Guillermo del Toro

“The Red Shoes...”

“400 Blows, fantastic.”

“And, oh dear lord, it's Charade, finally, Stanley Donen in magical Hitchcockian moment.”

“Crumb, in order to see every texture in Blu-ray. I'm ready, ready for the close one.”

“Oh dear, Thin Red Line, the master.”

“And what else? Oh really, The Magician? Mhm, we just got that. Master, fantastic.”

“And let's see what about the let see Repulsion best of staging...”

“Paths of Glory, is it alphabetical? Yeah, we haven't got Paths in yet, we could send you one. I'll patiently wait. Well I'm stealing, I mean unfortunately I have bought most of these and I have most of these, so I'll have to wait until you know the Blu-ray of Paths of Glory to add anything else.”

“Now, Notorious. Why do I choose Notorious? That staircase sequence, you count the steps and he has to cut five or six times: points of view, tracking with them, wide, the Nazis arriving, coming out of the study. That is such a precise film. He was very, very concerned about rhythm. Final sequence. Watch it.”

“Black Narcissus and this, to me, are the pinnacles of color narrative. Along with Fellini and some of the yellow in this and that. Black Narcissus is maybe one of the five most beautiful movies ever made. Easily. And the fact this is all done artificially, meaning matte paintings, set extensions. When people say, “Well, you have to go to location.” Yes, if you’re not talking about a parable. And Black Narcissus is a parable of desire. And Red Shoes is a parable of the passion of the arts destroying us all. Well, Black Narcissus. You can not own it too many times. Never.”

“Salesman, one of the greatest documentaries of the working man and the patois of the period and all that. I suggest very wholeheartedly that you have a bottle of booze, some ice, and you do a double program of this and Glengarry Glen Ross.”

“All That Heaven Allows. Sirk, a master of staging. He uses mirrors, glass, reflections, and the actors moving in a way that creates one-minute, two-minute masters that are breathtaking. This movie is so beautiful. When I was preparing Nightmare Alley, I remembered Gabriel Figueroa telling me the range of values that you needed in doing a black-and-white film and how color reacted to that. And he said, “Watch Sirk.” Because Sirk has the black-and-white values built in his color. And that’s how I did Nightmare Alley. I art-directed it to work in color and to work in black and white. Do an experiment for me: grab this movie, buy it and play it and then take out the color. Watch it in black and white, it works absolutely perfect. It’s not as expressive, it’s not as eloquent, it’s not as full of desire, but the image design is extremely powerful.”

“Now, Fellini. I love Amarcord, I love all his neorealism period and all that. But this movie and Casanova are the ones I revisit the most. I remember one of my favorite scenes ever committed to film, I won't ruin it for you, is the scene where they discover the frescoes in the subway. Watch it. And there are moments here where the music and the staging, the sort of fashion design for Cardinals, the way that whole set piece works is like a horror movie.”

“And Age of Innocence. Another Scorsese people don’t revisit enough. I have, on and on and on and on and on, for Frankenstein, Crimson Peak, because he understands Edith Wharton, Henry James, all the pulsations of the era. Repression is part of narrative exercise. It’s not just what you let loose, but what you contain. And Scorsese is a master of playing with repression. He absolutely is. When people imitate the violence without the containment, it’s like… the contents need to be under pressure to explode.”

“Au revoir– No, no. “Au revoir” he said. Au revoir les enfants. Masterpiece. Oh my God, Louis Malle nails it. This is a movie I watched over and over again before attempting Devil’s Backbone, which is somewhere in here. But I’m not going to take it out because I know how it ends. I’ve seen it.”

“I already have this. But, you know, it’s very funny when people say, “Oh, you must love this filmmaker or that filmmaker.” They never guess Wes. But I have more– In my imagination, in my kinship, I have a lot more in common with him than with a lot of people, because we are ultimately both creating strange tableaus that can be very mannered but they try to approximate truth. The undercurrent of heartbreak, the loss, the pathos this guy has, that’s why his stuff works, because, at the end of the day, it’s about things we never had, but we already lost. And this box is fantastic.”

“Oh, I found another Roma that I like. Alfonso had been talking about making this movie, for those of us that know him, for about 20 years. He had one plot, another plot, and he changed protagonists, but he was always incredibly interested in making it transcendental, powerful, beautiful, but incredibly solid. I think that the last image of her going basically into the clouds is one of the most poetic. And it starts on the ground, reflecting the clouds. It’s a very pejorative beginning, and then the purity that acquires at the end, seeing her ascend into the clouds, is so beautiful. Alfonso, I love him, but I envy him. I am in awe, and he’s very, very cruel with my brain, but I adore him.”