In the early 1950s, while Grant was staying at his luxurious Mayfair Hotel penthouse suite, he placed chocolates on the suite’s bedroom pillow for a certain woman who was meeting him there. He was married to actress Betsy Drake at the time – his third wife out of five – but he had another ‘female friend’ in mind. And for his plans of seduction, he designed a breadcrumb trail of chocolates, leading from the suite’s sitting room into the bedroom where he placed the final bit of sweets on his pillow. The name of his soon-to-be bedmate is still unknown, as are the contents of a love letter he left beside the chocolates. As expected, the woman arrived at the suite before Grant, where his romantic ploy was an Oscar winning success.

The manager on duty noticed Grant’s ploy and started the regular practice of leaving a nighttime chocolate on guests’ pillows. And that very tradition still continues at the Magnolia St. Louis, as part of its turndown service, but with chocolates now from Bissinger’s, regarded as one of the finest chocolatiers in St. Louis.

Today, guests can stay at the Magnolia’s Cary Grant Suite which is a fusion of old-world style with modern elements and technological enhancements The augmentation also includes an executive desk; tufted faux leather headboards with ecru woven textured bedding; gray and taupe textured fibers, woven into carpeting repeating the color palette of the floor to ceiling drapery with sewn-in blackout lining. And, of course, the suite is shrouded with Cary Grant photographs amd momentos.

Guests can continue their Cary Grant homage by dining at the Magnolia’s Robie’s Restaurant and Lounge, named for John Robie, Grant’s suave former jewel thief in the Alfred Hitchcock 1955 film, To Catch a Thief. So, the next time you stay at a hotel and enjoy the chocolate, cookie bite, or mint, remember that we have Cary Grant’ to thank for it. Readers, please note, you will not find Grant’s letter on the pillow: believed to be, Compliments of C. Grant: Have a restful sleep.

Who Was Cary Grant & Why Do We Keep Talking About Him?

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. I have spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant; unsure of either, suspecting each. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me. – Cary Grant

Grant was born Archibald Alexander Leach (1904) in a working class home in Bristol, England, a fishing town which offered few opportunities. In his youth he possessed a sense of drive, much like the early life of Charlie Chaplin in the slums in Victorian London. He felt he had no choice but to pull himself up by his bootstraps to eventually becoming an American stage and vaudevillian star, and then, after seemingly endless years on the road to be one of Hollywood’s most iconic film actors. With his distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent and impeccable timing, he was considered the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, not only handsome, but also witty, charming and masculine.

Film critic Robin Wood noted that the Bond films would never have happened if not for Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), with Grant in the lead role. Grant was the first actor asked to play the role of James Bond in Dr. No (1962) at the advent of the James Bond film franchise, but decided to pass due to age. He had come a long way since he worked as a stilt walker at Brooklyn’s Coney Island.

Grant, His Mother & Failed Marriages

Grant’s father, ravaged by years of alcoholism, worked as a tailor’s presser, while his mother was a seamstress. His older brother passed away at age one, and biographer Geoffrey Wansell notes that his mother blamed herself bitterly for the death, and never recovered from it. Nevertheless, his mother taught young Archie to sing and dance, insisted on piano lessons, and occasionally took him to the cinema.

Grant’s biographer Graham McCann claimed that his mother did not know how to give affection and did not how to receive it either. Grant acknowledged that his negative experiences with his mother affected his relationships with women later in life. Grant attributed her behavior to overprotectiveness, fearing that she would lose him as she did John..

When Grant was nine years old, his father placed his mother in a mental institution, and told him that she had gone away on a “long holiday”, which later ended with her death. To a degree, this resembled Chaplin’s relationship with his own fragile mother, often returning home from grade school to find that she had been placed in a mental ward. Grant did not learn that his mother was actually still alive until he was 31; and made arrangements to support her for the rest of her life, yet only visiting her once in 1938.

Cary Grant’s 1949 marriage to Betsy Drake constituted his longest martial union, but they separated in 1958 and divorced in 1962. Grant credited her with broadening his interests beyond his career and with introducing him to the then-legal LSD therapy and to hypnosis.

In the 1950s, after Grant had become the wildly successful star, he sought professional help to cope with the lingering emotions over his traumatic childhood. In particular, his failed marriages weighed on him. He tried hypnosis, yoga, and supervised LSD experimentation. During his LSD hallucinations, Grant was able to confront and overcome the unconscious motivation that had undermined his marriages: anger and sorrow over his mother. He credited Dr. Hartman’s treatment for helping him understand how his mother’s disappearance had triggered a self-sabotaging pattern of relationships.

