Archives for August 6, 2019

From 2009:

In honor of the release of its new DVD edition of The Last Days of Disco, the folks at the Criterion Collection invited Whit Stillman to submit a top-ten list of his favorite Criterion releases. He chose Mario Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey, Hitchcock’s Notorious, and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal…

What would I choose from the Criterion catalogue? I like nearly all of the films on Whit’s list, but only one, The Lady Eve, would make my personal top ten….

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Whit Stillman writes:

Thanks, Terry—missing here was my preface to the Criterion list: these were the first 10 films I came to in their catalog that I admired, not even getting to most of their catalog, not a 10 best list.

“At Wilber’s age, it was possible to believe that argument served some purpose, persuaded people, obliged those in error to turn to the truth. But soon enough you would have to wonder if an argument ever did anything beyond giving pleasure to those who already agreed with its contentions.”

James Gould Cozzens, Men and Brethren