Paid Homages


Emir Kusturica has a great admiration for some directors. He has paid homage in his way through some anecdotes or some sequences, throughout his whole career.


Jean Renoir


Jean Renoir was born in Paris on september 15, 1894 and died in Paris on february 12, 1979. From his father Auguste Renoir the well known impressionnist painter, Jean has inherited the natural sense of equilibrium and harmony of images. In Auguste's work images are still. Jean will make them move.

Jean Renoir has directed many films in his long career, like Boudu sauvé des eaux, La grande illusion, La bête humaine, French Cancan, but it's really La règle du jeu (the rules of the game) that is today considered as his chef d'oeuvre. Jean Renoir has certainly given Jean Gabin and Michel Simon their most beautiful roles.
Disliked by the public and the critics when it was released in autumn 1939, "La règle du jeu" is subject of a hate campaign. Several scenes were cut out, the film was shortly removed from the theatres and Renoir was accused, during the war, to betray the moral of the French people. Some months later, Pétain's governement will forbid the film.
Today, sixty years later, The Rules of the Game is universally considered as an absolute masterpiece of cinema's history. Together with Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane", directed one year after "The rules of the game", the influence of these films on generations of directors has always been huge. As said François Truffaut, these are certainly the two films that have created the most directors vocations.
Emir Kusturica has often quoted this film as one of his favourite. Under a classic "vaudeville", we see scenes of an incredible maestria, with complex camera movements and in which the action simultaneously happens both in the foreground and the background. The hunt scene, crucial for the narrative evolution, was "honored" by Emir Kusturica in "Life is a miracle".

Available filmography:


Federico Fellini


Emir Kusturica is often called the Fellini of the Balkans. We'll see the comparison is fair for many reasons.

Federico Fellini was born on January 20, 1920 in Rimini (small Italian seaside resort). Weak child, young Federico finds refuge in his wild imagination. He loves the circus and the cinema : he admires the Marx brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chaplin but also the acrobat dwarves and the clowns... His assiduous frequentation of the cinema does nothing but grow and in parallel, he starts to expose his drawings. At the age of 18, he settles in Rome and immediately falls in love with the city. His meeting with Roberto Rossellini was decisive : director with a good reputation yet, he entrusts to Federico the scenario writing of Rome, open city in 1945. Great critical and commercial success, their collaboration will continue on other films, and sometimes, as he is sick, Roberto Rossellini will entrust even the camera to Federico Fellini for certain plans.
"I didn't choose to become director : it's the cinema that chose me."
Fellini will then starts directing by his own, and it will be the beginning of a long and prestigious career, that will end after 24 films, 5 oscars and a palme d'or on the 31st of october 1993.
He has signed big classics such as La dolce vita (1960), 8 1/2 (1963), Satyricon (1969), Roma (1972), Amarcord (1973), Intervista (1987)...

In her excellent book on Emir Kusturica, Dina Iordanova recalls a citation of Emir Kusturica in 1999 : "I'm proud of having discovered how Fellini made his films, and using the same little tricks, like a magician who sees a circus, and then goes in another to work. There are three specific features : first, the excitment that comes from every character, second, the incredible architecture of the scenes, third, the dominant Mediterranean paganistic vision of life."

Emir Kusturica has often quoted Amarcord as being the major inspiring work for his film Time of the gypsies. He is said to be screening the film continuously in his caravan before arriving on the set. We can see obvious visual references, like, for example :

  • First, the sense of the frame, the complexity of the scenes with simultaneous action in the background and the foreground.
  • family eating scenes, weddings, great banquets in nature.
  • an illuminated narrator facing the camera at the opening of the film.
  • the film inside the film scenes where young Federico dares to approach the girl next to him during the film.
  • accordeon.
  • and even a turkey hypnosis scene !
But references to Amarcord can be seen also in other Emir Kusturica films, like :

Emir said about this film that he tryed 8 times to watch it, when he was student at the FAMU, but each time he fell asleep after 15mn. The 9th time, he was captivated, and since then, this film didn't cease to haunt him. It's certainly the film that has the most influence on his work.

But Fellini's influence on Kusturica's work is also wider : we can find homages to many other films of the italian maestro :

  • using the roman ruins : Roma / Time of the gypsies
  • kids running after the car : La Strada / Time of the gypsies
  • The elephant that invades the screen without surprising the audience : Intervista / Underground
  • We can even note that Emir took that name of one of Fellini's first films to baptise his production company : Cabiria films.

