Jonathan Demme names his 10 favourite movies of all time
Director Jonathan Demme began his career under the stewardship of B-movie exploitation filmmaker Roger Corman. He made his first foray into taking the directorial reigns in 1974 with Caged Heat before moving away from the exploitation drama and delving into more humanistic themes with the likes of Melvin and Howard and Married to the Mob.
Demme came into the limelight in 1991 when he released his psychological horror The Silence of the Lambs, winning the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’ in the process. Two years later, Philadelphia earned similar recognition. To look at Demme’s inspiration as a filmmaker, we can look at a list of his favourite films, as per Combustible Celluloid.
The American director is clearly an admirer of French cinema as the first film listed is French New Wave icon Francois Truffaut’s 1960 film Shoot the Piano Player, based on David Goodis’ novel Down There, starring Charles Aznavour as the titular pianist with Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger and Michele Mercier playing three women who have romantic involvements with him.
A year after Shoot the Piano Player was released, another of Demme’s favourites made its way onto the screen, Akira Kurosawa’s iconic Yojimbo. The samurai film told of a ronin being caught up between two crime lords when he arrives in a small town and unofficially remade by Sergio Leone in 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars.
That period in time in cinematic history is close to Demme’s heart, as he also admires 1959’s Black Orpheus, directed by Marcel Camus. The film is based on the play Orfeu da Conceição, which itself adapts the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, transporting the action and drama to a Rio de Janeiro favela during Carnaval. It’s another sign that Demme loves the works of French filmmakers.
Flashing forward into the 1970s, we see Demme’s admiration for the works of Hal Ashby, particularly his 1978 film Coming Home. The romantic war film tells of a confused woman, her husband who serves in the Marines in the Vietnam War, and a disabled Vietnam veteran who she falls in love with while her husband is away on duty.
Another film from around that time that Demme enjoys – showing his cinephilic knowledge is the 1977 picture Ceddo, directed by Ousmane Sembene. The Senegalese film tells of the outsider non-Muslim community in Senegal and their attempts to protect their culture from the onslaught of the slave trade, Islam and Christianity. Check out the complete list of Demme’s favourite films below.
Jonathan Demme’s favourite movies:
- Shoot the Piano Player (Francois Truffaut, 1960)
- The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
- Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
- Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964)
- Antonio das Mortes (Glauber Rocha, 1969)
- Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)
- Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
- Muriel (Alain Resnais, 1963)
- Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978)
- Ceddo (Ousmane Sembene, 1977)
