“I can't stop when I start it, even if I saw it a billion times”: this masterpiece released 44 years ago is one of the fetish films of the director of Nosferatu

It has been barely ten years since director Robert Eggers has proven to be (large) audience. It must be said that he had struck very hard from his very first feature film with The Witch, in 2015. A work distilling an atmosphere as oppressive as they are freezing and poisoned, like a bad dream. Tracing from his furrow, he recently delivered a new version of Nosferatu, largely under the infusion of the seminal masterpiece delivered more than 100 years ago by FW Monnau.

Always enthusiastic about talking about his tastes and influences in cinema, he had been surveyed in this sense in December 2024 in the Konbini video club. But also by the letterboxd site (via the YouTube channel James Whale Bake Sale). The opportunity to discover that one of his favorite films is none other than Elephant Man, the absolute masterpiece of the good late David Lynch, who left us last January at 78 years.

“It's the film that touches me the most”

“It is a film that I cannot stop when I start it, even if I saw it a billion times! I mean, it is a masterpiece, pure and simple. This Victorian era, the most accessible work of David Lynch … John Hurt which delivers an incredible and heartbreaking composition there. […] I probably watch this film once a year. This is the best job of Freddie Francis As managers, but also can be his best lighting.

I religiously study the work of Freddie Francis, even in some of the bad horror films of Hammer and Amicus, […] He has such good instincts [de metteur en scène] That it is often the most elegant way of capturing the scene. […] We can talk about a million things about Elephant Man, his work on sound design, the incredible performance ofAnthony Hopkins… […] Elephant Man is part of my imaginary playground, the film touches me the most. “

Studiocanal

Robert Eggers will certainly not contradict. In the Galaxy of David Lynch's works, Elephant Man is undoubtedly the most accessible of its author. She was also cruelly and scandalously forgotten by the Oscars in 1981, from where she will leave her empty -handed hands despite her eight nominations including that of the best actor for an unforgettable John Hurt, passed to posterity in the features of the character.

Without Manicheism, great honesty towards her subject and her audience, Lynch weaves through an admirable black and white photograph the story of beauty transfiguring ugliness. A deeply humanist film, which offers spectators more than emotional elevators of devastating power.