John Lennon has continued to inspire millions of people with his music in the years after his death in 1980. However, what inspired him? Among various musicians, such as Elvis and Chuck Berry, Lennon was inspired by film. On several occasions, Lennon expressed his love for cinema and said that it often helped to form his own artistic vision, including his passion for the counterculture movement.
However, three films in particular stood out to the singer-songwriter.
Citizen Kane (1941)
For many, Citizen Kane is a classic that ranks among the best films ever created. It tells the tale of a man who craved love from the world around him. A synopsis of the film reads: “When a reporter is assigned to decipher newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane’s (Orson Welles) dying words, his investigation gradually reveals the fascinating portrait of a complex man who rose from obscurity to staggering heights. Though Kane’s friend and colleague Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), and his mistress, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), shed fragments of light on Kane’s life, the reporter fears he may never penetrate the mystery of the elusive man’s final word, ‘Rosebud’.”
Lennon both loved the film and felt extremely inspired by it. His loved it and was deeply inspired by it, continuing to watch it often with his wife Yoko Ono, as she would later make known.
On the film he said: “[Citizen Kane] is something else too.
“Poor old Orson [Welles], though, he was troubled. He goes on [The] Dick Cavett Show, and he’s sort of: ‘Please love me, I’m a big fat man now, and I’ve eaten all this food, and I did do well when I was younger, and I can act, I can direct, and you’re all very kind to me, but at the moment I don’t do anything.’”
Despite this, Lennon still used the film as a source of inspiration throughout his career.
El Topo (1970)
El Topo, a hallucinogenic interpretation of the Western genre directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, was a film to which Lennon and his wife Ono felt deeply connected. The film, released in 1970, was an avant garde surreal film about an outlaw that defies the Four Masters of the Desert due to the love of a woman.
A synopsis written by a fan reads: “It’s sort of a twisted Western meets spiritual allegory. Each gunman symbolizes different religious or philosophical beliefs.”
Lennon said: “We thought El Topo was a great work of art and we thought it should get exposure.”
Thanks to the endorsements of Lennon, Ono alongside other icons like Bob Dylan and Roger Waters, El Topo became an iconic part of the counter-culture movement.
Satyricon (1969)
Lennon loved this film by Federico Fellini. But more than that, he identified with it. The film’s synopsis reads: “After his young lover, Gitone (Max Born), leaves him for another man, Encolpio (Martin Potter) decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another. He’s invited to a poetry reading that ends in violence; is taken hostage by pirates; and is even forced to battle a gladiator disguised as a minotaur in a giant labyrinth.”
During his time in the Beatles, Lennon compared the end of the band’s time together with the film, he said: “I was an emperor. I had millions of chicks, drinks, drugs, power and everybody saying how great I was. It was like being in a f****** train. I couldn’t get out.”
Lennon aligned with the experimental elements in the film and at one stage was set to star in it, however this came to no avail due to funding.