26 Feb 2025

Dick Cavett’s Closet Picks

The legendary television host reminisces about having Katharine Hepburn and Jean-Luc Godard on his show, shares that he “doesn't see how a movie would get any better” than Stagecoach, and celebrates David Lean and Noël Coward’s collaborations.

Dick Cavett: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

7

6 single, 1 box set

single films

6

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

10

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.

901 The Philadelphia Story 1940 744 Every Man for Himself 1980 806 Only Angels Have Wings 1939 516 Stagecoach 1939 SET David Lean Directs Noël Coward 754 Odd Man Out 1947 1029 Husbands 1970

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Philadelphia Story	George Cukor	1940	7
2	Every Man for Himself	Jean-Luc Godard	1980	1
3	Only Angels Have Wings	Howard Hawks	1939	1
4	Stagecoach	John Ford	1939	7
5	David Lean Directs Noël Coward box set, 4 films			7
6	Odd Man Out	Carol Reed	1947	6
7	Husbands	John Cassavetes	1970	6

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1939 to 1980, box sets 1942 to 1945

David Lean Directs Noël Coward

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 10films run 17.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 153.1 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 5 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Every Man for Himself, taken by this visit alone.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com