World War II offi­cial­ly end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945. It fol­lowed, by less than three weeks, an equal­ly momen­tous event, at least in the eyes of cinephiles: the birth of Wim Wen­ders. Though soon to turn 80 years old, Wen­ders has remained both pro­duc­tive and capa­ble of draw­ing great crit­i­cal acclaim. Wit­ness, for exam­ple, his Tokyo-set 2023 film Per­fect Days, which made it to the run­ning for both the Palme d’Or and a Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film Acad­e­my Award. Back on V‑J Day, it sure­ly would’ve been dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a Japan­ese-Ger­man co-pro­duc­tion seri­ous­ly com­pet­ing for the most pres­ti­gious prizes in cin­e­ma — even one direct­ed by a known Amer­i­caphile.

Wen­ders has long worked at reveal­ing inter­sec­tions of his­to­ry and cul­ture. Seen today, Wings of Desire seems for all the world to express the spir­it about to be lib­er­at­ed by the fall of the Sovi­et Union, but by Wen­ders’ own admis­sion, nobody work­ing on the movie would have cred­it­ed the idea of the Berlin Wall com­ing down any time in the fore­see­able future.

In his new short film “The Keys to Free­dom,” he com­mem­o­rates the 80th anniver­sary of the Sec­ond World War’s con­clu­sion by pay­ing a vis­it to a school in Reims. Comman­deered for the secret all-night meet­ing in which Ger­man gen­er­als signed the doc­u­ments con­firm­ing their coun­try’s total sur­ren­der to the Allies, it host­ed the end of what Wen­ders called “the dark­est peri­od in the his­to­ry of Europe.”

Clos­ing up the tem­po­rary head­quar­ters, Allied com­man­der-in-chief Dwight D. Eisen­how­er returned its keys to the may­or of Reims, say­ing, “These are the keys to the free­dom of the world.” As much as these words move Wen­ders, he also fears that, even as the Rus­sia-Ukraine war roils on, younger gen­er­a­tions of Euro­peans no longer grasp their mean­ing. Born into soci­eties pro­tect­ed by the Unit­ed States, they nat­u­ral­ly take peace for grant­ed. “We have to be aware of the fact that Uncle Sam isn’t doing our job for very much longer, and we might have to defend this free­dom our­selves,” Wen­ders explains in a New York Times inter­view. The end of World War II marked the begin­ning of the so-called “Amer­i­can cen­tu­ry.” If that cen­tu­ry is well and tru­ly draw­ing to its close, who bet­ter to observe it than Wen­ders?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Explains How Polaroid Pho­tos Ignite His Cre­ative Process and Help Him Cap­ture a Deep­er Kind of Truth

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

36 Artists Give Advice to Young Cre­ators: Wim Wen­ders, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, Pat­ti Smith, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco & More

Wern­er Herzog’s New Nov­el The Twi­light World Tells the Sto­ry of the WWII Japan­ese Sol­dier Who Famous­ly Refused to Sur­ren­der

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-bud­get spec­ta­cle, and nobody knew that bet­ter than the Pythons them­selves. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, they turned the pro­jec­t’s finan­cial con­straints into one of its many sources of humor, fash­ion­ing mem­o­rable gags out of every­thing from coconut shells sub­sti­tut­ing for hors­es to the sud­den shut­down of film­ing that ends the “sto­ry.” But, as explained in the Canned His­to­ry video above, putting togeth­er even the mod­est sum with which they had to work was hard­ly a straight­for­ward endeav­or. Turned down by stu­dios, the Pythons sought out the only financiers like­ly to pos­sess both suf­fi­cient wealth and suf­fi­cient belief in an absur­dist TV com­e­dy troupe mak­ing their first prop­er film: rock stars.

This was the mid-nine­teen-sev­en­ties, recall, when a group with a few hit albums could find them­selves mak­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly, more mon­ey than they knew what to do with. Such was the case with Pink Floyd, for exam­ple, after releas­ing The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.

