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In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow made film history by becoming the first woman to win Best Director and Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The accolades were given in response to her war thriller The Hurt Locker, starring Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie, which followed a bomb disposal team during the Iraq War and showcased the psychological effects of such a situation. The film also won Best Film Editing, Screenplay, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing at the ceremony, marking a huge breakthrough for female filmmakers, who had barely received nominations – let alone awards – by the Oscars before.

Bigelow’s film career began in 1978 with her short film The Set-Up, which she described as an exploration into ‘why violence in cinematic form is so seductive‘. However, before her cinematic endeavours, Bigelow studied painting at San Francisco Art Institute. After a stint renovating and selling apartments with the now-famous composer Philip Glass, she went on to study theory and criticism for her masters degree at Columbia University, where she was taught by famous theorists Susan Sontag and Vito Acconci. Bigelow even tried out teaching for herself, becoming a faculty member in the School of Film/Video at CalArts in 1983.

It’s safe to say that Bigelow’s life before she became an Oscar-winning director greatly influenced her as a filmmaker. Her films operate within typically masculine genres, such as action or thrillers, however, her incorporation of gender, race, class, and political commentary makes her films stand out in comparison to their contemporaries.

For example, 1991’s Point Break, which is situated in the action crime genre has also been labelled “the ultimate gay subtext film,” and her 1995 science-fiction thriller Strange Days explored rape, racism, abuse of power, and gender stereotypes.

However, although Bigelow clearly possesses extensive knowledge of art, theory and criticism, she would not be the filmmaker she is today without the influence of cinema, of course. Check out Bigelow’s top five favourite movies that have greatly inspired her to make critically and commercially successful films such as Zero Dark Thirty, Point Break, and The Hurt Locker.

Kathryn Bigelow’s 5 favourite films:

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

The epic historical drama Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, and Jack Hawkins, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, is unsurprisingly also one of Bigelow’s favourites. It is clear that the historical element of the film – with most of the characters based on real people – inspired Bigelow, who has made several historical films herself, such as K-19: The Windowmaker. Talking about Lawrence of Arabia, Bigelow said “I’m constantly looking at this film for its sheer magnificence, scale, and scope.” She even stated that the film “brought us to Jordan and made that the location of choice for The Hurt Locker.”

Furthermore, she explained that she “visited Wadi Rum, which is the desert in which they shot Lawrence of Arabia […] If you see this desert, first of all, it’s gorgeous, it’s beautiful. But it’s a very forbidding landscape, not one you would imagine would be very film-friendly; these beautiful, magnificent, extraordinary kind of red rock buttes that rise out of this red sand… ” David Lean’s success filming in the desert only inspired Bigelow to battle difficult filming conditions to meet her artistic goals. During her time filming in Jordan, she worked in 54 °C heat.

The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

It seems that Bigelow has a penchant for long movies, as another one of her favourites is the epic Revisionist Western The Wild Bunch, which follows an ageing outlaw gang that attempts to adapt to the changing world around them. The film received criticism for its depiction of graphic violence, which, of course, is a reoccurring feature within Bigelow’s films. Similarly, the film used innovative cinematographic techniques such as quick-cut editing, which is something Bigelow has also emulated, particularly in The Hurt Locker.

Bigelow explained that during her time as an artist living in 1970s New York, she attended a double-bill screening of The Wild Bunch and Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. She described it as “a life-changing experience. I thought they were just extraordinary.” Regarding The Wild Bunch, she praises “Peckinpah for his muscularity, his immediacy, his sheer genius in his storytelling and characters.”

Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)

One of Martin Scorsese’s earliest films, Mean Streets, still remains one of his best, and for Bigelow, after watching the crime film alongside The Wild Bunch, remains a huge filmic inspiration. Exploring themes of guilt and sin, critic Glenn Kenny stated that “if a movie can be faulted for packing in a little too much realism, this is definitely one of them.” Of course, this is not always a bad thing – Bigelow has frequently been described as a “new action realist” and has clearly been influenced by the gritty realism of Scorsese.

Bigelow was astounded by Robert De Niro’s award-winning performance in Mean Streets, explaining that she adored “his kind of twitchy reverence to this wonderfully insane underworld.” In reference to seeing the film alongside The Wild Bunch, she said: “it was at a moment when, in an art context, I was beginning to make short films. So film was definitely becoming a medium that was intriguing to me, and I hadn’t quite made a complete transition yet, but I found those two films just extraordinary, and they opened up a kind of unimaginable landscape for me. That kind of great irreverence, and intensity, and strength of purpose in those characters.”

The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)

James Cameron’s first instalment in the Terminator franchise, The Terminator, was described by Bigelow as “seminal.” The film follows Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg from 2029, who is sent back in time to kill Linda Hamilton’s character Sarah Connor. The Terminator helped to launch Cameron’s filmmaking career, and he went on to create the biggest box office hits cinema had ever seen – Titanic and then Avatar. Cameron wrote and directed The Terminator before he met Bigelow, who he married a few years later in 1989, but Bigelow had already read the script before its filming began.

Bigelow said: “I read the script — it’s a game-changer. All of these films, I feel like they’re real game changers; there are films prior to these movies, and there are films after. It’s like you’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box, and the filmmaking world can never be the same — the language is different, the grammar is different. I think Jim did that in Terminator. I think he really changed the playing field. And so I read the script, and I was like, ‘I can’t wait to see it!’ I didn’t know him, so I didn’t go and watch the shooting, but of course, when it came out…the only way you can describe it is as a game-changer.”

Collected Works of Alfred Hitchcock

Unable to pick just one out of Alfred Hitchcock’s incredible catalogue of films, Bigelow states that all of his films have influenced her. Hitchcock began his filmmaking career in the 1920s, releasing his directorial debut in 1925 with the silent film The Pleasure Garden. After releasing the first British ‘talkie’ Blackmail, Hitchcock became one of cinema’s most important figures, shaping the thriller genre into what we know today. His career spanned six decades, with his most coveted works including Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.

During Bigelow’s time at Columbia University, she studied Hitchcock’s films, beginning with his silent pictures. She recalled her love for his silent films: “there are some extraordinary silent movies of his; I’m not sure how readily available they are, but there’s a phenomenal film — I think it’s called Murder! — and it’s silent, but it’s as tense as Psycho, or The Birds or Notorious or Rear Window. It’s a silent film, but it’s Hitchcock. All of his signatures, all the signifiers, everything we’ve come to know and love about Hitchcock, they’re all in play.”