"Melville is a very, very dear filmmaker for me because I feel he suffers when he’s making a movie. He puts a lot of effort into it. I have a feeling that it doesn’t flow very naturally, but that’s exactly what I like, that he’s working and putting in so much of his own feelings and vision in a way that’s complicated for him. In Le silence de la mer, which is one of my favorite films ever, he creates this feeling of intimacy not through dialogue but through a space, a certain type of light, and the sounds of a specific place. How is it that, with a film, he can make you feel the weight of a living room and the solace it can give? It’s all about nostalgia and reminds me of the way I think of places in the past. I can imagine that Melville must have been an intense and passionate person, especially given how he deals with the past and his memories. Army of Shadows is done very intellectually and very elegantly. He’s always so classical—not in the sense of rules but in the sense of proportions and elegance, like something Greek and old. That’s a quality that belongs to people who were living during the Second World War, people from another era with an aspiration for a better humanity."

"Melville is a very, very dear filmmaker for me because I feel he suffers when he’s making a movie. He puts a lot of effort into it. I have a feeling that it doesn’t flow very naturally, but that’s exactly what I like, that he’s working and putting in so much of his own feelings and vision in a way that’s complicated for him. In Le silence de la mer, which is one of my favorite films ever, he creates this feeling of intimacy not through dialogue but through a space, a certain type of light, and the sounds of a specific place. How is it that, with a film, he can make you feel the weight of a living room and the solace it can give? It’s all about nostalgia and reminds me of the way I think of places in the past. I can imagine that Melville must have been an intense and passionate person, especially given how he deals with the past and his memories. Army of Shadows is done very intellectually and very elegantly. He’s always so classical—not in the sense of rules but in the sense of proportions and elegance, like something Greek and old. That’s a quality that belongs to people who were living during the Second World War, people from another era with an aspiration for a better humanity."

"I remember when this came out; I was at a restaurant celebrating someone’s birthday, and I walked by a table that was talking about Mike Leigh, I forget what film exactly. But I chimed in and said something hyperbolic. The table remarked that they all worked for Criterion. I joked that I’d thought about tattooing a line across my chest with “Criterion Collection” underneath it (the old iconic Criterion logo design). I then explained our proximity to Ray Carney and our love for Cassavetes. This was the first time I heard that a big box set was coming soon. Cassavetes is a god and a hero. My introduction to his work as a director was A Woman Under the Influence, which I bought a single version of for our mother, who is petrified of the DVD and will never watch it. Bookie, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows, and the later-added Love Streams are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa, and hold the feeling above anything else. In the words of JC (not a coincidence) in regards to Opening Night, about Hollywood: “It’s about time it took art and said, ‘C’mon, baby! Show me something!’” (Dear Criterion, please absorb Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Gloria as well.)"