In literature, an essay is a composition dealing with its subject from a personal point of view. The pioneer of this genre, 16th-century French writer and philosopher Michel de Montaigne, used the French word “essai” to describe his “attempts” to put subjective thoughts into writing. Deriving its name from Montaigne’s magnum opus Essays and the literary genre in general, essay films are defined as a self-reflexive form of avant-garde, experimental, sort of documentary cinema that can be traced back to the dawn of filmmaking.
From early silent essay films, like D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat and Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, to in-depth explorations from the second half of the 20th century, these are some of the best essay films ever made, ranked.
8 A Corner in Wheat
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
The 14-minute short A Corner in Wheat (1909) is considered by many to be the world’s earliest essay film. Directed by filmmaking pioneer D. W. Griffith, this shot follows a ruthless tycoon who wants to control the wheat market. A powerful portrayal of capitalistic greed, A Corner in Wheat is a bold commentary on the contrast between the wealthy speculators and the agricultural poor. It is simply one of the best early short films.
7 Two or Three Things I Know About Her
UGC
Described by MUBI as “a landmark transition from the maestro’s jazzy genre deconstructions of the 60s to his gorgeous and inquisitive essay films of the future” (such as Histoire(s) du cinéma, Goodbye to Language, The Image Book), 1967’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her is Jean-Luc Godard’s collage of modern life.
The story of 24 hours in the life of housewife Juliette (Marina Vlady), who moonlights as a prostitute, is only a template for the filmmaker’s social observation of 1960s France, sprinkled with references to the nightmares of the Vietnam War. Whispering in our ears as narrator, Godard tells us much more than two or three things about “her,” referring to Paris rather than Juliette.
6 F for Fake
Planfilm
Orson Welles’ 1973 essay film F for Fake focuses on three hoaxers, the notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory who had a talent for copying styles of noted painters; his biographer Clifford Irving whose fake “authorized biography” of Howard Hughes was one of the biggest literary scandals of the 20th century; and Welles himself with his famous War of the Worlds hoax. One of the best Orson Welles films, F for Fake investigates the tenuous lines between forgery and art, illusion and life.
5 News from Home
World Artists
An unforgettable time capsule of New York in the 1970s, News from Home features Belgian film director Chantal Akerman reading melancholic, sometimes passive-aggressive letters from her mother over beautiful shots of New York, where Akerman relocated at the age of 21. Released in 1976, after the filmmaker’s breakthrough drama Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, News from Home makes plain the disconnection in family, while New York and the young artist’s alienating come more and more to the front.
4 As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Canyon Cinema
Jonas Mekas, the godfather of American avant-garde cinema, made one of the most personal, but at the same time one of the most universal films ever. It is his 2000 experimental documentary As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty. Compiled from Mekas’ home movies from 1970-1999, this nearly five-hour essay film shows the loveliness of everyday life. Footage of what Mekas calls “little fragments of paradise,” the first steps of the filmmaker’s children, their happy life in New York, trips to Europe, and on and on, are complemented by Mekas’ commentary. It is a poetic diary about nothing but life.
3 Sans Soleil
Argos Films
Directed by Chris Marker, king of the essay film, 1983’s Sans Soleil (Sunless) follows an unseen cameraman named Sandor Krasna, Marker’s alter ego, who journeys from Africa to Japan, “two extreme poles of survival.” The 100-minute poetical collage of Marker’s original documentary footage, clips from films and television, sequences from other filmmakers, and stock videos comes complete with the voice of a nameless female narrator, who reads Krasna’s letters that sum up his lifetime’s travels.
Like Marker’s French New Wave masterpieceLa Jetee, Sans Soleil reflects on human experience, the nature of memory, understanding of time, and life on our planet. It is pure beauty.
2 Blue
Zeitgeist Films
Made when the filmmaker, Derek Jarman, was dying from AIDS-related complications that rendered him partially blind and capable only of experiencing shades of blue, the great experimental film Blue from 1993 is like no other. Jarman’s 79-minute final feature consists of a single shot of one color — International Klein Blue. Against a blank blue screen, the iconic director interweaves a medley of sounds, music, voices of four narrators (Jarman himself, the chameleonic Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, and John Quentin), the filmmaker’s daydreams, adventures of Blue, as a character and color, diary-like entries about Jarman’s life and current events, names of his lovers and friends who had died of AIDS, fragments of poetry, and much more.
A deeply personal goodbye and a sort of self-portrait, this essay film is dedicated to Yves Klein, the artist who mixed this deep blue hue and said, “At first there is nothing, then there is a profound nothingness, after that a blue profundity”.
1 Man with a Movie Camera
VUFKU
Dziga Vertov, one of cinema’s greatest innovators, believed that the “eye” of the camera captures life better than the subjective eye of a human. In the 1920s, he started looking for cinematic truth, showing life outside the field of human vision through a mix of rhythmic editing, multiple exposures, experimental camera angles, backward sequences, freeze frames, extreme close-ups, and other “cinema eye” techniques. This is how Vertov’s best-known film, 1929’s Man with a Movie Camera, was made. This narrative-free essay shows the kaleidoscopic life of Soviet cities. An avant-garde urban poem, Man with a Movie Camera makes clear what the beauty of cinema is.
