7 Dec 2023

Wim Wenders’ Closet Picks

The legendary auteur returns to the Criterion Closet, where he selects new editions of favorite films like Down by Law and Wanda, talks about Kurosawa’s genius for recreating weather on-screen, and shouts out his former assistant director Claire Denis.

Wim Wenders: 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

17

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 A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu 166 Down by Law 1986 5 The 400 Blows 1959 1033 The Cameraman 1928 SET The Complete Jacques Tati 267 Kagemusha 1980 965 Wanda 1970 1042 Beau travail 1999 1007 Until the End of the World 1991 297 Au hasard Balthazar 1966 363 Mouchette 1967

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu box set, 2 films			3
2	Down by Law	Jim Jarmusch	1986	13
3	The 400 Blows	François Truffaut	1959	10
4	The Cameraman	Edward Sedgwick	1928	8
5	The Complete Jacques Tati box set, 6 films			19
6	Kagemusha	Akira Kurosawa	1980	4
7	Wanda	Barbara Loden	1970	15
8	Beau travail	Claire Denis	1999	8
9	Until the End of the World	Wim Wenders	1991	2
10	Au hasard Balthazar	Robert Bresson	1966	4
11	Mouchette	Robert Bresson	1967	2

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1928 to 1999, box sets 1934 to 1974

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu

The Complete Jacques Tati

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 17films run 29.7 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 162.1 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 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 Mouchette, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Claire Denis, through Beau travail and Jim Jarmusch, through Down by Law, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

One of the choices is their own: Until the End of the World. Left out of the lineage count, because reaching for yourself is not reaching for somebody else.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com