Christopher Nolan Picks 15 Favorite Films from the Criterion Closet

Maybe you’ve already seen Christo­pher Nolan’s new cin­e­mat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of the Odyssey more than once; maybe you don’t know whether you’ll ever get around to it at all. Either way, you’ve got to admit that the man makes films in a way very few liv­ing direc­tors do. His com­bi­na­tion of block­buster-scale spec­ta­cle and per­son­al vision, a rare expe­ri­ence indeed at the the­ater these days, can real­ly only be achieved by film­mak­ers with a thor­ough­go­ing love of the medi­um. Most of us will require no fur­ther proof of that love than this new video cap­tur­ing his vis­it to the Cri­te­ri­on Clos­et, that both hal­lowed and much-YouTubed space jam-packed with releas­es from the most wide­ly known home-video brand for cinephiles.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it’s not his first vis­it. “Last time I was here, there were no cam­eras, and I got to just come and steal some films,” he says, “but now I’m singing for my sup­per.” Unlike some film­mak­ers, he does­n’t play it cool for the audi­ence; rather, he imme­di­ate­ly starts pulling down Don Siegel’s neo-noir Hem­ing­way adap­ta­tion The Killers, a five-pic­ture John Cas­savetes box set, and Al Rein­ert’s Bri­an Eno-scored NASA doc­u­men­tary For All Mankind. It’s not a sur­prise to see him go for an Orson Welles movie, but the one that first catch­es his eye is Mr. Arkadin, which Welles “made all over the world in the scrap­pi­est, most sort of home­made, put-his-friends-togeth­er, grab-some-cos­tumes, find-an-inter­est­ing-loca­tion kind of way.”

Fritz Lang’s The Tes­ta­ment of Dr. Mabuse, he recalls, pro­vid­ed him and his broth­er-col­lab­o­ra­tor inspi­ra­tion for the Jok­er as famous­ly por­trayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. The com­plete Apu tril­o­gy by Satya­jit Ray reminds him that, how­ev­er great an impact the first of those films made on him, he nev­er did watch the oth­er two. For many movie­go­ers in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Ray’s work was some of the first “world cin­e­ma” they’d ever seen; Nolan’s fel­low cinephile-auteur Mar­tin Scors­ese has done his part to bol­ster that tra­di­tion with his World Cin­e­ma Project series, and Nolan pulls off the shelf one of its vol­umes fea­tur­ing pic­tures from Cuba, Indone­sia, Iran, and else­where.

Though tech­ni­cal­ly British, Nolan is the par­tial­ly Chica­go-raised son of an Amer­i­can moth­er long since accept­ed as a kind of Hol­ly­wood native. His taste in movies, too, reflects a streak of high Amer­i­can­ism, which man­i­fests in selec­tions like Spike Lee’s Mal­colm X, David Lynch’s Lost High­way, Carl Franklin’s One False Move, and Richard Lin­klater’s Boy­hood. (As for Robert Alt­man’s satir­i­cal thriller The Play­er, it would be hard to imag­ine how he could­n’t appre­ci­ate its wicked­ly inci­sive depic­tion of “the Indus­try.”) Com­ing to the end of his Clos­et time, he also man­ages to grab God­frey Reg­gio’s Qat­si tril­o­gy, which con­sti­tutes “one of the great pieces of pure cin­e­ma,” and Car­roll Bal­lard’s The Black Stal­lion, a child­hood favorite that stayed with him. Like all the most suc­cess­ful film­mak­ers, Nolan under­stands that you’ve got to end strong, and in a way that does­n’t require expla­na­tion: hence, per­haps, his final choice of Cit­i­zen Kane.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Christo­pher Nolan Vis­its a Paris Video Store & Talks with Cil­lian Mur­phy About the Films That Influ­enced Him

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Picks His Favorite Cri­te­ri­on Movies & Gives Advice to Film­mak­ers

Jim Jar­musch Picks His Favorite Films from the The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

The Cult of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion: The Com­pa­ny Ded­i­cat­ed to Gath­er­ing & Dis­trib­ut­ing the Great­est Films from Around the World

What Makes Cit­i­zen Kane a Great Film: 4 Video Essays Revis­it Orson Welles’ Mas­ter­piece on the 80th Anniver­sary of Its Pre­miere

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.