A Brief Look at Grant’s Career from an Auteurist Perspective

Upon Cary Grant’s arrival in Hollywood he was dismissed by casting directors due to his thick neck and bowlegged walk. But, a year later, he appeared in crime films or dramas as a handsome, yet wooden, costar in films by Josef von Sternberg in Blonde Venus (1932) with Marlene Dietrich, and She Done Him Wrong (1933) with Mae West, who apparently took one look at him and said, If can talk, I’ll take him. But Cary Grant becoming Cary Grant, the Cary Grant persona in which he is famous, began with his role co-starring with Katherine Hepburn in George Cukor’s Sylvia Scarlett (1935) as the rough, but charming Cockney swindler, Jimmy Monkley. Leo McCarey’s 1937 comedy The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne proved to be a smash box office success and furthered to concrete Grant’s sophisticated comedic image; later he followed with two more Cukor comedies with Hepburn, Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940).

But it was his roles in Howard Hawks’ screwball comedies, Bringing Up Baby (1938) with Hepburn again, and His Girl Friday (1940) with Rosalind Russell, which are frequently cited among the greatest comedy films of all time. Hawks continued to cast him in what are regarded as the lesser comedies, I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and Monkey Business (1952), and but also in the earlier 1939 drama, Only Angels Have Wings, where Grant delivered the goods with a powerful dramatic performance.

Cary & Hitch

During the 1940s and 1950s, Grant developed a close working relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, who cast him in four films: Suspicion (1941) opposite Joan Fontaine, Notorious (1946) opposite Ingrid Bergman, North by Northwest (1959) alongside James Mason and Eva Marie Saint, and To Catch a Thief (1955) with Grace Kelly. The last two of the four capitulated audiences and film critics alike, while the first two film dramas, Suspicion and Notorious, Hitchcock revealed a darker, more ambiguous nature in Grant’s characters.

Toward the end of his career, Grant was praised by critics primarily as a romantic leading man, and received five nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, which included a pair of Stanley Donen features, Indiscreet (1958) again with Bergman, and Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn. Cary Grant died at age 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage. His marriage to Dyan Cannon, which ended in divorce, produced his only child, Jennifer, who was the centerpiece of his life and his greatest work of art.

Cary Grant is most remembered for his broad appeal as a handsome, suave actor who did not take himself too seriously, and able to play with his own dignity in comedies without sacrificing it entirely. The story of chocolates on the pillow continues to speak to lovers throughout the world with a special affection to the art of seduction.

For more on Celebrity Suites, visit Hemingway, John & Yoko, Oscar Wilde Celebrity Hotel Rooms & Suites: Part I – Traveling Boy; The Beatles, Coco Chanel, Jim Morrison Celebrity Suites, Part 2 – Traveling Boy; Katharine Hepburn, Salvador Dali, Gwyneth Paltrow Celebrity Suites, Part 3 – Traveling Boy; Francis Ford Coppola, Nelson Mandela, J.K. Rowling, Richard Harris Celebrity Hotel Rooms & Suites, Part 4 – Traveling Boy; and Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn Celebrity Suites Part 5 – Traveling Boy

A Bite About Chocolate – Courtesy of the World Cocoa Foundation

Cocoa and other chocolate products are enjoyed by billions of people around the globe, but surprisingly few people know the history of the confection. In fact, cocoa has appeared in different cultures worldwide for hundreds of years. Cocoa was first developed as a crop in many ancient South American cultures, with the Aztecs and Mayans being the most well-known of these indigenous populations. Researchers have found evidence of cocoa-based food dating back several thousand years. READ MORE History of Cocoa | World Cocoa Foundation

Click here for further information about the Cary Grant Suite at the Magnolia St. Louis.

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Here’s my list, and I encourage you to assault, disagree or perhaps even agree, and send in your own list in our readers’ section at ad***@tr**********.com . What is most important is to keep a dialogue going about cinema as a visual medium for artistic expression where it takes its place among other art forms.

