Original subtitles

Last time, in this definitive history

of cinema, I definited cinema

from its early days of silent crud

to the shrill gaudiness of

The Wizard Of Oz. Now cinema

was about to enter a new Golden Age,

with new icons who'd create

an impossible beauty standard

by standing over a grate and having

air blown up their arseholes.

Tony Curtis said kissing Marilyn Monroe was like kissing Hitler.

When did he kiss Hitler?

I'm Philomena Cunk, and welcome to this...

..which is Cunk On Cinema.

It's 1941, and World War II

is generating explosive content

for future documentary-makers.

While Europe burned, America was so busy not being at war,

it had time to make what lots of people in glasses call

"the best film ever made".

Citizen Ken.

Very much the Citizen Kane of films about people named Ken.

Rosebud.

With its stylish, evocative

visuals and nonlinear narrative,

Citizen Kane challenged the notion

of what a Hollywood movie could be.

Not a chronological story,

but a kaleidoscopic portrait

of a complex and inscrutable man.

In Citizen Ken, why does Ken

have carrots in his pockets?

He keeps checking they're there, doesn't he?

He's really stressed out, in case they've fallen out.

It's a big part of the film. Like, 57%, I'd say.

I... I don't think there's anything like that in Citizen Kane.

When did you last see it?

Um... I've seen it many times. I think the last time I saw it

- was last year, and I'm pretty sure that's not... - I saw it on Thursday,

so maybe it's changed since you last bothered to watch it.

A few months after the release of Citizen Kane,

the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor

and the US entered the War.

Hollywood became a propaganda machine,

even deploying cartoon characters

in the fight against fascism.

In a triumphant intervention,

Daffy Duck heroically killed Hitler,

thereby stopping the War in its tracks.

America rejoiced, but Europe

lay in ruins. Bricks were so rare,

they were passed between people,

so everyone could touch one

to try to remember what a house felt like.

As people watched the dust settle -

because there was nothing else to watch -

they wondered what cinema should be about, once it got rebuilt.

The answer was gritty,

neorealist films that explored

the darkness they'd experienced,

even in daylight.

The Bicycle Thief is one of the all-time classic films

you've never watched and never will.

- Ciao, Ma. - Ciao, Maria. - Ciao.

Can I ask you

about The Bicycle Thief?

- Yes. - Has anyone ever watched The Bicycle Thief on purpose?

Yeah. Me, for one.

And many other people. It's a great movie.

The film recounts the heart-rending tale of an Italian

too stupid to buy a thief-proof padlock for his bike...

Al ladro! Al ladro!

..but instead of checking CCTV

or seeing if it's been listed on eBay,

he searches the whole of Rome for it,

even though all bikes back then looked exactly the fucking same,

especially in black and white.

A landmark portrait of everyday desperation,

it managed the impossible,

by humanising an Italian.

Not to be outdone, Hollywood grew its own brand of

gritty post-war movie - film noir.

Film noir is French for black cinema,

which is why Hollywood insisted on casting white leads.

Iconic Caucasians

like Humphrey Bog-art

and Lauren Back-hole.

What's wrong with you?

Nothing you can't fix.

But away from film noir,

America was obsessed with a different colour - red.

Since World War II,

communism, by force and by propaganda,

has extended its frontiers

into the heart of Europe.

What was the Red Scarf?

Do...? No. Red Scarf?

No idea.

"Senator McCarthy was at

"the centre of the Red Scarf."

Oh, the Red Scarf, right. I think we're talking about the Red Scare,

which was a time in the 1950s,

in America, when everybody was afraid that,

basically, everybody was communists,

and they were called Reds.

It was like a nickname for them.

So no scarves involved?

- Not that I know of. - Oh...

Well, that's a shame, because I've got

a lot of questions about scarves.

- Can I do them anyway? - Mm.

What is a scarf?

In the US, Republicans were terrified that

Communist sympathisers might undermine American democracy

before they'd had a chance to do it themselves.

Senator Joe McCarthy claimed Hollywood was full of

elite radicals, filling movies with far-left propaganda,

like Grok still says it is today.

In a series of tense hearings,

Hollywood screenwriters were bombarded

with hostile questions -

a welcome relief from studio notes.

Lives were ruined,

but Hollywood was about to face

a bigger threat than communism -

the television.

Although not this one. It's not plugged in.

Can I ask you about television?

- Yeah. - In three words,

how does a television work?

Er... Um....

- I don't think it's possible to... - Try again.

Um...

Electronics.

Sound. Image.

- I... - Uh... - Not easy

- to convey how television... - We don't have time for that, anyway.

