28 Mar 2024

St. Vincent’s Closet Picks

The singer shares her love for The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and its decadent drama, praises Nicole Kidman’s hilariously psychotic performance in To Die For, and talks about the intimate dream state of Brand upon the Brain!

St. Vincent: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

8

7 single, 1 box set

single films

7

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

16

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.

929 Female Trouble 1974 740 The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant 1972 855 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 1988 1213 To Die For 1995 440 Brand upon the Brain! 2006 SET Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978 336 Dazed and Confused 1993 969 Diamonds of the Night 1964

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Female Trouble	John Waters	1974	8
2	The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	1972	5
3	Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown	Pedro Almodóvar	1988	7
4	To Die For	Gus Van Sant	1995	6
5	Brand upon the Brain!	Guy Maddin	2006	2
6	Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978 box set, 9 films			5
7	Dazed and Confused	Richard Linklater	1993	7
8	Diamonds of the Night	Jan Němec	1964	3

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1964 to 2006, box sets 1968 to 1978

Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978

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 16films run 22.5 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 168.8 minutes of film for each of its 8 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 8 choices had been taken by 5.38 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 Brand upon the Brain!, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Guy Maddin, through Brand upon the Brain! and John Waters, through Female Trouble, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com