Few directors show their cinematic influences as readily as Todd Haynes. Just watch one of his movies, and the filmmakers that helped shape his style — Douglas Sirk and Nicolas Roeg, to name two — become incredibly apparent. His stylized melodrama and favored themes of social taboos and celebrity carry the DNA of both directors. But at the same time? His work is entirely his own.
Born in Los Angeles during 1961, Haynes studied art at Brown and cinema at Bard College, where he made the short film that first brought him notoriety. Made entirely with dolls, 1987’s “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” tells the story of the titular popular pop singer and her struggles with anorexia. Its unauthorized nature, unflattering portrayal of Carpenter’s brother and music partner Richard, and unlicensed use of the Carpenters’ music made it the subject of a lawsuit, and it remains withdrawn from circulation. Available only via bootleg, “Superstar” still resonates as a thoughtful look at fame and notoriety — themes that Haynes continues to examine throughout his career.
With a reputation already established with just a short, Haynes used his earliest films to solidify himself as a principal examiner of sexuality and transgression on screen. The cult classic gay sci-fi film “Poison” in 1991 gained good reviews, but it was 1995’s “Safe,” his first collaboration with frequent muse Julianne Moore and a tantalizing exploration of crushing societal malaise as a literal illness, that fully cemented him as a great director. He brought his Sirk inspiration into the forefront of future movies like “Far From Heaven,” which often acts as an outright homage to the director’s work. And he made films that vary from audacious experiments (“I’m Not There”) to universally beloved masterpieces (“Carol”).
Haynes is nothing if not provocative and his latest is one of his most uncomfortable yet. “May December” sees the filmmaker reunite with Moore for a movie that tackles his favorite themes of transgressive sexuality and fame and notoriety through a far more unsettling angle, taking inspiration from a 25-year old tabloid scandal to tell the story of Gracie (Julianne Moore), a grown woman who had an affair with a 13-year old boy in the ’90s and eventually married him after a jail stint, as she faces the pressure of an actress (Natalie Portman) studying her for a film about her life. Reviews out of Cannes where it premiered were excellent, and the movie will release in theaters this November followed by a December Netflix streaming launch.
With “May December” out this Friday, IndieWire decided to look at the films that inspired Haynes and shaped him today. Read on for our list of the “Carol” director’s 10 favorite films, compiled from interviews and references he’s made over the course of his filmography.
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“All That Heaven Allows” (1955)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Just taking a look at Haynes’ filmography, it’s not a surprise that one of his biggest influences is Douglas Sirk, the king of the melodrama. Haynes is such a big fan, in fact, that one of his films almost directly spins off of Sirk’s most famous movie, “All That Heaven Allows.” The 1955 heartbreaker explores crushing suburban emptiness through the taboo relationship between an older widow (Jane Wyman) and her younger, salt-of-the-earth man (Rock Hudson). In 2002, Haynes copied the basic premise of a 50’s suburban woman in a taboo romance for his Sirk homage “Far From Heaven,” in which Julianne Moore plays a housewife who discovers her husband is having an affair with a man and subsequently falls for a Black man.
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“Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (1974)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Like Haynes’ “Far From Heaven,” German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” is a direct riff on the story of “All That Heaven Allows,” this time focusing on an older white woman falling for a younger Moroccan man to the disapproval of her friends and children. Haynes provided a video introduction to the Criterion Collection’s 2014 release of “Fear Eats the Soul” discussing Sirk’s influence on Fassbinder.
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“Lola” (1981)
Image Credit: ©United Artists/Courtesy Everett Collection Another Fassbinder film, “Lola” stars Barbara Sukowa as the titular cabaret singer and sex worker, whose quest for security leads to her romancing a feuding building contractor and a building commissioner. Haynes selected the film during a 2017 guest programming stint at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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“Mary Poppins” (1964)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection In 2019, Haynes revealed in a New Yorker profile that his formative film experience was watching “Mary Poppins” in theaters at the age of three. Haynes explained that the Julie Andrews Disney musical inspired a “total imaginative rapture” in him and a “fanatical, creative, obsession response where I had to replicate the experience.” He further described how he drew hundreds of pictures of Mary Poppins, constantly sang the songs, and made his family dress up as the characters.
“I could feel my parents behind me, worrying about what this might mean, or worrying whether they should be worried, and I always felt defiant of their concerns,” he told the New Yorker.
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“A Place in the Sun” (1951)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection One of the most iconic melodramas of all time, George Stevens’ “A Place in the Sun” stars Montgomery Clift as a working-class man whose endless ambitions cause him to play with the hearts of two women to tragic consequences. In 2015, Haynes selected the film for a special series of screenings at Lincoln Center that paired his works with their inspirations; “A Place in the Sun” was paired as an influence of “Carol”
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“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (1970)
Image Credit: ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection Russ Myer’s satirical cult classic “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” was initially intended to be a sequel to the drug scare drama “Valley of the Dolls,” but was retooled into a campy parody instead — and has since far eclipsed its original inspiration in recognition. Haynes named it as an influence for early short “Dottie Gets Spanked” when he selected it for his 2015 Lincoln Center program.
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“Performance” (1970)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection One of the earliest films of director Nicolas Roeg (he co-directed with Donald Cammell), “Performance” is an unusual crime drama that stars James Fox as a violent gangster hiding out in the home of a reclusive rock star, played by actual rock star Mick Jagger. Haynes named the film an inspiration for his film “Velvet Goldmine,” a rock n’ roll drama about a fictional musician.
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“Bad Timing” (1980)
Image Credit: World Northal Another Roeg film, “Bad Timing” is a psychological drama starring Art Garfunkel as a professor in Vienna investigated after his younger girlfriend (Theresa Russell) follows thorugh with an apparent suicide attempt. Haynes selected the film to screen during his 2017 program at SFMOMA.
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“Meet John Doe” (1941)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Frank Capra’s “Meet John Doe” stars Barbara Stanwyck as a reporter who hires a homeless man (Gary Cooper) to pose as an anonymous letter writer who threatened suicide, and unexpectedly creates a grassroots political movement in the process. A dream sequence in Haynes’ film “I’m Not There” directly references a similar scene featured in “Meet John Doe.”
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“The Night of the Hunter” (1955)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection “The Night of the Hunter” was the only film actor Charles Laughton ever directed, but his dark fable about a killer priest haunting two young children remains one of cinema’s most stylistically influential films. In a Turner Classic Movies program in 2017, Haynes named the film as an inspiration behind his movie “Wonderstruck,” which similarly focuses on young children in peril.