1. Robert Bresson

The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself. When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. The ear goes more towards the within, the eye towards the other. – Robert Bresson

Bresson Films for Review:

• Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
• A Man Escaped (1956)
• Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

 2. Yasujirō Ozu

I have formulated my own directing style in my head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others. I can make fried tofu, boiled tofu, stuffed tofu. Cutlets and other fancy stuff, that’s for other directors. – Yasujirō Ozu

Ozu Films for Review:

• I was born, but … (1932)
• Tokyo Story (1953)
• An Autumn Afternoon (1962)  

3. Alfred Hitchcock

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on. – Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock Films for Review:

• Notorious (1946)
• Rear Window (1954)
• Vertigo (1958)

4. Jean-Luc Godard 

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality. – Jean-Luc Godard

 Godard Films for Review:

• Vivre sa vie (1962)
• Pierrot le Fou (1965)
• Masculin Féminin (1966)

5. Roberto  Rossellini 

I want you to know how deeply I wish to translate those ideas into images, just to quiet down the turmoil of my brain. – Roberto Rossellini

Rossellini Films for Review:

• Paisà (1946)
• Journey to Italy (1954)
• La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (1966)

6. Orson Welles 

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. – Orson Welles

Welles Films for Review:

• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
• Touch of Evil (1958)

7. Ernst Lubitsch  

There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one. I let the audience use their imaginations. Can I help it if they misconstrue my suggestions? – Ernst Lubitsch

Lubitsch Films for Review:

• Trouble in Paradise (1932) 
• Ninotchka (1939)
• The Shop Around the Corner (1940) 

8. Howard Hawks  

I’d say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven’t seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don’t worry much about plot anymore. – Howard Hawks 

Hawks Films for Review:

• Bringing Up Baby (1938) 
• Only Angels Have Wings (1939) 
• Rio Bravo (1959) 

9. Kenji Mizoguchi 

You must put the odor of the human body into images [which] describe for me the implacable, the egoistic, the sensual, the cruel… there are nothing but disgusting people in this world.– Kenji Mizoguchi

Mizoguchi Films for Review:

• The Life of Oharu (1952)
• Ugetsu (1953)
• Sansho the Bailiff (1954) 

10. Jean Renoir  

What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object – Jean Renoir 

Renoir Films for Review:

• The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935)
• The Human Beast (1938)
• The Rules of the Game (1939) 

11. Max Ophüls  

The highest reaches of the actor’s art begin, I believe, at the point where words cease to play a part. – Max Ophüls

Ophüls Films for Review:

• Letter from an Unknown Woman (1949)  
• La Ronde (1950)
• The Earrings of Madame de… (1953)  

12. Luis Buñuel  

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. Thank God, I am still an atheist – Luis Buñuel

Buñuel Films for Review:

• Viridiana (1961)
• Belle de Jour (1967)
• Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)

 13. Fritz Lang 

To begin with I should say that I am a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or only rarely, with my ear – to my constant regret. Each picture has some sort of rhythm which only the director can give it. He has to be like the captain of a ship. – Fritz Lang

Lang Films for Review:

• Metropolis (1927)
• M (1931)
• The Big Heat (1953)

14.  John Ford  

My name’s John Ford. I make westerns – John Ford

Ford Films for Review:

• My Darling Clementine (1946)
• Rio Grande (1950)
• The Searchers (1956)

15. Josef von Sternberg

Shadow is mystery and light is clarity. Shadow conceals – light reveals. To know what to reveal and what to conceal and in what degrees to do this is all there is to art. – Josef von Sternberg

Sternberg Films for Review:

• The Docks of New York (1928)
• The Blue Angel (1930)
• Morocco (1930)

 16. Billy Wilder  

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut. – Billy Wilder

Wilder Films for Review:

• Double Indemnity (1944)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• Some Like It Hot (1959) 

17. Robert Altman 

Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you’re finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there’s something in there, but you’re not sure exactly what it is until you find it. – Robert Altman 

Altman Films for Review:

• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
• Nashville (1975)
• Short Cuts (1993)

18. D.W. Griffith 

Remember how small the world was before I came along? I brought it all to life: I moved the whole world onto a 20-foot screen. I made them see, didn’t I? I changed everything. – D.W. Griffith 

 Griffith Films for Review:

• The Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Intolerance  (1916)
• Broken Blossoms (1919) 

19. Abbas Kiarostami 

My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated. – Abbas Kiarostami

Kiarostami Films for Review:

• Close-Up (1990)
• Taste of Cherry (1997)
• The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)  

20. Carl Theodor Dreyer 

Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry. – Carl Theodor Dreyer 

Dreyer Films for Review:

• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
• Day of Wrath (1943)
• Ordet (The Word) (1955) 

21. Michelangelo Antonioni  

After you’ve learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like – including breaking those rules. A film you can explain in words is not a real film. – Michelangelo Antonioni

