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Watch: William Friedkin Visits Criterion’s Offices
In the latest edition of “a famous person visits the Criterion Collection’s offices,” William Friedkin drops by to browse. Sighting Sunday Bloody Sunday, he remembers that as another film nominated for Best Picture the year he won with The French Connection. Segeuing from memory to pro-digital polemic, he says that the Criterion’s editions preserve films as they were meant to be seen, unlike movie theaters, where prints are “scratched up.” He also praises “one of Walter Huston’s greatest performances, The Devil and Daniel Webster” and talks up Jules Dassin’s Brute Force. “I never thought I’d see this again,” he says, since he first saw it upon release in 1947 (and perhaps hasn’t seen it since? unclear). He walks out with 8 1/2, a choice that makes “my day, my week, possibly my year.”
