When it comes to films released by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, we’d all strug­gle to nar­row our favorites down to only ten, but we prob­a­bly would­n’t have quite as hard a time as Guiller­mo del Toro. The direc­tor of Mim­ic, Hell­boy, and Pan’s Labyrinth char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly takes it to anoth­er lev­el, bemoan­ing the “unfair, arbi­trary, and sadis­tic top ten prac­tice,” craft­ing instead a series of “thematic/authorial pair­ings” (and in first place, a tri­fec­ta) for his Cri­te­ri­on “top-ten” fea­ture. The list, whether he meant us to take it lin­ear­ly or not, runs as fol­lows:

1. Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Throne of Blood, High and Low, and Ran, the Emper­or of Cin­e­ma’s “most oper­at­ic, pes­simistic, and visu­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar films.”
2. Ing­mar Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal and Fan­ny and Alexan­der (the­atri­cal ver­sion), which “have the pri­mal pulse of a children’s fable told by an impos­si­bly old and wise nar­ra­tor, both “ripe with fan­tas­ti­cal imagery and a sharp sense of the uncan­ny.”
3. Jean Cocteau’s Beau­ty and the Beast and Georges Fran­ju’s Eyes With­out a Face, both of which “depend on sub­lime, almost ethe­re­al, imagery to con­vey a sense of doom and loss: mad, frag­ile love cling­ing for dear life in a mael­strom of dark­ness.”
4. David Lean’s Great Expec­ta­tions and Oliv­er Twist, two “epics of the spir­it [ … ] plagued by grand, utter­ly mag­i­cal moments and set­tings” and laced with pas­sages that “skate the fine line between poet­ry and hor­ror.”
5. Ter­ry Gilliam’s Time Ban­dits and Brazil, the work of a “liv­ing trea­sure” who “under­stands that ‘bad taste’ is the ulti­mate dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence from the dis­creet charm of the bour­geoisie” and tells sto­ries in elab­o­rate worlds “made coher­ent only by his undy­ing faith in the tale he is telling.”
6. Kane­to Shin­do’s Oni­ba­ba and Kuroneko, a “per­verse, sweaty dou­ble bill” fus­ing “hor­rors and desire, death and lust” that, when del Toro first saw them at age ten, “did some seri­ous dam­age to my psy­che.”
7. Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus and Paths of Glo­ry, which “speak elo­quent­ly about the scale of a man against the tide of his­to­ry, and both raise the bar for every ‘his­tor­i­cal’ film to fol­low.”
8. Pre­ston Sturges’ Sul­li­van’s Trav­els and Unfaith­ful­ly Yours, “mas­ter­ful films full of mad ener­gy and fire­works, but Sullivan’s Trav­els also man­ages to encap­su­late one of the most inti­mate reflec­tions about the role of the film­mak­er as enter­tain­er.”
9. Carl Theodor Drey­er’s Vampyr and Ben­jamin Chris­tensen’s Häx­an, the for­mer “a memen­to mori, a stern reminder of death as the thresh­old of spir­i­tu­al lib­er­a­tion” and the lat­ter “the filmic equiv­a­lent of a hell­ish engrav­ing by Bruegel or a paint­ing by Bosch.”
10. Vic­tor Erice’s The Spir­it of the Bee­hive and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, “the two supreme works of childhood/horror [ … ] lamen­ta­tions of worlds lost and the inno­cents trapped in them.”

Hav­ing already fea­tured a tour of del Toro’s man cave and a tour of his imag­i­na­tion by way of his sketch­es here on Open Cul­ture, it makes for a nat­ur­al fol­low-up to offer this tour of his dis­tinc­tive cin­e­mat­ic con­scious­ness. A direc­tor since his child­hood back in Mex­i­co (then equipped with his dad’s Super 8, his own action fig­ures, and a pota­to he once cast as a ser­i­al killer), he went on to study not film­mak­ing, strict­ly speak­ing, but make­up and spe­cial effects design. The resul­tant mas­tery of visu­al rich­ness, espe­cial­ly in ser­vice of the grotesque, shows up even in his ear­li­est avail­able works, such as the 1987 short Geome­tria we post­ed a few years ago.

