What are Monte Hellman’s 10 favorite Criterion DVDs? The answers may surprise you! “Picking ten is worse than trying to choose between my wives, my dog, and my kids,” says Hellman, and…his wives? I hope he means his spouses served their terms consecutively, not concurrently. And if he has a current wife, I hope she doesn’t see this and learn that he’s having a hard time deciding between her and his past wives…or even his dog.

But I digress. The fact is that Mr. Hellman did manage to pick 10 Criterion DVDs, among them 8 ½ (“I had the pleasure of watching Fellini shoot a scene from City of Women at Cinecittá. I was flattered when he said, ‘Ah, you’re the young director I’ve heard so much about,’ although I was barely younger than he.”), Scenes from a Marriage (“At the time the film first played theatrically in the U.S., I was invited to a private screening of the five-hour television version. As one who’s addicted to marriage, it was a devastating experience.”) and Grand Illusion (“I had the privilege of being a member of a festival jury led by Jean Renoir, and subsequently replaced him as a cameo actor in a film.”) Hellman! What’s with all the name-dropping? Did Peter Bogdanovich ghost-write this list?

Other choices include Notorious and The Lady Eve, but Hellman’s top pick is a bit out of left field: Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive from 1972. “I’ve probably seen this film more than any other. Nestor Almendros turned me on to it when I was looking for a DP to shoot Iguana. He recommended Luis Cuadrados, but I soon discovered he’d died of a brain tumor, having shot Spirit while 95 percent blind.” You can check out the full list here.

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