While the starting point for Christopher Nolan’s career as a filmmaker is generally considered to be his 2000 movie Memento, Nolan’s first film was actually his 1998 pᴀssion project Following. This little-known debut feature from the director is a Hitchcockian neo-noir crime thriller that was sH๏τ in black-and-white on the streets of London, and cost just $6,000 to make. Nolan sH๏τ the movie over the course of several weekends, while he earned a living as a videographer for business during the week. Like almost all of his movies, it was produced by his wife, Emma Thomas.
Following is a darkly mysterious crime story that uses innovative camerawork juxtaposed with voiceover narration to invoke the physical act of stalking. In both thematic and formal terms, it owes an enormous amount to some of the best movies of Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary career as a director. Various recognizable Hitchcock tropes pop up throughout Christopher Nolan’s first film, with Nolan overtly signposting the great director’s influence over his work. Given that Hitchcock is rarely cited as one of Nolan’s directorial inspirations, Following is the clearest indication we have that the iconic filmmaker has been a major influence on his work.
Christopher Nolan’s First Movie Is Full Of Alfred Hitchcock Tropes
Following Clearly Signposts Its Debt To Hitchcock
If ever fans of Alfred Hitchcock were looking for a modern movie that integrates elements of his work, Following is that movie. Christopher Nolan’s 1998 neo-noir thriller is fairly straightforward about acknowledging the debt it owes to the incomparable master of noir cinema, as it features a number of tropes considered to be Hitchcock trademarks.
Several film critics noted the similarity between Following and Hitchcock’s movies at the time of its release.
Among other Hitchcockian easter eggs, Following works a botched burglary into its plot, which centers on a wrongly-accused protagonist who’s framed for a serious crime by misdirection and mistaken idenтιтy. The theme of voyeurism, a key aspect of Hitchcock’s filmmaking, is manifested throughout the movie by Nolan by means of both its form and its content. As though we needed more evidence that Alfred Hitchcock looms large over Following, Nolan names one of the film’s characters “The Blonde,” and the connection alone is a huge key to her fate.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Influence Is Also Apparent In Nolan’s Other Movies
Hitchcock Informed Nolan’s Preoccupations With Time, Idenтιтy & Narrative Repeтιтion
Because Christopher Nolan is rarely ᴀssociated with Alfred Hitchcock as a director, it’d be easy to regard Following as an anomalous, one-off Hitchcock homage in his storied career. Nolan is principally ᴀssociated with the dystopian science-fiction movies of Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, and John Frankenheimer, and the spectacular visual artistry of Terrence Malick. However, if we look closely, it’s impossible not to see Hitchcock as a key inspiration for the films Nolan has made throughout his career.
The concept of time is a consistent thread running through Christopher Nolan’s work, from Memento all the way to his 2020 time-traveling epic Tenet. Although time isn’t one of the most commonly recognized themes of Hitchcock movies, the director actually found it to be a fundamental aspect of his work.
In an interview published in the 1966 book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock agreed with the French director that a “a bold manipulation of time” underpinned the suspense filmmaking for which he was famous. Hitchcock suggested that dialogue, visual and audio references to time, from close-ups of clocks and the sun, to the tolling of bells, were essential to building suspense in a scene. We see this idea employed throughout his work, from Rope and Strangers on a Train, to Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo. He’s likely one of the biggest influences on Christopher Nolan’s conception of cinematic time.
Their treatment of time isn’t the only thing Hitchcock and Nolan’s movies have in common, either. The Hitchcockian trope of the “Doppelganger” – characters with mistaken or double idenтιтies – is a consistent feature of Christopher Nolan’s works, from The Prestige to the Dark Knight trilogy, as well as his upcoming 2026 release The Odyssey. Nolan even listed one of the Hitchcock movies that best exemplifies this trope, The Lady Vanishes, among his recommendations of Turner Classic Movies last year.
Nolan has become a specialist in telling or reenacting the same story multiple times in the same movie from different perspectives, as happens more than once in Following. This trick is another classic Hitchcockian trope, albeit one shared with other great directors of his era like Akira Kurasawa, which is most brilliantly exhibited in Dial M for Murder and Vertigo. All in all, as Following exemplifies, Alfred Hitchcock is surely one of Christopher Nolan’s biggest influences, even if the ᴀssociation between their work is seldom spoken of.
