Monte Hellman

Two-Lane Blacktop; Road to Nowhere

Voted in the directors’ poll

Voted for

Asphalt Jungle, The	1950	John Huston
Casablanca	1942	Michael Curtiz
enfants du paradis, Les	1945	Marcel Carné
Goodbye, Dragon Inn	2003	Tsai Ming Liang
House of Flying Daggers	2004	Zhang Yimou
Outcast of the Islands	1952	Carol Reed
Samouraï, Le	1967	Jean-Pierre Melville
Spirit of the Beehive, The	1973	Víctor Erice
Stavisky…	1974	Alain Resnais
Storm Over Asia	1928	Vsevolod Pudovkin

Comments

These are the first ten that came to mind, in the order I remembered them. They are all pictures that have been an important part of my life, and have had a profound influence on me. Another important criterion for me is emotional effect on me. I find all of these deeply moving.

I immediately thought of 12 (these numerical constraints are too difficult!) more: The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski), La Sentinelle (Desplechin), Scenes from a Marriage (Bergman), Notorious (Hitchcock), Pan's Labyrinth (del Toro), My Favourite Brunette (Nugent), A Slave of Love (Mikhalkov), His Girl Friday (Hawks), The Lady Eve (Sturges), A Place in the Sun (Stevens), Night Must Fall (Thorpe), Climates (Ceylan). These lists are easily interchangeable. There are a hundred movies that I would find some way to bring with me to the proverbial desert island. How could I exclude Gene Tierney?