The staff writer Michael Schulman, who profiles the director Ridley Scott in this week’s issue, recommends five films that best demonstrate Scott’s versatility and “unclassifiable” career. “The Duellists” (1977): Scott’s first film, based on a Joseph Conrad story, is among his finest. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it stars Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine as rival officers who face off in a series of duels, even as they lose track of why exactly they loathe each other. The film—sumptuous, taut, and mordantly funny—won the best-début prize at Cannes. Napoleon himself doesn’t appear, but it’s the perfect bookend to Scott’s newest film, which gives a similar deadpan treatment to the Emperor himself. “Alien” (1979): After seeing “Star Wars,” in 1977, Scott was determined to top George Lucas and took on his first science-fiction film, which established him as a blockbuster director. With its visceral, claustrophobic spaceship setting, the movie gave the world Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, one of Hollywood’s first female action heroes, and the infamous “chest-burster” scene. After launching the franchise, Scott directed the later prequels “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant.” “Blade Runner” (1982): Scott’s flawed masterpiece, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” envisions a dystopian Los Angeles in the far-off year 2019 (imagine!), in which much of humanity has fled to “off-world” colonies, and a race of androids, known as “replicants,” has infiltrated the sunless streets of those who remain. The film, starring Harrison Ford, was a box-office disappointment, but it grew into a cult hit, with its future-noir design influencing everything from “The Matrix” to the manga series “Ghost in the Shell.” “Thelma & Louise” (1991): Wait, did the same Ridley Scott really direct “Thelma & Louise”? He did. Scott picked up Callie Khouri’s script, about two Southern women on the lam, with the intention of producing it. But, after he decided to direct it himself, it became one of his most enduring films. Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis star in the feminist classic, to which Scott brought a sense of grandeur and scope—not to mention a shirtless Brad Pitt. “Gladiator” (2000): After struggling through the nineties, Scott revived his career with this swords-and-sandals extravaganza, starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix (who is now his Napoleon). It won the Oscar for Best Picture and resurrected the Hollywood historical epic. For Scott, who was sixty-two when it was released, it kick-started a prolific stretch that included more period dramas (“The Last Duel”), war movies (“Black Hawk Down”), crime thrillers (“American Gangster”), a sci-fi comedy (“The Martian”), and whatever “House of Gucci” is. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
