The director Christopher Nolan said possessed the ultimate “technical virtuosity”
There’s no doubt that when we talk about the greatest technical masters of modern cinema, Christopher Nolan is one of the very first names we talk about. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Denis Villeneuve and James Cameron, Nolan is responsible for some of the most visually spectacular movies of the modern century, including 2010’s Inception and 2014’s Interstellar.
Making his feature film debut in 1998 with the release of his low-budget crime flick Following, Nolan followed up his early success with Memento in 2000, a two-time Oscar-nominated thriller that would catapult the director to the attention of the wider industry. Further success came in the form of 2002’s Insomnia with Al Pacino and Robin Williams, before he sought to change the face of superhero cinema forever with Batman Begins in 2005.
A revolutionary piece of popular cinema, Batman Begins established Nolan’s fondness for spectacular visions, giving the Caped Crusader a vivid gothic aesthetic that went hand in hand with the director’s epic presentation. With thanks to a score from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, Nolan’s film announced Batman not as a goofy crime fighter, but as a dark, brooding and troubled individual.
Nolan’s Dark Knight continued the character’s legacy, taking the superhero to an even more serious place in the 2008 movie, coming up against his greatest foe in the form of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger who received an Academy Award for his performance. The performances of both Ledger and Christian Bale as the lead characters were buoyed by Nolan’s incredible cinematic scope.
Yet, the director didn’t curate this style by himself, being inspired by some of the greatest filmmakers of all time, including Stanley Kubrick, with his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey being of great inspiration to Nolan. Still, there was one other director that he arguably treasured the films of even more, once naming the creative master behind Psycho and Rear Window, Alred Hitchcock, as a favourite.
Whilst presenting his 2017 film Dunkirk to the British Film Institute, Nolan spoke about the impact of Hitchcock on the wider industry, giving him considerable praise. “No examination of cinematic suspense and visual storytelling would be complete without Hitchcock,” he stated, “and his technical virtuosity in Foreign Correspondent’s portrayal of the downing of a plane at sea provided inspiration for much of what we attempted in Dunkirk”.
Nolan’s 2017 film dedicated itself to realism, with the director using real Spitfires throughout the movie in order to be as authentic as possible. It’s no surprise then that he was inspired by Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, a film that told the story of an American reporter trying to expose enemies on the eve of WWII and featured a marvellous plane crash scene that used rear projection to maximise realism.
Take a look at the scene in question from Hitchcock’s masterpiece, below.
