"I used to go to see movies with my dad. He took me to see ’Round Midnight. Afterward, we bought the soundtrack and listened to it a lot; it was one of the few records I felt okay about putting on when he was in the house. It fascinated me that the music on the record was also the music we saw performed in the movie. This helped me to understand one of the things that I value most in movies: that the action captured by the camera is special and unique and crucial to the value of the movie. Which is to say that the writing is crucial, of course, the preproduction, scoring, and editing are crucial, of course . . . but my main thing is what the camera captured at the moment of its happening. I love to watch a performance that was not created by editing or cinematography or even writing, but rather a performance that is in and of itself, in the moment that it was captured, something of the highest value (because of the collaborative efforts of the major forces involved in making it happen in the first place). And so there are certain directors, “actor’s directors,” who give me more pleasure than most others. No actor is great by himself or herself. Tavernier was able, again and again, to present his players in measured, idiosyncratic, and complete ways. Coup de torchon was the first time I noticed this, and it remains a favorite. Also because Isabelle Huppert is so good and beautiful and Philippe Noiret is a hero’s hero. And because it took this resetting of Jim Thompson’s book (and James Foley’s After Dark, My Sweet) for me to understand what Thompson’s work has to offer."

"It’s a very personal choice because when I came to America from mainland China, I was an actress, but I never knew about Hollywood. I had heard of Hollywood but we didn’t have access to see Hollywood movies. A photographer was taking pictures of me and said, “You remind me of this actress named Audrey Hepburn.” I said, “Who is that?” He said, “Bai Ling, you have to watch her films,” and he found me Roman Holiday. That was the first Hollywood movie I’d ever seen. And it’s still one of my favorites, because it first introduced me to Hollywood — beautiful, romantic, very graceful, and elegant. I would like to remake it — I hope some director can help me, maybe Steven Soderbergh or Wong Kar-Wai. [Laughs] What I remember about those old Hollywood films is that when a leading lady and a leading man meet, they don’t have to say anything; you already know they’re in love. You root for them; you want them to be together. That’s the magic of Hollywood. I think somehow today we’ve lost a little bit of it, and you don’t care as much if two characters get together. But Roman Holiday makes you smile, makes your heart smile, makes your heart sing for these two people. Gregory Peck is gentle and elegant, the kind of tall leading man that I like. I think we should remake the film. Everybody in America, in Asia, and in Europe, would appreciate it. The beautiful, pure, romantic story — I wish I would play a role like that, because I have a romantic soul. I’d like to bring that purity to the audience, to have their fantasy fulfilled."

"Blew my mind. I didn’t see it until I was middle-aged, after decades of thriving on the ongoing French New Wave. I thought of the New Wave as beginning in these subversive young Parisian cineastes’ love for American genre films. My jaw was dropped the whole length of Journey to see the sensibility and techniques of the New Wave appearing first in this Italian flick (though English-language, starring George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman). Later I read that Truffaut called it the “first modern movie,” and I believe he’s right. I haven’t researched, so don’t know if this is a commonplace, but, on a side note, it’s interesting to consider the parallels between Journey and Godard’s Contempt. They’re both about a couple whose marriage is failing, who are foreigners on a visit to Italy, where their stiff estrangement reaches a head amid the vital, pagan-slash-Catholic ancient culture of the area around Naples. Noble, erotically charged, millennia-old statuary reverently track-circled to swelling music. Local color, and travelogue landmarks of aesthetic and mythologically poetic power, integrated naturally into the story (almost Hitchcockian in a way, except with an emotional and intellectual justification). The most groundbreaking thing about it, though, is the way it’s not exactly a story, but rather a situation, depicted in fragments and episodes—the emotional situation of a couple, displaced within a continuously intruding, alien or disorienting environment, and one that keeps us conscious of death and history. A lot is pointedly artificial about it—to me the dialogue all feels like exposition, and is delivered that way, as presentation of the situation, rather than anything natural—or at least frankly cinema, but at the same time it feels like life in a way that movies hadn’t before."