Peter Bogdanovich's Five Favorite Films

I always think of Renoir whenever I make any picture, and he made a comedy about show business called French Cancan. It’s set around the turn of the century, and Jean Gabin plays the guy who invented the Moulin Rouge night club. He did it by championing the return of the can can, and it’s a glorious film. Gabin was great and Renoir is my favorite director. It’s a show business story, and so is ours.

The Lady Eve, written and directed by Preston Sturgess, with Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck. That’s a great movie.

This is a wild farce, it’s shocking that he got away with it in the middle of World War II. Betty Hutton gets drunk saying goodbye to soldiers going off to fight, and she gets knocked up. You never know what happened but everyone says let’s get married, because she’s pregnant. She has no idea who the father is. How he got away with this in the middle of the production code in the middle of World War II, I have no idea. Eddie Bracken plays a guy who’s so madly in love with her, he agrees to be the father. It’s a great comedy, really a farce.