Directors who made films in the style of another director

Cafe Society
1

I don’t remember where I got that notion, if it was my original thought or I got it from some book, but I’ve always thought of Billy Wilder’s “Witness For The Prosecution” as his “Hitchcock” film. A murder mystery and psychological thriller with a twist ending and a big reveal, just like from Hitch’s playbook. Hitchcock returned the favor with “The Trouble With Harry”, a black comedy in Wilder’s vein that even shared an important actor with Wilder comedies, Shirley MacLaine. I have another Hitchcock homage by another director in mind that I won’t tell because I’m curious if someone else will mention it.

What have you?

2

Would you consider “High Anxiety” to be an homage, or do spoofs not count?

3

Isn’t is fairly common that usually when a new original megahit arrives that you see a number of directors try to copy the success?

4

Nah, I really didn’t mean spoofs, but rather serious homages.

5

I really don’t know or ever have noticed, do you have examples? I know bad exploits of megahits that copied the subjects, like tons of shark and other critter horror films after the success of “Jaws”, rather than copies of the directional style.

6

When Brian DePalma’s Body Double came out everyone noted the homage to Hitchcock. Here’s Roger Ebert’s review

7

Well, the movie I hinted at in the OP was DePalma’s earlier “Dressed To Kill”, which IMHO is even a more blatant homage to Hitchcock.

8

For more Hitchcock resemblances, I’ll mention Charade, Diabolique, and Marathon Man. I’ve seen discussion of the first two in regard to being Hitchcockian. And for the recurring Hitchcock theme of a guy who gets caught up in dangerous intrigue he doesn’t understand, MM is the movie for you.

9

Every heist film everywhere basically follows in the footsteps of the brilliant French film Rififi.

10

Interiors is Woody Allen’s homage to Ingmar Bergman.

11

I mean, I feel like much of what Guy Ritchie does is an homage to Quentin Tarantino…

12

…“in the style of” is really a very subjective thing. I’m not sure “murder mystery/psychological thriller/twist ending/big reveal” are really what one would call “stylistic choices.” Homages are a different distinct thing, and it seems like more what the OP is talking about? Because Tarantino, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Hitchcock, those are all directors that have distinct styles. You can watch a scene from one of their movies and often can pick who directed it just from the way the scene has been shot. But I’m not sure that this is what you mean here.

13

Nitpick: Hitchcock’s film came first, by a couple of years. If you didn’t mean “returned the favor” to include a temporal relationship, then never mind.

14

Gus Van Zant’s shot for shot remake of Psycho? Maybe that shoots right past ‘homage’ into straight-up ‘rip-off’ territory though.

15

Well, I looked it up because I wasn’t sure, and imdb says that “Witness For The Prosecution” is from 1957 and “The Trouble With Harry” from 1960.

16

Sleeper was originally conceived as a silent film in the style of Charlie Chaplin, whose influence is still visible in the final cut.

17

DePalma’s Blow Out was an homage to Antonioni’s Blowup (and possibly The Conversation.

18

Interesting. IMDB says it was 1955, in fact they list it as Shirley MacLaine’s first movie, well before any of her film work with Billy Wilder.

19

Sorry, you’re right, I must have had a brainfart or optical problem (my eyesight isn’t what it used to be) when I looked that up yesterday.

20

Nope, like I said above I had Brian DePalma’s “Dressed To Kill” in mind. I didn’t even think about Van Zant’s “Psycho” and never had the urge to watch it anyway because I find the idea of a shot for shot remake tedious and pointless.