"Scarlet Empress, with Marlene Dietrich, directed by Josef von Sternberg. That’s also pre-Code, just barely, I think, and it’s the greatest of their collaborations. Morocco is amazing, too, and I love Blue Angel. Morocco has that incredible ending where she can’t resist but follows him off, and you hear the wind sound and all that. Anyway, Scarlet Empress is so singular; there’s nothing like it. It’s almost like a new cinema is being created; he’s creating a new language for cinema. Not just the way that it looks, but the light, the use of light, and the use of production design becomes, almost, a sensory part of the experience and informs her character. It’s all about her character’s sensuality, and he uses all these other elements beyond just herself to sell that. The way the film looks, the way the film feels, and it’s where the style completely informs her identity, which is an amazing idea."

"This was my grandfather’s first cinematic gift to me. He was a filmmaker who made commercials in Italy in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he loved Visconti, who was always his favorite. So he would make me watch films regularly, and this was one of the few that could have felt like homework but didn’t. I love where the film comes from, in terms of the evolution of Visconti’s career. I like that he started off making this pretty dogmatic neorealism and then went on to make this operatic film. The difference between the two approaches is a really beautiful manifestation of his ability to grow as an artist and also to just do multiple things. His cinematic language changed based on the people who populated his frames, and this movie feels grand because it’s got cinema royalty in it, like Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale. The frame feels like it’s the right size and scope and weight for people of that stature."

"It is the greatest film in the english language ever made between the two Godfathers. Almost drove him bankrupt, but there you go. It is the greatest thriller of all time. If ever you’re talking about a character to which — how to get you biting your nails without any slaps or gunshots going off, that movie’s it. It’s just so terrifyingly correct. I’m not really a [Michaelangelo] Antonioni fan or any of those; Blow Up and all that never did it for me. But The Conversation, somehow, whoa. And I kind of find Mamet the same way. I know everybody holds correctly Hitchcock, you know, as high as you can, but I find Mamet delivers more shock and awe to me, and twists in a correct way than I ever found with Hitchcock. But of course we’re watching Hitchcock movies when 20 things have copied his films and they’ve become cliché at a particular point. The Conversation holds up like that for me."