"It’s definitely up there because of the cinematography, the cultural references, the graffiti, and the art. It’s that kind of high-standard indie film and the French make such beautiful films anyway. They seem to be in a league of their own. All the references to the riots and the times and what was going on, that’s particularly why I love that film."

"I only saw this a few years ago, and I think it’s become my favorite of the French New Wave. I think it’s virtually impossible to make a film about complex ideas and yet at the same time make it feel as light as air. It’s a thrilling film that feels very much of its period but also completely timeless."

"I remember the title Les enfants du paradis. A young woman teacher said that French film is really important, and that I should see it. I saw it and I liked it, and obviously I remember it, but I don’t know why."

"I almost left this off my list, because what’s left to say about it? Renoir celebrates the death knell of the French aristocracy with sublime grace and trenchant satire. No final shot in film history can chill me to the bone like this one."

"It’s difficult; I have so many. But moving right along, a French film, Queen Margot. I love the story, and I love the performances. Jean-Hugues Anglade plays the phenomenal character of this sort of sick, dying king. So that’s one of my favorites."

"This movie makes me think of my French producer, Claire. We watched it as reference for a script we were working on together. It’s a brutal film to be sure, but I only have warm associations attached to it now: days of wine, writing, and more wine."

"Jules Dassin’s gangster film about a robbery and its consequences is a French classic, noir before the word was in use to describe a certain kind of filmmaking. A word is in order here: I was educated in Switzerland, in an era when French-speaking people expected to see French films, so when we were allowed to go to the local cinema at Rolle or Gstaad, we mostly saw French films. British films, except for The Third Man, which is very “European” in tone, seldom played; still less big Hollywood ones. Rififi was a stunner, and an eye-opener, teaching us that French gangsters were a lot more interesting and attractive than our own mobsters, but just as tough, if not tougher. “Julie” Dassin was an American who moved to France, but he captured a whole, pungent slice of French life, and for months everyone at my school (le Rosey) went around trying to sound like Jean Servais, and to talk with a cigarette glued to their lips. Whole scenes from it still play in my fantasies."

"I’m always drawn to misunderstood movies, ones that were either ahead of or behind their times. This Melville crime film about the French Resistance was both. It took thirty-seven years to open in America, and when it did, it received great acclaim. A surprise happy ending for a complicated and unsentimental movie."

"An old French film with Simone Signoret, and I think Paul Meurisse is in it. It’s the film that terrified me as child, with this very simple scene where she pulls a curtain back in an upstairs window, and he’s watching from the yard. That was actually probably the first horror film I ever saw. It was a very scary. I was a small child. I just remember the simplicity of that moment when she pulled that curtain back. So there’s that, and they did the remake with Sharon Stone that was not very successful and wasn’t very well made."