My Top Ten Criterions

Nicolas Roeg

"Oh! What have you done to me? What an impossible task. To pick ten titles from the Criterion Collection is difficult enough, but to put them in any kind of order would defeat Ockham's sharpest razor," exclaimed Nicolas Roeg, director of The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bad Timing, and Walkabout, all available from the Criterion Collection. "It's a wonderful list that I have gone over again and again and everytime I've tried to make a selection, I've ended up with fifteen or twenty different choices—usually dictated by my mood of the day. Don't do this to me. Please stop. I love them all. But only with a pin and blindfold can I land on ten. Now, looking at them, I find I could champion each one equally, but then of course I could do the same for all the rest the pin didn't pick. My advice would be to work your way through the whole collection and look forward to new ones being added."

1. L'avventura     Michelangelo Antonioni

2. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie     Luis Buñuel

3. Beauty and the Beast     Jean Cocteau

4. Wild Strawberries     Ingmar Bergman

5. 8½     Federico Fellini

6. Children of Paradise     Marcel Carné

7. Schizopolis     Steven Soderbergh

8. Contempt     Jean-Luc Godard

9. Straw Dogs     Sam Peckinpah

10. The Leopard       Luchino Visconti