19 Sept 2023

Jeremy Thomas’s Closet Picks

The Academy Award–winning producer praises Claire Denis’s portrayal of masculinity in Beau travail, talks about the lessons he learned from Luis Buñuel’s producer Serge Silberman, and selects favorites by friends and collaborators, including The Last Wave, The Double Life of Véronique, and Kings of the Road.

Jeremy Thomas: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

8

6 single, 2 box sets

single films

6

chosen on their own

box sets

2

one choice, many films

films reached

12

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.

825 A Touch of Zen 1971 235 The Leopard 1963 1042 Beau travail 1999 142 The Last Wave 1977 SET Three Films by Luis Buñuel 216 The Rules of the Game 1939 SET Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy 219 La strada 1954

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	A Touch of Zen	King Hu	1971	2
2	The Leopard	Luchino Visconti	1963	9
3	Beau travail	Claire Denis	1999	8
4	The Last Wave	Peter Weir	1977	2
5	Three Films by Luis Buñuel box set, 3 films			8
6	The Rules of the Game	Jean Renoir	1939	6
7	Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy box set, 3 films			3
8	La strada	Federico Fellini	1954	16

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1939 to 1999, box sets 1972 to 1977

Three Films by Luis Buñuel

Wim Wenders: The Road 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 12films run 24.8 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 186.2 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 6.75 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 The Last Wave, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Claire Denis, through Beau travail, Wim Wenders, through Alice in the Cities, Wim Wenders, through Kings of the Road and Wim Wenders, through Wrong Move, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com