Available filmography :


Hollywood, the 40's


Emir Kusturica is a big fan of americain cinema... of the 40's. In many interviews, he uses to repeat that Hollywood has lost its originality and creativity it once had. When he teached cinema in New York, hollywood movies of the 40's had an important place in his programme. We realize the influence throught some of its "classiques".


Francis Ford Coppola


Francis Ford Coppola was born on april 7th 1939 in Detroit, Michigan (United States). Son of a composeur and an actress, Francis Ford grows up in New York and then studies cinema at UCLA. He first writes scenarios and in 1969, he founds an indpendant production company American Zoetrope. Their first movie will be Georges Lucas' THX 1138. It's with Godfather in 1972 that Francis Ford Coppola wins the respect of his peers (and an Oscar). He will then direct many other great movies that have enriched the american cinema like Godfather - part II (1974) Apocalypse Now (1979) or Dracula (1992). In Europe too, he will be recognized as a great director, since he wins twice the Palmes d'Or in Cannes for The conversation and Apocalypse Now. He is now working on a new film, a science-fiction project "on Utopia, much more ambitious than Apocalypse Now : Megalopolis".

Francis Ford Coppola is typically a hated child of Hollywood, obliged work in the "system", he alterns command films and personnal films, he produces popular films for better producing independant films.


Godfather - part II in particular, but other films of Coppola in general are visual references for Emir Kusturica. We find homages in different forms :

But... there is someone who contests the admiration that Emir Kusturica shows to Francis Ford Coppola. It is noone else than Vincent Gallo himself. He has declared in an interview :

The scene in Arizona Dream where I parody "The Godfather" wasn't written in the script. Certainly not the use of the animal and certainly not using "The Godfather." I kind of improvised both those things. The director, Emir Kusturica, is not a giant film fan so he didn't really get involved in the choices of which movies we were going to parody or use for those scenes. I have to be quite honest and tell you that a lot of it had to do with what was available to be used, so that limited my choices. What would happen is I would pick a movie and right at the last minute I'd have to change my choice based on what was available to get the rights to. So the scene using "The Godfather" was decided a day before we shot the scene.
Of course I'd seen the film several times but I'm not a fan of DeNiro or Pacino. I'm not one of those guys who quote from "The Godfather." I'm certainly a fan of movies, no doubt about it, no denying it. Certainly I liked "The Godfather" - but I'm not an actor who's in love with DeNiro. I got so good by that point at watching a movie and being able to mimic a film that I watched that scene over and over for 15 minutes and I could do it that way that I did it in the movie. So I just was in the habit of being quick to be able to do that.
The complete interview of Vincent Gallo : http://www.tv-now.com/intervus/gallo/vgi.htm

Should we see in this declaration a denial on the points mentioned above ? Or a narcissistic attempt from Vincent Gallo to steal the paternity of one of the best scenes of the film ?


Even if both men do part of the tiny club of the Two Golden Palms wining directors, the admiration is not reciprocal. Indeed, there is a famous anecdote that was quite fairly commented since then, on the attitude of Francis Ford Coppola before Emir Kusturica, when they happen to meet by chance in Nice's airport in 1997...

Filmography available on Amazon.com :


Jean Vigo


Jean Vigo was born on April 26, 1905 in Paris. Child with fragile health, he loses his father, a journalist, at the age of 12. Accused of being a spy for the Germans, he will be found strangled in his cell (official thesis : suicide). Due to this traumatism, Jean will have a strong memory of his father, and will transmit in his films the values of courage, love, freedom, contempt of the conventions. After school, he maries "Lydu" (Elizabeth Lozinska) and they move in Nice. Lydu's father offers him a camera, and he makes his first film (1930, 23 mn) : A propos de Nice, a false documentary, but a true lampoon on the misleading appearances of the city.

Back in Paris for medical examinations, Jean Vigo gets quickly weak. In 1932, he shoots Zero de conduite, medium-length film of 42mn, which tells the story of a schoolboys revolt. The film disturbs, the criticisms are bad. The sentence "Je vous dit merde" (I tell you shit) a son says to his father will make a big deal. During 12 years, the film will be forbidden in the theatres.

The next year, he turns his first and last full-length film : L'Atalante, starring Michel Simon and Dita Parlo. In February 1934, Jean is exhausted and gives the last editing instructions from his bed. But the film escapes him : the producers do not understand the film, they change the title, the music, the editing. Several versions will be screened during 1934 before the death of Jean Vigo, on October 5, 1934 after a long fever. Many restoration attempts will take place afterwards to try to find the spirit of the film that had Jean Vigo in mind.

A version we can consider as definitive was released in 2001 in a superb DVD box set, rightly entitled L'intégrale Jean Vigo.

