Stellan Skarsgård names his favourite movies: “I mean, it’s hard to choose”
There’s no denying Letterboxd is a big deal now, with some people even using it as some kind of film obsessive’s Tinder, judging potential marriage partners solely on the basis of which four movies they like most.
Of course, the best bit about it is watching celebrities panic and flounder on the red carpets when pushed for their picks, just like Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgård did.
Skarsgård recently picked up the Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor’ thanks to his work on last year’s film, the emotional comedy-drama about a pair of sisters trying to reconcile with their former film director father, who is attempting to make a comeback, and next month will see if he can repeat the trick at the Oscars, amidst some pretty fearsome competition.
But then the Swede is no stranger to award ceremonies after a 50-year career, even if his major industry attention has come in later years thanks to massively acclaimed shows like the nuclear meltdown drama Chernobyl and the Star Wars spin-off Andor.
Skarsgård, aside from fathering about 17 kids, all of whom have gone into acting themselves, definitely does a nice line in ‘authoritative older gent with power but troubles of his own’, as evidenced by his commanding performances as Baron Harkonnen in the blockbuster Dune movies, and Sentimental Value sees him do the same, albeit with a much softer side.
So, after so many decades on TV and in films, both in his native Sweden and in Hollywood with big-budget fare like The Avengers movies, which are the films that Skarsgård loves the most, and feels have had the most influence on his career?
Well, in a typically flustered fashion, he let the floating Letterboxd microphone know exactly that last month when he picked out four classic efforts, notably all from previous eras and spread across the globe. Skarsgård said: “I mean, it’s hard to choose. And you’re going to press that on me now?”
Indeed, they were, meaning he was forced into a hurried selection, kicking off by revealing: “I like Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers”.
The 1933 musical comedy is one of the most influential films in history, and has gone on to be recognised as something of a masterpiece of physical comedy, as Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo and Chico race through a just-over-an-hour-long display of slapstick, visual gags and vaudeville routines against the backdrop of a fictional country at war.
Next up, Skarsgård answered: “I like Come and See, Elem Klimov, it’s a great film.” That one is a Russian-made anti-war drama from 1985, which saw the director Klimov have to fight against Soviet censorship to get a widespread release.
Third on Skarsgård’s list was Children of Paradise, a two-part romantic drama set in France in the 1830s but released during the closing stages of WW2. Directed by the French filmmaker Marcel Carne, it has a reputation among those in the industry as one of the finest pieces of cinema in history, with Marlon Brando calling it ‘maybe’ the best movie ever made and fellow Frenchman François Truffaut admitting that he wished he’d made it.
Rounding off his list of four films, Skarsgård went with: “Bicycle Thieves, how about that?”. The Italian drama from 1948 is known for being one of the greatest films of the post-war era, the story of a father who is left penniless when the bike he needs for work is stolen, leading him to desperately search the streets of Rome with his young son to find the culprits.
