Whit Stillman

"I discovered the film on TV in Spain and still like the Spanish title, Rufufu—signaling it as a travesty of a Rififi-style clever caper. The original Italian title—I soliti ignoti (Persons unknown)— also becomes very good once you’ve seen the film. Just the way the characters eat food in the movie is delightful, and the filming style classic and brilliant—a comedy of great elegance. The only two autographs I’ve collected are Mario Monicelli’s and Diana Ross’s (whose “I’m Coming Out” greatly aided the Last Days of Disco soundtrack)."

"Mark Sandrich was the superlative director of Fred Astaire musicals, strikingly more successful at this demanding (though charming) form than the better known George Stevens. It’s very funny, chock-a-block with great character actors, and with wonderful music (Cole Porter) and choreography (Astaire with Hermes Pan). There’s something about works at the beginning of a form or style of cinema, even if rough and lacking couth, that I find more lovable and compelling than that form perfected (which in this case would be the gorgeous Top Hat made by Sandrich the next year)."

"So beautiful and beautifully evocative—a film that allows space for imagination—but my gosh it’s long."

"The charms of the other Hitchcocks—I would like to have included The 39 Steps but don’t have the room—to which are added an atmosphere of such intense passionate tension and threatened betrayal, as well as a cast of archetypal beauty"

"I love films that are great not only in themselves but in the idea of them that stays in memory. But this then can dwarf the actual film, which perhaps it has in the case of Black Orpheus—some aspects now try one’s patience slightly. A few years back a Brazilian film was touted as the realistic and gritty version of the story, by those who knew the actual milieu—another black eye for realism and grit."