18 Oct 2024

Edward Berger’s Closet Picks

The director of All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave shares his love for Downhill Racer and its innovative sound design, talks about the emotional impact of Cold War, and selects a few of Roberto Rossellini’s films featuring Ingrid Bergman, in honor of his friend and collaborator Isabella Rossellini.

Edward Berger: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

7

4 single, 3 box sets

single films

4

chosen on their own

box sets

3

one choice, many films

films reached

13

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.

97 Do the Right Thing 1989 494 Downhill Racer 1969 SET 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman SET Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy 1005 Cold War 2018 459 The Exterminating Angel 1962 SET Fanny and Alexander

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Do the Right Thing	Spike Lee	1989	20
2	Downhill Racer	Michael Ritchie	1969	2
3	3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman box set, 3 films			9
4	Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy box set, 3 films			3
5	Cold War	Paweł Pawlikowski	2018	5
6	The Exterminating Angel	Luis Buñuel	1962	5
7	Fanny and Alexander box set, 3 films			7

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1962 to 2018, box sets 1945 to 1983

3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman

Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy

Fanny and Alexander

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 13films run 25 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 214.4 minutes of film for each of its 7 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 7 choices had been taken by 7.29 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 Downhill Racer, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Paweł Pawlikowski, through Cold War, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com