Spike Lee’s four favourite directors
The cinematic work of Spike Lee is absolutely essential to the modern connoisseur. His films look deeply into the race relations that significantly impact society, as well as examining the role that media plays in our everyday lives. Lee has never shied away from exploring the deeper issues, and the state of cinema is all the better for him.
The director made his feature debut in 1986 with She’s Gotta Have It, a few years before delivering one of his greatest works to this day, 1989’s Do The Right Thing. From there, Lee would continue to deliver culturally vital films, including the likes of Malcolm X, Inside Man and BlacKkKlansman.
While Lee has inspired countless aspiring filmmakers over the years, he naturally has his own movie heroes too. In a feature with GQ, Lee once discussed the people in the film industry that had the most significant impact on him in his youth and in his early days as a director.
The first of Lee’s film heroes is Elia Kazan, who mainly worked on films that had a personal social significance to his own life. Take, for instance, 1947’s Gentleman’s Agreement which deals with racism in America. Kazan also took charge of the likes of A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and East of Eden. Lee calls the works of Kazan “amazing with great scripts”.
Next for Lee is the man who needs no introduction, Martin Scorsese, who is well known for his widespread masterpieces Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Raging Bull and The Wolf of Wall Street, to name but a few. Lee remembers going to the cinema with his mother to watch Mean Streets, which made him want to be a “film man” after it left a “deep impact” on him.
Charles Laughton is also another of Lee’s film heroes. He was an English actor as well-known on the screen as on the stage. Laughton’s only directed movie, The Night of the Hunter, was something that Lee had to watch at NYU Graduate Film School, and it was another that had a “great impact” on him at a young age. “I love it,” he said.
Finally, we have good old David Lean, the legendary English director who took on the lengthy epics, The Bridge of the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, to name a few. Lee admitted that films big movies had a significant influence on his biopic Malcolm X in the way that it tells an essential story without rushing through the narrative.
Spike Lee’s four favourite directors:
- Elia Kazan
- Martin Scorsese
- Charles Laughton
- David Lean