For younger viewers, a television

was a sort of bulkier, immobile,

primitive smartphone,

with a non-functioning touchscreen,

which subjected the user to endless unskippable

adverts, just like YouTube.

Wonderful Ivory Snow!

TV was better than cinema,

because you didn't need to leave

your sofa to watch it,

leaving you free to develop deep vein thrombosis

at an age previously considered too young to be medically possible.

If it wanted to stay relevant,

cinema would have to offer viewers

a sense of scale that TV couldn't match.

For instance, Cecil B DeMille's Ten Commandments

wasn't just physically big, but was so long,

Charlton Heston can be seen

visibly ageing on camera. It set

a standard for epic, lengthy blockbusters

that modern directors continue

to follow to the present day.

What's the longest film you've ever made?

The longest is Pearl Harbor.

- How long was that? - It was two hours and 52 minutes.

Oh, no, no, I mean, how long, as in width?

Like, how long in widescreen?

Like, 12 metres, or...?

It depends what screen. Um...

If you made a film that's 12 metres long at the cinema,

would I need a 12-metre TV to watch it at home,

- or do you just film it again, with smaller actors and sets? - There...

No. I'm just, uh...

These are...odd questions.

- Um... - Oh. - Um...

Another way to combat the challenge of TV

was to change the shape of cinema

by changing the shape of cinema.

For years, films came in a familiar boxy shape.

It was fine for films set inside cubes or crates,

but made it hard to depict people

outdoors, holding ladders horizontally.

But now widescreen was available.

Widescreen made outdoor ladder stories possible,

as long as the actors kept their heads down.

And Hollywood didn't stop at mere ladders.

Scores of visually epic movies

exploited the stretched-out format,

with death-defying stunts

and landscape format shots of landscapes.

Western landscapes.

Few things that aren't spray cheese

define America quite like the Western,

and no American has defined the Western quite like this man,

Wayne John, a man who shot first and asked questions later,

like my Aunt Carol with a wedding camera.

Wayne played his timeless character The Man With A Hat

in almost 1 billion movies.

And as films like Hondo made clear, he was

the epitome of the rugged, masculine hero.

A substitute father figure

every American boy could look up to.

- You can't what? - I can't swim.

- How old are you? - Six.

But for some reason, young audiences didn't trust Wayne John.

For the first time in human history,

a generation of youths wasn't dying

on a battlefield or during childbirth.

They had leisure time and prosperity in abundance,

and wanted entertainment that expressed

how resentful they were about that.

Soon, movie moguls were courting teenagers -

in the acceptable financial sense -

by making films aimed at them.

There's the devil to pay

when high-school hellcats and

high-school hotshots get together.

Like a phone after an update,

Hollywood was suddenly filled with

new icons only young people could truly understand.

Teenage idols, like 24-year-old Dean James.

Was James Dean born a teenager?

I mean, that must have been terrible for his mother.

James Dean might as well have been born a teenager, because that's...

- Really painful. - ..how he exists for us in our imaginations.

But you'd need stitches and everything.

- Well, in the cinema, it doesn't matter... - She would be ripped

- from front to back, giving birth to him. - Yeah. When we're thinking about

celebrities, we don't think about where they really came from.

- We're just thinking about... - I am. - ..when they first

came to our attention.

Dean was the star of a long list of three classic films,

the most famous being Rebel Without Acorns,

where he wowed viewers with his internalised fury,

which only comes to the surface

when, jealous of its acting abilities, he fights some furniture.

Perhaps more influential was a man whose name is familiar to

any serious student of film, Marlo Brandon.

Marlo Brandon invented a whole new form of acting.

Instead of reciting lines clearly,

he'd mumble them while looking handsome,

which was better than hearing an ugly person saying them coherently.

Yeah. I mean, I know a nice little dump down here that's got

a special entrance for ladies and all like that.

Marlon Brando was a meth head, wasn't he?

No, he was a meth-od actor.

- Um... - What is meth-head actor?

Well, method has to do with how you find your way into a character,

- and it's about a naturalism. - It's surprising that

they can remember their lines when they're on meth.

Brando's success proved screen acting was becoming

an art form in its own right.

For centuries, actors had to stand onstage, bellowing their lines.

Now the movie camera could pick up

the tiniest facial expressions,

authentically inhabiting

a character became key.

When you're trying to

get inside a character, which hole do you enter by, north or south?

Er, it's not like a...

I mean... Er...

Do you use the Rhythm Method?

- Not... - It's an acting term,

- the Rhythm Method. - Is it? - A lot of actors use the Rhythm Method. - Mm.

