Thief
Films that shaped it
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Jean-Pierre Melville is a director I have enormous respect for. Le Samouraï in particular, the character of Alain Delon’s hitman, his stoicism, his commitment to his professional code, it’s all very elemental and profound, and that’s something that certainly informs my work, from Thief to Heat.
Films it shaped
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Thief, Michael Mann's Thief. Like... That was one of his. Yeah. ... Thief was a touchstone, yeah.
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Nicolas Winding Refn crafted Drive as an intoxicating, neon-drenched fairy tale, but its stoic soul belongs entirely to the French cinematic tradition of the ultra-cool, ascetic criminal. Refn and star Ryan Gosling obsessively studied Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï, borrowing Alain Delon's deadpan silence and the mythological code of an underworld phantom who speaks only when absolutely necessary. The film's deliberate, hypnotic pacing and fascination with solitary men navigating fatalistic systems is further reinforced by Melville's Le Cercle Rouge. By bathing the clinical detachment of the French New Wave era in a synth-pop, Los Angeles glow, Refn orchestrated a mesmerizing explosion of romantic brutality.
