20 Oct 2023

Todd Haynes’s Closet Picks

The writer and director of Safe, Carol, and May December describes the influence that Brief Encounter and Beau travail have had on his work, praises classic Douglas Sirk movies as “the most perfect films ever made,” and gives a shout-out to the late Terence Davies and his friend Kelly Reichardt.

Todd Haynes: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

16

15 single, 1 box set

single films

15

chosen on their own

box sets

1

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.

76 Brief Encounter 1945 277 My Own Private Idaho 1991 95 All That Heaven Allows 1955 96 Written on the Wind 1956 SET The BRD Trilogy 308 Masculin féminin 1966 629 Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 541 The Night of the Hunter 1955 694 The Long Day Closes 1992 1042 Beau travail 1999 1003 All About Eve 1950 1004 Now, Voyager 1942 1008 Old Joy 2006 1182 The Servant 1963 836 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls 1970 810 In a Lonely Place 1950

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Brief Encounter	David Lean	1945	4
2	My Own Private Idaho	Gus Van Sant	1991	9
3	All That Heaven Allows	Douglas Sirk	1955	3
4	Written on the Wind	Douglas Sirk	1956	4
5	The BRD Trilogy box set, 3 films			4
6	Masculin féminin	Jean-Luc Godard	1966	4
7	Sunday Bloody Sunday	John Schlesinger	1971	7
8	The Night of the Hunter	Charles Laughton	1955	11
9	The Long Day Closes	Terence Davies	1992	1
10	Beau travail	Claire Denis	1999	8
11	All About Eve	Joseph L. Mankiewicz	1950	10
12	Now, Voyager	Irving Rapper	1942	5
13	Old Joy	Kelly Reichardt	2006	4
14	The Servant	Joseph Losey	1963	2
15	Beyond the Valley of the Dolls	Russ Meyer	1970	4
16	In a Lonely Place	Nicholas Ray	1950	4

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1942 to 2006, box sets 1979 to 1982

The BRD Trilogy

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

That is 115.6 minutes of film for each of its 16 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 16 choices had been taken by 5.25 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 Long Day Closes, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Claire Denis, through Beau travail, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com