Paul Dano named his 11 favourite films of all time
Paul Dano has been one of the most underrated acting talent in Hollywood for a while now. Over the course of a stellar career, Dano delivered amazing performances in gems like Little Miss Sunshine and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners. In addition to his roles in cinema, Dano also managed to appear in critically acclaimed television shows like The Sopranos and War & Peace.
However, the breakthrough performance of Dano’s career came in 2007 when he held his own against Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus There Will Be Blood. With that performance alone, Dano proved that he was an artistic force to be reckoned with but he was criminally neglected in the Awards season.
Dano has also ventured into filmmaking, starting with his powerful directorial debut Wildlife which stars Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal in a mesmerising investigation of the institution of marriage. The film was lauded by audiences as well as critics, with many fans still waiting for another directorial project by Dano.
While Dano hasn’t taken the director’s chair after that, he starred in one of the most anticipated films of this year alongside Robert Pattinson – Matt Reeves’ The Batman. As usual, Dano was very enigmatic as The Riddler – a highly intelligent but psychologically deranged man who embarks on a journey to uncover the corruption of Gotham City.
Dano’s artistic sensibilities, both as an actor and a director, are very much influenced by some of his favourite films. While talking about Yasujirô Ozu’s Early Summer, Dano said: “Ozu changed the way I look at film. Proof that less is more. What blossoms from his unmoving camera is huge, heartbreaking, poetic, and truly singular. This is my personal favourite of his.”
He is also inspired by the singular vision of Robert Bresson, the director who created strangely beautiful masterpieces which ended up sparking the French New Wave. “The specificity, the precision, the pacing, the details, the economy,” Dano commented on A Man Escaped. “The offscreen action and the use of sound. This is one of my very favourite films.”
In order to understand his artistic vision, check out some of the masterpieces that had a huge impact on Dano’s career. See the full list below.
Paul Dano’s favourite films:
- Early Summer (Yasujirô Ozu, 1951)
- A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
- Le samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
- Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)
- Three Colours: Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
- Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa, 1949)
- Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
- The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
- The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992)
- Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)
Dano also revealed that he focused on actors more than directors when he watched films as a child because they were more recognisable points of reference. However, there was one special film which made him aware of the imposing presence of the auteur on cinema.
Showering praise on Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Dano gushed: “Growing up, actors defined films for me. When I was fourteen or fifteen and saw this film, it was the first time I thought, Who directed that? I think this is an absolute masterpiece, and I will watch it again and again and again.”
