The film Christopher Nolan calls “absolute genius”
If you’re searching for proof that English Literature is indeed a worthwhile degree (despite the UK’s vendetta against the subject), look no further than Christopher Nolan. The writer and director graduated back in 1993 and can currently lay claim to five Academy Award nominations, five BAFTAs and six Golden Globes.
He was also appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2019 and has been listed as one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine. A Mathematics degree won’t get you that kind of recognition. Here, the walking talking accolade magnet opens up about an equally-revered cinematic “genius.”
After graduating, Nolan found employment as a script reader, camera operator and director of corporate videos. In 1996, he wrote and edited the short film Larceny, which was shot in a single weekend and is still regarded as one of the best short films to come out of the UCL Union Film Society. Following the success of his debut feature, 1998’s Following, Nolan got started on Momento, his breakthrough film. Released in 2000, it won Nolan Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe for ‘Best Screenplay’ and two Independent Spirit Awards for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Screenplay’.
Since then, Nolan has directed some of the most successful blockbusters in modern film history, including The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Inception and Oppenheimer. Back in 2013, just before the release of Interstellar, the director sat down with Criterion to name his top ten favourite films.
Alongside classic expressionist thrillers like The Testament of Dr Mabuse (which he regards as “essential research for anyone attempting to write a supervillain”) and Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (starring a charismatic David Bowie), Nolan named Erich von Stronheim’s 1924 silent film Greed, which he described as “von Stroheim’s lost work of absolute genius.”
One of the greatest psychological dramas of all time, Greed tells the story of a housewife who wins the lottery with her dentist husband John. As she becomes increasingly paranoid, her normal life starts to unravel. Much like Abel Gance’s 1927 epic Napolean, Greed is but a fragment of what von Stronheim set out to achieve. The original was nearly ten hours long but was re-cut countless times over, eventually leaving the director with the 140-minute feature we know today – one that inspired a punchup with Louis B. Mayer and was subsequently disowned by von Stronheim.
You can watch the remastered version of Greed below, which will have to do until it’s made available on Criterion.
