George Stevens
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Match Point (2005)
Directed by Woody Allen
influenced by A Place in the Sun (1951)
Plot Visuals Characters
Writer/director Woody Allen ("Melinda and Melinda") tints his own "Crimes and Misdemeanors" with George Stevens's "A Place in the Sun," leaves his beloved New York completely behind for the first time ever and delivers his best film in years.
The electric encounter between Chris and Nola (Scarlett Johansson) over a ping-pong table is Allen's answer to "A Place in the Sun," in which Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor did their mating dance over a pool table.
And like Shelley Winters in George Stevens' "A Place in the Sun," Nola becomes something resembling pure demand.
It needs to be mentioned, though, that Johansson -- even though her character is made out to be more and more a nagging, whining bitch as the movie progresses; she's Shelley Winters in "A Place in the Sun," without any of the compassion shown that character -- survives the picture unscathed.
Yet the more obvious model for Match Point is Theodore Dreiser’s classic novel An American Tragedy, which was made into A Place in the Sun with stars Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley Winters.
Some things are a little on the point like the clips from the Western Shane (a clear influence on this story) being watched by the group in a hotel room.
Not only does Logan make explicit reference to Shane, the film borrows the genre’s self-critical eye, questioning our need to mythologise heroes.
Traversing dusty American backroads haunted by the ravages of social downturns, this trio of interlocking misfits morph into warped western characters, a notion blatantly underlined by a scene in which Xavier and Laura watch Shane.
A closer analogue is the 1953 western Shane, which Mangold quotes liberally.
But mostly the movie is brilliantly on point in its influences — the 1953 Western classic Shane plays a key role — and how it ties in to the previous movies without being beholden to them.
Mangold uses clips and quotes to draw a pointed comparison between Logan and the protagonist of Shane, the 1953 Alan Ladd Western about an aging gunfighter whose attempts to settle down with a family lead to tragedy.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by Giant (1956)
Themes Visuals
Inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel 'Oil!' and Margaret Leslie Davis' biography of the oil tycoon Edward Dehaney 'The Dark Side of Fortune', and shot in the same place (Marfa, Texas) where oil saga Giant was filmed in 1956, There Will Be Blood taps into a deep seam of American ideology and iconography.
There are also echoes of the 1956 James Dean classic, Giant.
Clocking in a a bursting 158 minutes, the latest Paul Thomas Anderson epic comes onto the scene reminding viewers more of the 1956 George Stevens opus "Giant" than anything else in recent or past memory.
Those who remember the 1956 James Dean classic "Giant" will notice hints and whispers from that epic in the crude-soaked new film.
Their travels are determined by Daniel’s brutal speculations, from Texas to California (the film was shot in Marfa, Texas, same location as George Stevens’ Giant, another epic melodrama about land, oil, and blood, though its CA setting suggests Anderson’s abiding interest in the state’s entwining commercial histories).
It was shot in Marfa, Texas, the location of George Stevens’$2 1956 oil epic Giant .
The movie is a showcase for acting, and in addition to Ormond and Hopkins, it also shows how strong Aidan Quinn and Brad Pitt are, in roles that have inescapable parallels to the Rock Hudson and James Dean characters in "Giant."
In fact, what "Legends" will remind veteran moviegoers of most is the 1956 George Stevens-directed version of Ferber's "Giant," with Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and Julia Ormond standing in nicely for James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.
Because Brad Pitt is routinely compared to American cinema's great tragic romantic rebel youth, James Dean-whom he resembles in appearance, style and, most important, talent and charisma-it probably explains why so many critics have compared "Legends of the Fall" to Dean's last movie, "Giant."
Though there are echoes here of the 1939 film Gunga Din (also adapted from Kipling), The Man Who Would Be King perhaps best recalls The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon, Huston's earlier classics about enterprising men who seek treasure and discover the darkness of their hearts.
On the one hand, it's a rollicking tall tale, a light, comical, swashbuckling yarn in the tradition of RKO's "Gunga Din."
In marvelous old movies like "Lives of the Bengal Lancers" and "Gunga Din," this world is very far removed and terribly romantic, as it still is in John Huston's highly entertaining new film, "The Man Who Would Be King," based on the short story by Rudyard Kipling.
The movie invites comparison with the great action films like "Gunga Din" and "Mutiny on the Bounty," and with Huston's own classic " The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ": We get strong characterizations, we get excitement, we even get to laugh every once in a while.
In its own way, Huston’s film is part of that last stand, even though it’s an old-fashioned adventure yarn of the Gunga Din (1939) school.
Ryan Gosling exudes no-sweat professionalism in Drive, a shamelessly entertaining genre movie from director Nicolas Winding Refn that plays like an exalted episode of Miami Vice or a stealth version of Shane.
Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman are on fine form as the terrifying heavies, but it's Gosling who anchors the movie with a strong, silent (and undeniably pretty) performance that's oddly reminiscent, as is the set-up, of the 1953 Alan Ladd western Shane.
With Gosling like an outsider gunslinger trying to protect a decent but compromised family - and sharing a chaste love for the wife and a grudging respect for the husband - Drive at times feels like a super-charged, modernised version of George Stevens' classic western, Shane.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Directed by Mel Gibson
influenced by The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
Themes Visuals
This movie is no more anti-Jewish than Jesus Of Nazareth, or King Of Kings, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or The Greatest Story Ever Told.
"The Last Temptation of Christ" had this feeling to it even "The Greatest Story Ever Told" had a few moments of true glory amidst its "Gospel According to Hollywood Squares" aesthetic.
Savage and often shocking, Gibson's film is a far cry from the corny, stately religious epics many of us grew up with, such as "The Greatest Story Ever Told," in which special guest star John Wayne appeared as a Roman soldier overseeing the crucifixion.
The crucifixion is much more real, unlike anything we've seen before, from 1927's silent film "The King of Kings" to George Stevens' classic, "The Greatest Story Ever Told."
Moreover, the movie doesn't even try to encapsulate the Christian message in the way that the second "King of Kings" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told" did so lovingly.
Historical accuracy was clearly the directorial watchword throughout, and this is where problems creep in: The Passion of the Christ trumps The Greatest Story Ever Told but comes perilously close to being The Greatest Snuff Film Ever Made.
Chazelle dresses Mia and her friends in colors straight out of a primary crayon box (one of several nods to Demy’s Young Girls of Rochefort ) and places them in a dreamscape that’s tantalizing, bracing, yet naggingly derivative of everything from Swing Time to Cover Girl.
Whiplash writer-director Damien Chazelle’s dazzling, ambitious modern-day musical is fresh yet nostalgic, paying tribute to song-and-dance classics such as Singin’ in the Rain and Swing Time.
Purple Hearts (2022)
Directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum
influenced by Woman of the Year (1942)
Characters
They remind me of a modern version of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year.
Argento and Bertolucci included references or quotations to several American Westerns, including High Noon (in the opening scene), The Searchers (in the closing scene), Shane (again, in the closing scene), as well as 3:10 to Yuma (in a line of dialogue), John Ford�s cavalry trilogy (brief shots in Monument Valley), and numerous others, in effect making Once Upon a Time in the West the first post-modern Western.
Shane would never do this, although Wilson (Jack Palance) might have in Leone's universe.
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced by The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
Themes
Bale's Moses, despite the miscasting, is a conflicted, sometimes compelling figure, but the rest of the actors recall John Wayne's cameo as a Roman soldier in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" more than they do Willem Dafoe in "The Last Temptation of Christ."
Such movies were big, in every way, in the '50s and '60s, when pictures like Ben-Hur , Quo Vadis , King Of Kings , The Ten Commandments and The Greatest Story Ever Told regularly ran between two-and-a-half and four hours, their vast desertscapes rendered in widescreen, CinemaScope and VistaVision to tempt viewers away from their 4:3 TV screens.
In appearance he channels Jack Palance’s Wilson in George Stevens’ Shane, the sure-shot (and coffee-drinking, like Killer Joe) dark spirit called forth to take on the new, eponymous threat.
Thus, when a man named Angel (Brandon Perea) comes to their aid, he is following a noble trail laid down by the hero of “Shane” (1953), who rode to the rescue of the Starretts, in their imperilled homestead.
Palmer in particular shines with an easy exuberance that feels entirely her own, and Kaluuya embodies the precise kind of laconic cowboy masculinity that defined the leading men of movies like George Stevens’ Shane .
In George Stevens's Shane the Johnson County war is enacted on two planes: the sodbusters confronting the pioneer rancher Ryker on a realistic level; Alan Ladd's angelic Shane facing up to Jack Palance's evil gunslinger Wilson in a mythic manner.
But it's in this segment that Giant's objective--to redefine masculinity for Bick as something not founded on chauvinistic principles--surfaces, leading to a thoughtful denouement that, like the epilogue of Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth , shows "'til death do us part" from a comforting angle.
I could not help but be reminded of “Gunga Din”, Kipling’s awful poem that was made into an even more awful film.
It’s quite old-fashioned and classical, but in a pleasing way, reminiscent of “Gunga Din” and particularly Kurosawa in its widescreen images and reveling in mud and rain.
Instead, the film seems to have been inspired by such screwball pen pals as Tracy and Hepburn in “Woman of the Year.”
The Pianist has already, jokingly, been referred to as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank meets CastAway’ and that’s not too far from the truth.
It may be a coincidence, but when Merlin makes his first appearance in the film, his image taking shape out of swirling, back-lighted mist, he looks startlingly like Max von Sydow's Jesus in George Stevens's ''The Greatest Story Ever Told.''