- I think it's when you pull out of a character at the last minute. - Wow!

Perhaps the most famous method actor ever was a woman.

This is Marilyn Monroe, of Marilyn Monroe fame.

Not the real one, who's dead,

but a live human copy we hired from an agency,

which also threw in this Gordon Ramsay

as part of a two-for-one offer.

Even now, decades after her death,

Monroe's one of the most recognisable people on the planet,

even though she hasn't worked for ages.

Unlike Gordon Ramsay, who juggles a thriving restaurant empire

with a busy media career,

in which he shouts at people until they learn to cook.

Monroe was an enigmatic screen actor, who effortlessly blended

sex appeal, vulnerability, comic timing and innocence

into one irresistible package for men to destroy.

Why did they say Marilyn Monroe is the ultimate male fantasy when,

as far as I can see, the ultimate male fantasy

is having your own podcast?

Do you think Marilyn Monroe would have enjoyed podcasts?

No, I think she'd have had better things to do.

- Yeah, like what? - Um, she was a big reader,

Marilyn Monroe, but she wanted

- to adapt Dostoevsky for... - I think she just held books

and had her picture taken with them.

Um, well, she talked a lot about how she liked them, so...

Yeah, we can all do that.

Marilyn was a massive sex symbol,

who ushered in a new era of Hollywood icons.

Unforgettable names like Steve McQuim,

Paul Human,

Jane Fondle,

Robert Redfuck

and Gordon Ramsay,

who hasn't technically starred in any movies,

but we had him for the full day, so no harm in leaving him in.

Of course, Hollywood wasn't the only place movies were being made.

The rest of the world was busily making its own films,

foreign films, in a variety of tastes.

Because different nationalities come in different flavours,

as your mum can explain.

Foreign films reflected the personalities of the countries

they sprang from. So the British made genteel comedies

about the class system...

Sh!

..while the Japanese crafted meticulously stylish epics

about samurais and honour.

When you watch a foreign film,

what's all the writing for?

That is to help.

It's called subtitles, and that is to help you understand

what the people are saying on-screen.

Right, so you're supposed to read all that?

You are supposed to read it.

Subtitles are annoying, though, aren't they? Because you can't

read the subtitles and look at your phone at the same time.

If they're going to have to write all the words out anyway,

why don't they just make the films in English?

- Mais il y a le nom Kovacs ecrit la-dessus. - Ah, oui?

This is Jean-Luc Godard's About De Souffle,

also known as Breathless, because it contains so much

smoking, you can catch emphysema just by watching it.

Shot on the streets of Paris like a rabid dog,

its constantly roving hand-held camera work was startling,

inspiring surprise and motion sickness in all who saw it.

As well as being the most aggressively

French cigarette advert in history,

Breathless was part of the influential French New Wave,

the movement that made stars of its directors.

This is Francois Truffaut,

which is French for Frank Truffle.

He directed New Wave classics including

Jules Ate Jim

and...Le Quatre...

Le Qua... Oh!

Truffaut had a bold idea that it was the director, not the writer,

who should be thought of as the author of the film.

He called this Auteur Theory -

the idea that out of everyone, he "auteur" get all the credit.

This made him feel more important than anyone else

which, being French, he did anyway.

Ever since, directors have been

treated as huge geniuses,

with egos to match.

Do directors treat camera crews

with respect?

For the most part, yes, directors do.

I saw a thing where there was a French director

who was trying to get a shot that wasn't all blurry,

and he kept turning to his camera crew and saying,

"Fock-ers. Fock-ers."

Yes, sometimes, you do get directors like that,

- and... - I think he even said "shallow fock-ers" as well.

- Right, well... - "Shallow fock-ers"! - I know.

Well, to give him the benefit of the doubt,

he may have been saying "shallow focus",

which is about depth of field.

Oh, so he wanted them to focus, he wasn't being rude?

Let's... Let's hope so.

Right. Yeah. He did hit one with a shoe until he cried, though.

But when it comes to auteur directors,

none was bigger, or more obese, than a man so fatly influential,

his name became synonymous with cinematic genius.

Who was Ian Hitchcock?

I think you're referring to Alfred Hitchcock,

- who was a famous film-maker. - Well, it says "Hitchcock-Ian"

- on the question sheet thing, so... - OK. Yeah. So that's

a word "Hitchcockian",

which doesn't mean "Hitchcock-Ian", as in Ian Hitchcock,

- it means a film in the style of Alfred Hitchcock... - Right.

..like Cunkian would be "like Philomena Cunk".

- Yeah. Is that a thing that people say? - No. - Oh.

