The first teaser trailer for Barbie was a spot-on parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the homage goes further than that. The Stanley Kubrick classic is one of 30-plus films that inspired Greta Gerwig while she was directing and co-writing the most pink movie of 2023. They range from Best Picture winners (The Godfather and An American in Paris) to sci-fi blockbusters (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) to Hitchcock thrillers (Rear Windows) to movies where John Travolta dances a lot (Saturday Night Fever and Grease).
One obvious inspiration for Barbie is The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the colorful and vibrant musical from 1964. “That’s an amazing movie and astonishingly beautiful,” Gerwig told Letterboxd. “I loved the use of color and the surrealness. Rodrigo Prieto and I — he shot the film and he’s one of the greatest DPs who ever lived — were talking about that layering of the colors and how you’d shoot five different shades of pink or red in one shot and not have it overwhelm anything, that you feel like there’s separation, but that it’s vibrant.” She added, “Everything feels painterly, and that was a big part of it.”
One of Margot Robbie’s Barbie looks is even styled after Catherine Deneuve.
As for The Godfather, Gerwig said, “We all know why The Godfather was in there, because it’s a triumph of Robert Evans’ and [Francis Ford] Coppola’s aesthetic genius,” adding, “It’s the best ever; it’s a masterpiece.” I can’t wait for Barbie Part II when we see Young Ken living in New York City.
You can watch Gerwig discuss her picks above, or read the full picks here.
(Via Letterboxd)
