Jonathan Demme’s favourite movies of all time: “I cherish the memory”
Like countless other notable talents of his generation, Jonathan Demme got his start in the industry under the watchful eye of Roger Corman, which would go on to inform a career that wasn’t beholden to any one genre, style, or tone.
His first two features – 1974’s prison thriller Caged Heat and the following year’s action comedy Crazy Mama – both emerged from Corman’s New World Pictures production company, with the latter also furthering the legendary producer’s status as a talent spotter by introducing both Dennis Quaid and Bill Paxton to the world of cinema for the very first time.
From there, Demme would flit between comedy, drama, romance, and thrills without ever helming a substantial box office hit, at least until 1988’s Married to the Mob came along. The star-studded caper arrived at just the right time, with its director’s following film launching him into the upper echelons of Hollywood’s behind-the-camera talents.
The third – and so far final – flick to win the ‘Big Five’ at the Academy Awards, The Silence of the Lambs opened up an array of new doors for Demme, which he swiftly followed with another powerhouse awards season contender in Philadelphia. He never quite managed to recapture those same levels of success, but his reputation as an Oscar winner was secured, and he’d showcased an impressive amount of skill while doing it.
For someone who sat under the Corman learning tree and oversaw many propulsive genre films, it would be easy to assume Demme’s own favourites are cut from a similar cloth. Instead, almost the exact opposite is true, with the pair of classics he named to the BBC as ranking at the very top of his list antithetical to the majority of his own back catalogue.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist was such a seismic moment for cinema that it directly influenced Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, apt when they’re each among the greatest ever made. An epic politically-charged drama rooted in Italy’s fascist era, Demme described it as a “brilliantly, emotionally effective motion picture that is so informed by the brilliance of Bertolucci’s visual, directorial style and his magnificent handling of actors”.
Beyond its artistic merits, The Conformist is also “a film that I cherish the memory of viewing so much, it provides a never-ending source of ideas to turn to when faced with having to come up with an approach to a scene in a film that I’m doing.” That’s quite the imprint for a motion picture to make on anybody, least of all a director who was rewarded with the most prestigious prize in their profession.
An existential slow-burner about an inbred Japanese family being shunned by their own society and partnering up with unusual outsiders to build a well is fairly niche, but Shohei Imamura’s “brilliant three-and-half hour, totally engrossing masterpiece” Legends From A Southern Island exists as another of Demme’s top picks, and a movie he maintains “achieves something really extraordinary in cinema.”
He was supposed to name three but failed to settle upon the last contender, which only serves to underline just how important the two he did manage to list were to Demme. He’s also a massive supporter of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, too, so it’s not as if he wasn’t an eclectic guy.