Antonioni Films for Review:   

• L’Avventura (1960)
• L’Eclisse (1962)
• Blow-up (1966)  

22. Buster Keaton 

Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot. Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles. – Buster Keaton 

Buster Keaton Films for Review:

• Sherlock Jr. (1924)
• The General, co-director Clyde Adolf Bruckman (1927)
• Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) 

23. Chantal Akerman   

When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films. – Chantal Akerman

Akerman Films for Review: 

• Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
• News from Home (1977)
• D’Est, From the East (1993)

24. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It’s a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other. – Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder Films for Review:

• The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972)
• Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
• Berlin Alexanderplatz, a 14-part West German crime television miniseries (1980)  

25. Ousmane Sembène  

I think cinema is needed throughout Africa, because we are lagging behind in the knowledge of our own history. I think we need to create a culture that is our own. I think that images are very fascinating and very important to that end. Our forefathers’ image of women must be buried once for all.  – Ousmane Sembène

Sembene Films for Review:

• La Noire de… Black Girl (1966)
• Mandabi  (1968)
• Xala (1975) 

26. Charles Chaplin 

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease from pain. You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down. We think too much and feel too little. – Charles Chaplin

Chaplin Films for Review: 

• City Lights (1931)
• The Great Dictator (1940)
• Monsieur Verdoux  (1947)

27. Andrei Tarkovsky  

The director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. – Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky Films for Review:

• Andrei Rublev (1966)
•  Solaris (1972)
• Stalker (1979)  

28. Federico Fellini  

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me. – Federico Fellini

Fellini Films for Review:

• Nights of Cabiria (1957)
•  La Dolce Vita (1960)
• 8½ (1963), 

29. Ermanno Olmi

I really don’t feel exclusive. My ambition instead, perhaps because of my peasant–worker background, is to look at the world with others, not as an aristocratic. – Ermanno Olmi

Olmi Films for Review:  

• Il Posto (1962)
• The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)
• Tickets, an anthology film directed by Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami  and Ken Loach (2005)

30. Akira Kurosawa 

Kurosawa Films for Review:  

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film. – Akira Kurosawa

• Ikiru (1952)
• Seven Samurai (1954)
• Yojimbo (1961)

31. Sergei Eisenstein  

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects? – Sergei Eisenstein

Eisenstein Films for Review:    

• Strike (1925)
• Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• Alexander Nevsky (1938) 

32. Éric Rohmer  

Rohmer Films for Review: 

I don’t think that my films are ‘literary’; they are based on the most ordinary things of life. – Éric Rohmer 

• My Night at Maud’s (1969)
• Perceval le Gallois (1978)
• Le Beau Mariage  (1981)

33. Jerzy Skolimowski  

As a poet my mind is trained along the path of poetic associations – I’m not afraid to wander away from direct narrative – I feel safe with a story that tempts you to believe or disbelieve. – Jerzy Skolimowski

Skolimowski Films for Review:  

• Deep End (1970)
• Moonlighting (1982)
• EO (2022) 

34. F.W. Murnau 

Don’t act – think! Films of the future will use more and more of these “camera angles” or, as I prefer to call them, these “dramatic angles.”  – F.W. Murnau 

Murnau Films for Review: 

• Nosferatu (1922)
• The Last Laugh (1924)
• Sunrise (1927).

35. François Truffaut

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. – François Truffaut

Truffaut Films for Review: 

• The 400 Blows (1959)
• Jules and Jim (1962)
• Day for Night (1973)

36. Miklós Jancsó 

It’s very simple. Cinema has limits that it can’t exceed. It can never go beyond catching the spectator’s interest to make a spectacle. – Miklós Jancsó.

Jancsó Films for Review: 

• The Round-Up (1966)
• The Red and the White (1967)
• Red Psalm  (1971) 

37. Hou Hsiao-hsien  

The  “wu” in  “wuxia” means both “to cut” and “to stop.” It also refers to the weapon – usually a sword – carried by the assassin.  So wuxia stories are concerned with the premise of ending violence with violence. The hero’s journey is epic and transformative – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. – Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien Films for Review: 

• A City of Sadness (1989)
• The Puppetmaster (1993)
• Flowers of Shanghai (1998) 

38. Werner Herzog 

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization. – Werner Herzog

Herzog Films for Review: 

• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
• Stroszek (1977) 

39. Satyajit Ray 

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about. Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. – Satyajit Ray 

Ray Films for Review: 

• Pather Panchali (1955) 
• Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959)
• Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest)  (1970) 

