Portugese director Manoel de Oliviera, who died today at age 106, lived a life that everyone envied — long, prolific, legendary. He was respected worldwide as a man of taste, cultivation and modest aesthetic accomplishment. He once described himself as an interpreter of the Bunuelian themes of romantic frustration and stifling societal mores, and that’s fine. But honestly? When I learned of his death this morning I respectfully couldn’t think of a single, stand-out default classic that he’d made. I went to his Wiki bio and scanned his films and went “uh-huh, yup, heard about that one, respected, missed that one, hmmm, yup.” But I love that he kept working decades past the usual age of retirement or slowing down. I love his oft-quoted remark about directing films for the sheer pleasure of it, regardless of how many critics went nuts for his latest. I adore the fact that de Oliviera was 103 when his last feature, Gebo and The Shadow (which I never saw), played the 2012 Venice Film Festival.