23 Apr 2023

Carl Franklin’s Closet Picks

The director of One False Move and Devil in a Blue Dress talks about his love of Yasujiro Ozu, the exploration of crime in Pixote , the inspiration he took from Children of Paradise , and one of the greatest jazz films of all time.

Carl Franklin: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

12

10 single, 2 box sets

single films

10

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.

SET The Killers 178 My Life as a Dog 1985 141 Children of Paradise 1945 217 Tokyo Story 1953 331 Late Spring 1949 140 8½ 1963 963 To Sleep with Anger 1990 SET Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 962 Death in Venice 1971 1098 The Damned 1969 1122 ’Round Midnight 1986 830 Chimes at Midnight 1966

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Killers box set, 2 films			3
2	My Life as a Dog	Lasse Hallström	1985	7
3	Children of Paradise	Marcel Carné	1945	5
4	Tokyo Story	Yasujiro Ozu	1953	10
5	Late Spring	Yasujiro Ozu	1949	7
6	8½	Federico Fellini	1963	18
7	To Sleep with Anger	Charles Burnett	1990	11
8	Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 box set, 6 films			4
9	Death in Venice	Luchino Visconti	1971	3
10	The Damned	Luchino Visconti	1969	5
11	’Round Midnight	Bertrand Tavernier	1986	7
12	Chimes at Midnight	Orson Welles	1966	3

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1945 to 1990, box sets 1934 to 1980

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3

The Killers

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 37 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 184.8 minutes of film for each of its 12 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 12 choices had been taken by 6.92 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 The Killers, taken by 3 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Charles Burnett, through To Sleep with Anger, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com