Robert De Niro visits the Criterion Closet and reveals his favourite movies
Robert De Niro has taken a short-lived walk into the Criterion Closet and has picked out his favourite movies, including Italian crime comedies and British classics.
The actor first picked up the 1958 Mario Monicelli comedy, Big Deal on Madonna Street, and shared, “Terrific movie. It’s been so many years since I saw it, but it was just terrific.
On that theme, he added, “There was another Italian movie, Mafioso, and that was also terrific, with Alberto Sordi. Martin [Scorsese] and I also talked about doing a remake of that. Divorce Italian Style. Yeah, this was a terrific movie. Terrific.”
De Niro was gesturing to the comedy crime picture, directed by Alberto Lattuada, which follows a factory manager who visits his hometown in Sicily and is tasked with performing a hit for the Mafia.
Moving on but still in the same decade, De Niro then added Blow-Up to his list, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Grappling to remember the lead’s name, he added, “He shot it with… Who’s the young English actor? David Hemmings.”
The Taxi Driver actor went on, “It was another– almost another style, it seemed. It was a more popular movie, I think. It was, in those days, an ‘art film,’ but more people saw it. It was a terrific movie.”
Picking up another movie, De Niro added Agnès Varda’s 1995 film One Hundred and One Nights to his list, in which he made a brief cameo as himself.
Reminiscing about working on set, he shared, “I knew Agnès and her husband, Jacques Demy, a little bit. We did this, and the toughest thing I remember was speaking French with Catherine Deneuve. It just drove me crazy.”
Finally, the screen icon revealed that his favourite movie of Fredereco Fellini’s is La Dolce Vita while handling his collected works, and reminisced, “I remember I was at a premiere of it on Third Avenue at the Baronet or the Coronet, and I was there watching him come in. Of course, big fan.”
De Niro will next star in the upcoming sequel, Focker-in-Law, alongside Ben Stiller and Ariana Grande, as well as the upcoming thriller, The Whisper Man, and David O Russell’s next movie, Shutout.
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