Baz Luhrmann names his five favourite films of all time
The reputation of Baz Luhrmann as a film director has continued to swell into greatness. He has directed the hit pictures Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, Australia and The Great Gatsby. With the recent release of the Elvis biopic, Luhrmann has continued his ascent. He also once revealed himself to be a cinephile and named his five favourite films of all time.
Luhrmann’s first pick is Bob Fosse’s biopic of the Canadian Playboy model Dorothy Stratten, Star 80, released in 1983. Luhrmann said of the film: “Fosse’s great ability with rhythmic storytelling is very alive in the movie, and what’s so intriguing is that it takes a true chapter in the history of Hugh Hefner and the world of Playboy and tells it as a kind of psychological thriller.”
Weighing in at an astonishing 12-hour runtime, Luhrmann has sat through Sergei Bondarchuk’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1868 novel War and Peace. “It has some of the finest examples of Russian acting of that era, Luhrmann said. “I was profoundly affected by the Russian theatre and the style of Russian acting. It was shot on cameras and film stock that we simply never have access to.”
Up next for Luhrmann is the 1969 drama film Medium Cool, directed by Haskell Wexler. It tells of a Chicago TV news team embroiled in the Democratic Convention in 1968. Luhrmann said: “It pre-empts the idea of taking a real historical event and weaving a drama around it. So that’s great about it. Robert Forster is great in that picture. Not to mention – and I’ll be a bit flippant here – the clothes are fantastic. It’s just a great pop cultural picture.”
Werner Herzog holds a special place in Luhrmann’s heart, particularly his 1982 film, Fitzcarraldo, the tale of an Irishman attempting to transport a steamship up a hill in Peru. “I think the intense passion between actor and director is in the film,” Luhrmann said. “To me it’s kind of a package deal, this film. You have to involve yourself in the movie, but it’s really worth going beneath the film, up the jungle and into the psyche of the drama itself.”
Though these are Lurhmann’s five picks, he also makes reference to several other films that he admires, including Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, Wood Allen’s Stardust Memories and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
Baz Luhrmann’s five favourite films
- Star 80 (Bob Fosse, 1983)
- War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1966-67)
- Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969)
- Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982)
- 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
Luhrmann’s final pick goes to Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, 8 ½, the surrealist picture about a famous Italian filmmaker suffering from creative block. Luhrmann said of the film, “8 ½ to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity. I mean, it’s a little bit of a self-examination of the act of making a film.”
Check out the first three minutes of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 below.
