The Movies That Inspired ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Perhaps the only good part of the ongoing actors strike is the fact that the guy doing all of the press for Killers of the Flower Moon is writer/director Martin Scorsese himself. With no movie stars to work the publicity circuit, Scorsese has been everywhere doing interviews and making appearances. We would never get this much Scorsese in another circumstance, and some of these interviews have been really great.

He just did, for example, a really wonderful video with Letterboxd, the social media site dedicated to movies. As part of his new Letterboxd account, Scorsese posted a list of “Companion Films” that inspired all of his movies in general, but specifically provided elements of inspiration to Killers of the Flower Moon. Then the interview is illustrated with clips from the movies — which do bear obvious influences on Scorsese’s new work.

The six movies he named as helping inspire Killers of the Flower Moon were...

The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)
The Last of the Line (Jay Hunt, 1914)
The Lady of the Dugout (W.S. Van Dyke, 1918)
Blood on the Moon (Robert Wise, 1948)
Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960)

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It’s worth watching the full video because Scorsese clearly knows and loves all these movies so well, and he can talk about the specific ways they inspired him; sometimes in the performances of actors, other times in the framing of shots or the costuming of the characters. It’s 11 minutes long and it’s like a film course in miniature. It’s great.

Scorsese mentions two silent films on the list, which are so old at this point they can now be found on YouTube. Here is W.S. Van Dyke’s The Lady of the Dugout

And here is The Last of the Line...

Killers of the Flower Moon is in theaters now. You can watch Scorsese’s full interview with Letterboxd below.