Salles also identified the Italian iconoclast Michelangelo Antonioni as one of his greatest educators in the field of art, directly, but through his work.
“Antonioni is, in fact, the filmmaker that brought me to cinema,” he said, “the director that captured best the senselessness of society — of the industrial society — and, at the same time, the loss of identity that ensued after that. And ‘La Notte’ has the seeds of what was going to be later ‘Blow-Up’ and ‘The Passenger.’ The pillars of an extraordinary director.”
And on the subject of extraordinary, Salles also had to hold space for the work of Martin Scorsese. In grabbing his 1980 masterpiece “Raging Bull,” Salles spoke of its total originality and the difficulty of creating something completely new on screen.
Watch Salles’ full Criterion Closet tour below.