The filmmaker who inspires Wes Anderson the most: “I’ve always felt this”
Wes Anderson is one of the few directors whose work can be instantly identified. Plenty of younger filmmakers have tried to ape his style of brightly coloured, meticulously composed shots, but no one seems to have the patience that all that symmetry and colour theory requires. You can argue whether his eye for detail helps or hinders the actual stories in his films, but no one can accuse him of being derivative (except of himself).
That said, no filmmaker working today exists in a vacuum. Even the ones who are regularly labelled as auteurs are always drawing on inspiration from someone else. Martin Scorsese borrows from Orson Welles, who borrowed from John Ford and the German expressionists. Quentin Tarantino was inspired by Jean-Luc Godard, who was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Fuller, and gangster movies. Even David Lynch, who was one of the few visionaries in cinema, was inspired by Old Hollywood melodrama. For Anderson, it all goes back to François Truffaut.
In the 1950s, Truffaut was one of the film critics writing for the influential French publication Cahiers du Cinéma alongside Godard. After championing the likes of Welles and Hitchcock, he decided to try his hand at filmmaking, too. His feature debut, The 400 Blows, earned him widespread acclaim, and he went on to an illustrious career as a director. Before his death in 1984, he made such classics as Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, and Day for Night, cementing himself alongside the auteurs he praised so intensely as a critic.
His films are highly stylised, featuring jump cuts, freeze frames, literary narration, and meandering storylines. He didn’t spend months constructing rooms and props and backgrounds, but his work has been a key inspiration for Anderson, nonetheless. During a conversation with Letterboxd in which he discussed the influences behind his 2025 film The Phoenician Scheme, Anderson commented, “Truffaut has always, for whatever reasons, been one of my role models. I mean, I’m projecting that on him. He didn’t ask for this, he didn’t appoint me anything, but somehow, I’ve always felt this.”
It would have been difficult for Truffaut to appoint Anderson for anything, considering that the future Grand Budapest Hotel director was still a teenager in Texas when the French master passed away. However, he has been a guiding light for Anderson even beyond his filmmaking style. His long-running relationship with actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, which began when the actor was only a teenager in The 400 Blows and continued to the 1979 comedy Love on the Run, inspired Anderson’s relationship with actor Jason Schwartzman.
The two collaborated for the first time on the 1998 film Rushmore, in which the 17-year-old actor played an unhappy student, just like Léaud in The 400 Blows. Nearly three decades later, Anderson and Schwartzman continue to be frequent collaborators. According to the director, one of the first things they did together was watch Truffaut’s feature debut.
Of all the movies that his hero made, though, it’s 1973’s Day For Night that Anderson loves most. One of the filmmaker’s last great films, it centres on the making of a melodrama and all the interpersonal struggles that ensue. “It’s a kind of irresistible celebration of filmmaking,” Anderson explained, “which is his life”.
