One time Orson Welles and I were talking about Greta Garbo. Welles adored her as an artist and was raving about her extraordinary presence, her mystery, her magic. I agreed. But wasn't it too bad, I said, that out of all the many films she'd appeared in, only two (George Cukor's Camille and Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka) were really good movies? Welles looked at me a long moment and then said, quietly: "You only need one...."

Well, the majority of the filmmakers in this book--like the majority of the actors--are represented by only one film. My hope is that readers may be so intrigued by the one they read about, and then view, that they will search out the several others I've noted at the end of each recommendation--and thereby find themselves again in the presence of the same personality, the same aura.
Writing nearly all of these pieces (or their nucleus) on a weekly deadline for my column on the TV page of the iconoclastic New York Observer, I was decidedly at the mercy of what the next week's (uncut and uninterrupted) New York City television selections were to be. Usually I chose either the film I thought was best or the one about which I felt most impelled to write at that moment.

Occasionally, if I had recommended one director's work over too many weeks, I would make another choice. Or if there was an arcane picture I thought wouldn't appeal to as many people, I would go instead for a more easily understandable or popular choice, because essentially I was writing not for film buffs but for an audience with a wider interest than movies and so with less time for the esoteric. Also, since it was primarily a New York audience, fewer Westerns (to which I'm partial) were chosen because I've fo...