Guillermo del Toro is often seen as the leading director in practical effects and creature features. The inspiring filmmaker has directed envelope-pushing fantastical movies such as Pan's Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Hellboy to name a few. Those films all have one thing in common, which is that they all have inventive creature designs.
Those films are full of half-human, half-amphibian creatures and skin-crawling beasts with their eyes in their palms. Because of that, it's no wonder that the director's favorite movies are mostly fairytales about sympathetic monsters. According to Collider, del Toro submitted these movies to Sight & Sound when asked about his all-time favorite flicks.
10 Shadow Of A Doubt (1943) - 7.8
For a director who has invested so much into terrifying audiences by not using jump scares, but with actual horror, it's only natural for del Toro to have an Alfred Hitchcock movie on his list. However, Shadow of the Doubt isn't a horror like Birds or Psycho, but it is instead a thriller about a niece's relationship with her uncle who is wanted for murder.
The movie is a thriller unlike anything del Toro has done. However, it raises the suspense and shock factor through its psychological narrative, much like a lot of del Toro's movies, such as Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone. And in the coming months, the director's first-ever straight-up thriller, Nightmare Alley, will be released, which could very well be influenced by the Hitchcock classic.
9 Frankenstein (1931) - 7.8
It's unsurprising that Frankenstein is one of del Toro's favorite movies, as it's one of the earliest and most influential monster movies in cinema history. Del Toro takes a lot of pride in creating unique-looking creatures, such as Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth and Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water, and those designs would have been possible without the 1931 movie.
Frankenstein is almost a century old. It has such a strong legacy and is so embedded in pop culture that not even its many negatively received sequels can taint it. A Frankenstein remake is one of many of Guillermo del Toro's unrealized projects, but hopefully, it'll see the light of day in the future. There's no more fitting remake-director pairing than Frankenstein and del Toro.
8 La Belle Et La Bete (1946) - 7.9
Long before Disney turned the title into a beloved animated, romantic musical, The Beauty and the Beast was, and still is, a classic French movie. The 1946 movie differs massively from the 1991 Disney film, as it focuses more on Belle's father, who is sentenced to death for picking roses from the beast's garden.
There are no talking teapots in the movie, but it is just as romantic. It's again hardly a surprise that del Toro is so in love with the movie, as it not only features an amazingly designed creature, but the filmmaker has a thing for romance too. The Shape of Water could be seen as a modern-day take on the classic, as both films follow humans falling in love with different species and are looked at as monsters for being different.
7 Freaks (1932) - 7.9
Freaks is a pre-code Hollywood movie, which was a phase between 1929 and 1934 when the content in movies wasn't restricted after sound was introduced into film. Many films took advantage of that by including profanity, drug use, and violence, and Freaks was no different.
But though del Toro is known for his incredible creature designs, and the title suggests that there'd be some fascinating designs, that isn't exactly the case. The movie is about a group of carnival workers who plot to kill a dwarf to gain his inheritance.
6 Nosferatu (1922) - 7.9
Nosferatu is essentially an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but as it's unauthorized and unofficial, all of the names are completely changed, leading to the Dracula character being renamed too. Nosferatu is a Romanian word and literally translates to "vampire."
It's ironic that though it's an unofficial adaptation of the character, Nosferatu is the best version to date and is seen as superior to the 1931 Dracula movie. It's one of the most influential films of the silent era, an early example of German Expressionism, and one of the movies that influenced del Toro.
5 8½ (1963) - 8.0
8½ is about filmmakers and it's almost made for filmmakers too. Visually, the movie was shot in black-and-white in a time where color was most popular, which gave it an aesthetically pleasing style. But more than that, it follows an Italian director's miserable attempt at making an epic sci-fi movie.
It's almost as if 8½ is autobiographical, especially seeing as director Federico Fellini has always made self-referential movies. It makes sense that not only del Toro would love the film but any filmmaker, as it's relatable to any creative professional given that it's all about a creative block, writer's block or otherwise.
4 Greed (1924) - 8.1
It's no surprise that, being almost 100 years old, Greed has a long and fascinating history, both before it was made and after. The original cut of the movie was over nine hours long. It was subsequently cut down to two hours and 20 minutes for its theatrical release, and a four-hour version was released in 1999, which was made from found archival footage.
In terms of Greed's content, regardless of how long each version is, it's no wonder that del Toro has it on his list of favorite movies. The film is one of the very first examples of a psychological drama in cinema history. It was also one of the first movies to reject the Hollywood trope of happy endings, which is something that del Toro has been known to do as well.
3 Los Olvidados (1950) - 8.3
Los Olvidados isn't an obvious choice for del Toro because, unlike most of the other movies on his list, it doesn't have a clear influence on his body of work.
The Latin American film follows a juvenile street gang and the violence they get up to, and it depicts the poverty that was all around Mexico City at the time. The movie was negatively received at the time, but it has retrospectively been labeled a masterpiece and has clearly influenced movies like The Outsiders, The Warriors, and City of God.
2 Modern Times (1936) - 8.5
Charlie Chaplin may have made hilarious slapstick comedies, but they were also satires that were social commentaries on the current times. One of the best examples of this is The Great Dictator, in which he fearlessly parodied Hitler. But one that often goes overlooked is Modern Times.
The movie follows Little Tramp, who finds it near impossible to keep up with the industrialized world. It was a commentary on unemployment and struggling financial situations at the time of The Great Depression. Though they are completely different movies, it isn't unlike the way del Toro uses fairytales like Pan's Labyrinth as a social commentary for war.
1 Goodfellas (1990) - 8.7
It's fascinating how much of a backward-looking cinephile del Toro is considering he's one of the most influential filmmakers working today, especially when it comes to visual effects. But that might be the secret to his success, as the newest film in his list of favorites is Goodfellas, which is still over 30 years old.
Every filmmaker has at least one Martin Scorsese-directed movie on their list, and for del Toro, it's the '70s gangster epic. The movie is fast-paced, based on a real-life story, and full of profanities, which is completely unlike any movie made by the monster-loving director, but that proves just how irresistible Goodfellas is to any movie fun.
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September 21, 2021 at 12:00AM
