Greta Gerwig’s favourite movies of all time
Actor and director Greta Gerwig is known for her collaborations with Joe Swanberg, such as Hannah Takes the Stairs and Nights and Weekends, and her husband Noah Baumbach, which include Greenberg, Frances Ha and White Noise. Her personally directed films include Lady Bird and Little Women, which both saw her nominated for a ‘Best Picture’ Academy Award.
Gerwig has stated a number of films that she considers her favourites several times over the years, and we’ve compiled a list of them here. Firstly, the actor is clearly in admiration of the work of British director Mike Leigh, naming Another Year and Career Girls amongst her most admired.
She said of the former film (via Collider), “The way it’s divided up into seasons — that’s what kind of gave us the inspiration to demarcate [Frances Ha] into parts from where she lived. I really like in the movie the way there was elapsed time. You’d kind of be figuring out what happened in between these two sections.”
Coming-of-age movies also look to be a deep love of Gerwig’s, particularly the 1991 film Flirting, directed by John Duigan and starring Nicole Kidman and Thandi Newton. “It’s about a fancy boarding school in Australia, and the kids who are on scholarships are otherwise ostracised,” Gerwig said. “It’s very tender, and it’s very good. I remember that was a movie where I was like, ‘Oh, you could do it, but it could be real?’ Even though I’ve never been to an Australian boarding school, I have no idea whether that’s real or not.”
When it comes to coming-of-age movies, though, it’s hard to look beyond the work of John Hughes, and Gerwig once spoke glowingly of his 1986 film Pretty in Pink, directed by Howard Deutch. “If you grew up like I did, watching movies where there was a ‘one’, that was a big part of what it seemed like you were supposed to be doing as a young woman, was looking for ‘the one’,” Gerwig told Slate. “But definitely, of those movies, I would say Pretty in Pink is my favourite.”
We also see a profound respect in Gerwig for the western films of Howard Hawks. She has previously mentioned his 1959 classic Rio Bravo starring Dean Martin and the 1948 film Red River, which starred John Wayne. Gerwig is a big fan of Wayne, and she once told The Dissolve, “I find him almost psychically different from movie to movie. He can be really scary in movies like Red River, or he can be very gentle. I like how much time he takes for everything; he really takes his goddamn time to walk or to talk.”
Check out the complete list of Greta Gerwig’s favourite movies below, with references from IndieWire.
Greta Gerwig’s favourite movies of all time:
- Suzanne’s Career (Eric Rohmer, 1963)
- Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2010)
- My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936)
- Girlfriends (Claudia Well, 1978)
- Passing Strange (Spike Lee, 2009)
- Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997)
- A Single Girl (Benoit Jacquot, 1995)
- Flirting (John Duigan, 1991)
- Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
- Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986)
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
- Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952)
- Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
- The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)
- Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
- The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)
