4 Aug 2025

Kristin Scott Thomas’s Closet Picks

The actor and filmmaker talks about the comedic genius of The Awful Truth, reflects on Andrei Tarkovsky’s dream sequences, and selects films starring screen legends like Jeanne Moreau and Simone Signoret.

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

choices

10

9 single, 1 box set

single films

9

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

18

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.

59 The Night Porter 1974 270 Casque d’or 1952 917 The Awful Truth 1937 916 Women in Love 1969 335 Elevator to the Gallows 1958 637 Purple Noon 1960 1271 You Can Count on Me 2000 1088 La piscine 1969 397 Ivan’s Childhood 1962 SET Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Night Porter	Liliana Cavani	1974	6
2	Casque d’or	Jacques Becker	1952	1
3	The Awful Truth	Leo McCarey	1937	4
4	Women in Love	Ken Russell	1969	2
5	Elevator to the Gallows	Louis Malle	1958	5
6	Purple Noon	René Clément	1960	5
7	You Can Count on Me	Kenneth Lonergan	2000	4
8	La piscine	Jacques Deray	1969	6
9	Ivan’s Childhood	Andrei Tarkovsky	1962	4
10	Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978 box set, 9 films			5

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1937 to 2000, 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 18films run 27.4 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 164.5 minutes of film for each of its 10 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 10 choices had been taken by 4.2 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Casque d’or, taken by this visit alone.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com