My 20 best films

Christian-Jaque directed this wonderful version of Stendhal's classic novel. Gerard Philipe and Maria Casares play superbly, and the supporting players are everything you could want. Enjoy!

Ah, to be young in Parma again. This is a companion piece to La Chartreuse de Parme. Adriana Asti is fantastic. Watch for the unbelievable scene at Puck's country house.

Pialat directs Jacques Dutronc, who manages to make us forget Kirk Douglas's attempt to play the tortured painter. Gerard Sety as Dr. Gachet does a fine job, as does Elsa Zylberstein as one of the prostitutes.

Arthur Penn directs Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, James Woods and a teen-aged Melanie Griffith in a cool thriller that's a delight to watch. What you can see when you go diving in the Florida Keys might drive you crazy.

Resnais made a fine film out of Jean Cayrol's story. Delphine Seyrig is superb as an antiques dealer in northern France who dredges up memories of a love affair gone bad during the War.

"Va va voom, Mike!" A great noir from Robert Aldrich, with memorable performances from Ralph Meeker, Cloris Leachman, and many more.

Possibly Bergman's greatest film (but I don't want to rank them). Bibi Andersson is great as the nurse, Liv Ullmann holds your attention throughout in a mute role.

Bergman did superb comedies, this is one of his best. The female cast may be the best ever assembled: Eva Dahlbeck, Ulla Jacobsson, Margit Carlquist, Harriet Andersson.

A film that is better than the book it's adapted from. Philip Kaufman does great epic films and this is probably his best. The Daniel Day-Lewis-Juliette Binoche pairing is superb.

I prefer Coup de grace for the title, it refers more directly to the terrifying ending. A love story gone terribly bad, if ever there was one. Margarethe von Trotta is the doomed Sophie, and Matthias Habich is Erich, an impossibly conflicted man.

I could have chosen at least three Louis Malle films for this list, but will content myself with this one. Maurice Ronet gives the performance of his life as Alain Leroy, and is surrounded with excellent supporting players in Alexandra Stewart, Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre.

"he'd kill us if he knew". Coppola never did anything as good as this (not even the Godfather series). Nightmarish, moving and tending to make the viewer wish electronic spying was impossible.

Godard taught me a lot about the possibilities of cinema. Breathless, Pierrot le fou, 2 ou 3 choses..., I devoured them all. Alphaville remains one of my favourites. Watch Eddie Constantine as he slinks around a futuristic Paris with his sidekick Anna Karina.

Pialat never made it easy for his admirers. Sometimes you want to throw something at the screen--he could get you that angry. Happily the right instincts are at work here, and this is a masterpiece. Sandrine Bonnaire makes one of the greatest debuts in film history.

The world's critics have recently picked Vertigo as the greatest film of all time. I don't know whether it is, I just like it a lot. Barbara Bel Geddes and James Stewart are terrific, and Kim Novak looks appropriately mysterious as Madeleine.

I don't like many of Hitchcock's pictures; I found him too willing to do trashy Victorian stories. Rear Window shows him in an ideal light, as he marries story to technique. The set he had built is superb.

Everybody talks about Orson Welles and the cuckoo clock story, but for me it's Joseph Cotten nervously going around Vienna on his search, abetted by Trevor Howard as the British army commander trying to keep crime down. Alida Valli is splendid.

I wanted to put one of Patrick Dewaere's films on the list. The problem was to pick one out of a half-dozen terrific pictures he made in his short life. Serie noire is black, all right, but Patrick's virtuosity carries the day and will keep you watching. He's ably supported by Bernard Blier and Marie Trintignant (another actor whose life ended too soon.)

A cowardly repressed homosexual in fascist Italy gets an assignment to kill his former professor. His mental state starts to deteriorate... Bertolucci was the greatest director of that period, and he got me interested in Italian cinema.