27 Apr 2018

Leslie Harris’s Closet Picks

The director of Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. stopped by to talk about the movies that loom large in her personal canon.

Leslie Harris: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

5

4 single, 1 box set

single films

4

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

8

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.

216 The Rules of the Game 1939 229 Scenes from a Marriage 1973 SET 4 by Agnès Varda 286 Divorce Italian Style 1961 140 8½ 1963

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Rules of the Game	Jean Renoir	1939	6
2	Scenes from a Marriage	Ingmar Bergman	1973	3
3	4 by Agnès Varda box set, 4 films			2
4	Divorce Italian Style	Pietro Germi	1961	5
5	8½	Federico Fellini	1963	18

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1939 to 1973, box sets 1955 to 1985

4 by Agnès Varda

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 8films run 14.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 175.6 minutes of film for each of its 5 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 5 choices had been taken by 6.8 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Every one of them has been taken by somebody else too. The least-picked was 4 by Agnès Varda, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Agnès Varda, through Cléo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda, through Vagabond, Agnès Varda, through La Pointe Courte and Agnès Varda, through Le bonheur, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com