1. The Graduate (1967)
Perhaps the most important touchstone in the career of director Wes Anderson, Mike Nichols' seminal comedy of disaffected youth echoes through all five of his features—for its groundbreaking use of pop songs on the soundtrack, for its impeccable widescreen compositions, and for its tale of a young man of privilege crippled by uncertainty and melancholy. Take your pick of direct influences: The May-September dynamic between an unformed kid and a much older woman (Rushmore), the wall-to-wall music by a single composer (Paul Simon here, David Bowie in The Life Aquatic), the stalled lives of young adults who move back in with their parents for the indefinite future (The Royal Tenenbaums). And in the end, a satisfying resolution that isn't quite a happy ending.
2. Paper Moon (1973)
Anderson has a weakness for movies involving precocious young people, child-like adults, and overtly retro stylization. In that respect, his films echo Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon, a black-and-white hit about a lascivious con man (Ryan O'Neal) who hits the road with a pint-sized prodigy (his real-life daughter Tatum O'Neal) and begins separating suckers from their hard-earned scratch. Like Anderson, Bogdanovich in his prime had such complete control over mise en scene and such a strong sense of production design (thanks in no small part to his ex-wife and production designer Polly Platt) that his films became hermetic little worlds. (Years later, Platt served as a producer on Bottle Rocket.)
3. Harold And Maude (1971)
Cat Stevens' "The Wind" pops up in Rushmore as another example of the film's excellent use of songs from the '60s and '70s. It's also a tip of the hat to Hal Ashby's cult classic Harold And Maude. In H&M, Stevens' songs accompany the coming of age of Harold (Bud Cort), a death-obsessed teen who comes to a better understanding of life by interacting with an older generation. (Though Jason Schwartzman's relationships with Bill Murray and Olivia Williams remain much more chaste than Harold's affair with his 79-year-old friend Maude, played by Ruth Gordon.)
4. Brewster McCloud (1970)
Cort has the sad, slightly blank face of a lost Wilson brother, and his role in Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud foreshadows Anderson's obsessive heroes. Here, Cort plays a kid fiercely dedicating to flying inside the then-new Astrodome, and exhibiting the unflappable tenacity Owen Wilson brings to his doomed heists in Bottle Rocket. (Almost inevitably, Cort found his way into one of Anderson's films, playing a nervous accountant in The Life Aquatic.)
5. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Life has a way of making obsessions seem wrongheaded, however. In Preston Sturges' comedy Sullivan's Travels, Joel McCrea plays a Hollywood comedy director intent on making a picture of great social significance called O Brother, Where Art Thou? Disguising himself as a hobo, he sets out to get the real-world experience he thinks he'll need to make the movie, only to be taken aback by what he finds. Like many of Anderson's characters, he discovers the world is simultaneously more perilous and kinder than he'd imagined.
6. The World Of Henry Orient (1964)
What is Rushmore but a coming-of-age story, in which a precocious teen learns to put his preoccupations to better use? There've been few better coming-of-age movies than The World Of Henry Orient, in which two 14-year-old New York girls stalk concert pianist Peter Sellers. The girls—played by Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth—are like Jim Henson's Tenenbaum Babies, flashing comically grave expressions while they share their boundless imaginations and adolescent obsessions. Just as Anderson's characters come off like juvenile-fiction heroes in an adult-fiction world, so the teenagers in The World Of Henry Orient have their idyllic friendship ruptured by the repercussions of divorce and the looming specter of sex. The movie's exterior is soft, but there's a familiar soreness at the center.
7. The River (1951)
Acknowledged by Anderson as the most significant influence on The Darjeeling Limited, Jean Renoir's first color film is as bracing in its way as the transition from black-and-white to Technicolor in The Wizard Of Oz. Shot entirely on location in India, the film could be called a colonialist's view of the country, but Renoir isn't indulging in exoticism for its own sake; on the contrary, he comes from a position of respect and deep curiosity for its cultural traditions. Though Anderson's film is about travel, while Renoir's remains more or less stationary, both come from a distinctly Western vantage, and neither feigns any expertise about understanding a radically different culture. The characters in The River and The Darjeeling Limited are going through a painful time—in the former, three teenage girls come of age; in the latter, three brothers deal with their father's death, their mutual estrangement, and various personal crises—yet the country transforms them and heals them, and gives them passage to the next phase in their lives.
8. Bande À Part (Band Of Outsiders) (1964)
Jean-Luc Godard's enormously influential Bande À Part has had a strong influence on countless filmmakers, many of who have paid reverent homage to its famously spontaneous dance sequence. But other elements cast a heavy shadow over Anderson's 1996 debut, Bottle Rocket, another unexpectedly bittersweet crime comedy about charming young people playing at being outlaws, none too convincingly. The films share a youthful playfulness that coexists surprisingly smoothly with undertones of melancholy and loss.
- Comments