40. Stanley Kubrick  

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. – Stanley Kubrick

 Kubrick Films for Review:

• Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• The Shining (1980) 

41. Alain Resnais  

I use formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally. – Alain Resnais

Resnais Films for Review:

• Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
• Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
• Mon oncle d’Amérique (1980) 

42. John Cassavetes  

During the actual filming, I’m not really listening to dialogue. I’m watching to see if the actors are communicating something and expressing something. You’re not aware of exactly what people are saying. You are aware of what they are INTENDING and what kind of feeling is going on in that scene. – John Cassavetes  

Cassavetes Films for Review:  

• Faces (1968)
• A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
• Opening Night (1977) 

43. Claire Denis  

I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. – Claire Denis

Denis Films for Review:

• Chocolat (1988)
• Beau Travail (1999)
• Stars at Noon (2022)  

44. Sam Peckinpah 

The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws – everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he’s only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don’t say to me we’re not violent. – Sam Peckinpah 

Peckinpah Films for Review:

• Ride the High Country (1962)
• The Wild Bunch (1969)
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) 

45. Andrzej Wajda  

When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it. – Andrzej Wajda 

• Kanał (1957)
• Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
• Man of Iron (1981)  

46. Martin Scorsese 

Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out. – Martin Scorsese

Scorsese Films for Review:

• Mean Streets (1973) 
• Taxi Driver (1977)  
• Raging Bull (1980)   

47. Masahiro Shinoda

One thing I can say is either to look at films very carefully, watch a lot of films, or don’t see any films at all. Just imagine! – Masahiro Shinoda

Shinoda Films for Review:

• Pale Flower (1964)
• Double Suicide) (1969)
• Ballad of Orin (1977) 

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. – Ingmar Bergman

Bergman Films for Review:

• The Seventh Seal (1958)
• Winter Light (1962)
• Persona (1966) 

49. Sergio Leone 

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. – Sergio Leone 

Leone Films for Review:

• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
• Once Upon a Time in America (1984) 

 50. Agnès Varda  

I’m not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman – not unless she is looking for new images. – Agnes Varda

Varda Films for Review:

• Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
• Le Bonheur (1965)
• Vagabond (1985) 

51. Jacques Rivette  

I guess I like a lot of directors. Or at least I try to. – Jacques Rivette 

Rivette Films for Review:

• L’amour fou (1969)
• Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
• La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

52. Clint Eastwood 

I keep working because I learn something new all the time. – Clint Eastwood 

Eastwood Films for Review:

• Unforgiven (1992)
• Mystic River (2003)
• Million Dollar Baby (2004) 

53. Erich von Stroheim

In Hollywood, you’re only as good as your last picture. – Erich von Stroheim

Stroheim Films for Review:

• Blind Husbands (1919)
• Foolish Wives (1922)
• Greed (1924)

54. Chris Marker 

An object dies when the gaze that lights on it has disappeared. – Chris Marker

Marker Films for Review:

• La Jetée (1962)
• Sans Soleil (1983)
• Loin du Vietnam, short in compilation film (1967)

55. Robert Flaherty

Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit. – Robert Flaherty

Flaherty Films for Review::

• Nanook of the North (1922)
• Man of Aran (1934)
• Louisiana Story (1948)

56. Claude Chabrol

Films with a message just make me laugh. – Claude Chabrol

Chabrol Films for Review:

• La Femme infidèle (1969)
• Le Boucher (1970)
• Juste avant la nuit (1971)

57. Michael Powel & Emeric Pressburger 

Of course, all films are surrealist. They are because they are making something that looks like a real world but isn’t. – Michael Powell

Powell & Pressburger Films for Review:

• A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
• Black Narcissus (1947)
•  The Red Shoes (1948

58. Joseph Losey

Films can illustrate our existence… they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But NOT give the answers. America has abandoned the strong woman of spirituality and is shacking up with the harlot of materialism. – Joseph Losey

Losey Films for Review:

• The Servant (1963)
• Accident (1967)
• The Go-Between (1971)

59. Preston Sturges

I did not think that a good movie was the equivalent of a good stage play, any more than I thought an automobile ride was as exhilarating as a drive behind a spirited horse, nor a trip by steam as soul-satisfying as a voyage by sail. – Preston Sturges

Sturges Films for Review:

• Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
• The Lady Eve (1941)
• Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

60. David Cronenberg

Everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos. – David Cronenberg

Cronenberg Films for Review:

