The Only Footage of Mark Twain: The Original & Digitally Restored Films Shot by Thomas Edison

in History, Literature | January 23rd, 2023

We know what Mark Twain looked like, and we think we know what he sound­ed like. Just above see what he looked like in motion, strolling around Storm­field, his house in Red­ding, Connecticut—signature white suit draped loose­ly around his frame, sig­na­ture cig­ar puff­ing white smoke between his fin­gers. After Twain’s leisure­ly walk along the house’s façade, we see him with his daugh­ters, Clara and Jean, seat­ed indoors. Below you can see the orig­i­nal murky ver­sion, fea­tured on our site way back in 2010. A dig­i­tal restora­tion (top) does won­ders for the watch­a­bil­i­ty of this price­less silent arti­fact, so vivid­ly cap­tur­ing the writer/contrarian/raconteur’s essence that you’ll find your­self reach­ing to turn the vol­ume up, expect­ing to hear that famil­iar cur­mud­geon­ly drawl.

Shot by Thomas Edi­son in 1909, the short film is most like­ly the only mov­ing image of Twain in exis­tence. We might assume that Edi­son also record­ed Twain’s voice, since we seem to know it so well, from por­tray­als of the great Amer­i­can humorist in pop cul­tur­al touch­stones like Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion and par­o­dies by Alec Bald­win and Val Kilmer.

Kilmer’s sur­pris­ing­ly fun­ny in the role, but he doesn’t come near the pitch per­fect imper­son­ation Hal Hol­brook had giv­en us for the bet­ter part of six­ty years in his mas­ter­ful Mark Twain Tonight. Holbrook’s vocal man­ner­isms have become a defin­i­tive mod­el for actors play­ing Twain on stage and screen.

Giv­en the num­ber of Twain vocal imper­son­ations out there, and Edis­on’s inter­est in doc­u­ment­ing the author, we might be sur­prised to learn that no orig­i­nal record­ings of his voice exist. Twain, we find out in the short film below, exper­i­ment­ed with audio record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, but aban­doned his efforts. It seems that none of the wax cylin­ders he worked with have survived—perhaps he destroyed them him­self.

As nar­ra­tor Rod Rawlings—himself a Twain imper­son­ator and afi­ciona­do—informs us, what we do have is a record­ing made in 1934 by actor and play­wright William Gillette,  an able mim­ic of Twain, his patron and long­time neigh­bor. Like Hol­brook, Gillette spent a good part of his career trav­el­ing from town to town play­ing Mark Twain. Below, you’ll hear Gillette address a class of stu­dents at Har­vard, first in his own voice, then in the voice of the author, read­ing from “The Cel­e­brat­ed Jump­ing Frog of Calav­eras Coun­ty.” Gillet­te’s per­for­mance is like­ly the clos­est we’ll ever come to hear­ing the voice of the real Twain, whose major works appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain’s Vicious­ly Fun­ny Mar­gin­a­lia Took Aim at Some Lit­er­ary Greats

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

Watch David Letterman’s Complete Interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy

in Current Affairs, Television | January 6th, 2023

In a spe­cial episode of My Next Guest Needs No Intro­duc­tion with David Let­ter­man, the icon­ic TV host trav­eled to Kyiv to inter­view Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy. The con­ver­sa­tion took place in a pro­tect­ed sub­way sta­tion, in front of a small live audi­ence. About Zelen­skyy, Let­ter­man said: “When you first learn about the guy, it seems impos­si­ble to not find him appeal­ing, and his sto­ry to be astound­ing. You just don’t see actions and deeds like this, peo­ple behav­ing like this, on the right side of things.” Above, thanks to Net­flix, you can watch the inter­view in its entire­ty.

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

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, Fea­tur­ing 23 Lec­tures

How Volodymyr Zelen­skyy Went from Play­ing a Pres­i­dent on a Com­e­dy TV Show to Very Real Life

How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

The Map of Engineering: A New Animation Shows How All of the Different Fields in Engineering Fit Together

in Science, Technology | January 5th, 2023

In his lat­est ani­ma­tion, physi­cist and sci­ence writer Dominic Wal­li­man maps out the entire field of engi­neer­ing and all of its sub­dis­ci­plines. Civ­il engi­neer­ing, chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing, bio engi­neer­ing, bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing, mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, aero­space engi­neer­ing, marine engi­neer­ing, elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing, com­put­er engineering–they’re all cov­ered here.

