The 24-hour film that blew away Dune 2 director Denis Villeneuve

You don’t become one of Hollywood’s most successful directors without a deep love of cinema and cinema history. That’s certainly the case for Denis Villeneuve, who became a superstar with films like “Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049” and more recently, “Dune” and “Dune: Part Two.” At a recent screening of “Dune 2” that I attended at the Directors Guild of America in New York, Villeneuve made an appearance and spoke briefly about the production process. Of course, being a huge movie fan, he also took the time at the end of the chat to promote another movie that really impressed him recently, and that’s not exactly what one would expect. ‘to wait for.

The film in question is “The Clock,” a 2010 film by artist Christian Marclay that is currently part of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. You may be wondering what kind of film would be considered a modern art exhibition, and the answer is an exhibition that lasts 24 hours and includes shots from throughout the long history of cinema. “The Clock,” which has never been released to home audiences, is essentially a one-day montage, but it’s also so much more, and it clearly made a huge impression on Villeneuve.

“I’m a little late in the news,” joked the director, even though the film has existed at this point for around fifteen years. “I was blown away last week by this movie.”

“The Clock” is not just a collection of shots from famous films. Each section of the sequence relates to the fundamental concept of time, progressing over 24 hours with shots of characters checking their watches, looking at clocks, or announcing the time. Gary Cooper glancing at the clock as tension mounts in “High Noon?” It’s there. This is also the case with the lightning that strikes the clock tower in “Back to the Future” at 10:04 p.m. The nighttime hours may feature dream sequences, the morning sections show characters waking up and preparing for the day, etc. Everything from James Bond films to the works of Ingmar Bergman, old Western classics and more modern films like “V for Vendetta” are beamed onto the screen, creating a fascinating audiovisual display that pays homage to the history of cinema while centering its own artistic themes.

It is not surprising that a filmmaker like Denis Villeneuve is so seduced by the film. “I encourage you to go,” the director told the DGA audience, referring to the current exhibition at MoMA. “You can walk around the theater, you can stay there for 10 minutes or four hours.” Villeneuve even dug a little into the thematic material of “The Clock,” praising Marclay’s thoughts on time as a unifying concept. “Every shot is linked to the idea of ​​time and we see it throughout the history of cinema,” he said. “The shot of a watch, of a clock, the suspense, the tension, the beauty of time. So we watch, for 24 hours, the time. And it’s super entertaining, I swear. Go for it .”

Residents of the greater New York metropolitan area can check out “The Clock” for themselves at MoMA through February 17, 2025.