Hitchcock began his career in Britain,

but moved to the USA in the days before ICE.

He soon made a name for himself

with a series of exciting and luscious movies.

Films like Vertigo,

in which Jimmy Stewart plays a man who spirals into paranoia.

Or Rear Window,

in which Jimmy Stewart plays a man who spirals into paranoia,

but this time, in a chair.

But Hitchcock's most impactful film was also his nastiest.

It came out in 1960, and it was called...Physio.

Physio tells the story of

Norman Bates, a humble motel owner

tormented by shameless female guests

who insist on brazenly stripping naked

in front of his secret peephole,

thereby goading him into murder.

- You know the shower scene in Psycho? - Mm-hm. - Was that edited?

Oh, several edits. I think there was

50-plus edits on that one,

which is one of the most incredible

horror scenes ever made.

SHE SCREAMS

You see the knife going in,

- though, don't you? - You don't.

That's actually one of the coolest things about this scene,

is that the knife does not make any contact with the skin.

You see the motion of someone stabbing.

You see Marion's character fall to the floor.

You see the blood go down the drain.

But you never once see the knife breaking skin.

So if she doesn't get stabbed, how come she dies?

Janet Leigh's murder

was the most shocking death

ever captured on film,

until JFK stole that crown three years later.

A crown which, ironically, he could no longer wear.

The times, they were a-changing.

The Swinging Sixties were happening.

Young people stopped shaving and cutting their hair,

and dropped out of society,

like my Uncle Steve did after his divorce.

And thanks to psychedelic drugs, the hippies didn't need cinema

at all. They could simply drop acid

and watch an epic 12 hour-movie

in the comfort of their own minds.

But Hollywood didn't understand this new generation,

and it kept blindly churning out old-fashioned epics

young folks didn't want to see,

then wondering why they flopped.

In desperation, the studios hired

a groovy young director

to make a new far-out kind of movie.

What are you talking about, HAL?

This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it.

Have you seen Stanley Kubbard's 201?

I think you mean Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

Is that a sequel?

- No, that's the film. - Do you have to have seen

the first 2,000 films in the series to understand 2,001?

No, the number doesn't refer to that number in a series of films.

- It's the year that the film is set in. - Are you sure?

Yes, I'm absolutely certain.

2001 was a philosophically demanding, visually audacious,

big-budget sci-fi epic

that examined the entire history of

human progress and dared the viewer

to ask themselves, why am I here,

instead of watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Screen 2?

This was more than a film. It was

a psychedelic experience,

just like a real acid trip,

in that it was incoherent and lasted for hours,

whether you were enjoying it or not.

The '60s generation weren't just into psychedelia.

They were more relaxed about sex.

But American films, which were still

complying with the 1930s Hays Code,

were still rather coy,

whereas European films

could show everything. Hollywood

had to move with the sexy times

to avoid being left behind,

so the US censors devised

a new code, based on letters,

like all languages.

X - persons under 16 will not be admitted.

As a result, in the US,

porn briefly went mainstream.

Graphic films like Deep Throat

pushed the envelope,

then pulled out and jizzed up its back.

Mind if I smoke,

while you're eating?

No, not at all.

Oh, that is disgusting!

I can't believe she's smoking indoors!

Film censorship in the UK

was more reserved.

They put an off-putting man at the start of rude films

to ensure it was impossible to get aroused.

This film has been classified 18,

which means it's for adults only.

To find out more about how film censorship works,

I spoke to David Clamworth,

who's worked at the Board of British Film Censorship

for over 20 years.

Right, I'm going to describe some things that might happen in a film,

and I want you to tell me what certificate

- that film should get, OK? - OK.

Wrestling.

Probably suitable for all.

Superman, but he's crouching...

- That's... - ..over a toilet...

- ..possibly PG. - ..and opening his bum.

Depends on what you see.

You see everything, unsimulated.

Possibly wouldn't be passed at all.

Animal husbandry.

- Animal husbandry? - Yeah.

- Animals. - What do you mean, exactly? - You know, animals. - Animals, what?

- Doing it. - Doing it? - Doing it. - Well,

that wouldn't necessarily

- be... - Big animals.

Actually, this interview is fake,

and that man is an actor,

because when we approached the real

David Clamworth for an interview,

he turned us down.

Well, here at Cunk On Cinema, we thought that wasn't good enough,

so we paid a visit to their headquarters in London

to confront him in person with the questions he didn't want to answer.

Can I speak to Mr Clamworth?

I'm afraid Mr Clamworth's not in today.

Seems they don't want to talk to us.

- That's him! - Mr Clamworth!

