The movie that changed Scott Walker’s life: “I was very struck”
Understanding our favourite artists’ influence is tricky territory. On the one hand, it seems obvious that we will inherently like the works our most-loved musicians heralded as their own. But, on the other, are we not free-thinking music lovers ourselves whose tastes are built on our own preferences as opposed to the blind following of our idols? I think so. Although, it’s fair to say that David Bowie is an outlier to that logic, and if he calls Scott Walker his “idol”, chances are, he will be ours as well.
Like Bowie, Walker was a perennial shapeshifter obsessed with creating something on the verve of culture. Beginning with The Walker Brothers before venturing into solo material, he lived by his own mantra: “The music has to be as interesting” and “It has to keep taking you into places that you’re at least not used to”.
His eye for the escapist qualities of art can be traced to his artistic beginnings. As a child, he stepped onto the Broadway stage, fluttering into a brief but crucially impactful career as a child actor. Performing in musicals, he learnt the craft of dramatic storytelling and how narrative arcs can be woven into songs, informing the theatrical palette of his later work. But alongside that development, he watched a film that would change the course of his artistic career for good. At 17, he saw The Virgin Spring, Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 tale of rape, murder and revenge in Medieval Sweden. According to Walker, it changed his life.
“I took in the name. At the same time, I discovered [Akira] Kurosawa because Los Angeles had a Japanese cinema at the time,” Walker told Erik Morse. “So it was on that one night that I became interested. I was very struck by the imagery and the chiaroscuro. And then Bergman later admitted about that film that it was pure Kurosawa, the way he had done it”.
It’s easy to understand why a young Walker, whose sensibilities were first formed on Broadway stages and who scrounged up quarters to watch films on Hollywood Boulevard, would explore the theatrical in his music. Bergman’s black-and-white cinematographic landscape, which focussed deeply on stark facial expressions and stunning natural landscapes, can be found repackaged in Walker’s suave yet sharp sonic storytelling.
However, as Walker alluded to, Bergman’s influence was somewhat of a second-hand delivery, given the overarching nod to Kurosawa. Bergman, in fact, called The Virgin Spring “touristic” and “a lousy imitation of Kurosawa” and, rather humorously, added, “At that time, my admiration for the Japanese cinema was at its height. I was almost a samurai myself.”
The directors shared a mutual respect that, besides boasting one of the most celebrated joint catalogues of filmography, went on to inspire one of music’s most pivotal creative figures. Given Bowie’s admiration of Walker and what he went on to do for music, I guess we all have Kurosawa to thank.
