The Oscar-winning director of THE SHAPE OF WATER and PAN’S LABYRINTH sat down with MYTHBUSTERS’ Adam Savage to talk about the cinematic inspirations that fuel his flights of phantasmagoria—and to introduce some of his favorite films.
The Oscar-winning director of THE SHAPE OF WATER on a lifetime of moviegoing
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1931 • France
Starring Michel Simon, Janie Marèse, Georges Flamant
Jean Renoir's ruthless love triangle tale, his second sound film, is a true precursor to his brilliantly bitter THE RULES OF THE GAME, displaying all of the filmmaker's visual genius and fully imbued wit...
Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer • 1932 • France, West Germany
Starring Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel
With VAMPYR, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer channeled his genius for creating mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, unsettling imagery into the horror genre. The result—a chilling film...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1934 • United Kingdom
Starring Peter Lorre, Leslie Banks, Edna Best
An ordinary British couple vacationing in Switzerland suddenly find themselves embroiled in a case of international intrigue when their daughter is kidnapped by spies plotting a political assassina...
Directed by Jean Cocteau • 1946 • France
Starring Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély
Jean Cocteau’s sublime adaptation of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy-tale masterpiece—in which the pure love of a beautiful girl melts the heart of a feral but gentle beast—is a landmark of motion picture f...
Directed by Georges Franju • 1960 • France
Starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, François Guérin
At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—a...
Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1961 • Spain
Starring Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal
Banned in Spain and denounced by the Vatican, Luis Buñuel’s irreverent vision of life as a beggar’s banquet is regarded by many as his masterpiece. In it, novice nun Viridiana does her utmost to maintain ...
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi • 1965 • Japan
Starring Rentaro Mikuni, Keiko Kishi, Katsuo Nakamura
After more than a decade of sober political dramas and socially minded period pieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of...
Directed by Víctor Erice • 1973 • Spain
Starring Ana Torrent, Isabel Tellería, Fernando Fernán Gómez
Criterion is proud to present Víctor Erice’s spellbinding THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (EL ESPÍRITU DE LA COLMENA), widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s. In a small Castilian vi...
Directed by Felipe Cazals • 1976 • Mexico
One of Mexico's most highly regarded works of political cinema, CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY reimagines a real-life incident that had occurred just eight years before its release, when a group of urban university employees on a hiking trip were viciously att...
Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen • 1984 • United States
Joel and Ethan Coen's career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases a torrent of violence with one murderous though...
