Wes Anderson Visits a Paris Video Store and Highlights the Films He Loves: Kurosawa, Truffaut, Buñuel & More

Wes Ander­son lives at least part-time in Paris, a sit­u­a­tion whose advan­tages include the abil­i­ty to fre­quent JM Vidéo, one of the very few cinephile-ori­ent­ed video-rental shops still in busi­ness. His apart­ment is on rue Daguerre, which would make it a bit of a trek — across the Seine and then some — to get there. Still, he made it out to JM to shoot the video above, the lat­est install­ment of a series from French Youtube chan­nel Kon­bi­ni in which famous auteurs (here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured episodes star­ing David Cro­nen­berg and Ter­ry Gilliam) pick their favorites off the shelves. Any­one who’s seen Ander­son­’s work will have a sense of his love of movies, but sel­dom have we had the chance to see him speak so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly about them.

Ander­son­’s JM jour­ney begins and ends in Japan. He calls Shōhei Ima­mu­ra’s Vengeance Is Mine “a great, very long, sort of ser­i­al killer movie” and names Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Drunk­en Angel as one source of music for his own ani­mat­ed film Isle of Dogs. There fol­low works from Luis Buñuel, Rouben Mamou­lian (who seems to have been a par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful fount of inspi­ra­tion), musi­cals like The Paja­ma Game and Meet Me in St. Louis, and John Sturges’ West­ern Bad Day at Black Rock (whose title sequence he lift­ed for his lat­est pic­ture, Aster­oid City).

He also pulls out a series of French films: The Fire With­in by Louis Malle, The Big Risk by Claude Sautet, Play­time by Jacques Tati, Vagabond by Agnès Var­da (her­self a one­time rue Daguerre res­i­dent), The Crime of Mon­sieur Lange by Jean Renoir, and The Man Who Loved Women by François Truf­faut.

Oth­er of Ander­son­’s selec­tions involve his col­lab­o­ra­tors: his pro­duc­tion design­er Adam Stock­hausen worked on Steven Spiel­berg’s Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies, his direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Robert Yeo­man worked on Gus Van San­t’s Drug­store Cow­boy. Find­ing Mel Stu­ar­t’s Willy Won­ka and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry prompts him to dis­cuss his own upcom­ing Roald Dahl adap­ta­tion, a short film for Net­flix (cur­rent own­er of Dahl’s work) called The Won­der­ful Sto­ry of Hen­ry Sug­ar. Not long there­after he comes around to the ani­me sec­tion, where he express­es his appre­ci­a­tion for Isao Taka­hata’s fea­ture Only Yes­ter­day and Hidea­ki Anno’s series Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion. He imag­ines the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “some­one becom­ing a Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion fanat­ic and mak­ing it their reli­gion”; the fact that he has­n’t seen the actu­al­i­ty sug­gests that, how­ev­er inter­na­tion­al his life and work have become, he has yet to spend time in Mex­i­co.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films

David Cro­nen­berg Vis­its a Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies

Wes Ander­son Names 12 of His Favorite Art Films

Ter­ry Gilliam Vis­its a Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies and Actors

Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son: A Super­cut for Bib­lio­philes

Steal Like Wes Ander­son: A New Video Essay Explores How Wes Ander­son Pays Art­ful Trib­ute to Alfred Hitch­cock, Ing­mar Bergman & Oth­er Direc­tors in His Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.