"Ernest Hemingway’s superb eight-page short story is the jumping-off point and inspiration for these two essential and very different movies (Stacy Keach reads the story magnificently in one of the DVD extras). I don’t understand why more people don’t know the 1946 Siodmak film. For my money, this is not only the best noir movie of all time but is just about my favorite Hollywood drama from the 1940s. The complex narrative structure begins as a jumbled Rubik’s Cube, and, slowly but surely, each piece falls into its precise place by movie’s end (the stuff Quentin Tarantino’s dreams are made of). The moody atmosphere provided by Siodmak and his technicians is a marvel. The cinematic execution of a heist has never been better. Here marks the birth of two glorious stars: Burt Lancaster (a beautiful caged animal, all teeth) and Ava Gardner (wow). Paul Schrader’s seminal essay on film noir, as a DVD extra, is invaluable. For those of you who wonder why Siegel’s 1964 violent, stylish, quirkily entertaining B version (the first TV movie ever made) is on this list, I have two words for you: Lee Marvin. There has never been a star like him before or since. Words simply cannot do justice to the magic of this guy—the timbre of his voice, the calm, paranoid, roughneck danger in his physical moves. In a spectacular extra on this DVD, fellow actor Clu Gulager gives a very moving (and, one feels while watching it, very truthful) account of working with Marvin, Siegel, and Ronald Reagan (who hated the movie—yet another reason to see it!)."

"My next film is a noir, so I noticed that you had a neonoir theme on FilmStruck and recently watched Mona Lisa. It fucking knocked me out! I think it’s one of the best noirs ever. It’s like Melville meets Ken Loach, which is my dream. Watching it, I was like, “They’ve already done it. They did it. It’s everything I wanted to do!” Bob Hoskins is out of control. It’s one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. The way this movie begins is so mind-bogglingly amazing that as soon as it starts you feel like you want to watch it forever. So I’ve been watching it over and over, and I think it shows you the breadth of Neil Jordan. This guy does everything and it’s really cool to see."

"I love Hopscotch and dream of making a movie like it. It’s just full of fun and double crosses. Ronald Neame is very unsung as a director, but he made the coolest movies. He worked a lot with David Lean, so I think it’s interesting to look at Lean, who did these giant epics, and Neame, who was way more experimental and wild in choosing the kinds of movies he was going to make. Hopscotch is basically a perfect film, and Walter Matthau is unreal in it. You watch him and you think, that’s what American actors should have been and should always be. Hopscotch has that heist-noir and cat-and-mouse thing going on, but it’s also bright and goofy and funny and hits a tone that’s so unique and clear."

"This is a film noir that was produced by RKO Studios while Howard Hughes was the controlling owner of it. It stars Robert Mitchum and a woman named Faith Domergue, who was Hughes’ discovery and girlfriend who he basically became involved with when she was a teenager, really, and kept promising that he was going to make her a big star – and didn’t. But this movie is the finest showcase she ever got for her unique talents, which – I don’t know that she was a great actress – but she’s really good in this film as a femme fatale who you would initially think is sort of a vulnerable victim. Then, slowly, over the course of the movie, she reveals that she’s actually running the whole show and is incredibly devious."