• Spider (2002)
• Dead Ringers (1988)
• A History of Violence (2005)

61. Carlos Saura

I can’t separate cinema from my life. The two things are interrelated and enrich or impoverish each other. – Carlos Saura

Saura Films for Review:

• Ana and the Wolves (1972)
• Cría cuervos (1975)
• Flamenco Trilogy (1981 – 1986), Bodas de Sangre, Carmen, El Amor Brujo 

62. Wim Wenders 

Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed. – Wim Wenders

Wenders Films for Review:

• Alice in the Cities (1974)
• Kings of the Road (1976)
• The American Friend (1977)

63. John Huston

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. – John Huston

Huston Films for Review:

• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
• The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
• The Man Who Would Be King (1975) 

64. Shōhei Imamura  

I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of daily Japanese life obstinately supports itself. – Shōhei Imamura 

Imamura Films for Review:

• Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
• The Ballad of Narayama (1983)
• Black Rain (1989)

65. Nicholas Ray 

An actor can be as talented as another, but if he doesn’t stick to what the director’s intentions are, it all falls down. – Nicholas Ray 

Ray Films for Review:

• In a Lonely Place, (1950 )
• Johnny Guitar (1954)
• Bitter Victory (1957)

66. Jean Vigo 

However paradoxical it may seem, the film studio’s ideal would be to produce only one film which would go on making money forever. – Jean Vigo

Vigo Films for Review:

• Zéro de conduite featurette (1933)
• L’Atalante (1934) 

67. Vittorio De Sica

Art has to be severe. It cannot be commercial. It cannot be for the producer or even for the public. It has to be for oneself. – Vittorio De Sica

De Sica Films for Review:

• Sciuscià (1946)
• Ladri di biciclette (1948)
• Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970)

68. Jacques Tati

The images are designed, so that after you see the picture two or three times, its no longer my film, it starts to be your film. You recognize the people, you know them, and you don’t even know who directed the picture. – Jacques Tati

Tait Films for Review:

• Les Vacances de M. Hulot (1953)
• Playtime (1967)
• Trafic (1971)

69. Richard Lester

Cinema must reflect the temper of the times. We must choose material not only on the basis of whether we feel deeply, but on whether or not anyone’s bloody well going to see it. – Richard Lester

Lester Films for Review:

• A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
• Petulia (1968)
•  Juggernaut (1974)

70. Kon Ichikawa 

I’ve made various types of films: period dramas, modern dramas, films set in the Meiji period. But I don’t make any distinctions between them – they’re all films. True, with a period drama, there are certain conventions. With a modern drama, there is a different style of shooting. So you have to make changes according to the genre, but I never think, “This is a period drama, so I have to shoot it in such and such a way.” Films are films. If you don’t understand that, then you start filming lies. – Kon Ichikawa

Ichikawa Films for Review:

• The Burmese Harp (1956)
• Odd Obsession (1959)
• Fires on the Plain (1959)

71. Laurent Cantet 

I think we’re going through a really precarious period in film production, and I very much fear that it’s going to be a lot more difficult to make my kind of cinema. If you make films that don’t exactly announce themselves as surefire hits, you feel like you’re walking a tightrope.  I don’t want to take larger scale films in order to show my evolution as a director. – Laurent Cantet

Cantet Films for Review:

• Human Resources  (1999)
• Time Out (2001)
• The Class (2008)

72. Jean-Pierre Melville

I believe that you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage. – Jean-Pierre Melville

Melville Films for Review:

• Le Doulos (1962)
• Le Samouraï (1967)
• Army of Shadows (1969)

73. Krzysztof Zanussi

I think cinema has a unique capacity to show the passage of time. When the camera can cover a distance of forty years, and you see what really happened to the faces of the actors – how they really aged, with no need for make-up – you see what happens to us. In literature, it is only reference, it’s not sensual; in cinema it’s sensual. – Krzysztof Zanussi

Zanussi Films for Review:

• Contract – FR TV (1980)
• The Constant Factor (1980)
• A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984)

74. Luchino Visconti

I could make a film in front of a wall if I knew how to find the data of man’s true humanity and how to express it. – Luchino Visconti

Visconti Films for Review:

• Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960)
• Il gattopardo (1960)
• Morte a Venezia (1971)

75. David Lynch

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too. – David Lynch

Lynch Films for Review:

• Blue Velvet (1986)
• Lost Highway (1997)
• Mulholland Drive (2001)

Readers, feel free to comment or send your own lists to ad***@tr**********.com .

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