­trar­i­an broad­sides? What young cinephile could resist the temp­ta­tion to inflate an opin­ion about The Sev­enth Seal, or Wild Straw­ber­ries, or Per­sona after see­ing them for the first time — or indeed, before? We could all ben­e­fit from some­one to show us the way into the “Swedish mas­ter’s” loaded, time-con­sum­ing fil­mog­ra­phy, and as this BBC inter­view by film crit­ic Mark Ker­mode reveals (watch Part 1 above, and Part 2 here), Woody Allen could well be it.

Allen holds a sur­pris­ing­ly plau­si­ble claim to the title of Bergman’s num­ber-one fan, or at least his most promi­nent one. How to square his ded­i­ca­tion to these solemn Swedish med­i­ta­tions on mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith with his cre­ation of beloved light come­dies like Bananas, Sleep­er, and Annie Hall? But watch Allen’s fil­mog­ra­phy in full, espe­cial­ly pic­tures like Love and Death, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Shad­ows and Fog, and the answer comes into view. Mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith — Bergman’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions are Allen’s, but Allen grap­ples with the unan­swer­able ques­tions by mak­ing jokes about them. What Allen describes as a “the­mat­ic con­nec­tion” to Bergman ulti­mate­ly becomes a much more com­pli­cat­ed entan­gle­ment: his hir­ing of Bergman’s cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sven Nykvist to shoot Anoth­er Woman, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Celebri­ty, for instance, sug­gests some­thing beyond sim­ple influ­ence.

In con­ver­sa­tion with Ker­mode, Allen remem­bers join­ing the van­guard of New York Bergman enthu­si­asm after see­ing Sum­mer with Moni­ka and The Naked Night, films that, to his mind, dis­played an obvi­ous­ly high­er lev­el of craft than any­thing else play­ing in town. The days when dis­cov­er­ing Bergman real­ly meant dis­cov­er­ing Bergman have long passed, but it will nev­er be too late to feel the same excite­ment Allen did about Bergman’s abil­i­ty to express inter­nal con­flicts — “inner states of anx­i­ety,” Allen calls them — so rich­ly and dra­mat­i­cal­ly on film. The Woody Allen-approved points of entry for the Bergman novice: The Sev­enth Seal, Wild Straw­ber­ries, and Cries and Whis­pers “for sure.” And maybe The Magi­cian. H/T @opedr

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Also don’t miss Hubert Drey­fus’ course on Exis­ten­tial­ism & Film (iTunes) in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.