Kore-eda Hirokazu

Still Walking; Nobody Knows

Japan

Voted in the directors’ poll

Voted for

argent, L'	1983	Robert Bresson
Dust in the Wind	1986	Hsiao-hsien Hou
Floating Clouds	1955	Naruse Mikio
Frankenstein	1931	James Whale
Kes	1969	Ken Loach
Travelling Players, The	1975	Theodoros Angelopoulos
Nights of Cabiria	1957	Federico Fellini
Secret Sunshine	2007	Lee Chang-dong
Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The	1964	Jacques Demy
Woman Under the Influence, A	1974	John Cassavetes

Comments

Every time I watch Floating Clouds, it’s never the same. My impressions of the last scene are totally different between my twenties and my forties. The dialogue at the petrol station in the last scene of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is awesome. The smile of Cabiria in the last scene of the Fellini is shocking. Landscape in the Mist might be the smallest piece among Angelopoulos’s works, but I love it all the more for its smallness.

It’s needless to mention the brilliance of Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence. But I think the actor/actress at the receiving end makes the difference between success and failure in this kind of film. In this case, Peter Falk is just wonderful.

Dust in the Wind determined me to pursue the road to cinema. It pushed me from behind. L’Argent is like a textbook, which I review before shooting each new film of mine.