Paul Thomas Anderson and cinematographer Michael Bauman kept a 35mm print of The French Connection on set for the entire shoot of One Battle After Another. Not as decoration. As a working reference.
Bauman told American Cinematographer: "Sometimes it was just like, hey, it's time to have a little review, just to make sure your visual palette was in the same direction."
That level of specificity tells you something about how Anderson works. He doesn't cite influences vaguely. He puts them in the room.
Here's every film Anderson and his collaborators named in interviews, and why each one matters.
The French Connection (1971, dir. William Friedkin)
The entire aesthetic brief for the film was "make it look like a 1970s movie." Specifically, Bauman said: "The looseness of The French Connection and The Last Detail really set the tone."
Editor Andy Jurgensen (speaking to the AMPAS blog, The Credits): "Paul was inspired by The French Connection, so the stunt coordinators and everybody on set had that goal in mind."
The goal was no music under car chases. No CGI. Real vehicle sounds and real impacts. Friedkin's approach, applied 50 years later.
Running on Empty (1988, dir. Sidney Lumet)
Anderson opened his TCM guest programmer night with this one. It is the most emotionally direct reference for the film.
The setup: Christine Lahti plays a former radical on the run who visits her estranged father. He reaches out for her as she leaves. Anderson described the scene: "It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about that scene. Because you see his brokenhearted perspective on what she has done to him."
He also spent considerable time on River Phoenix, calling him "the GOAT" and "a guiding light with his performances and his choices."
The thematic overlap with One Battle After Another is exact: a family of former radicals on the run, parents whose choices damage their children, grief passed through generations.
The Searchers (1956, dir. John Ford)
Two reasons this film is in here.
First: Anderson told the TCM audience that Wayne's performance as Ethan Edwards is "one of the great performances you're ever going to see. So cold and angry and brutal." He said he is "constantly struggling to try to get the same kind of indescribable emotion found in Ford's masterpiece." He described DiCaprio's version as "the other side of the coin."
Second: The Searchers was shot in VistaVision. One Battle After Another was also shot in VistaVision. Both films center on a man searching for a kidnapped child. Anderson chose the format deliberately.
The Battle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo)
This one doesn't just appear in Anderson's TCM programming. It appears in the film itself.
DiCaprio's character Bob watches The Battle of Algiers in a cabin scene. Anderson wasn't being cute with the reference. He was being historically accurate. The Weather Underground actually screened the film as a tactical manual. So did the Black Panthers. Critic Jimmy Breslin called it "a training course" for revolutionaries.
Anderson (from his TCM breakdown): he praised Pontecorvo's decision to cast non-professional local actors, calling it rooted in Italian neorealism. That approach influenced his own casting choices.
In the Mood for Love (2000) + Chungking Express (1994, dir. Wong Kar-wai)
Anderson told Dazed magazine he watched both films about two months before shooting started. Direct quote:
"It's the fucking looseness that he has, the kind of absolute swagger that isn't overly cocky but just so cool. I wanted to remember his energy, particularly for the first act of our movie."
He called Wong "a great 1.85 shooter" whose way of inhabiting cities with a camera: "it feels like people walking along the streets with a camera." That energy shapes the film's first act.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975, dir. Sidney Lumet)
This one is DiCaprio's, not Anderson's.
At the press conference for the film, DiCaprio said he kept watching Dog Day Afternoon throughout production. He was specifically focused on "that fanaticism that Al Pacino has to get back and save the person that he loves." That's the emotional core of his character's obsession.
Sidney Lumet shows up twice in these citations. Running on Empty and Dog Day Afternoon. Anderson builds around Lumet without making the connection explicit.
The Bottom Line
The DGA winner has predicted the Oscar Best Director 89% of the time since 1948. Anderson just won the DGA for One Battle After Another. He's at 74% to win Best Picture.
Track the live odds at waitingforamacguffin.com.
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