There are a zillion great, old films for free on youtube. I wanted to bring them together on one blog for lovers of older films or people who want to learn about film history and see some of the best films ever. When I was younger there was a theater called the Parkway (in Chicago) that showed such films. It was torn down (so it goes). So this blog is kind of my own personal Parkway. djg51qu@gmail.com I will post new films each Saturday.
Showing posts with label free films on youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free films on youtube. Show all posts
In this film there has been a nuclear war and people are dead on every continent except Australia. But the folks in Australia know that the radioactive winds are slowly but surely pushing toward their country.
The film presents this nightmare scenario of a nation waiting for its extermination while also examining the types of political situations and arguments that can lead to this situation. An excellent and moving film.
A well-dressed man helps a homeless man and goes so far as to invite him to stay at his house. The well-dressed guy seems a bit peculiar, not especially warm or sympathetic even though he engages in a selfless gesture. About half way through the film some of the ambiguity concerning the character of the well-dressed guy is resolved. But there are many other bizarre aspects of the film that may leave you scratching your head.
As a side note, all of the actors in the film participated without pay, as did the director, since funding such an out of the ordinary film became difficult.
French soldiers refuse to leave their trenches to attack the "Ant Hill", a heavily fortified German defensive emplacement. To do so would be suicide, as everybody knows...except the French general who has ordered the attack. When the French soldiers ordered to attack simply refuse to do so, some are chosen to be executed as a message to any French soldiers in the future who might consider disobeying an order. Can these soldiers be saved from execution? You can watch the film and see here:
This film received luke-warm reviews in 1965 but it works. Yul Brenner plays a German captain who is blackmailed by the Nazis into taking a dangerous mission: he is to transport 7,000 tons of rubber to a secret location. Marlon Brando plays a German pacifist who is blackmailed by the English to use his engineering skills to infiltrate the ship as a fake SS official in order to defuse bombs that could blow up the ship and the rubber if the Allies can isolate and capture the ship (which they intend to do).
The film is about coercion, whether it be from government agents or one's own sense of morality. The sense of moral coercion both characters tend to feel toward the end of the film mirrors, to a great extent, the external coercion they initially faced. Both characters resist their assignments but exercise their own forms of moral agency at different times during this story but are never satisfied with their decisions. Neither wants to be a part of an ugly war, neither wants to do ugly things, but both are compelled to act against their natures due to the horrors of Nazism and the consequences of not taking action against those horrors.
Funny thing - Brando affects a German accent in this film. Why not Yul Brenner? Why not Wally Cox? In fact, Brando is the only person in the film with a German accent but most of the characters represent Germans. Shouldn't the director have said, "Hey, Marlon, look....nice accent but...I mean, seriously...you need to drop it."?
Here is a version of Gus Van Sant's film based on the Columbine massacre. It has Spanish subtitles - sorry about that. But, hey, it's free on YouTube.
It looks as if Van Sant wants you to bring a lot to this film to get meaning from this film. He especially seems to want you to recall a lot of your experiences in high school and to bring along your knowledge of the motives for the Columbine shootings.
It's as if he wants us to really examine the high school experience, within the context of our families and greater society, to fully understand this tragedy. What kind of stage is the American high school for the expression of human emotion and human relationships? Does it possess inherently harmful aspects or potentials?
He follows many characters throughout the school, as if he is examining the very architecture of the school itself to find possible flaws or contributing factors to the shootings. We see an environment often devoid of warmth and compassion and one in which casual cruelty has room for expression and growth. The only really kind or sympathetic adult character in the film seems to be the librarian who stands as a contrast to every other adult figure that we come across.
You can access the film by clicking on the link below:
OK, it's a TV movie, but I liked it. Margot Kidder and Peter O'Toole star in George Bernard Shaw's thought-experiment: can you socially elevate someone just through various external trappings like improving one's grammar, clothing and attitude? Is it worth it to even do this? Is there some more meaningful transformation that might be possible?
Well, this brings to mind the case of "Clark Rockefeller" to me. There was once a German guy who had no real formal education and who had overstayed his visa in the USA. He began calling himself Clark Rockefeller and telling folks he was from the famous Rockefeller family. He perfected his English by imitating a character from an American TV series and he began reading widely so as to be able to convince folks he had a Ivy education.
It worked. Soon he was married to a highly-educated woman of wealth who supported him and his friends included the rich and famous, including many American power-brokers.
Here's an interesting film based on, of all things, a dance marathon during the Great Depression. On a 'social realism' level, it's a film about how easily the most financially vulnerable can be exploited to make money for callous, heartless others. The dance marathon can stand in for any number of social phenomena involving the exploitation of the weaker by the stronger.
The film asks the question: To what extent are the exploited complicit in their exploitation? Are they completely innocent victims or are the exploiters merely utilizing some disgenuine motivation in the exploited? Is there always a possibility to say "No!" and, somehow, survive and fight back? Can some folks who are being used even say "No!" or are they driven by demons as strong as those of their exploiters?
