Transformative terrors: how the first movies that gave Nicolas Cage nightmares shaped his career
Love him, hate him, or view him as a meme made flesh more than an actor; there’s no denying that Nicolas Cage has done something that many in the profession have sought to accomplish but never managed to achieve.
There are a lot of actors, which is putting it very lightly, but how many of them have been completely and inarguably unique? There’s Marlon Brando, who capitalised on the method and reinvented the face of American cinema, but after that, suitable candidates became very few and far between.
Nobody has done what Brando did, but the fact he’s inspired all-time greats like Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro illuminates his individual brilliance and indelible artistry. However, there’s not a soul who’d even be daft enough to attempt the things that Cage does, which is intended as a compliment.
There’s not a single thespian on the face of the planet who can replicate his approach to the craft because it’s so bonkers that it would be idiotic to even try. Cage has plucked from an assortment of random, eclectic, and outlandish influences, tossed them into an idiosyncratic blender, and become one of his generation’s most defining oddities as a result.
Of course, there are many younger stars who look up to Cage, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to try and adopt ‘Nouveau Shamanism’. It’s his and his alone, but the formation of that technique can be traced right back to the first features that gave Nicolas Coppola nightmares as a kid.
His father, August Coppola, was key in ensuring that his boy appreciated the classics from an early age. “When I was a kid, the other kids were seeing Disney, and he was showing us movies like Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits,” he told David Sheff. That was before video, so he would take us to arthouse cinemas. I saw Citizen Kane, and that’s when I discovered Max Shreck, Nosferatu, and Dr Cagliari, which gave me nightmares.”
Instead of family-friendly animation, Cage was exposed to ‘French New Wave’ fantastical drama, seminal horror, and German Expressionism, which says an awful lot. As an academic, scholar, and author, his old man had no intention of exposing his children to mindless entertainment that didn’t have a thematic or artistic backbone, and it shows.
Cage has based characters on his father, he’s embraced the ethereal peculiarities of both Count Orlok and Nosferatu, he embraced expressionism as a foundational part of his bespoke acting techniques, and Orson Welles’ timeless breakthrough opened his eyes to the best the moving image has to offer.
How old was Cage when all this was going on? Four, according to him, which inadvertently set the template for what was to come.
