# The 1965 movie David Cronenberg called “the most influential film of my life”

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/the-1965-movie-david-cronenberg-called-the-most-influential-film-of-my-life/
- Published: 2026-07-19T15:15:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-07-21T00:21:55+00:00
- Original publisher: Far Out
- Original article: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-1965-movie-david-cronenberg-called-the-most-influential-film-of-my-life/
- Topics: Entertainment, Film

## Key points

- Cronenberg cites Polanski's "Repulsion" as his most influential film.
- The 1965 film stars Catherine Deneuve as a woman's sanity unravels.
- Its psychological, bodily horror shaped Cronenberg's own directing style.

## Summary

David Cronenberg has named Roman Polanski's 1965 psychological horror film "Repulsion" as the most influential picture of his life, crediting it with shaping his own approach to body horror and psychological disturbance on screen. The Canadian director, celebrated for films such as "Videodrome", "The Fly" and "Crash", has long cited European art-house cinema as a formative influence, and this acknowledgement underlines how directly Polanski's early work fed into the visual and thematic language Cronenberg later made his own.

"Repulsion" stars Catherine Deneuve as a young woman whose mental state disintegrates while alone in her sister's London flat, blending unsettling imagery with claustrophobic tension. Cronenberg has pointed to the film's unflinching depiction of psychological and bodily breakdown as a direct forerunner of the visceral, transformation-driven horror that defines his own filmography.

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