19 Jun 2026

Christopher Nolan’s Closet Picks

The filmmaker shares how The Testament of Dr. Mabuse influenced The Dark Knight, talks about the importance of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, and praises the way David Lynch evokes dream logic on-screen.

Christopher Nolan: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

16

11 single, 5 box sets

single films

11

chosen on their own

box sets

5

one choice, many films

films reached

31

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.

SET The Killers SET John Cassavetes: Five Films 54 For All Mankind 1989 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin 1955 231 The Testament of Dr. Mabuse 1933 SET The Apu Trilogy 1030 Scorsese Shorts SET Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 1160 Malcolm X 1992 1152 Lost Highway 1997 SET The Qatsi Trilogy 812 The Player 1992 839 Boyhood 2014 1187 One False Move 1992 765 The Black Stallion 1979 1104 Citizen Kane 1941

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Killers box set, 2 films			3
2	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films			30
3	For All Mankind	Al Reinert	1989	2
4	The Complete Mr. Arkadin	Orson Welles	1955	2
5	The Testament of Dr. Mabuse	Fritz Lang	1933	1
6	The Apu Trilogy box set, 3 films			7
7	Scorsese Shorts	Martin Scorsese		6
8	Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 box set, 6 films			4
9	Malcolm X	Spike Lee	1992	10
10	Lost Highway	David Lynch	1997	6
11	The Qatsi Trilogy box set, 3 films			7
12	The Player	Robert Altman	1992	5
13	Boyhood	Richard Linklater	2014	4
14	One False Move	Carl Franklin	1992	3
15	The Black Stallion	Carroll Ballard	1979	2
16	Citizen Kane	Orson Welles	1941	7

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1933 to 2014, box sets 1934 to 2002

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3

John Cassavetes: Five Films

The Qatsi Trilogy

The Killers

The Apu Trilogy

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

1 of the choices is not on the axis: Scorsese Shorts (no year on record). Left off rather than placed at a guessed year.

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

29 of its 31 films carry a runtime, and those alone run at least 59.2 hours. The other two are unmatched, so the real figure is higher. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

What one of its choices was worth is not published for this visit. That figure divides the whole runtime by every choice, so a total missing two films would understate it rather than be approximately right.

How unusual this haul was

Its 16 choices had been taken by 6.19 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Carl Franklin, through One False Move, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com