Mon­ty Python, for their part, had put out not only three sea­sons of their BBC series Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, but also a vari­ety of pur­chasable goods like books and LPs. The lat­ter made them the music-indus­try con­nec­tions that they could use to enlist the likes of not just the Floyd, but also Led Zep­pelin, Jethro Tull, as well as record labels like Island, Charis­ma, and Chrysalis. As Eric Idle tweet­ed much lat­er, Zep­pelin con­tributed £31,500, Pink Floy­d’s com­pa­ny £21,000, and Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son £6,300: £627,000 in more recent val­ue, or near­ly $850,000 in U.S. dol­lars.

Alto­geth­er, Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail’s bud­get came to £282,035 in 1974 pounds: by no means a king’s ran­som, but just enough to put togeth­er a com­ic take on Arthuri­an leg­end. No more con­ven­tion­al investors than the Pythons were con­ven­tion­al film­mak­ers, the rock stars and oth­er music-indus­try fig­ures involved made no vis­its to the set, nor offered any “notes” on the work in progress. One sus­pects that they were hap­py just to sup­port a Mon­ty Python project, and even more so to receive the tax break offered for films pro­duced in the U.K. In the event, of course, they all made their mon­ey back many times over, with a cut of the Broad­way musi­cal adap­ta­tion Spa­malot to boot. The film’s imme­di­ate and out­sized suc­cess can’t have been far from the mind of George Har­ri­son — that great ene­my of the tax­man — when Idle called him up a few years lat­er, ask­ing for the mon­ey to make Life of Bri­an.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream Online Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniver­sary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

It can be tempt­ing to view the box office’s dom­i­na­tion by visu­al-effects-laden Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle as a recent phe­nom­e­non. And indeed, there have been peri­ods dur­ing which that was­n’t the case: the “New Hol­ly­wood” that began in the late nine­teen six­ties, for instance, when the old stu­dio sys­tem hand­ed the reins to inven­tive young guns like Peter Bog­danovich, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, and Mar­tin Scors­ese. But lest we for­get, that move­ment met its end in the face of com­pe­ti­tion from late-1970s block­busters like Jaws and Star Wars, a new kind of block­buster that sig­naled a return to the sim­ple thrills of silent cin­e­ma.

Even a cen­tu­ry ago, many movie­go­ers expect­ed two expe­ri­ences above all: to be wowed, and to be made to laugh. No won­der that era saw visu­al come­di­ans like Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Char­lie Chap­lin become not just the most famous actors in the world, but some of the most famous human beings in the world.

Stay­ing on top required not just seri­ous per­for­ma­tive skill, but also equal­ly seri­ous tech­ni­cal inge­nu­ity, as explained in the new Lost in Time video above. It breaks down just how Lloyd, Keaton, and Chap­lin pulled off some of their career-defin­ing stunts on film, putting the actu­al clips along­side CGI recon­struc­tions of the sets as they would have looked dur­ing shoot­ing.

When Lloyd hangs from the arms of a clock high above down­town Los Ange­les in Safe­ty Last! (1923), he’s real­ly hang­ing high above down­town Los Ange­les — albeit on a set con­struct­ed atop a build­ing, shot from a care­ful­ly cho­sen angle. When the entire façade of a house falls around Keaton in Steam­boat Bill, Jr. (1928), leav­ing him stand­ing unharmed in a win­dow frame, the façade actu­al­ly fell around him — in a pre­cise­ly chore­o­graphed man­ner, but with only a cou­ple of inch­es of clear­ance on each side. When a blind­fold­ed Chap­lin skates per­ilous­ly close to a mul­ti­sto­ry drop in Mod­ern Times (1936), he’s per­fect­ly safe, the edge of the floor being noth­ing more than a mat­te paint­ing: one of those ana­log tech­nolo­gies of movie mag­ic whose obso­les­cence is still bemoaned by clas­sic-film enthu­si­asts, from whom CGI, no mat­ter how expen­sive, nev­er quite thrills or amus­es in the same way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Watch the Only Time Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Per­formed Togeth­er On-Screen (1952)

Safe­ty Last!, the 1923 Movie Fea­tur­ing the Most Icon­ic Scene from Silent Film Era, Just Went Into the Pub­lic Domain

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

How Char­lie Chap­lin Used Ground­break­ing Visu­al Effects to Shoot the Death-Defy­ing Roller Skate Scene in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.