Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- I. CLASSICS -- Fables of the Reconstruction: The Four-Hour Greed -- Fascinating Rhythms: M -- The Color of Paradise: Jour de fête -- Backyard Ethics: Hitchcock's Rear Window -- Songs in the Key of Everyday Life: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg -- A Tale of the Wind: Joris Ivens's Last Testament -- Kira Muratova's Home Truths: The Asthenic Syndrome -- The Importance of Being Sarcastic: Sátántangó -- Blush -- The Ceremony -- Thieves -- True Grit: Rosetta -- II. SPECIAL PROBLEMS -- Malick's Progress -- Improvisations and Interactions in Altmanville, with an Afterword: Nashville -- Mixed Emotions: Breaking the Waves -- Fast, Cheap & Out of Control -- The Sweet Cheat: Time Regained -- James Benning's Four Corners -- Overrated Solutions: L'humanité -- The Sound of German: Straub-Huillet's The Death of Empedocles -- Beyond the Clouds: Return to Beauty -- Reality and History as the Apotheosis of Southern Sleaze: Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story -- Is Ozu Slow? -- The Human Touch: Decalogue and Fargo -- III. OTHER CANONS, OTHER CANONIZERS -- Life Intimidates Art: Irma Vep -- Stanley Kwan's Actress: Writing History in Quicksand -- Critical Distance: Godard's Contempt -- Remember Amnesia? (Guy Maddin's Archangel), with an Afterword: Ten Years Later (Please Watch Carefully: The Heart of the World) -- Ragged but Right: Rivette's Up Down Fragile -- Critic with a Camera: Marker on Tarkovsky -- Riddles of a Sphinx: From the Journals of Jean Seberg -- International Harvest: National Film Histories on Video -- International Sampler: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai -- Not the Same Old Song and Dance: The Young Girls of Rochefort -- Flaming Creatures and Scotch Tape -- Ruiz Hopping and Buried Treasures: Twelve Selected Global Sites -- IV. DISPUTABLE CONTENDERS -- Back in Style: Bertolucci's Besieged.

The Young One: Buñuel's Neglected Masterpiece -- In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut -- The Best of Both Worlds: A.I. Artificial Intelligence -- Under the Chador: The Day I Became a Woman -- Chains of Ignorance: Charles Burnett's Nightjohn -- Good Vibrations: Waking Life -- Hell on Wheels: Taxi Driver -- Meat, John, Dough: Pretty Woman -- Tashlinesque -- Weird and Wonderful: Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro -- *Corpus Callosum -- V. FILMMAKERS -- Mann of the West -- Otto Preminger -- Nicholas Ray -- Exiles in Modernity: Films by Edward Yang -- Hou Hsiao-hsien: Becoming Taiwanese -- The Countercultural Histories of Rudy Wurlitzer -- Samuel Fuller: The Words of an Innocent Warrior -- The Mysterious Elaine May: Hiding in Plain Sight -- Visionary Agitprop: I Am Cuba -- The Battle over Orson Welles -- License to Feel: Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Neon Bible -- Death and Life: Landscapes of the Soul-The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko -- Appendix: 1,000 Favorites (A Personal Canon) -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.