If there was full-frontal nudity from Batman,

what certificate would that be?

- I've got no comment. - Why don't you want to speak to me, Mr Clamworth?

Footage of a full rectal examination,

- with funny music over it. - No comment.

What certificate would that be, Mr Clamworth?

Would that be X-rated, Mr Clamworth?

Mr Clamworth, our viewers deserve to know!

TYRES SCREECH

What about a clown doing a shit in his own hat,

on Christmas Day?!

The dark vibes darkened

even further during the 1970s.

With urban decay

and rising lawlessness,

the Watergate scandal,

the Vietnam War,

we've licensed library footage to illustrate all of them,

plus this clip of Tony the Tiger

- to lighten the mood. - They're grrrreat!

It was the perfect environment

for the profoundly unsettling Taxi Driver,

in which Robert De Niro plays a New York cabbie driven so insane by

the urban hellscape he's trapped in,

he launches the world's

most confrontational podcast,

streaming 24/7 in his own head.

Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads,

here's a man who would not take it any more.

A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts,

the dogs, the filth, the shit.

Here is someone who stood up.

Here is... Aah!

In Taxi Driver, what had driven

Travis Bickle so mad?

Was it customers blowing off in the back? That'd wind me up.

It was actually the Vietnam War.

That is the reason why

he is acting the way that he does.

So he's just angry at society?

That's all taxi drivers, really, isn't it?

The end of Taxi Driver

is shockingly violent.

He causes a bloodbath.

Hey!

GUNSHOT

Why were taxi drivers allowed to behave like that back then?

They weren't ALLOWED to behave like that.

He was a character in a film, so he's not real.

So what he does in the film would have been seen as

borderline unacceptable. If they remade it today,

he'd be violating Uber's code of conduct, wouldn't he?

Definitely no more than two stars.

Brutal, merciless films like Taxi Driver

came to symbolise New Hollywood

and a new generation of maverick directors.

There were a load of new directors who came up in the 1970s,

weren't there? Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola.

Why did they only have surnames?

No, they had first names as well, it's just that we refer to them

- by their surnames as a shorthand. - What was Scorsese's name?

- Martin. - Marvin? - Martin.

- Marvin? - Mar-TIN.

Could you spell it for me?

M-A-R-T-I-N.

So it's spelt with a T, but pronounced with a V?

- No, it's pronounced "Mar-tin". - What, so it's spelt with a V,

after all? You claimed it was a T just then.

No, it's... His name is Martin.

- It's not Marvin at all. - Look, I think we're getting

bogged down here. I don't know why

you're so bothered about spelling. Does it really matter

for the overall story of cinema how Marvin Scorsese's name's spelt?

It does, because he's Martin Scorsese.

He's Martin "Scor-sessie", actually. So you're getting

his first name wrong and mispronouncing his second name.

What about Jennifer Spielberg, how's that spelt?

Undoubtedly the biggest film-maker to break through in the 1970s

was a man we now know as Steven Spielberg,

responsible for one of the most iconic films in history.

There's a film called Jaws,

which you might not have heard of. It's about a sort of sea creature.

The technical name for it is a shark.

It lives in the water and eats people.

- Have you seen it? - I have seen Jaws, yes. - Oh, well done!

- I love that film. - Yeah. There's a famous shot in Jaws

where the sheriff man's on the beach

and he sees the shark,

and the perspective goes sort of mental.

Why did they leave a mistake like that in the final film?

- Well, that was quite deliberate. - So they did that on purpose?

They did it on purpose to...again, to distort and to create a sense of,

of shock and the sort of concertinaing of the situation.

They did it with a zoom.

The camera is tracking forward

and zooming out. It's called

- a contrazoom. - Right. So they sort of push in and pull out

- at the same time? - Yes. - Yeah.

My ex Sean used to say that was a foolproof method

for not getting pregnant.

He's a dad now. A terrible one, by all accounts.

God help his girlfriend,

although I don't like her either.

Jaws wasn't just notable for

its visuals, but its soundtrack,

which could just be made out

over the sound of people screaming and running away.

Could you talk me through the music from Jaws?

Jaws is, er,

an unbelievably impactful score

and a very seemingly simple score,

which is basically these two notes that go...

HE PLAYS LOW, MENACING NOTES

MUSIC BUILDS

How did a shark write that?

Next time, A New Hope for cinema,

as spectacular money-spinners

dominate the box office.

The video store boom

spawns a wave of cult classics.

And film-making itself faces

its final existential threat.

What's genital AI?

I think you mean generative AI.

So it's a generative system that takes pictures

- of genitals? - No...

HE SIGHS