In the past, we’ve fea­tured Wal­li­man’s oth­er edu­ca­tion­al ani­ma­tions that cov­er Biol­o­gy, Physics, Chem­istry, Math­e­mat­ics, Quan­tum Com­put­ing, Com­put­er Sci­ence, and more. Click the links to explore each video.

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 

The Map of Com­put­er Sci­ence: New Ani­ma­tion Presents a Sur­vey of Com­put­er Sci­ence, from Alan Tur­ing to “Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty”

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Physics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Physics Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Chem­istry: New Ani­ma­tion Sum­ma­rizes the Entire Field of Chem­istry in 12 Min­utes

American Gothic Explained: How Grant Wood Created His Iconic American Painting (1930)

in Art, History | December 27th, 2022

“We should fear Grant Wood. Every artist and every school of artists should be afraid of him, for his dev­as­tat­ing satire.” Gertrude Stein wrote those words after see­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic, the 1930 paint­ing that would become one of the most icon­ic images cre­at­ed in the Unit­ed States. Yet Wood him­self “said he paint­ed Amer­i­can Goth­ic to extol rur­al Amer­i­can val­ues, real peo­ple in their well-ordered world: an image of reas­sur­ance dur­ing the onset of the Great Depres­sion.” That’s how Art His­to­ry School host Paul Priest­ley puts it in the video above, which asks of the paint­ing, “Is it a satire, or a pos­i­tive state­ment of Amer­i­can rur­al life?”

It could be nei­ther; then again, it could be both. That very ambi­gu­i­ty goes some way to explain­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s suc­cess — as well as its per­sis­tence in the cul­ture through fre­quent and unceas­ing par­o­dy. Yet in its day, the paint­ing also angered some of its view­ers: “An Iowan farmer’s wife who’d seen the pic­ture in the papers in 1930 tele­phoned Wood to express her anger,” says Priest­ly.

“She claimed she wished to come over and smash his head for depict­ing her coun­try­men as grim Bible-thumpers.” Wood main­tained that he was one of them, “dress­ing in rugged over­alls after the paint­ing was com­plet­ed and telling the press, ‘All the real­ly good ideas I’d ever had come to me while I was milk­ing a cow.’

Yet Wood was no farmer. A son of Cedar Rapids, he trav­eled exten­sive­ly to Europe to study Impres­sion­ism and post-Impres­sion­ism. There he first saw the work of Jan van Eyck, whose com­bi­na­tion of visu­al clar­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty inspired him to devel­op the sig­na­ture look and feel of the move­ment that would come to be known as Region­al­ism. He became “half Euro­pean artiste, half Iowan farm boy,” as Vox’s Phil Edwards puts it in the video just above, all the bet­ter to strad­dle his home­land’s widen­ing divide between town and coun­try. “In 1880, almost half of all Amer­i­cans were on the farm,” but by 1920 more than half the pop­u­la­tion lived in cities. Amer­i­can Goth­ic came a decade lat­er, and most of a cen­tu­ry there­after, it still makes Amer­i­cans ask them­selves — earnest­ly or sar­don­ical­ly — just what kind of peo­ple they are.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What’s the Key to Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s Endur­ing Fame? An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Paint­ing

The Mod­els for “Amer­i­can Goth­ic” Pose in Front of the Icon­ic Paint­ing (1942)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

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.

Behold! The Very First Christmas Card (1843)

in Art, Design, History, Museums | December 23rd, 2022

Christ­mas cards aren’t just an anachro­nism.

They’re almost an endan­gered species, the vic­tim of the Inter­net, postal rate increas­es, and the jet­ti­son­ing of any time con­sum­ing tra­di­tion whose exe­cu­tion has been found to bring the oppo­site of joy.

Above, Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um cura­tors Alice Pow­er and Sarah Beat­tie take us on a back­wards trip to a time when the exchange of Christ­mas cards was a source of true social mer­ri­ment.

Christ­mas cards must hold a spe­cial place in both the V&A’s col­lec­tions and heart, giv­en that the museum’s founder, Hen­ry Cole, inad­ver­tent­ly invent­ed them in 1843.

As a well respect­ed man about town, he received a great many more hol­i­day let­ters than he had time or incli­na­tion to respond to, but nei­ther did he wish to appear rude.

