Thursday 15 March 2012

Free movies #1

The Kid
There are hundreds of free movies available online, if you know where to look. Most of them are old, and out of copyright, including many classics. Here are just a few:
  • A Dog’s Life (1918) – This endearing short film tells the story of underdogs, human and canine, succeeding despite the odds.
  • Battleship Potemkin (1925) – Directed by the great Russian director, Sergei Eisenstein. One of the most influential propaganda films of all time. 
  • City Lights (1931) – The funny and moving tale of a tramp who falls in love with a blind girl, City Lights is one of Charlie Chaplin’s greatest works. A silent film released two years after the arrival of “talkies,” it was a huge popular and critical success. Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky all placed City Lights on their list of the ten greatest films ever made.
Virginia Cherrill
  • Greed (1924) – Erich von Stroheim directed silent drama. Considered one of the great lost films of movie history.
  • Hiroshima mon amour (1959) – Major French film directed by Alain Resnais and written by Marguerite Duras. This acclaimed film is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness. It was a major catalyst for the Nouvelle Vague, making highly innovative use of miniature flashbacks to create a uniquely nonlinear storyline.
  • His Girl Friday (1940) – Directed by Howard Hawks. A classic comedy with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, it is still considered the benchmark for rapid-fire dialogue. Quentin Tarantino wrote at the start of Pulp Fiction concerning the two characters in the opening scene:                             Their dialogue is to be said in a rapid-pace "HIS GIRL FRIDAY" fashion.
Claudette Colbert
  • Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) – French science fiction black and white film. Loosely based on two popular novels by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.
  • M  (1931) – Classic film directed by Fritz Lang, with Peter Lorre. This film is a highly structured and stylized film about a serial killer. It created the serial kill genre, which includes such entries as Psycho and Silence of the Lambs. Alfred Hitchcock was a disciple of Lang as were Jacques Tourneur (The Leopard Man, 1943) and Michael Powell (Peeping Tom, 1960). M was not only the originator of the genre, but arguably remains it preeminent entry. (In German and high def.)
Peter Lorre
  • Menilmontant (1925) – When Pauline Kael, longtime New Yorker film critic, was asked to name her favorite film, this was it. French silent film.
  • Metropolis (1927)Fritz Lang’s silent German expressionist science fiction film. A landmark film.
Robert Donat
Marlene Dietrich
  • The General (1926)Orson Welles said that Buster Keaton’s The General is “the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made. A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time.
  • The Gold Rush (1925) – Charlie Chaplin wrote, produced, directed and starred in The Gold Rush. He said that this is the film he most wanted to be remembered for.
Charlie Chaplin

If there's something in particular you're looking for, try these websites:

    2 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Wow! someone knows how to do research
    Great list of movies

    Kathy said...

    Shows how much I knew. I didn't know Hitchcock made silent movies. What a difficult transition he made.