3 May 2024

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Closet Picks

The Oscar-winning writer and director talks about Army of Shadows and Jean-Pierre Melville’s cinema of betrayal, shares his love for Denis Lavant's dancing in Beau travail, and selects favorites by Yasujiro Ozu, Ernst Lubitsch, and Nicholas Ray.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

15

12 single, 3 box sets

single films

12

chosen on their own

box sets

3

one choice, many films

films reached

26

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.

331 Late Spring 1949 385 Army of Shadows 1969 381 La haine 1995 1040 Toni 1935 1042 Beau travail 1999 1007 Until the End of the World 1991 SET John Cassavetes: Five Films 291 Heaven Can Wait 1943 SET A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu SET The Essential Jacques Demy 710 Judex 1963 507 Bigger Than Life 1956 333 Fists in the Pocket 1965 1155 Cure 1997 732 My Darling Clementine 1946

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Late Spring	Yasujiro Ozu	1949	7
2	Army of Shadows	Jean-Pierre Melville	1969	4
3	La haine	Mathieu Kassovitz	1995	5
4	Toni	Jean Renoir	1935	1
5	Beau travail	Claire Denis	1999	8
6	Until the End of the World	Wim Wenders	1991	2
7	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films			30
8	Heaven Can Wait	Ernst Lubitsch	1943	5
9	A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu box set, 2 films			3
10	The Essential Jacques Demy box set, 6 films			6
11	Judex	Georges Franju	1963	2
12	Bigger Than Life	Nicholas Ray	1956	3
13	Fists in the Pocket	Marco Bellocchio	1965	2
14	Cure	Kiyoshi Kurosawa	1997	6
15	My Darling Clementine	John Ford	1946	7

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1935 to 1999, box sets 1934 to 2000

John Cassavetes: Five Films

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

The Essential Jacques Demy

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 26films run 49 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 196.2 minutes of film for each of its 15 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 15 choices had been taken by 6.07 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Toni, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Claire Denis, through Beau travail, Marco Bellocchio, through Fists in the Pocket and Wim Wenders, through Until the End of the World, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com