Kazuo Ishiguro’s favourite films
British-Asian author Kazuo Ishiguro released his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, in 1982, which was well-recieved by critics. By the end of the decade, the writer had recieved the Booker Prize for his seminal novel The Remains of the Day. Over the following decades, Ishiguro has written books such as Never Let Me Go, a dystopian science-fiction coming-of-age story, and his most recent effort, 2021’s Klara and the Sun, narrated by a solar-powered android.
The Nobel Prize-winning author has many ties to the cinema. The Remains of the Day was adapted into a film in 1993, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, which earned eight Academy Award nominations. Never Let Me Go was also adapted for the big screen in 2010, and a Japanese television drama followed in 2016. The author has penned multiple screenplays, including The Saddest Music in the World, James Ivory’s The White Countess and, most recently, Living, starring Bill Nighy.
Ishiguro once shared a list of his favourite films, which includes a series of masterpieces from Akira Kurosawa to Jean-Pierre Melville. His first choice was Once Upon A Time in the West by Sergio Leone, which he described as “Majestic ‘slow cinema’ from before the term was coined.” Furthermore, he commented, “Huge dirty faces loom across the screen like untamed landscapes. One extraordinary image follows another in lockstep with Morricone’s greatest score.”
Next is Holiday by George Cukor, starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Ishiguro declared his love for Depression-era Hollywood “screwballs,” which “mixed rom-com with social commentary and proto-feminism.” The writer called Hepburn’s performance “moving” and the film “underrated” and “much superior to the more lauded, reactionary The Philadelphia Story from the same director, stars and writers two years later.”
Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp from 1943 is another favourite of Ishiguro’s. He said, “Surprisingly, some of the finest ever British films were made during WWII, perhaps because, like Hollywood, Brit cinema benefitted from brilliant European filmmakers fleeing Nazism.” He is also a massive fan of Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu, whose film Tokyo Story, described by Ishiguro as a “sublime masterpiece”, remains a firm favourite. He shared, “Profound, quiet drama about family life and the fragility of the ties that govern it. Extraordinary performances from the entire cast, including one of Setsuko Hara’s greatest.”
Ishiguro picked two French films for his list, Le Cercle Rouge and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Not a fan of the French New Wave, the writer much prefers “French noir and genre films of that era”, such as Melville, Henri-Charles Clouzot, Rene Clement, and Jacques Becker. He believes these directors “confront, albeit at an allegorical level, the French trauma of the recent German occupation which Godard, Truffaut et al. conveniently side-stepped.” He described Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge as “a beautifully stylish heist movie-cum-gay romance, featuring unforgettable, long, silent set-pieces.”
As for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of Jacques Demy’s beautiful pastel-coloured musicals, Ishiguro said: “Every word in the film sung, every frame composed with deliberately artificial colour matching of visible items. Humdrum provincial life elevated to celebratory levels. Sweeping Legrand music, a wonderful Catherine Deneuve at seventeen. Fascinatingly, the most shattering, climax-like scene is reserved for the midpoint, leaving a clear run to a quiet, stoic ending which is the definition of bitter-sweet.”
Ishiguro’s next pick is a later entry from Billy Wilder – his 1970 picture The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. He declared that the film “blend[s] gentle comedy with elegiac melancholy. This take on the great detective caused outrage at the time but can now be seen as a huge influence on all subsequent portrayals. […] Loneliness, fear of love, the Loch Ness Monster, London fog, mysterious German women.”
Expressing a love for “train movies”, Ishiguro picked The Lady Vanishes by an early “pre-War Brit Hitch[cock].” Noting its “Great pace — in turns, hilarious, exciting, scary,” the author described the actors as possessing “imperial confidence, marked by their own distinct ways of standing upright, lighting cigarettes, etc.”
Moving forward to the 1990s, Ishiguro shared a love for Night on Earth by indie director Jim Jarmusch. He called the film “My favourite from this constantly inventive Indie master, and one of the best examples of the ‘portmanteau’ or ‘omnibus’ form.” Ishiguro continued, “Often very funny, sometimes heartbreaking, the cumulative effect brings hope and warmth as we watch strangers reach out to one another, if only fleetingly, with kindness and generosity.” He also admires the Tom Waits soundtrack, which he called “a perfect companion.”
Finally, another favourite is Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa, whose film Ikiru formed the basis of Ishiguro’s screenplay for Living. He compared Seven Samurai to an “800-page classic novel” due to its “multi-layered” quality. “I see something new every time I re-watch this,” he shared. “The battle scenes — especially the celebrated mud-and-rain finale — are probably still unmatched in their ability to convey terror, chaos, courage — and yes, the urge to kill to defend what you hold dear. The quiet coda brings a profound, existentialist perspective to everything we’ve seen.”
Kazuo Ishiguro’s favourite films:
- Once Upon A Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
- Holiday (George Cukor, 1938)
- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell, 1943)
- Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu, 1953)
- Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)
- The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
- The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder, 1970)
- Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991)
- The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)
- Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
