The one movie that influenced Ridley Scott the most: “I remember just being blown away”
It might sound oxymoronic at first glance, but by the time he finally got around to making his feature-length directorial debut on The Duellists in 1977, Ridley Scott was one of the most vastly experienced rookies in the business.
He may have never called the shots on a film production before, but he was hardly a novice. Commercials have been a pipeline for Hollywood to unearth new talents for decades, and it’s a route that was taken by David Fincher, Michael Bay, and Zack Snyder, to name just three, but in terms of quantity and quality, none of them were as knowledgeable as Scott.
The filmmaker founded his own production company all the way back in 1968, with Ridley Scott Associates recruiting many directors who’d go on to become greats in their own right – like his younger brother Tony, Chariots of Fire‘s Hugh Hudson, and Scum‘s Alan Parker – to completely reshape the landscape of television advertising with their stylish, cutting-edge commercials.
Scott turned 40 the year The Duellists was released, but by his own estimations, by that point, he’d helmed around 2,000 commercials and ran a hugely successful outfit that was always in demand. He’d always wanted to be a film director, and it may have taken him a lot longer than most to get there after first cutting his teeth, but once he’d made the leap, he was there to stay.
With literally thousands of shoots under his belt, it’s hardly surprising that once Scott had gotten a taste of cinema for the first time, he went on to make back-to-back classics in Alien and Blade Runner. Sci-fi made him famous, but ironically, the movie that influenced him the most unfolds in a genre that he’s never touched.
It’s always been a dream, though, with the director hardly in the mood for hesitating when he was asked to name the film that’s seared into his memory as the one he saw for the first time that made him realise beyond all doubt he didn’t want to do anything else but make movies for a living.
“The Searchers,” he told Alex Simon. “I remember just being blown away by that film. I love westerns. I want to do a western someday. I don’t think anyone else ever captured the west the way John Ford did. I actually went to the hotel in Monument Valley where they used to stay. They have the ‘John Ford Room’ there with all these production photographs he took. Vistas, panoramas, that sort of thing.”
Virtually every notable auteur of Scott’s generation owes at least a small debt of gratitude to Ford, particularly the epic western he made alongside John Wayne, which is regarded as the magnum opus for both star and director. The future great was only 18 years old when The Searchers hit cinemas in May 1956, but by the time the credits rolled, there was only one thing he wanted to do with his life.
