In 2022, Jane Campion made history as the first female director to be nominated for Best Director twice. And then, for “The Power of Dog,” she followed through and won, becoming the third female director to take home the top prize.
The win was a triumphant and long overdue achievement for Campion, who has consistently been one of the best directors actively working since her 1989 feature debut “Sweetie.” The black comedy about a dysfunctional family marked the New Zealand-born director as a great talent immediately, entering the Cannes Film Festival and taking home an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film shortly afterwards. Just a year later, Campion released her first masterpiece: the Janet Frame biopic, “An Angel at My Table.”
From there, her 1993 feature “The Piano” netted Campion her first Best Director nomination, while efforts like “The Portrait of a Lady,” “Holy Smoke,” “In the Cut,” and “Bright Star” received acclaim. An long gap from the big screen soon followed, during which she worked on the television limited series “Top of the Lake,” before “The Power of the Dog’s” triumphant 2021 release brought her back to the forefront of film circles with a bang.
Like so many great directors, Campion has a deep knowledge of cinema and an eclectic array of all-time favorite movies. Her recommendations transcend borders and include many international selections: in particular, she has a deep love for Japanese cinema, including films like “Tokyo Story,” “Seven Samurai,” and “Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto.” Other selections hail from Italy (“The Night Porter”), the Czech Republic (“The Firemen’s Ball”), Sweden (“Scenes From a Marriage”), and France (“Contempt”). Many of her favorite films inspired her work as a director; see “Badlands,” which influenced the cinematography of “The Power of the Dog.”
Read on for our list of 10 of Jane Campion’s favorite films of all time, curated from interviews from with legendary director over the course of her career.
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“Seven Samurai” (1954)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection One of the most famous films of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” focuses on a group of samurai hired to protect a village from menacing bandits. In a 2008 story for Criterion Collection about her favorite film’s in the company’s library, Campion said she watches the film once every few years.
“I love it for its balance of humor, drama, and its deep affection for our noble and flawed natures,” Campion wrote. “When I remember the film I smile and enjoy very much the breadth of the characters, all the beautiful courageous, broken and romantic samurai. I too want to be one of those samurai, and I want to make such a strong and kind film.”
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“The Night Porter” (1974)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter” stars Dirk Bogarde as a former Nazi concentration camp officer in a sadomasochistic relationship with one of his former inmates, played by Charlotte Rampling. In her Criterion list, Cavani called the movie “A film that made an enormous impression on me … A film that persuades me that our lives are not logical but poetic and allegorical.”
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“The Firemen’s Ball” (1967)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection A communist satire, Milos Forman’s “The Firemen’s Ball” focuses on a disastorous annual banquet for a local volunteer firefighter organization.
“It is very funny and charming, particularly the beauty competition, which is at the heart of the story, and the fantastic unwillingness of the contestants,” Campion wrote in her Criterion list.
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“That Obscure Object of Desire” (1977)
Image Credit: Everett Collection / Everett Collection Luis Buñuel’s final movie stars Fernando Rey as an aging Frenchman, who falls in love with a maddening but gorgeous Spanish woman (played by both Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina).
“Buñuel is my first deep love in cinema,” Campion wrote in her Criterion interview. “He is the adult that pulled the plug on the human art of pretending. He blazes through the hypocrisy at the heart of our bourgeois lives mercilessly—no one is sacred, no ideal or moral is spared. He is perfectly modern, bold, and clear. I found myself laughing in joy and amazement. He understands human nature while refusing to sentimentalize it.”
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“Contempt” (1963)
Image Credit: Everett Collection / Everett Collection Jean-Luc Godard’s classic film “Contempt” stars Brigitte Bardot as the wife of a screenwriter, whose marriage begins to dissolve as she spends more time with the producer of her husband’s next film. “No one today is as modern as Godard,” Campion wrote in her Criterion list. “There has never been a more daring conceptual, chic, and irreverent filmmaker. In ‘Contempt,’ it is not posturing but a fascinating portrait of a marriage unraveling.”
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“Tokyo Story” (1953)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Yasujirō Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” stars Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama as an aging couple journeying to Tokyo to visit their grown children. “It’s an amazing film, delicate, beautiful, and full of a complicated wise love, utterly itself,” Campion wrote in her Criterion list.
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“La Strada” (1954)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Federico Fellini’s controversial but acclaimed “La Strada” stars Anthony Quinn as a brutish man who buys a care-free woman (Giulietta Masina) from her mother.
“‘La Strada’ is quite perfect,” Campion wrote in her Criterion list. “It is like ‘The Ancient Mariner’ — a haunting film for all time; one cannot insult innocence without a lifetime of cost. I don’t know why it is, but it is so, a spiritual truth, that both Coleridge and Fellini knew and tell in their respective stories. Fellini is the most fluent filmmaker of them all. His shots and storytelling are so at ease and elegant, it’s as if he’s thinking his shots through a camera in his mind and straight onto a screen.”
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“Scenes from a Marriage” (1973)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Ingmar Bergman’s iconic limited series stars Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann as a married couple going through a devastating divorce.
“It goes very far into the riddle of marriage, the breakdown, pain, and passion,” Campion wrote in her Criterion list. “I’ve seen it three times already, and I want to watch it again with friends (most of us with one divorce under our belts!). The performances are stunning and the story surprises, touches, and absorbs me each time I see it.”
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“Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto” (1954)
Image Credit: Everett Collection / Everett Collection Hiroshi Inagaki’s 1954 samurai film “Musashi Miyamoto” stars Toshiro Mifune as the real-life famous swordsman. In her Criterion story, Campion called film “an old-style movie, and Mifune’s wild-man performance gives it special stature.”
She continued, “There are not many actors with his charisma, a true strength, and humor, vulnerability, and truth. The film is well told, strong, honest, and simply filmed. I found it refreshing to be reminded that these simple qualities made the film, now fifty years old, beautiful and alive to me.”
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“Badlands” (1973)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Terrence Malick’s feature directorial debut “Badlands” stars Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as two teens going on a murder spree in South Dakota. In an interview for the Oscars website, Campion wrote that the film inspired how she and her cinematographer Ari Wegner went about making “The Power of the Dog.”
“This is one of those rare creatures: a perfect film,” Campion wrote. “Terrence Malick understands the poetry in every character and particularly in this fated teen murderer and his newly met runaway girlfriend. The Martin Sheen character does terrible things, but he is also in love and not long for this world. Sissy Spacek is beautiful and unique in a way we rarely see in films. Her voiceover is matter-of-fact and grounding. The couple’s brief time together in a kind of enchanted wasteland is unforgettable.”