Paul Dano names the “great artist” director who “changed” him forever
The acting career of Paul Dano is littered with some of the greatest films made this century. His performance as a troubled teen in the 2006 indie classic Little Miss Sunshine first drew mainstream attention to Dano, but it was when he played identical twins in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 film There Will Be Blood with the expertise of his co-star Daniel Day-Lewis that Hollywood really began to notice his brilliance.
Since 2007, Dano has featured in a number of excellent movies, such as Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners. He has also portrayed Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson in the 2014 biopic Love & Mercy and made his directorial debut in 2018 with Wildlife, co-written with his wife, actor Zoe Kazan.
When Dano visited the Criterion Collection cupboard, he was sure to pick out some films that he wanted to see but hadn’t had the chance to by that point, with the plan also to take home some DVDs that he wanted to share with his daughter. Dano also explained that he wanted to “give some shoutouts along the way to some movies that I really, truly adore”.
Dano picked out a film by a particular director that holds a deep place in his heart. “One filmmaker that really changed the way that I think about films is [Yasujiro] Ozu,” he said. “I just don’t think I knew you could make films like he does. That you could just put the camera somewhere and rely on the composition and just the image and cut.”
The film that Dano picked out is Ozu’s 1959 comedy Good Morning, which is actually a loose remake of his 1932 silent film I Was Born, But… The plot focuses on two boys who begin a strike of silence in order to pressure their parents into buying them a television set and features a subplot surrounding the local women’s club.
Dano said of the film: “The sort of rhythm of it, his storytelling sort of ends up transcending itself by the end, and he is somehow doing melodrama but completely undercutting it by his pace and by skipping the big event in the film. In an American film, you would show the wedding or show the big thing. He really changed who I am, I think. He’s one of the great artists of the 20th Century.”
Dano then picked out 1937’s Make Way for Tomorrow, the Leo McCarey drama film that is said to have inspired Ozu’s 1953 drama Tokyo Story. “Such a beautiful American melodrama,” Dano said, noting the influence of one of his biggest personal inspirations.
See the clip below.
