Arild Andresen

It has not been easy choosing only ten films. I realised I had to make a rather personal list, having no illusions that I would ever be able to do justice to all great films and directors out there. So this was a pleasure, as well as a pain. What about Touch of Evil, Singing in the Rain, It's a Wonderful Life, Go and See? What about Bergman, Buñuel or Bresson? Maybe another time, should the opportunity return.   8½ is beautiful, bittersweet, romantic, dark and immensely entertaining. This masterpiece has got it all.

If I had to choose only one, I guess it would have to be Les 400 Coups: the music, the imagery, the wise and tender portrayal of childhood, the face of young Jean Pierre Leaud... I could watch this film forever. Au Revoir les Enfants represents a deeply touching childhood memory and a late entry in a career that may contain more memorable portrayals of adolescence than any other director's.

Le Boucher is suspense in its purest form – to me, ’70s Chabrol is Hitchcock’s one and only true heir.

Italian history never looked as good, and as frightening, as in Bertolucci’s cautionary tale of identity and ideology.

The Gold Rush is the first film I can remember having seen. I loved it. I still do.

I fell in love with New York a long time before actually going there myself, mostly because of Manhattan.

Once Upon a Time in the West is playful, political, poetic and so stylishly elaborate it's almost parodic. That westward bound train must be one of film history's most potent metaphors.

Sunset Blvd has dialogue to die for. Wilder got it right every time.

Who needs film school? Just watch Vertigo, then read Truffaut’s book on Hitchcock. Then watch it again. And again.