So he enlist­ed his friend, painter J.C. Hors­ley, to cre­ate a fes­tive illus­tra­tion with a built-in hol­i­day greet­ing, leav­ing just enough space to per­son­al­ize with a recipient’s name and per­haps, a hand­writ­ten line or two.

He then had enough post­card-sized repro­duc­tions print­ed up to send to 1000 of his friends.

(It’s hell being pop­u­lar…)

Talk about zeit­geist: Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol was first pub­lished that very same hol­i­day sea­son.

No won­der every­one want­ed in on the fun.

Part of the rea­son the cards in the V&A’s col­lec­tion are so well pre­served is that their recip­i­ents prized them enough to keep them in sou­venir albums.

Under­stand­ably. They’re very appeal­ing lit­tle arti­facts.

The upper crust could afford such fan­cy design ele­ments as clever die-cut shapes, pop up ele­ments, and translu­cent win­dows that encour­aged the recip­i­ents to hold them up to actu­al win­dows.

Tech­no­log­i­cal advances in the print­ing indus­try, and the cre­ation of the cost-effec­tive Pen­ny Post allowed those whose bud­gets were more mod­est than Mr. Cole’s to par­tic­i­pate too.

Their cards tend­ed to be sim­pler in exe­cu­tion, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­cept.

In addi­tion to the views we’ve come to expect — win­ter, Father Christ­mas, hol­ly — the Vic­to­ri­ans had a thing for jol­ly anthro­po­mor­phized food and some tru­ly shame­less puns.

Enjoy these Ghosts of Christ­mas Past, dear read­ers. We’re almost inspired to revive the tra­di­tion!

Read more about the advent of this tra­di­tion, includ­ing how it jumped the pond, in Smith­son­ian Magazine’s His­to­ry of the Christ­mas Card.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

J.R.R. Tolkien Sent Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Father Christ­mas to His Kids Every Year (1920–1943)

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christ­mas Car­ol Just Like Charles Dick­ens Read It

An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ Clas­sic Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christmas Nativity Story on an Icelandic TV Special (1976)

in Music, Television | December 21st, 2022

The hol­i­days can be hard, start­ing in Octo­ber when the red and green dec­o­ra­tions begin muscling in on the Hal­loween aisle.

Most Won­der­ful Time of the Year, you say? Oh, go stuff a stock­ing in it, Andy Williams!

The major­i­ty of us have more in com­mon with the Grinch, Scrooge, and/or the Lit­tle Match Girl.

Still, it’s hard to resist the preter­nat­u­ral­ly mature 11-year-old Björk read­ing the nativ­i­ty sto­ry in her native Ice­landic, backed by unsmil­ing old­er kids from the Children’s Music School in Reyk­javík.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly since I myself do not speak Ice­landic.

The fact that it’s in black and white is mere­ly the blue­ber­ries on the spiced cab­bage.

It speaks high­ly of the Ice­landic approach to edu­ca­tion that a prin­ci­pal’s office reg­u­lar who report­ed­ly chafed at her school’s “retro, con­stant Beethoven and Bach bol­locks” cur­ricu­lum was award­ed the plum part in this 1976 Christ­mas spe­cial for the Nation­al Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice.

It would also appear that lit­tle Björk, the fierce­ly self-reliant latchkey kid of a Bohemi­an sin­gle moth­er, was far and away the most charis­mat­ic kid enrolled in the Bar­namúsik­skóli.

(Less than a year lat­er her self-titled first album sold 7000 copies in Iceland—a mod­est amount com­pared to Adele’s debut, maybe, but c’mon, the kid was 11! And Ice­land’s pop­u­la­tion at the time was a cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand and change.)

As to the above per­for­mance’s reli­gious slant, it wasn’t a reflec­tion of her per­son­al beliefs. As she told the UK music webzine Drowned in Sound in 2011:

…nature is my reli­gion, in a way… I think every­body has their own pri­vate reli­gion. I guess what both­ers me is when mil­lions have the same one. It just can’t be true. It’s just…what?

Still, it prob­a­bly was­n’t too con­tro­ver­sial that the pro­gram­mers elect­ed to cleave to the rea­son in the sea­son. Ice­landic church atten­dance may be low-key, but the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of its cit­i­zens iden­ti­fy as Luther­an, or some oth­er Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.

