Satyajit Ray's Favorite Films

Bicycle Thieves is a triumphant discovery of the fundamentals of cinema and De Sica has openly acknowledged his debt to Chaplin. - Satyajit Ray

As for innovation, all artists owe a debt to innovators and profit by such innovation. [Jean-Luc] Godard gave me the courage to dispense largely with fades and dissolves, [François] Truffaut to use the freeze. But all innovation is not external. There is a subtle, almost imperceptible kind of innovation that can be felt in the very texture and sinews of a film. A film that doesn’t wear its innovations on its sleeve. A film like La Règle du jour. Humanist? Classical? Avant-Garde? Contemporary? I defy anyone to give it a label. This is the kind of innovation that appeals to me. - Satyajit Ray, “Under Western Eyes”, Sight and Sound