Greta Gerwig Reveals 32 Films That Inspired ‘Barbie’ World, From ‘All That Jazz’ to ‘Wizard of Oz’ (Video)

“Barbie” will soon be unleashed on an eagerly waiting world, and cowriter/director Greta Gerwig would like to provide you with some context, courtesy of her Letterboxd list of films she watched for inspiration, in a clip you can watch above.

Just looking at the list, you can see where some of the inspiration would come from — the candy-colored musical world of “Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie as the titular doll, does bring to mind several of her selections like “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Red Shoes” and “Playtime.” The idea of a character transitioning from one world to another is also pretty apparent in selections like “The Truman Show” and “Heaven Can Wait.”

For “Heaven Can Wait,” Gerwig said that the movie is “extremely high concept, but always human… There’s nothing about it that makes you feel distanced from it. It totally works even though in some ways it’s wacky. But when you’re watching it, it’s so beautiful.”

Among the more nuanced, less obvious films, Gerwig took inspiration from “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” Almodóvar’s 1988 masterpiece. Of that feature, she said, “The colors, the way he layers colors” influenced her.

Elsewhere in the interview, Gerwig exclaimed that Cary Grant would make a great Ken.

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Letterboxd has been a part of the “Barbie” saga for a little while now, especially last summer when eagle-eyed users spotted Margot Robbie’s fake account and her list of inspiration for the movie. The list was quickly deleted, but the Internet loves a good screen shot and most of those movies also appear on Gerwig’s list (“Splash,” “Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “The Truman Show,” and “The Young Girls of Rochefort” among them).

The only movie that appeared on Robbie’s list but not Gerwig’s is “Puberty Blues,” which, unsurprisingly, is a little-seen 1981 Australian coming-of-age movie directed by Bruce Beresford, who would go on to direct the Oscar-winning “Driving Miss Daisy.”

“Barbie” is in theaters Friday.

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