A list of Christopher Nolan’s favourite directors
Hailed as the most consummate British director of our time, Christopher Nolan stands as a paragon of cinematic innovation, and his latest movie, Oppenheimer, might well be his career-defining masterpiece. After achieving global acclaim with his characteristically convoluted 2000 thriller Memento, Nolan has stretched his talents into the disparate realms of historical drama, science fiction and comic book adaptation.
Nolan’s impact on modern cinema is incalculable, and were he to throw in the towel today, his immortal legacy would be sealed. His exceptional talent can be traced to roots in rich soil tilled by the cinematic giants on whose shoulders he proudly stands today. Ever the humble creative, Nolan has rarely passed up the opportunity to pay homage to his filmmaking heroes.
Anyone lucky enough to have witnessed Nolan’s latest World War II epic, Oppenheimer, will attest to the director’s penchant for pace. Coupled with convolution, Nolan’s usual recipe elicits a chorus of head scratching, but if you pay attention or rewatch a few times, it’s thoroughly entertaining.
Nolan learned a lot from the aptly titled action movie Speed. The classic 1994 film starred Keanu Reeves in a race against time that director Jan de Bont expertly helmed for optimal tension. Nolan described Speed as a “ticking clock nail-biter” in a past interview with the British Film Institute. In the same conversation, he gave a nod to Tony Scott for his “relentless” pacing in the 2010 thriller Unstoppable.
Perhaps one of Nolan’s more tangible influences is his contemporary auteur Quentin Tarantino. On several occasions, the British director praised his peer from across the pond, and in 2015, Nolan was so impressed with The Hateful Eight that he offered to host the awards screening for the Western drama for the Directors Guild of America.
“Well, that’s a hell of a movie, isn’t it? What an incredible thing and an incredible way to bring back the atmosphere and the beauty of seeing a film in a theatre,” Nolan said after the screening. “Watching this film, it felt like it had an increased level of formalism. There is a real calm and thought for where the camera is always. It’s also in the music. There is a great sense of the history of cinema in it.”
Another of Nolan’s favourite directors is his fellow Brit, Ridley Scott. “The director I have always been a huge fan of… Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid,” Nolan beamed in a past conversation with Media Company. “Alien [and] Blade Runner just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive.”
Oppenheimer marks Nolan’s second foray into military history. As a child of the mid-20th century, his world was hugely influenced by the plight of his parental generation. However, beyond these influences, several war movies caught his imagination while creating his first war drama, 2017’s Dunkirk.
Presenting Dunkirk to the British Film Institute, Nolan described Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 war essential, The Battle of Algiers, as a central inspiration. He described the movie as “a timeless and affecting verité narrative, which forces empathy with its characters in the least theatrical manner imaginable. We care about the people in the film simply because we feel immersed in their reality and the odds they face.”
During the same interview, Nolan also noted the impact of British filmmaking legend Alfred Hitchcock. “No examination of cinematic suspense and visual storytelling would be complete without Hitchcock, and his technical virtuosity in Foreign Correspondent’s portrayal of the downing of a plane at sea provided inspiration for much of what we attempted in Dunkirk.”
Below, we’ve gathered a list of the many directors Nolan has namechecked as crucial influences across various interviews over the past couple of decades.
Christopher Nolan’s favourite directors:
- Michael Mann
- Quentin Tarantino
- Edgar Wright
- Hugh Hudson
- Jan de Bont
- Tony Scott
- Stanley Kubrick
- Ridley Scott
- Sidney Lumet
- Nic Roeg
- Gillo Pontecorvo
- Steven Spielberg
- Damien Chazelle
- Al Reinert
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Erich von Stroheim
- Stephen Frears
- Godfrey Reggio
- David Lean
- Nagisa Oshima
- Fritz Lang
- Orson Welles
- Philip Kaufman’
- F. W. Murnau
- Richard Donner
- Terrence Malick
- Jules Dassin
- Terrence Malick
