“They used a nice trick, a little quirk”: Ridley Scott names the directors who influenced him the most
Having spent almost a decade working behind the camera before he’d even helmed his first feature, directing thousands upon thousands of commercials and advertisements in that time, Ridley Scott was one of cinema’s most experienced rookies when he called action on The Duellists.
He was on the cusp of turning 40 by the time his movie debut started rolling, but he was a million miles away from being a novice. That ended up serving him very well, with Scott’s knowledge of how to oversee a production ensuring that his soon-to-be legendary bullishness was already a key part of his personality.
The filmmaker had already founded a production company as far back as 1968, so he was also keenly familiar with the minutiae of steering film and television content from conception to execution. However, he wasn’t so confident in his own abilities that he believed he was destined to reinvent the art of the moving image, with Scott instead seeking to lift some tips and tricks from the greats of generations past.
These days, Scott’s reputation speaks for itself, and it has for a long time. Comfortably capable of mounting two massive-scale productions in the same year, he’s become one of Hollywood’s most reliable and trusted pair of hands. Give him a big budget, a star-studded cast, and a high concept, and it’s a guarantee he’ll bring it to the finish line on time, on schedule, and on budget.
Unsurprisingly, then, several of his most important influences were the trailblazers and pioneers who knew how to get the job done while maintaining as much autonomy as possible. Scott has had plenty of run-ins with various studios over the years, but the exact same can be said about several of his touchstones.
“Mostly Kubrick, but then along the way you’ve got to take on board Lean,” he said to the British Film Institute of the directors he admired the most. “You’ve got to take on board Kurosawa and Bergman. I loved The Seventh Seal. At the same time, the big American director would be, of course, John Ford.”
If anyone is the odd one out among that lineup, then it’s Ingmar Bergman, if only because Scott has hardly been renowned for his intimate and existential character pieces. Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, and John Ford all dealt in epic canvases, acclaimed movies spanning multiple genres, and an innate sense of composition and pacing, all sensibilities that have been intrinsic to the Alien and Blade Runner mastermind’s finest works.
As for why he saw them existing on their own directorial plane, Scott had his reasons. “They used a nice trick,” he offered. “A little quirk or something”. That saw him add Sam Peckinpah into the equation for the way his depictions of onscreen violence defined him, whereas “Kubrick was an intellectual” who was “particularly good with story”.
Most telling, though, Scott saluted Kubrick for the way he waved off any form of criticism. “The great thing about Stanley was that Stanley didn’t care,” he added, which goes a long way towards explaining Scott’s own worldview on being asked what he thinks are stupid questions. He makes the films he wants to make in the way he wants to make them, and anyone who voices any dissent is typically told where to go.
They’re all towering figures in their own right, but taking the single-minded determination of Kubrick, the expansive action beats of Peckinpah, the grandeur of Kurosawa, the stunning vistas of Lean, and the sweeping scale and spectacle inherent to Ford and putting it all into a blender, the concoction that emerges on the other side is basically Scott’s signature style. Bergman? Not so much in an obvious sense, but there’s nothing wrong with being the outlier.
