Scorsese Helped Curate Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino’s Movie Club with These British Films
Zack Sharf
During a three-hour discussion on a recent episode of “The Empire Film Podcast,” Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino revealed the existence of their makeshift quarantine movie club over the last 9 months. As Wright explained, “It’s nice. We’ve kept in touch in a sort of way that cinephiles do. It’s been one of the very few blessings of this [pandemic], the chance to disappear down a rabbit hole with the hours indoors that we have.” Tarantino added, “Edgar is more social than I am. It’s a big deal that I’ve been talking to him these past 9 months.”
A bulk of the film club was curated by none other than Martin Scorsese, who sent Wright a recommendation list of nearly 50 British films that Scorsese considers personal favorites. In the five months Wright spent in lockdown before resuming production on “Last Night in Soho” — and before he received the list from Scorsese — he started watching movies and then searching for any Scorsese commentary about those films via essays online or YouTube videos. That’s when Wright decided to just go ahead and send Scorsese a letter outright, thanking him for being his quarantine film professor.
“I sent him this nice letter just saying thank you, and I said, ‘I almost wish you could talk about every movie, that would be a better thing to have on Netflix, instead of skipping ahead to “Bridgerton” at the end, skipping ahead to what Martin Scorsese has to say about it,'” Wright said. “I wrote this letter and as a P.S. at the end, because of I was curious, I wrote: ‘By the way, what are your favorite British films when you were growing up? You’ve spoken a lot about Powell and Pressburger, David Lean, and Alfred Hitchcock, but what are some of their other ones?'”
Scorsese replied with a list of nearly 50 British titles, all of which Wright listed on the podcast. Wright then sent Scorsese’s list to Tarantino, which is when the film club really came to life.
“Edgar shared me the list and I wrote it down and I started going down some of the list and that led me down a rabbit hole since I’m competitive to find my own ones,” Tarantino said. “Edgar then gave me his list that I hadn’t seen that I should see, and I have a little list of British films that I’m a fan of.”
Check out Scorsese’s list below, courtesy of Edgar Wright. Head over to Empire magazine’s website to listen to Wright and Tarantino’s three-hour discussion in its entirety.
“Station Six-Sahara,” Seth Holt
“Nowhere to Go,” Seth Holt
“The Nanny,” Seth Holt
“Brief Ecstacy,” Edmond T. Gréville
“Halfway House,” Basil Dearden
“Went the Day Well?,” Alberto Cavalcanti
“Madonna of the Seven Moons,” Arthur Crabtree
“The Man in Grey,” Leslie Arliss
“So Long at the Fair, Terrence Fisher
“Stolen Face,” Terrence Fisher
“Four Sided Triangle,” Terrence Fisher
“Sound Barrier,” David Lean
“This Happy Breed,” David Lean
“Guns at Batasi,” John Guillermin
“Green for Danger,” Sidney Gilliat
“The Mind Benders,” Basil Dearden
“To the Public Danger,” Terrence Fisher
“It Always Rains on Sunday,” Robert Hamer
“A High Wind in Jamaica,” Alexander Mackendrick
“The Queen of Spades,” Thorold Dickinson
“Hue and Cry,” Charles Crichton
“Pink String and Sealing Wax,” Robert Hamer
“The Blue Lamp,” Basil Dearden
“The Good Die Young,” Lewis Gilbert
“Mandy,” Alexander Mackendrick
“Vampyres,” José Ramón Larraz
“Uncle Silas,” Charles Frank
“Legend of Hell House,” John Hough
“Burn Witch Burn,” Sidney Hayers
“The Flesh of the Fiends,” John Gilling
“The Snorkel,” Guy Green
“Scream of Fear,” Seth Holt
“These are the Damned,” Joseph Losey
“Plague of the Zombies,” Josh Gilling
“Quatermass and the Pit,” Roy Ward Baker
“Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde,” Roy Ward Baker
“The Devil Rides Out,” Terence Fisher
“The Asphyx,” Peter Newbrook
“Underground,” Anthony Asquith
“Shooting Stars,” Anthony Asquith
“Sapphire,” Basil Dearden
“Whistle And I’ll Come to You,” Jonathan Miller
“Dead of Night,” Anthology
“The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne,” Jack Clayton
“The Innocents,” Jack Clayton
“The Pumpkin Eater,” Jack Clayton
“The Seventh Vail,” Compton Bennett
“Yield to the Night,” J. Lee Thompson
