"Brigitte Bardot has never been better. The way Jack Palance’s producer brilliantly humiliates Michel Piccoli’s writer, who tries to hold on to his pride, rings a bell. Plus, our friend Fritz Lang as the director . . . Sacré Jean-Luc!"

"Two films about the brutality of seeing (about cinema?), one directed by France’s answer to Fritz Lang, the other by the British Vincente Minnelli. And on the Franju DVD, there’s a precious extra: the 1949 short documentary Blood of the Beasts, a film that dares to look death in the eyes."

"Two films about the brutality of seeing (about cinema?), one directed by France’s answer to Fritz Lang, the other by the British Vincente Minnelli. And on the Franju DVD, there’s a precious extra: the 1949 short documentary Blood of the Beasts, a film that dares to look death in the eyes."

"No filmmaker gets under my skin more consistently than Fritz Lang, and while M lacks some of the paranoid extravagance of his silent fantasies, it is flawless. Peter Lorre ingeniously incarnates the evolution from lizard to man, and the director’s every shot and sound underscores the excitement of cinema in the process of discovering its own power. One of the disc’s extras finds Claude Chabrol unsuccessfully attempting to mimic a Lang camera move. The new Criterion print, with a corrected aspect ratio and restored fade-out line, burnishes the film’s deathless vitality."

"It’s been years since I’ve read Patrick McGilligan’s Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast, but if I recall correctly, toward the end of his life, Lang was coming around to the conclusion that M would be the best film he ever made. If so, I certainly wouldn’t argue with the man. If he were making films today, Lang would probably be known as something of a geek. An artsy geek, maybe, but one with, besides a remarkable sense of composition, a penchant for state-of-the-art technology, its possibilities and implications. Which makes the use of silence in his first talkie all the more impressive. The other major asset M’s got, of course, is Peter Lorre."

"Another one with a massive text resting on that second disc. How delightful it was to marvel in the splendor of this film and then watch the Godard–Fritz Lang special feature! Also, a truly beautiful cover of which I was always quite fond. This spot could just as easily be Masculin féminin, my favorite Godard for years. Criterion’s support of sixties Godard has always been remarkable."

"This stars Edward G. Robinson, and is directed by Fritz Lang. Edward G. Robinson, of course, was always known as the tough guy, the gangster, the one you do not mess with, and Fritz Lang had the brilliance to sort of counter-cast him as a man having a mid-life crisis. He falls for a younger woman and just throws his life away, and it is so contemporary and so touching and tragic. It’s the kind of thing that I saw probably 30 years ago and couldn’t believe the bravery and vulnerability that Edward G. Robinson put himself through. I always thought of him as a guy holding a gat intimidating Humphrey Bogart. It’s the kind of thing as you get older, his character and the themes of the movie just have more and more resonance. It’s one of those movies that stills holds up because of what it’s about. It’s a timeless subject."

"A visual and aural feast. The best movie ever made about moviemaking. Greece and Brigitte Bardot provide the purest form of seduction; Jack Palance provides the sleaziest. The subtext that explains the title is sexual politics at its most provocative. Every frame of this movie is invigorating. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard and composer Georges Delerue deserve to be canonized. The already anointed Fritz Lang, playing himself, gives the film yet another pleasurable dimension of film truth."

"Had to at least include one from the master Hitchcock. Being the huge De Palma fan that I am, it would be tough to not be a huge Hitchcock fan as well. Bronwyn loves Ingrid Bergman and was the person to introduce me to Notorious when we were younger. What I love about this film is that you get this sincere, Old Hollywood romantic chemistry between Bergman and Cary Grant, in addition to some classic Hitchcock greatness. We project films while we write and record, and this film played a lot during the making of our debut album. Fritz Lang is another one of the greats who I had to have on this list. I first discovered his films through Giorgio Moroder’s 1984 restoration of Metropolis, whose iconic image of the robot on the soundtrack and posters always intrigued me as a child, and once I eventually saw the film, it quickly became one of my all-time favorites. Most who have seen it, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and M will agree that Fritz Lang is one of the best to have ever done it, but perhaps no one film has earned him that reputation more than M."

"Had to at least include one from the master Hitchcock. Being the huge De Palma fan that I am, it would be tough to not be a huge Hitchcock fan as well. Bronwyn loves Ingrid Bergman and was the person to introduce me to Notorious when we were younger. What I love about this film is that you get this sincere, Old Hollywood romantic chemistry between Bergman and Cary Grant, in addition to some classic Hitchcock greatness. We project films while we write and record, and this film played a lot during the making of our debut album. Fritz Lang is another one of the greats who I had to have on this list. I first discovered his films through Giorgio Moroder’s 1984 restoration of Metropolis, whose iconic image of the robot on the soundtrack and posters always intrigued me as a child, and once I eventually saw the film, it quickly became one of my all-time favorites. Most who have seen it, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and M will agree that Fritz Lang is one of the best to have ever done it, but perhaps no one film has earned him that reputation more than M."