Welcome to The Penny-Pinching Cinephile, a weekly spotlight of the best free flicks on the web. ‘Cuz sometimes you gotta eat.
1) The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
Great minds really do think alike, as our own Andreas Stoehr picked The Scarlet Empress for his Looking Back segment this week. Great minds, or sheer coincidence, take your pick. Von Sternberg’s film is an embarrassment of decadence, anti-Russian muckraking and Marlene Dietrich’s eyebrows. Ridiculousness doesn’t get more entertaining. Charting the rise of Catherine the Great from virginal German innocent to uniformed leader of the Russian army/total sex bomb, The Scarlet Empress isn’t exactly historically accurate. But with its insanely detailed production design, crackling smart-alec dialogue and outrageous costumes, you’ll wish it were.
Watch on DailyMotion
2) Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow and Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio de Sica, 1963/64)
It’s a de Sica/Mastroianni/Loren double feature! If you don’t have anything to do this weekend, may I suggest snuggling up with some spaghetti, chianti and a molto bene few hours with some of Italy’s best ’60s entertainment? Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow is an anthology film, charting the history of the Italian screen couple, from post-war neo-realist (lots of babies, not a lot of money), to cool ’60s mod (sports cars and aloof affairs) and a sweet final segment in which Sophia Loren plays the hooker with a heart of gold. Marriage Italian Style continues this last theme, as Loren again plays a prostitute who also is the long-time lover of a wealthy business man (Marcello Mastroianni). To prevent the man from marrying his much younger lover, Loren pretends to die and then blackmails him into finally making an honest woman out of her. Ah, Italy! How romantic.
3) Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) and Destino (Dominique Monfery, 2003)
Admittedly, this is kind of an odd choice. I’ve selected the Alfred Hitchcock film Spellbound, for which surrealist Salvador Dali famously created a dream sequence, and the animated short film Destino, which is a recently completed collaboration between Dali and Walt Disney. Destino was started in 1945, but not completed until 2003; thus this short and feature pairing is a small sample of 1945, the year when Salvador Dali went mainstream. Sort of. In Spellbound, Ingrid Bergman is a psychoanalyst trying to protect a patient she believes has been falsely accused of murder. The two-minute dream sequence features masked men, giant, droopy eyeballs, and a lone man being chased by unknown forces. Destino features some familiar Dali imagery–like ants crawling out from the palm of a hand–and tells the story of a lone heroine trying to unite with her lover while overcoming the forces that hold her back. What is interesting about Destino is that while the landscape may be pure surrealism, the narrative–beautiful but resourceful heroine navigating through the dark and scary woods–is pure Disney. Watching the two films together provides an insight into the collaborative side of artistic genius.
Watch Spellbound on YouTube; Destino on Ubu
4) Let’s Get Lost (Bruce Weber, 1988)
This hazy, sad and beautiful documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker mixes archival footage with contemporary interviews to give a portrait of a musical genius who’s just as well known as a pop icon for his rock ‘n roll good looks and notorious heroin addiction. Chet Baker is a complex figure: his soft singing voice seems at any moment about to crack into tears, but the real man is no sob story. Director Bruce Weber strikes all the right tones of dreamy and jazzy, of a story unfolding to a downbeat tempo, taking us into the world of 1950s jazz and Baker’s 1980s career resurrection. Now a living icon, musical personae as varied as Chris Issak to guitarist Flea flock to sit in on recording sessions with the legend. Sadly, Chet Baker died in 1988, making Let’s Get Lost a haunting final testament to a true musical genius.
Watch on YouTube, via OpenCulture
5) Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005)
Brick made quite the indie splash when it first came out and if you ask me, it’s still the best of Rian Johnson’s output. Cribbing from film noir and the hardboiled parlance of Dashiell Hammett, Brick is a bulls and dicks story set in a Southern California high school. If that set-up is too high concept for you, skip it. But if you can make that mental adjustment and view the style as informing the closeted, cliquey milieu of high school–that time when everyone felt like an outsider and it seemed like everyone was out to get you–then sit back and enjoy Brick. Brendon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) investigates the death of his ex-girlfriend, which leads him to the school’s underground drug culture and gets him embroiled with several dangerous heavies and an even deadlier femme fatale.
If you’d like to suggest a website or film that’s screening for free, leave us a comment below.
