5 Nov 2017

Euzhan Palcy’s Closet Picks

The trailblazing director of A Dry White Season reminisces about her childhood love of Hitchcock, the kindness that François Truffaut showed her, and a Brazilian classic that changed her life.

Euzhan Palcy: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

11

9 single, 2 box sets

single films

9

chosen on their own

box sets

2

one choice, many films

films reached

18

the same visit, box sets opened

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

48 Black Orpheus 1959 3 The Lady Vanishes 1938 551 Cronos 1993 811 The Naked Island 1960 666 The Devil’s Backbone 2001 838 Pan’s Labyrinth 2006 953 A Dry White Season 1989 5 The 400 Blows 1959 SET John Cassavetes: Five Films SET A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman 721 Love Streams 1984

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Black Orpheus	Marcel Camus	1959	10
2	The Lady Vanishes	Alfred Hitchcock	1938	5
3	Cronos	Guillermo del Toro	1993	3
4	The Naked Island	Kaneto Shindo	1960	1
5	The Devil’s Backbone	Guillermo del Toro	2001	4
6	Pan’s Labyrinth	Guillermo del Toro	2006	3
7	A Dry White Season	Euzhan Palcy	1989	2
8	The 400 Blows	François Truffaut	1959	10
9	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films			30
10	A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman box set, 3 films			5
11	Love Streams	John Cassavetes	1984	8

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1938 to 2006, box sets 1959 to 2000

John Cassavetes: Five Films

A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

Its 18films run 34.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 188.8 minutes of film for each of its 11 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.

How unusual this haul was

Its 11 choices had been taken by 7.36 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was The Naked Island, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Guillermo del Toro, through Cronos, Guillermo del Toro, through The Devil’s Backbone and Guillermo del Toro, through Pan’s Labyrinth, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

One of the choices is their own: A Dry White Season. Left out of the lineage count, because reaching for yourself is not reaching for somebody else.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com