Giv­en the length of the aver­age hair­cut, it sur­pris­es me that I don’t see more short films built around them. Tamar Simon Hoffs knew the advan­tages of the hair­cut-based short film, and she put them to use in 1982, dur­ing her time in the Amer­i­can Film Institute’s Direct­ing Work­shops for Women pro­gram. The Hair­cut’s script has a busy record exec­u­tive on his way to an impor­tant lunch appoint­ment. With only fif­teen min­utes to spare, he drops into Rus­so’s bar­ber shop for a trim. Lit­tle does he expect that, with­in those fif­teen min­utes, he’ll not only get his hair cut, but enjoy a shave, a mas­sage, a glass of wine, sev­er­al musi­cal num­bers, romance real or imag­ined,  and some­thing close to a psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic ses­sion. He goes through quite a few facets of the human expe­ri­ence right there in the chair — minus the time-con­sum­ing “hot tow­el treat­ment” — and Rus­so and his col­or­ful, effi­cient crew still get him out of the door on time. Hoffs knew the per­fect actor for the star­ring role: John Cas­savetes. What’s more, she knew him per­son­al­ly.

The con­nec­tion came through her friend Eliz­a­beth Gaz­zara, daugh­ter of a cer­tain Ben Gaz­zara, star of the The Killing of a Chi­nese Book­ie, my own favorite Cas­savetes-direct­ed film. After read­ing the script, Cas­savetes agreed to per­form, “his only stip­u­la­tion being that his co-stars must be entire­ly rehearsed and ready to go, so he could just come in and per­form as if he real­ly was the cus­tomer,” writes British Film Insti­tute DVD pro­duc­er James Black­ford. “Even in a lit­tle film such as this, Cas­savetes was still search­ing for those per­fect moments that come from the spon­tane­ity of ear­ly takes.” You’ll even laugh at a few lines, spo­ken by Cas­savetes as his char­ac­ter begins to enjoy him­self, that must sure­ly have come out of his beloved impro­vi­sa­tion­al meth­ods. And we can cred­it the film’s sur­pris­ing end to an even more per­son­al con­nec­tion of Hoffs’: to her daugh­ter Susan­na, front­woman of The Ban­gles, then known as The Bangs. You can watch The Hair­cut on the BFI’s new DVD/Blu-Ray release of The Killing of a Chi­nese Book­ie, or you can watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Nowa­days, most of us who still reli­gious­ly attend screen­ings of films by the most respect­ed Euro­pean direc­tors of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry have cir­cled the wag­ons: even if we far pre­fer, say, Felli­ni to Truf­faut, we’ll more than like­ly still turn up for the Truf­faut, even if only out of cinephilic sol­i­dar­i­ty. But in the fifties, six­ties, and sev­en­ties — or so I’ve read, any­way — dis­cus­sions of such film­mak­ers’ rel­a­tive mer­its could turn into seri­ous intel­lec­tu­al shov­ing match­es, and even many of the lumi­nar­ies them­selves would eval­u­ate their col­leagues’ work can­did­ly. At the Ing­mar Bergman fan site Bergmanora­ma, you can read what the mak­er of The Sev­enth Seal, Wild Straw­ber­ries, and Per­sona had to say about the mak­ers of movies like L’Avven­tu­ra, Breath­less, Ver­ti­go, The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel, The 400 Blows, and Stalk­er.

Regard­ing Jean Luc Godard: “I’ve nev­er been able to appre­ci­ate any of his films, nor even under­stand them… I find his films affect­ed, intel­lec­tu­al, self-obsessed and, as cin­e­ma, with­out inter­est and frankly dull… I’ve always thought that he made films for crit­ics.”

Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni, thought Bergman, had “nev­er prop­er­ly learnt his craft. He’s an aes­thete. If, for exam­ple, he needs a cer­tain kind of road for The Red Desert, then he gets the hous­es repaint­ed on the damned street. That is the atti­tude of an aes­thete. He took great care over a sin­gle shot, but did­n’t under­stand that a film is a rhyth­mic stream of images, a liv­ing, mov­ing process; for him, on the con­trary, it was such a shot, then anoth­er shot, then yet anoth­er. So, sure, there are some bril­liant bits in his films… [but] I can’t under­stand why Anto­nioni is held in such high esteem.”

Alfred Hitch­cock struck him as “a very good tech­ni­cian. And he has some­thing in Psy­cho, he had some moments. Psy­cho is one of his most inter­est­ing pic­tures because he had to make the pic­ture very fast, with very prim­i­tive means. He had lit­tle mon­ey, and this pic­ture tells very much about him. Not very good things. He is com­plete­ly infan­tile, and I would like to know more — no, I don’t want to know — about his behav­iour with, or, rather, against women. But this pic­ture is very inter­est­ing.”

You’ll find more quotes on F.W. Mur­nau, teller of image-based tales with “fan­tas­tic sup­ple­ness”; Mar­cel Carné and Julien Duvivi­er, “deci­sive influ­ences in my want­i­ng to become a film­mak­er”; Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, the sheer heat from whose cre­ative mind “melts him”; François Truf­faut, with his fas­ci­nat­ing “way of relat­ing with an audi­ence”; and Andrei Tarkovsky, “the great­est of them all,” at Bergmanora­ma. His com­ments on Luis Buñuel offer espe­cial­ly impor­tant advice for cre­ators in any medi­um, of any age. He quotes a crit­ic who wrote that “with Autumn Sonata Bergman does Bergman” and admits the truth in it, but he adds that, at some point, “Tarkovsky began to make Tarkovsky films and that Felli­ni began to make Felli­ni films.” Buñuel, alas, “near­ly always made Buñuel films.” The les­son: if you must do a pas­tiche, don’t do a pas­tiche of your own style — or, as I once heard the writer Geoff Dyer (him­self a great fan of mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean cin­e­ma) call it, “self-karaoke.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick to Ing­mar Bergman: “You Are the Great­est Film­mak­er at Work Today” (1960)

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

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

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.