Martin Scorsese screened Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques obsessively while developing Shutter Island. He needed to understand how Clouzot built paranoia without supernatural elements—the paranoia of the mind turning on itself, of memory as unreliable narrator. Clouzot's bathtub scene, the psychological claustrophobia, the way the camera moves through haunted domestic spaces—these became the exact template for Teddy Daniels' unraveling on the island. Scorsese cited this in a 2009 Sight & Sound interview. Les Diaboliques is available on Criterion Channel.
In terms of visuals, it was mainly German expressionism, which created this sense of dream, hallucination, paranoia, a distortion of reality... Especially 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' or 'Metropolis,' which also feature a lot of stylized landscapes and distorted architecture.
— Martin Scorsese · IndieWire: Scorsese on Influences for 'Shutter Island'
Films That Influenced Shutter Island
