“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
— Pablo Picasso
Jazz musicians “quote”, rappers “sample”, and filmmakers pay homage. They take snippets of other works and incorporate them into their own stuff. It might seem like stealing. I see it more as tipping the hat to the masters. Imitation is the best kind of flattery, right? In that vein, I’m kicking off the “homage sequence” series in which I compare and contrast the original inspiration sequence and the homage version. Sometimes the inspiration is clearcut and other times not so much…
But I’ll start with an obvious example: Spike Lee paying homage to Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter. Laughton’s only movie as a director is a classic, a mashup of a fairy tale and a film noir, in which Robert Mitchum plays one of the best villains in film history, the psychopathic Rev. Harry Powell.
In the state penitentiary for car theft, Rev. Powell’s cellmate is a bank robber and murderer named Ben Harper (Peter Graves). Before the police arrested him, Ben stashed the cash inside his little girl Pearl’s rag doll. Then he swore her and his ten year-old son, John, to secrecy. Before he’s executed for murder, Ben tells Powell he hid the loot — but doesn’t tell him the exact location. Fooled by Powell’s gentle demeanor, Ben begs him to look after his wife and kids when Powell gets out. Rev. Powell readily agrees, secretly salivating over the cash. I’m not going to spoil the rest of the movie. Suffice it to say that it’s a must-see for any film buff.
Anyway, on to the sequence in question: Rev. Powell’s first meeting with Ben’s wife Willa (Shelley Winters), in which he charms everyone with a memorable take on the Cain and Abel story. Everyone that is, except for young John (Billy Chapin).
And here is Spike Lee’s updated take, from his own classic movie, Do The Right Thing, featuring Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem and Lee as Mookie:
Both sequences make a larger, ironic point about each movie’s message and it’s achieved in an entertaining, visually arresting manner.
Do you know any other homage sequences in movies?