“They transformed Hollywood”: Christopher Nolan names the five directors who changed cinema
He might be the son of a London-born father and an Illinois-born mother who holds dual citizenship of both the United Kingdom and the United States, but Christopher Nolan has always come across as a distinctly British gentleman.
The filmmaker is never spotted on set wearing anything other than an immaculately pressed suit and wouldn’t be caught dead without his trusty thermos full of tea, which is about as British as it gets. Nolan has always been heavily influenced by Hollywood, though, a place he eventually conquered.
It was being handed the reins on blockbuster reboot Batman Begins that lit the touchpaper on his ascension from highly-regarded rising star to industry powerhouse, and two decades later he’s on the same level as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and James Cameron as being one of the few directors who can open a movie through their name alone.
Finding the perfect niche for himself, Nolan combines the thought-provoking drama and complex construction of experimental cinema with the bombast of expensive effects-heavy fare, which has won him Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ and a filmography that’s earned more than $6 billion at the box office.
His influences hail from all across the world and span virtually the entirety of cinema, but there’s a particular quintet he’s adamant never got the recognition or credit they deserved for the lasting impact they made on cinema. In fact, he believes they completely altered the complexion of Tinseltown forever.
“The filmmakers I grew up with who have never had enough attention paid to them are the group of five British directors who came from advertising in the 1970s: Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and Adrian Lyne,” Nolan told the British Film Institute. “They transformed Hollywood, and were utterly British in their formation, their upbringing, their sensibilities.”
Even though they all made their marks in different ways, Nolan’s point is inarguable. Ridley Scott had helmed two of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made by 1982 after following Alien with Blade Runner, and his penchant for world-building and telling stories on an epic scale influenced generations.
His brother Tony was instrumental in moving action cinema away from the meat-and-potatoes age of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone into something much more stylish, kinetic, and vibrant that allowed auteurism to find its place in the genre, while Lyne was instrumental in the erotic thriller boom of the 1980s and 1990s that Hollywood couldn’t get enough of.
Hudson may have never recaptured the glories of his debut narrative feature Chariots of Fire, but Parker’s versatility was on full display across films as diverse as Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Fame, Pink Floyd – The Wall, Angel Heart, and Mississippi Burning. For Nolan, their imprint is eternal.
“They all came to Hollywood and absolutely transformed it,” he said. “They became Hollywood directors, but their Britishness is undeniable. Those guys defined what the visual language of Hollywood movies was going to be from the 1980s onwards, and their influence is still seen and felt.”
