Irvine Welsh’s five favourite films of all time
“Aye Oedipus, yir a complex fucker right enough.” – Irvine Welsh
Capturing the abject nature of a working-class existence while also appraising the sheer bloody-minded joy of it is not an easy task, but Irvine Welsh has cracked it time and time again. The Scottish writer doesn’t shirk the shitshow in inequity, but triumphant of a laugh winning out over hardship has always been the core tenet of his work.
This has made his writing decidedly cinematic. Although there is depth and the stories are sprawling, the right directorial eye can hone his books into a linear few hours thanks to the arc of eviscerating mediocrity and banality that he builds his tales around. From Trainspotting to Filth and the recent TV series Crime, there is plenty of evidence that Welsh pairs well with the screen.
Thus, it is also no surprise that along with music – he once said, “I’m a failed musician rather than a successful writer” – films have served as a central influence of his works. The textured and visceral world of the silver screen has bred a particular level of potency to his prose. He casts plentiful detail without dwelling like the quick-fire weirdness of David Lynch that somehow, on second glance, has something to state about the state of the American dream.
So, we’re taking a look at the five films he told Metro are his favourites. It’s a list that certainly abides by the boldness of his own work. They are films that stand as the obverse to Isaac Asimov’s quip: “It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.”
Irvine Welsh’s five favourite movies:
Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982)
Welsh joins Brad Pitt in appraising Werner Herzog’s deranged 1982 film about Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald’s maddening desire to bring the opera, on a big fuck-off boat, to the middle of the jungle, as one of his favourites. A quirk in its production can almost best describe the sentiment of the film: Jason Robards was originally cast as the lead, and he saw the story as a strive towards glory, when the reprehensible Klaus Kinski replaced him, the misanthropic Pole flipped that notion on its head and turned it into one man’s stubborn slide into madness… the film followed him.
As Walsh explains: “It’s an amazing visual treat; a film about one man’s obsessive folly that’s almost like a field-of-dreams movie – but the feud between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski means there’s palpable tension. Usually, that kind of director/actor relationship messes a film up, but in this case, it made it.” This meshuga has also often coloured the cast of his own characters.
Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
Reality is mad. Welsh has made no bones about that, so when it comes to fiction and all the endless possibilities therein, there is no need to be so bloody stoic about sticking to realism. David Lynch drifts into dreamscapes like no other, but they always reveal quirks in our own realities. Enter 1977’s Eraserhead, a movie with one of the great synopses: “Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.”
For Welsh, it is how well this is all pulled off that proves beguiling. “People go on about David Lynch’s visuals, but one of the things he does better than anybody is his work with sound. All that clanking and pipes banging in Eraserhead creates a fantastic, disorientating effect. I love the scene during the dance when all these kind of abortion tadpoles fall onto the stage, like a fucked-up, hyperreal meditation on abortion,” he says.
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
The quick-fire exchanges of the late author James M. Cain have had a huge bearing on the art that has followed. When you read him, the Coen brothers, Martin McDonagh and Welsh, jump right out. In the film adaptation of Double Indemnity, we see Fred MacMurray seduced into a murderous insurance scam by Barbara Stanwyck.
Speaking about the 1944 classic, Welsh states: “I love that film noir dialogue; Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray batting it back and forth like a tennis ball. It would be hard for a female actress to find a part like that in a mainstream studio film these days. Now they’re just there to scream and fall from rooftops into Tom Cruise’s arms.” Indeed, a level of un-shoehorn liberation gives the film a progressive edge.
Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrera, 1992)
In Abel Ferrera’s 1992 indie hit Bad Lieutenant, Harvey Keitel plays a cop who has succumbed to the depravity that surrounds him. A difficult watch akin to less renegade Taxi Driver for the modern age, the film’s boldness to get dirty is a gripping thing to be enthralled by, even if it is the sort of film that makes you want to shower afterwards.
“An uncompromising piece of film-making,” Welsh appraises. “I didn’t think of this at the time but it was probably a big influence when I wrote Filth. Harvey Keitel’s performance is up there with the best – an amazing piece of existential angst.”
Once Upon A Time In America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
Never have four hours gone over so smoothly without a watch even being glanced at. Sergio Leone’s pastoral tale, scored beautifully by Ennio Morricone, travels through 35 years in a gangster’s life. As Quentin Tarantino said about the film in a 1994 interview, “There’s a poetic-ness and a beauty about the film, yet, the film probably presents the most vicious group of gangsters that maybe I’ve ever seen until just recently in like the South Central LA movies, I mean, these four guys are about as cold-blooded and brutal as any gangsters ever betrayed in films”.
Welsh also puts his finger on this strange dichotomy that sees violence unfurl with an equanimity that masks it in a cracking comment on American society, explaining: “De Niro’s best film in terms of physical performance was Raging Bull, but this just works with him being an old guy reminiscing. It captures how time catches up with someone; it has that incredible sadness and beauty to it, yet it’s so big in scale as well.”
