The art that inspired 6 great directors

It can be difficult to disentangle all the suggestions that go into a single film. Often the directors themselves fail to do this, having distilled the experience and inspiration of a lifetime into their work. But seldom does anything inspire artists as much as art. When asked what their guiding lights had been in making some of the best films of 2022, the directors, actors and craftspeople pointed to a wide range of sources, from old master paintings to ghost stories.

The Eternal Daughter

Inspired by the story They by Rudyard Kipling
One evening, after visiting Martin Scorsese, Joanna Hogg returned home with a film and two books: The night of the devil by Jacques Tourneur and two volumes by MR James, including the book which had inspired The night of the devil. Hogg was thinking of making what she calls a “ghost movie” and when she finally felt ready to start, she already knew who she would ask for advice. “I remember writing to you during the pandemic: ‘Do you have any ghost stories to recommend?'” she told Scorsese herself in a recent conversation with Vanity Fair. Scorsese sent him some, including, «the fundamental They by Rudyard Kipling, who was a major influence for The Eternal Daughter». Hogg’s film, in which Tilda Swinton plays a woman grieving for her mother and her own mother, is the kind of emotional ghost story Hogg didn’t think possible before reading They and be moved to tears. Regarding his decisive role in inspiring Hogg, Scorsese says: «With Joanna I tend to follow her interests. If there’s something that appeals to her, I know she’ll tell me and I’ll think, “Let’s try sending her this. Let’s see what happens.” — Katey Rich

Nothing new on the western front

Inspired by the Steve McQueen movie, Shame
For his adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I novel, director Edward Berger drew inspiration from Steve McQueen’s drama Shame in 2011. “It might seem like a surprising choice, but in all of McQueen’s films I admire the precision,” says Berger. Set 100 years apart and under vastly different circumstances, Berger’s war epic and McQueen’s sex addiction drama focus particularly on their protagonists. “Every shot is incredibly thought out, the viewer has the sensation of a razor dissecting everyone on the screen until the blade cuts into their bones,” says Berger of Shame. “In every shot I feel the contribution of every department that helps the actors express the emotions that their characters are actually trying to hide.” — Rebecca Ford

Living

Inspired by the documentary photography of Cecil Beaton
Living by Oliver Hermanus, remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Ikiru Starring Bill Nighy as a dying bureaucrat, it opens with real footage of 1950s London. Costume designer Sandy Powell was therefore inspired by photos of the time to make the transition to the world of film as smooth as possible. In addition to the fashion photographs of Cecil Beaton, who also immortalized the rubble of the Blitz, she asked her family members to dig into their archives. “These photos of real working-class and lower-middle-class people were the most useful tools,” she explains. “Many of the background arrangements were based on family photos.” Beaton himself inspired the look of Tom Burke’s character Sutherland, a rough-and-tumble fellow Nighy’s Williams meets by the sea. As for cinematic references, she turned to films shot at Ealing Studios in London at the time, such as The Incredible Adventure of Mr. Holland, Passport to Pimlico And Ladykillers. But his attention was directed above all to reality, unlike other films set in the 1950s that he made, such as Far from heaven. “This film wanted to recreate something authentic,” says Sandy Powell. – Esther Zuckerman

Armageddon Time – The time of the Apocalypse

Inspired by Rembrandt’s painting Supper at Emmaus

Before starting any project, director James Gray and cinematographer Darius Khondji visit a museum. To make their third film together, in Gray’s hometown of New York, they traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Gray chose the Vermeer painting A sleeping maid – which portrays a woman dozing off at a table, her face turned away from the light of the room – as «the point of reference» for the atmosphere of their film. But it’s the Rembrandt painting Supper at Emmaus which the cinematographer calls “a friendly ghost” who inspired the whole film. While scouting locations in New York with Gray to shoot the 1980s-set family drama, heavily inspired by Gray’s own childhood, “this Rembrandt painting came back to me,” says Khondji. «I remembered the ghostly feeling of the character standing out against a light behind him, the ocher tones». The painting is not directly recreated in the film, but its essence – the shadows, the “elusiveness of souls,” as Gray puts it – is present in the silent obsession that runs through the story. — Katey Rich

Tar

Inspired by Judy Collins and Jill Godmilow documentary Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman
In Tarwhen conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) sits down with Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker for an onstage interview, she tells him about the innovative 1930s conductor Antonia Brico, who «was marginalized in the unglamorous role of guest conductor». Brico’s story also had a strong influence on writer and director Todd Field, who cites the 1974 documentary Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman of 1974 as a source of inspiration for Tar. Field, who hadn’t made a film for 16 years, referred in particular to a moment in the documentary where Brico, who otherwise seems quite stoic, is asked what it means to not be able to conduct without having an orchestra with which to work regularly. “She replied, says Field:” I’m a musician, but I don’t have a piano and I don’t have a horn. I have human beings, and without them I can’t express myself “”, says Field. “It’s the only time you can read the pain on her face. She needed other people to be a musician.’ — Rebecca Ford

Good luck to you, Leo Grande

Inspired by Lucas Cranach’s painting Adam and Eve

“What am I going to do?” was the first thought that crossed Emma Thompson’s head when she realized that she would have to be completely naked for a scene in Good luck to you, Leo Grande. “I thought, ‘How am I going to dissociate from myself and get over the issues I’ve always had with my body? ‘” she tells Vanity Fair. To do so, he looked back to “a more innocent time” as part of his research, finding inspiration in a painting of Adam and Eve by German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach. In the painting, Eva is standing with one knee bent and looking very relaxed. In the film, in the role of a widow who rediscovers her sexual desire thanks to a professional escort, Thompson had to convey Eva’s ease with her naked body. “I realized that whenever I stood in front of the mirror, I was always holding something in my hand or standing in a particular way just to make myself more acceptable to myself,” says the actress. Thompson not only borrowed the bent-kneed position from Eva, she also learned to stand in front of the mirror without judging. As she puts it: “It’s a fucking tough goal.” — Rebecca Ford.
\