David Remnick

“I’m going to start with what I think might be my favorite filmmaker: Robert Bresson, whose rhythms and stillness is a little bit like listening to Bach. And A Man Escaped is simply that. It’s somebody who’s in prison and who, bit by bit, using the materials of what’s in his jail cell, escapes from the prison. Think of it metaphorically, think of it in narrative terms, it’s one of the most beautiful films you’ll ever see. So in it goes.”

“I think I’m going to surprise you by picking something that looks utterly predictable. Citizen Kane has a connection to The New Yorker. It’s written by Herman Mankiewicz, along with Orson Welles, of course, and there’s a famous book by Pauline Kael, who was the great New Yorker film critic, about the controversy about who gets the credit for Citizen Kane, which many people think is the best movie ever made, certainly in English, whether it was Herman Mankiewicz more or Orson Welles. In any case, you have to see it.”

“I watch a lot of music movies. Thelonious Monk was one of the great composers and players during the bebop period, and Charlotte Zwerin’s film, Straight, No Chaser, captures his stage presence and his quirkiness and humanity like no other film I’ve ever seen. So Straight, No Chaser.”

“When I was a kid, just learning about films that were a little more than Daffy Duck, I started seeing Werner Herzog’s films, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, things like this, and I knew nothing about the absolute eccentric working life of Werner Herzog, why would I? But along came a documentary about Werner Herzog. It’s called Burden of Dreams, and it’s revelatory about the filmmaker’s art, especially on the more lunatic end of the spectrum.”

“I love French New Wave films, Godard, Agnès Varda, François Truffaut, Rivette, all of them. And one of the ones that I saw earliest in my life, when I was a teenager, was Shoot The Piano Player. I think I learned about it from Bob Dylan’s liner notes in an early album. A great, simple melodrama, and Charles Aznavour is absolutely wonderful in the title role.”

“So one of my dearest friends in the world is a guy named Richard Brody, who you know better as the film critic at The New Yorker, along with Justin Chang, and Richard is of the belief that the great revolutionary filmmaker is Jean-Luc Godard. But he would not choose Breathless or Masculin féminin as his greatest film. He will choose and he will tell you that King Lear, starring Norman Mailer and Molly Ringwald and Godard himself, is the epitome of Godard’s art. I don’t agree, but you should give it a shot.”

“And I was really honored that he did a film that was kind of about The New Yorker called The French Dispatch, so Wes Anderson, the first 25 years. And if you have a sore back and can’t schlep around a big gift box: The French Dispatch, all by its lonesome.”

“Now I’m going to blow your mind, probably somebody you’ve never heard of: Stan Brakhage. I came to him because I took a film course by the late, great P. Adams Sitney, and P. Adams Sitney– I think all the kids came to this film course thinking they were going to get an escape from academia and see The French Connection or The Godfather or something, and he put on a film called Window Water Baby Moving, which was the equivalent of seeing Jackson Pollock after a lifetime of seeing nothing but naturalism and realism. He is the godfather of experimental filmmaking, along with people like Maya Deren from an earlier age. Be patient with this. Don’t let it be all you ever watch, but it’s extraordinary in so many ways. Painterly is one of the words that you could put here. Give it a try. Stan Brakhage’s films.”

“Far be it for me to be selling gift sets, but you might as well. It’s the first 25 years of Wes Anderson’s art. You have to say he has a vision. Within two seconds of seeing one of his films, you know who’s directing it. And I was really honored that he did a film that was kind of about The New Yorker called The French Dispatch, so Wes Anderson, the first 25 years.”