(They also believe in elves and 13 for­mer­ly fear­some Yule Lads, descen­dants of the ogres Grýla and Lep­palúði. By the time Björk appeared on earth, they had long since evolved, through a com­bi­na­tion of for­eign influ­ence and pub­lic decree, into the kinder, gen­tler, not quite San­ta-esque ver­sion, address­ing the stu­dio audi­ence at the top of the act.)

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk Presents Ground­break­ing Exper­i­men­tal Musi­cians on the BBC’s Mod­ern Min­i­mal­ists (1997)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She is proud to orig­i­nat­ed the role of Santa’s mor­tal con­sort, Mary, in her Jew­ish hus­band Greg Kotis’ Nordic-themed hol­i­day fan­ta­sia, The Truth About San­ta. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

How Will AI Change the World?: A Captivating Animation Explores the Promise & Perils of Artificial Intelligence

in Animation, Artificial Intelligence, Technology | December 13th, 2022

Many of us can remem­ber a time when arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was wide­ly dis­missed as a sci­ence-fic­tion­al pipe dream unwor­thy of seri­ous research and invest­ment. That time, safe to say, has gone. “With­in a decade,” writes blog­ger Samuel Ham­mond, the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence could bring about a world in which “ordi­nary peo­ple will have more capa­bil­i­ties than a CIA agent does today. You’ll be able to lis­ten in on a con­ver­sa­tion in an apart­ment across the street using the sound vibra­tions off a chip bag” (as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.) “You’ll be able to replace your face and voice with those of some­one else in real time, allow­ing any­one to social­ly engi­neer their way into any­thing.”

And that’s the benign part. “Death-by-kamikaze drone will sur­pass mass shoot­ings as the best way to enact a lurid revenge. The courts, mean­while, will be flood­ed with law­suits because who needs to pay attor­ney fees when your phone can file an air­tight motion for you?” All this “will be enough to make the sta­blest genius feel schiz­o­phrenic.” But “it doesn’t have to be this way. We can fight AI fire with AI fire and adapt our prac­tices along the way.” You can hear a con­sid­ered take on how we might man­age that in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, adapt­ed from an inter­view with com­put­er sci­en­tist Stu­art Rus­sell, author of the pop­u­lar text­book Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Mod­ern Approach as well as Human Com­pat­i­ble: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and the Prob­lem of Con­trol.

“The prob­lem with the way we build AI sys­tems now is we give them a fixed objec­tive,” Rus­sell says. “The algo­rithms require us to spec­i­fy every­thing in the objec­tive.” Thus an AI charged with de-acid­i­fy­ing the oceans could quite plau­si­bly come to the solu­tion of set­ting off “a cat­alyt­ic reac­tion that does that extreme­ly effi­cient­ly, but con­sumes a quar­ter of the oxy­gen in the atmos­phere, which would appar­ent­ly cause us to die fair­ly slow­ly and unpleas­ant­ly over the course of sev­er­al hours.” The key to this prob­lem, Rus­sell argues, is to pro­gram in a cer­tain lack of con­fi­dence: “It’s when you build machines that believe with cer­tain­ty that they have the objec­tive, that’s when you get sort of psy­cho­path­ic behav­ior, and I think we see the same thing in humans.”

A less exis­ten­tial but more com­mon wor­ry has to do with unem­ploy­ment. Full AI automa­tion of the ware­house tasks still per­formed by humans, for exam­ple, “would, at a stroke, elim­i­nate three or four mil­lion jobs.” Rus­sell here turns to E. M. Forster, who in the 1909 sto­ry “The Machine Stops” envi­sions a future in which “every­one is entire­ly machine-depen­dent,” with lives not unlike the e‑mail- and Zoom meet­ing-filled ones we lead today. The nar­ra­tive plays out as a warn­ing that “if you hand over the man­age­ment of your civ­i­liza­tion to machines, you then lose the incen­tive to under­stand it your­self or to teach the next gen­er­a­tion how to under­stand it.” The mind, as the say­ing goes, is a won­der­ful ser­vant but a ter­ri­ble mas­ter. The same is true of machines — and even truer, we may well find, of mechan­i­cal minds.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er DALL‑E, the Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Artist That Lets You Cre­ate Sur­re­al Art­work

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Instan­ta­neous Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Remote Work, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty & More

Stephen Fry Voic­es a New Dystopi­an Short Film About Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence & Sim­u­la­tion The­o­ry: Watch Escape

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

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.