Del Toro’s next fea­ture, a fan­ta­sy adven­ture set in Cold War Amer­i­ca called The Shape of Water and involv­ing a fish-man locked away in a secret gov­ern­ment facil­i­ty, will no doubt make even more use of all the tastes the direc­tor’s favorite Cri­te­ri­on films have instilled in him: for grand spec­ta­cle, for freak­ish­ness, for the uncan­ny, for “mad, frag­ile love,” and for sheer dis­tur­bance. May he con­tin­ue to do “seri­ous dam­age” to the psy­ches of his own audi­ences for decades to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Geome­tria: Watch Guiller­mo del Toro’s Very Ear­ly, Ghoul­ish Short Film (1987)

Sketch­es by Guiller­mo del Toro Take You Inside the Director’s Wild­ly Cre­ative Imag­i­na­tion

A Guid­ed Tour of Guiller­mo del Toro’s Cre­ativ­i­ty-Induc­ing Man Cave, “Bleak House”

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names His Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

In 1945 Alfred Hitch­cock had to explain one of Hol­ly­wood’s unwrit­ten rules to Sal­vador Dalí: No, you can’t pour live ants all over Ingrid Bergman! Hitch­cock had approached Dalí for help with a dream sequence in his upcom­ing thriller, Spell­bound, star­ring Bergman and Gre­go­ry Peck. He was unhap­py with the fuzzi­ness of Hol­ly­wood dream sequences. “I want­ed to con­vey the dream with great visu­al sharp­ness and clarity–sharper than film itself,” Hitch­cock recalled in a 1962 inter­view with François Truf­faut. “I want­ed Dali because of the archi­tec­tur­al sharp­ness of his work. Chiri­co has the same qual­i­ty, you know, the long shad­ows, the infin­i­ty of dis­tance and the con­verg­ing lines of per­spec­tive. But Dali had some strange ideas. He want­ed a stat­ue to crack like a shell falling apart, with ants crawl­ing all over it. And under­neath, there would be Ingrid Bergman, cov­ered by ants! It just was­n’t pos­si­ble.” The result you can watch below:

Note: This video first appeared on our site in 2011. See­ing that it’s Dal­i’s birth­day today, we’re bring­ing it back!

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Every­one knows that if you want to make a movie, you first have to write down its sto­ry. Many of us have tried our hands at writ­ing movie sto­ries our­selves — as treat­ments, screen­plays, or whichev­er oth­er forms the indus­try has come up with — and some have made careers out of it. But even if a film begins on the page, it does­n’t, of course, remain there; up on screen, the final prod­uct has to tell its sto­ry visu­al­ly as much as it does with words, and usu­al­ly even more so. Lewis Bond, the video essay­ist behind the cin­e­ma-ana­lyz­ing Youtube chan­nel Chan­nel Criswell, under­stands that bet­ter than most, hence his three essays ded­i­cat­ed to the three most impor­tant ele­ments of visu­al sto­ry­telling, the first chap­ter of which, “Colour in Sto­ry­telling,” we fea­tured a cou­ple months ago here on Open Cul­ture.

The sec­ond, “Com­po­si­tion in Sto­ry­telling,” explores the pos­si­bil­i­ties inher­ent in arrang­ing peo­ple, places, and things with­in a shot. “Decid­ing the place­ment of sub­jects through the viewfind­er of a cam­era isn’t mere­ly a tech­ni­cal deci­sion,” says Bond, “it’s an expres­sive one.”

Beyond show­ing the audi­ence what they need to see to under­stand the sto­ry, film­mak­ers have relied on “tried and test­ed for­mu­las to make an image pleas­ing to the eye” such as the rule of thirds, the gold­en ratio, and tri­an­gu­lar com­po­si­tion. But beyond those basics opens up the vast cre­ative space of com­pos­ing images in order to care­ful­ly guide the audi­ence’s atten­tion, craft sym­bols and sub­texts, and make the pow­er of a scene felt — all as depen­dent upon what gets left out of the pic­ture as what gets put in.

Final­ly, “Edit­ing in Sto­ry­telling” cov­ers the step of the film­mak­ing process wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the most impor­tant, even more so than writ­ing the sto­ry in the first place. “Beyond the basic func­tion of putting a film togeth­er,” says Bond, “the crafts­man­ship of edit­ing can be dealt with such sub­tle­ty that it can be the foun­da­tion of a film’s pace, its atmos­phere — it can even be the enrich­ing ingre­di­ent to strength­en all the film’s themes, and you may not even notice.” Though the edi­tor holds “total manip­u­la­tion over our emo­tions,” decid­ing what we see, when we see it, and how we see it, they also labor under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of know­ing the film will stand or fall on their skill. Watch Chan­nel Criswell’s entire visu­al sto­ry­telling essay tril­o­gy and you’ll notice all their tech­niques much more eas­i­ly while watch­ing movies — espe­cial­ly if you start watch­ing them, as you might well find your­self inspired to do, with the sound off.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

How Film­mak­ers Like Kubrick, Jodor­owsky, Taran­ti­no, Cop­po­la & Miyaza­ki Use Col­or to Tell Their Sto­ries

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Strik­ing Super­cut of the Vivid Col­ors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Obses­sion with the Col­or Red: A Super­cut

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.