Bruce Springsteen’s favorite movies inspired his songwriting

In his country Biography “Born to Run” Bruce Springsteen wrote about how when he was initially struggling as a musician, songwriting was the skill he chose to focus on honing. His writing was “the most special thing” to him in the early 1970s – as it is to his legions of fans to this day.

When I listen to Springsteen, I don’t just feel a story being told or a mood being evoked, I feel the characters, as if years of inner life are being conveyed in a few minutes. Springsteen’s 1982 hit “Atlantic City” is one of the most cinematic songs I’ve ever heard, with a simple but evocative story (a desperate young man in love turns to crime). The verses of “Atlantic City” heighten the despair, but they’re coupled with a refrain of possibility in the chorus.

“Well, I’ve got a job and saved my money but I’ve got debts that no honest man can pay” In the second verse of “Last night I met this man and I’m going to do him a little favor” in the fourth, the boy’s story unfolds very clearly before your eyes. Given how much his music is rooted in storytelling, it’s no surprise that The Boss is passionate about cinema. My fellow filmmaker Caroline Madden literally wrote the book about Springsteen and movies, “Springsteen as Soundtrack: The Voice of the Leader in Film and Television.”

Springsteen has written film themes including “Streets of Philadelphia” and “Gladiator,” and co-directed (with Tom Zimny) the 2019 concert film named after his 19th studio album, Western Stars. He’s about to become a movie star in a different way because… Jeremy Allen White has been cast to play Springsteen in “Deliver Me From Nowhere.” About the preparation of his sixth album, “Nebraska”.

Showing his credibility as a movie lover, Springsteen also guest-starred on Turner Classic Movies in 2019, Presenting a double bill of “The Searchers” and “A Face In The Crowd” with Ben Mankiewicz. (but He still doesn’t want to appear on “The Simpsons.”Some of his other favorites, As reported by IndieWireranging from 1940s noirs to 1970s B-movie thrillers: “The Grapes of Wrath” to “Double Indemnity” to “Rolling Thunder” and more.

The stories of these films are similar to the ones Springsteen explores in his songs, so his love of them reflects what compels his sound and reveals another element in his influences.

He said at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival that the “humanism” of The Grapes of Wrath is one of the main emotions Springsteen tries (and always succeeds at) to embody in his music. “Rolling Thunder” is about a Vietnam War veteran who comes home and can’t cope, much like Springsteen’s often misinterpreted “Born In The USA.” In 2017, he said the film “Born To Run” was inspired by watching car racing in his hometown of Asbury Park. And “Every photo is a B-hotrod.”

Born To Run was Springsteen’s second and breakthrough album, and it begins with another song about drive and longing: “Thunder Road.” This song has the same title as Robert Mitchum’s 1958 picture. Mitchum, the hottest (and in-demand) movie star of the timeplays Lucas Dolin, a smuggler in the American South. Interestingly, Springsteen was less of a die-hard fan than this suggests; He just saw attached for “Thunder Road” when he wrote his own song, so the song isn’t based on the movie as much as what the poster made him imagine.

“Thunder Road” and the film don’t have much in common; Unlike the Appalachians in the film, Springsteen is a Jersey boy to the core, and his song settings evoke that. But, perhaps since both the song and the movie share the idea of ​​leadership, there is a common theme of wanting a better life. In Mitchum’s “Born To Run,” Lucas wants it for his brother (played by Mitchum’s son James), while in Springsteen’s song the singer encourages his lover to take the journey toward freedom with him.

“Born to Run” and “Thunder Road” complement each other; Both are about young but not forever couples trying to escape and see what the road will bring them. In contrast, both songs use the physical setting of an open road to evoke the characters’ emotions: an urgent desperation to find somewhere else because this place must be better than here.

Speaking of which, many of Springsteen’s songs are about doomed lovers, or at least lovers doomed to be unfulfilling. “Born To Run”, “Thunder Road” and also “The River” is a song of the same name from Springsteen’s 1980 album. 5. It is a Flavored by Flannery O’Connor A grief for a working-class couple, where all the youthful hopes of “Born To Run” have vanished.

Remember the movie “Blue Valentine,” starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as middle-aged couple Dean and Cindy, whose love has died and marriage will soon follow? I associate this movie more with The River than Tom Waits’ Blue Valentine album. Crazy, right? Not if I listen to the first verses, I find:

“For my 19th birthday, I got a union card and a wedding coat

We went to court, and the judge put an end to everything.

He doesn’t smile on the wedding day, he doesn’t walk down the aisle,

“No flowers, no wedding dress.”

What puts these songs in a new context for me is that Springsteen is a fan of writer James M. Cain and… Classic film noir inspired by his novels Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. These two stories are of the same genre, as they both revolve around an adulterous couple who plan to kill the woman’s husband in order to be freer and richer than before. Springsteen fans don’t resort to murder (except in “Atlantic City”), but they do We are Dreamers who are overcome by life, and are still trying to overcome their meager circumstances, which have not failed.

Then the opening lyrics of “The River” say that the narrator’s fate was determined from his birth:

“I came from down in the valley,

Where, sir, when I was young?

They are raising you to do just like your father did.”

To quote another Bruce song, “You were born into this life paying for the sins of someone else’s past.” His songs and many of his favorite films explore how people live with the burden of this amount.