The Shape of Water
Where the DNA of The Shape of Water travels
Films that shaped it
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Definitely 'Ivan’s Childhood' [...] It was like someone had taken a scalpel to my brain and opened it up. It showed me how cinema could be poetry.
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I watched 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg,' and 'The Young Girls of Rochefort.' I said, I want that color palette, I want that sort of innocent melancholy that they have. I really thought about Jacques Demy when I was making this film, because he makes musicals that are very melancholic.
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The film is Amarcord, and the way he uses memory, the way he uses nostalgia, the way he uses the town, the way he uses the political allegory... all of that had a huge impact on me.
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My three great influences, creature-wise, are undoubtedly Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Alien, as in Ridley Scott’s Alien. And they’re influences in many, many ways. Both from a design point of view, and a narrative point of view.
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I remember when I saw E.T., I cried like a pig... The idea of the most vulnerable creature being one of the most powerful and meaningful in the universe... that was a big one for me. The film is based on a fundamental idea I've had since I was an '80s kid... it's a genre that I inhabit as my own. Frankenstein, Creature From the Black Lagoon, E.T., Beauty And The Beast.
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I really loved movies like 'Beauty and the Beast,' and 'Frankenstein,' and 'Edward Scissorhands.' And I started thinking, well, what if the monster is not cured or transformed, but the human character learns to love them exactly as they are? That was the core idea.
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I also tried to capture the sweetness of Amélie, and its sense of magic. The idea that you are a magical realist, you embrace the fantastic and you are completely earnest about it.