Emir Kusturica has very often quoted "L'Atalante" as one of his favourite films : "Each time I see a piece of "l'Atalante", I remain persuaded that it is undoubtedly the best film ever made. I do not know exactly if it is due to its pure qualities or the lapse of time during which the film was finally concluded, or both joined together. The dialogued parts however are not very developed, the sound is limited in quality but its meeting with the image is made under the best possible conditions, despite everything. It is one of first talking movies, you know ! It contains so many different sequences, so many clever framings, the whole at the service of simple emotions. Today, it would be practically impossible to direct. We would have to try an allegory... This film undoubtedly contains the necessary means to understand the human being. It is really my favorite film and I pay him a tribute every day of my life."

One of the homages Emir paid to him is the scene with the characters under water in Underground : "the flying bride we see under water... it is a certain form of homage to "L'Atalante" of Jean Vigo. Then, it became something much more important, and everyone dies and derives under water from the river."

Available Filmography :


Andréï Tarkovski


Andreï Arsenievitch Tarkovski was born on April 4, 1932 in Zarraje, small city on the Volga. His father, a poet and translator, leaves his wife when Andreï is three years old and his sister one and half. In spite of the great admiration he will always have for the paternal talent, Andreï will remain filled with the abnegation and tenderness of his mother. These childhood bits, this mysterious universe full of "women secrets", we'll find them embellished, sublimated, in The mirror.
After the war, when all the family dies of hunger and cold, Andreï continues his studies, follows courses of music and painting. Back from geology training, he registers in 1956 the famous VGIK, the national school of cinema. At the end of these four years of studies, he makes his diploma film : The road roller and the violin.
In 1962, he shoots The childhood of Ivan, the history of a child died at 12, during the war. A child who looks like the future Stalker, since this victim, apparently without defense, appears stronger than those who surround him. The film wins the golden Lion in Venice and it is the beginning for Tarkovski, of his troubles with the authorities.
In 1966, Andreï Roublev is rather well acclaimed by the other directors, which astonishes Tarkovski. But the film is nevertheless not screened. Some even plan to destroy it but an hors-competition screening at the Festival of Cannes in 1969 makes it possible to save it. In 1971 he makes Solaris, in 1974 The mirror but the polemic thunders. Tarkovski exiles then in Italy.
Tarkovski is quickly considered as a dangerous individualist and agitator. "I am for an art which brings to men hope and faith."
In 1984, he chooses to remain in western Europe, with his wife, but claiming the presence of his son, retained in Russia. "I am tired of your persecution, your hate, your spite, the misery and, finally, the systematic absence of work to which you condemned me."
In 1985, in Sweden, he prepares The Sacrifice. But he also realised to be sick. December 15, he is fixed : "man throughout his life, knows that one day or the other, he will die. But he doesn't know when and this is why he always pushes back this moment in the future. It helps to live. Me, now, I know... and nothing can help me.". Famous french doctor Professor Leon Schwarzenberg sends a letter to French president François Mitterrand, who sends one to Gorbatchev, who orders that the son of Tarkovski can join his father. It will be him that receives in May 1986 the Special Prize that the jury gives to The Sacrifice.
On december 29, 1986, Andreï Tarkovski dies in Paris.


The Mirror en particular, but all the films of Tarkovski in general are references for Emir Kusturica. We find the homages in several forms :

  • Emir Kusturica has used in many films the same water symbols, dropped on the head as a purification. One can also see the scene where Merdzan raises Perhan's house in Time of the gypsies echoing the end of Solaris where Kris sees his (dead) father standing inside his house, under a surreal rain.
  • The daughter of the Stalker is handicaped. She can't walk, but she has telekinetic powers. This exceptional faculty to make moving remote objects compensates a certain physical handicap just like... Perhan in Time of the gypsies.
  • The climax sequences in The Sacrifice and The Mirror are marked by a kind of levitation, a force, that of love and sacrifice, which carries the bodies in the air waves. Emir Kusturica will often have levitation sequences in the moments of grace.
  • Elaine Stalker (Fayne Dunaway) in Arizona Dream has the name of an Andréï Tarkovski's film.
  • The verticality a very particular way of shooting that has developped Andréï Tarkovski. We can consider that the sequence which shows Perhan down the lime kiln, and simultaneously at top of the oven after a vertical camera movement, then again at the bottom, is an homage.
  • In Andreï Roublev also, we see a strange pagan celebration on a river, which makes us think of the Saint-George celebration in Time of the gypsies...

A very complete and regularly updated website on the russian master : www.nostalghia.com

Available filmography on Amazon.com :