The most influential movie ever made, according to science
It’s impossible for any filmmaker to manufacture an influential movie, but the ones that leave the biggest legacy have a funny way of seeping into the bones of cinema. Whether it’s through technical innovation, trailblazing artistry, or groundbreaking narrative techniques, the very best the medium has to offer makes an impact that extends for decades beyond the end credits.
It can often be cyclical, too. For example, Christopher Nolan channelled his lifelong love of James Bond and used them to inform Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, two blockbusters that Sam Mendes explicitly cited as massive influences when he was putting together Skyfall and Spectre.
Whether it’s one hand feeding the other, homages and tributes, the lifting of single shots or entire sequences, or simply a looming shadow that directors run directly into instead of backpedalling away from, Hollywood’s most indelible classics continue to be reference points for the auteurs of today.
However, thanks to the wonders of science, it was determined that one film was the single most influential ever made. It’s a tall order to try and determine which title deserved to be placed on such a lofty pedestal, but the boffins at the University of Turin put in the hard yards to make their determination.
Researchers at the educational institute “developed an algorithm that uses reference between movies as a measure for success, and which can also be used to evaluate the career of directors, actors, and actresses, by considering their participation in top-scoring movies.” The sample size wasn’t small, either, with the team calculating an influence score based on 47,000 features and then basing that score on how much they’d been referenced by films that came after.
To that end, Technicolor marvel and timeless musical fantasy The Wizard of Oz was named as the most influential movie in cinema history, which seems fair when it’s iconography has become so baked into the pop culture consciousness for so long that it’s long since reached a stage where film and television has started eating itself and begun referencing things that themselves referenced Victor Fleming’s classic.
Joel Coen, one of the most respected and acclaimed filmmakers of his or any other generation with four Academy Award wins to his name from 15 nominations and a back catalogue of universally acclaimed pictures, once said that “every movie ever made is an attempt to remake The Wizard of Oz.” He would know, having done it already in a roundabout way, but it turns out there’s hard science to back it up.
It’s been over 80 years since Judy Garland’s Dorothy Gale first hit the yellow brick road in search of adventure, and looking at the very recent success of Wicked, the ongoing infatuation with all things Oz-related does a stellar job of backing up the scientific study.