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryoshka Dolls in Japan

in Music | December 9th, 2022

A decade ago, in Tokyo, 167 musi­cians per­formed a Beethoven clas­sic with the “Matry­omin,” a new-fan­gled instru­ment that lodges a theremin inside a matryosh­ka. A matryosh­ka, of course, is one of those Russ­ian nest­ed dolls where you find wood­en dolls of decreas­ing size placed one inside the oth­er. As for the theremin, it’s a cen­tu­ry-old elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ment that requires no phys­i­cal con­tact from the play­er. You can watch its inven­tor, Leon Theremin, give it a demo in the vin­tage video below. And via this link you can see the Matry­omin Ensem­ble per­form­ing a mes­mer­iz­ing ver­sion of Amaz­ing Grace. Enjoy.

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 

See Japan­ese Musi­cians Play “Amaz­ing Grace” with 273 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls–Then Learn How They Per­form Their Mag­ic

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Leon Theremin Adver­tis­es the First Com­mer­cial Pro­duc­tion Run of His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment (1930)

Learn How to Play the Theremin: A Free Short Video Course

“Some­where Over the Rain­bow” Played on a 1929

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

480 Filmmakers Reveal the 100 Greatest Movies in the World

in Film | December 8th, 2022

Nobody knows more about cin­e­ma than crit­ics. But in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way, nobody knows more about cin­e­ma than direc­tors. That, per­haps, is one of the rea­sons that Sight and Sound mag­a­zine has, for the past thir­ty years, con­duct­ed two sep­a­rate once-in-a-decade polls to deter­mine the great­est films of all time. Last week we fea­tured the results of Sight and Sound’s lat­est crit­ics poll here on Open Cul­ture, but the out­come of the direc­tors’ vote — whose elec­torate of 480 “spans exper­i­men­tal, art­house, main­stream and genre film­mak­ers from around the world” — mer­its its own con­sid­er­a­tion.

As all the cinephile world knows by now, Chan­tal Aker­man’s Jeanne Diel­man, 23, quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles came out on top of Sight and Sound’s crit­ics poll this year. That tem­po­ral­ly expan­sive mas­ter­work of pota­toes, veal cut­lets, pros­ti­tu­tion, and mur­der did­n’t place quite so high­ly in the direc­tors poll. It ranks at num­ber four, below Ozu Yasu­jirō’s Tokyo Sto­ry, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s The God­fa­ther, Orson Welles’ Cit­i­zen Kane, and — at num­ber one — Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which, for those who make movies, evi­dent­ly remains the “ulti­mate trip” that its late-six­ties mar­ket­ing cam­paign promised.

The roundup of indi­vid­ual bal­lots at World of Reel reveals that 2001’s sup­port­ers include a wide range of auteurs — Olivi­er Assayas, Bi Gan, Don Hertzfeldt, Gas­par Noé, Joan­na Hogg, Edgar Wright, Mar­tin Scors­ese — not all of whose own work shows clear evi­dence of hav­ing been influ­enced by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s at once lav­ish and stark vision of mankind’s des­tiny in the realms beyond Earth. But 2001’s real achieve­ment was less to tell its par­tic­u­lar sto­ry, no mat­ter how mind-blow­ing, than to expand the pos­si­bil­i­ties of cin­e­ma itself: to exe­cute, as exam­ined in the video essay above, a kind of cin­e­mat­ic hyp­no­tism.

Of course, Kubrick is huge­ly admired by view­ers and mak­ers of movies alike. Bar­ry Lyn­don appears on both top-100 lists, though it seems as if crit­ics favor The Shin­ing more than film­mak­ers. The lat­ter group cast more votes for Kubrick­’s Cold-War com­e­dy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb. Also among the dozens of titles only in the film­mak­ers’ top 100 include Abbas Kiarosta­mi’s Where Is the Friend’s House? and Taste of Cher­ry, Kuro­sawa Aki­ra’s Throne of Blood and Ikiru, Sergei Para­janov’s The Col­or of Pome­gran­ates, and even Steven Spiel­berg’s Jaws — which, no less than 2001, sure­ly appeals to any film­mak­er’s innate sense of spec­ta­cle.

See the direc­tors top 100 films here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films: The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed

The Ten Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

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.