Eight films to watch before you see The Shape of Water

Com­bin­ing fan­tas­ti­cal romance with Cold War intrigue, Guiller­mo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is both a lov­ing trib­ute to all man­ner of movies and a swipe at soci­etal woes – more so big­otry and the tyran­ny of tox­ic white male het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty than dis­ap­proval of romanc­ing an amphibian.

Here’s our guide to some films worth seek­ing out before – or after – see­ing The Shape of Water: ones del Toro has cit­ed as influ­ences, a few explic­it­ly ref­er­enced in the film, and the odd one that shares some­thing of the same spirit.

With its romance between a human woman and a crea­ture who is mon­strous on the out­side but lov­ing on the inside, The Shape of Water nat­u­ral­ly owes a debt to the time-hon­oured sto­ry of Beau­ty and the Beast. Of the many cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tions, Jean Cocteau’s 1946 effort is both the best and most rel­e­vant to del Toro’s film. They share a dream­like score and an abun­dance of visu­al metaphors, and both are fairy tale films aimed at adults more than chil­dren – The Shape of Water even more so, con­sid­er­ing its plen­ti­ful gore, nudi­ty and implied sexy time.

Though tonal­ly very dif­fer­ent, The Shape of Water’s 1960s set­ting brings to mind a great movie by anoth­er hor­ror-inclined direc­tor: Joe Dante’s satir­i­cal com­e­dy Mat­inée. John Good­man plays a William Cas­tle-esque film pro­duc­er who decides to cap­i­talise on peak Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis hys­te­ria while pro­mot­ing his lat­est crea­ture fea­ture in a mil­i­tary base town. The film’s mon­ster in its movie-with­in-the-movie is an ant-man (Mant!) as opposed to a fish-dude, but both also take a swing at the pro­pa­gan­da spoon-fed to mid­dle Amer­i­ca at the time.

This not very fun­ny and slight­ly creepy com­e­dy comes rec­om­mend­ed less for its qual­i­ty and more for cer­tain plot points. A roman­tic com­e­dy reimag­in­ing of The Lit­tle Mer­maid, it sees William Pow­ell play a man vaca­tion­ing in the Caribbean with his wife (Irene Har­vey), only to catch and fall in love with a young mer­maid (Ann Blyth), whom he must then hide from his spouse. The gen­ders for the human-crea­ture romance here are dif­fer­ent to del Toro’s film (Doug Jones’ amphib­ian is male), but like Sal­ly Hawkins’ char­ac­ter in The Shape of Water, Blyth is a mute for almost the entire runtime.

Two of The Shape of Water’s lead char­ac­ters – Hawkins’ Elisa and Richard Jenk­ins’ Giles – live above a cin­e­ma. Thanks to this loca­tion and Giles’ pen­chant for watch­ing musi­cals on TV, a num­ber of old­er titles get a small bit of screen time in del Toro’s film. Most notable of these is the musi­cal That Night in Rio, as a num­ber called ​‘Chi­ca Chi­ca Boom Chic’, per­formed by Car­men Miran­da, ends up being a live­ly sound­track to a mon­tage of Elisa and Giles work­ing on their plan to free her beloved from his lab­o­ra­to­ry prison.

Among the many plea­sures of The Shape of Water’s pro­duc­tion design is the look of Elisa and Giles’ respec­tive apart­ments, includ­ing an arched win­dow the two share as neigh­bours that’s split in two by a wall. Del Toro, ever keen to dis­play ear­ly designs for his films on social media, tweet­ed con­cept art for the win­dow late last year. The thread con­firms that the design is a delib­er­ate homage to a mem­o­rable inte­ri­or in Michael Pow­ell and Emer­ic Pressburger’s bal­let clas­sic The Red Shoes.

In an inter­view with The Playlist, del Toro revealed that the role of Giles, a clos­et­ed gay artist, was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for Ian McK­ellen. This was influ­enced by McKellen’s per­for­mance as film­mak­er James Whale in biopic Gods and Mon­sters. It is implied in Giles’ sub­plot that a let­ting slip of his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion has cost him work, echo­ing what hap­pened to Whale in his lat­er years, when he grew tired of hid­ing the fact that he was gay. Whale is best known for direct­ing Franken­stein and Bride of Franken­stein, two icon­ic hor­rors which del Toro lists among his favourite films.

The colour green dom­i­nates The Shape of Water. In inter­views, del Toro has sug­gest­ed that the film’s colour palette rep­re­sents the future, but, to this writer, cer­tain shots evoke the cin­e­matog­ra­phy of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Dou­ble Life of Veronique. Recur­ring shots of Elisa day­dream­ing against a bus win­dow recall one of the most strik­ing moments in Kieslowski’s film, where Irène Jacob views the streets out­side through a reflec­tive ball in her hand while on a train. Char­ac­ter-wise, Hawkins’ Elisa is also akin to Jacob’s dop­pel­gänger char­ac­ters in their empa­thy, sen­su­al­i­ty and abil­i­ty to find mag­ic in the seem­ing­ly mundane.

The most obvi­ous homage in The Shape of Water is to Crea­ture from the Black Lagoon, part of the orig­i­nal Uni­ver­sal Mon­sters canon. Hope­ful­ly it’s not one the stu­dio plans to revive any­time soon – espe­cial­ly now that del Toro has left a big webbed foot­print of his own on film cul­ture. The direc­tor has pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that, at age six, one scene in par­tic­u­lar stirred in him a mix of artis­tic admi­ra­tion, roman­tic long­ing and sex­u­al awak­en­ing. With his own cre­ation, he’s merged the lat­ter two qual­i­ties into one being: a hot crea­ture from the black lagoon who fucks.