Early in his career, Woody Allen bought a cheesy Japanese detective film and re-dubbed it in English so that the detectives are searching for a really good egg salad sandwich.
The first three minutes are scenes from the original, undubbed film, then you see a short interview with Woody Allen, and then his dubbed comedy. When I was a kid and I saw this on TV, I thought it was hilarious. If you watch it, I hope you like it.
Zeffirelli's 1982 film version of the Leoncavallo opera.
"Laugh, Pagliaccio, at your shattered love..."
A troupe of clowns regularly presents a comic version of a man being betrayed
by his wife - to a happy ending as the betrayed man is able to laugh the betrayal
off. Yet, when this happens within the troupe there is a tragic ending.
It looks as if there are some North Korean films on youtube.
This war movie was the first North Korean film I had ever seen - essentially a group of North Korean commandos has to infiltrate South Korea during the war, posing as injured soldiers traveling to a South Korean hospital. One of the soldiers has to break his cover, however, when he sees a South Korean guy physically abusing a child on the train. This is despite his awareness that "...the mission is everything." Breaking his cover thus means that the mission has to be attempted in a much more difficult fashion since the enemy is now aware that a group of commandos is on some type of mission in their territory.
So this is not an unsophisticated plot twist. After the soldier breaks his cover, he is told that he is too emotional, yet, one has to question whether or not saving the mission was worth allowing an innocent child to be abused. Probably the higher or better response was to potentially abandon the mission in order to protect the child, or was it? So the film has its thought-provoking element.
Also, this type of moral conflict is relevant to a story which was in the news last year in NY City. A police officer was working undercover within a motorcycle gang that was suspected of drug dealing and various other crimes. He felt that he had been told not to break his cover - his mission was to determine where this gang was getting its drugs. So when the motorcycle gang began beating an innocent man on a street in Manhattan, he did not attempt to stop this nor did he call the police to stop the beating. He was then arrested and recently sentenced to prison for not breaking his cover. So in our society it would seem that breaking one's cover is mandatory if one might become involved in some type of crime.
There's a lot of patriotism and martial arts and North Korean comradery in this film.
In this film Huston seemed most interested in revealing and examining that Lockean aspect of human character or morality which resists corruption even though a situation might strongly invite it.
You can judge for yourself how innocent these guys were.
The director later said he wasn't trying to make a film which attacked the manner in which Australian soldiers were treated by England, he said that he wanted to do a film about how the pressures of war could corrupt otherwise decent people and compel them to acts of barbarism.
It's an allegorical film, but it's an allegorical film about alot of things at the same time. So it has interpretations on all kinds of levels.
Actually, it's a film set in the Australian desert but it was originally a novel about two American children who survive an airplane crash and meet an American Indian boy who helps them before dying of influenza.
I recently saw the war movie "Fury" on DVD. It was a total piece of crap - a film for war mongers. Also, I don't know whether to believe that a tank crew in World War II really might have treated each other as that tank crew did. Based on all the World War II documentaries and films and TV shows I have seen, US guys in World War II tended to cooperate with each other better than in Fury. I tend to think that all recent war movies have been influenced by narratives that came out of the Vietnam War concerning totally dysfunctional men and units partly at war with each other while fighting a common enemy for unknown or unjustifiable reasons.
Well, let's go back to the early 1960s and see the mythology that was created around World War II. This is a highly organized effort where the men treat each other with respect and there is 100% cooperation. Fury and The Longest Day are probably two extremes in the portrayal of combat in WWII.
Five different directors worked to make this film and probably every actor in Hollywood at the time was in this film. The funniest thing is that they chose macho-man John Wayne to play General James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne Division. Gavin was a scholar as well as warrior - not sure the casting was really perfect for this film.
Aldrich was an amazing Hollywood director who made a diverse number of films. I also have Ulzana's Raid on this blog. Did you ever see The Dirty Dozen? Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Aldrich directed those movies as well. Indeed, he unobtrusively directed a number of Hollywood classics. He is totally under-appreciated.
Here's a war movie he directed. I can't say it's an anti-war film, but it's an anti-corruption film, certainly. The guy in the film who is in charge of what American soldiers are doing got his position only because of political connections and social class. Disaster ensues. It's a pretty good movie.
"I like to see a man playing as if he really meant it..."
Lindsay Anderson was an English director who seemed interested in issues of social class and aggression. "If..." is also on this blog and is a must-see film about upper class English boys who violently revolt against their inhumane 'educational' system (which is more of a disciplinary system meant to churn out members of the upper crust). It was based on Zero for Conduct by Jean Vigo - also on this blog.
This Sporting Life is about a guy from the working class who uses his aggression and pent up rage to distinguish himself himself as an athlete. Unfortunately, nothing else seems to go well for him.
