26 Sept 2014
Slavoj Žižek’s Closet Picks
The philosopher names Trouble in Paradise “Ernst Lubitsch’s ultimate masterpiece,” praises Peter Weir’s early films, and calls the final scene of City Lights “the most sublime ending.”
Slavoj Žižek: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest
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.
| Chose | Director | Year | Taken by | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Trouble in Paradise | Ernst Lubitsch | 1932 | |
| 2 |  Sweet Smell of Success | Alexander Mackendrick | 1957 | |
| 3 |  Picnic at Hanging Rock | Peter Weir | 1975 | |
| 4 |  Murmur of the Heart | Louis Malle | 1971 | |
| 5 |  Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave box set, 6 films | |||
| 6 |  Stranger Than Paradise | Jim Jarmusch | 1984 | |
| 7 |  Great Expectations | David Lean | 1946 | |
| 8 |  Eclipse Series 14: Rossellini’s History Films—Renaissance and Enlightenment box set, 3 films | |||
| 9 |  City Lights | Charles Chaplin | 1931 | |
| 10 |  Carl Theodor Dreyer box set, 4 films | |||
| 11 |  Y tu mamá también | Alfonso Cuarón | 2001 | |
| 12 |  Antichrist | Lars von Trier | 2009 |
How far across film history it reaches
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
20 of its 22 films carry a runtime, and those alone run at least 33 hours. One of the others is a television series, which has no total on record at all: TMDB gives one episode's length, not a series'. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.
What one of its choices was worth is not published for this visit. That figure divides the whole runtime by every choice, so a total missing two films would understate it rather than be approximately right.
How unusual this haul was
Its 12 choices had been taken by 4.42 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Three of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Eclipse Series 14: Rossellini’s History Films—Renaissance and Enlightenment, taken by this visit alone.
This visit reached the work of Alfonso Cuarón, through Y tu mamá también and Jim Jarmusch, through Stranger Than Paradise, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.