I wonder if I'm alone in thinking that the opening scenes of episode 1 were an homage to the opening scenes of "2001 A Space Odyssey". The shots of distant scenery and also the pants flying up in the air.
(the pants in the air is similar to the bone flying up in 2001)
If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you doyou are misinformedMark Twain

Your mother is a huge film buff.

I read that interview where he talked about The Caine Mutiny. He mentioned he's a fan of Humphrey Bogart, the greatest actor of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and mentioned The Maltese Falcon, the aforementioned Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, and Casablanca, where he also said he wanted the ending to be similar to that film in terms of being bittersweet but still satisfying for the characters. In fact, you can see some of Bogart in Cranston's performance, most specifically Bogart in Treaure.
Want three steaks? My mistake. Four steaks.

Gilligan:
"Film noir is a big influence: the classic noirs I could watch
The Maltese Falcon
once a month, probably as well as the Coen brothers contemporary ones as well."
On
The Godfather
:
"I don't know where to begin with
The Godfather
except to say that's a movie I could watch pretty much every night for the rest of my life. Every time it's on AMC, I tune in, which is crazy because I have all the Blu-rays. When I say
The Godfather
, I'm talking about one and two. No offense to the third one, but I'm pretending it never happened. One and two, it's a crash course in storytelling. There's so much to be learned. It teaches you confidence in stillness and quietude. The cutting pattern and the composition of
The Godfather
is so different than what typically is in vogue nowadays, where there's hypercaffeinated cutting that doesn't necessarily accomplish everything in story tones. Coppola had the confidence to hang back wide and not cut until it was damn well time to cut.
The Godfather
teaches you restraint. We try to emulate that on
Breaking Bad
and
Better Call Saul
. We like to stay wide and keep the cutting patterns slow.
Kubrick:
"Kubricks one of my all-time favorites. The other great quote, that I use all the time from him, was somebody asked him, 'What about the space station, and using the Blue Danube throughout that sequence? Just genius! Why did you do it that way?' And Kubrick thought about it, and said, 'Showmanship.' It was my favorite answer of all time."
Asked to name his favourite action movie:
The French Connection
, though I very much doubt it would qualify as action with the young moviegoers of today. The chase scene in that film is as breathless and exciting as anything Im seeing in 2015. And its real- no CGI!
From another source, talking about the pilot:
I was thinking of William Friedkin and the way he shot
The French Connection
, that news gathering handheld [style] not the caffeinated **** but the old Korean War combat photographers, the old newsreel guys who didnt have the ability to carry a camera with them, so they held it as still as they humanly could and yet it still breathed. But I was thinking of Friedkin. I was thinking of Sergio Leone a lot
"
The French Connection
was definitely an influence for me on the pilot of
Breaking Bad
. It's another movie I could watch once a week for the rest of my life. It came out in 1971 but still, to my eyes, looks as fresh and original as anything being currently made. It does not ever feel dated, and I can't even figure out why that is, because it's very much a very specific time and place. What I took from it on
Breaking Bad
in the pilot was the stable handheld look there's a newsreel-type feel to the photography. They shot it holding the cameras as steadily as they humanly could. There's always a bit of breathing, there's always a bit of life to these shots, not this kind of "let's whip the camera around like we're having a seizure" ****. There's restraint."
"Another influence was Bernardo Bertolucci, particularly his 1970 political assassination movie
The Conformist
. Gilligan said he particularly loved the way that movie tends to catch characters when they are alone in corners, a choice that increases the films sense of paranoia."
Mike is also seen watching
The Caine Mutiny
in 502. Glligan:
"Its interesting that
The Caine Mutiny
came to us. It is indeed one of my favorite movies, and Ive loved it ever since my dad introduced me to it when I was 8 or 10 years old. It was available to us because it is a Sony property, and when it became available to us, essentially for a song, I thought to myself, my God this is what he should be watching."
"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for."

• Marilynne Robinson

This message has been deleted.

That's nothing. How about Heat, Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, The Departed, Falling Down, Scarface, and many many others.

I read somewhere he based a lot of the lighting, especially season 5, on the godfatherhow it made a lot of use of dark lighting. And I think it mentioned him trying to make every season darker than the one that preceded it. The godfather was apparently a major influence on season 5 though.
I noticed that for season 5, the darkness of the soul, appearance over truth, all from The Godfather films, which owe a lot from Citizen Kane's cinematography, lest we forget.
Want three steaks? My mistake. Four steaks.

I read somewhere he based a lot of the lighting, especially season 5, on the godfatherhow it made a lot of use of dark lighting. And I think it mentioned him trying to make every season darker than the one that preceded it. The godfather was apparently a major influence on season 5 though.
And i also remember reading that he viewed breaking bad as a modern day western, so that definitely was a huge influence.
I agree, he definitely knew his stuff. I'm sure there are tons of movies ive yet to see that ill probably be like 'thats where VG got that from' lol