Nicolas Cage names the one scene that made “a real impact” on his life
Few actors are liked to the same extent in Hollywood as Nicolas Cage, the much-memed Hollywood star who has the magical mix of comedic chops and dramatic proficiency. Rising to fame in the 1980s, Cage first started in the coming-of-age movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn and Forest Whitaker before collaborating with his uncle Francis Ford Coppola.
The recipient of two Oscar nominations and one iconic win, taking home the ‘Best Leading Actor’ statuette in 1996 for the Mike Figgis film Leaving Las Vegas. The 1990s was certainly the decade in which Cage thrived, kicking off with David Lynch’s Wild at Heart in 1990 before ending it with a number of hit action flicks, including Con Air and Face/Off, which both helped define the bombastic nature of the genre during the era.
Yet, while Cage was considered a genuinely brilliant actor at one time, these days, he’s considered more of a punchline despite his gravitas when it comes to his approach to the art form. Arguably, such recent hits as Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy don’t do much to dispel this impression either, using the actor as something of a prop to set up a punchline rather than as the fantastic actor he is.
But, this version of Cage all goes back to the very start of his career, with the actor admitting that he was heavily inspired by German expressionism during many of his performances.
When speaking about the Norman Jewison movie Moonstruck, Cage broke down one specific moment in Vanity Fair, “That moment where I’m going, ‘I lost my hand, I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his bride’, that was a designed, rather choreographed move that I got from an old Fritz Lang movie called Metropolis, where the mad scientist takes off the glove and shows his robot hand”.
Continuing, he commented, “That was a direct steal. I was very impressionable when I first saw Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. That moment with the scientist made a real impact on me, and it’s designed, it’s choreographed, and that’s what German expressionism was, in my view, was like almost choreographed acting. I try to put in that, the moment of looking up at the hand and seeing it was a very grandiose gesture, but it worked”.
Take a look at the clip below, where Nicolas Cage discusses the influence of German expressionism.
