10 Overlooked First Films By Great Directors

Few directors can match up to Christopher Nolan in terms of fanatical devotion.

Maybe Quentin Tarantino, but his first film was Reservoir Dogs, and there's no way we could call that "overlooked".

As for Nolan's first film, he took the Aronofsky approach and filmed 1998's Following in black and white.

The director went to extreme lengths to get this picture made; he made his actors heavily rehearse scenes ahead of time to save on film; he paid for equipment out of his own salary; he pitched in with editing; he cast his own uncle in one of the roles.

Safe to say that he was keen to get Following off the ground.

Once it did get off the ground, it went down a storm. A neo-noir crime thriller about a young man drawn into a seedy underworld, Following was praised for its snappy action, atypical narrative structure, and nail-biting mystery.

It got Nolan's name out there, which allowed him to gather the resources to make his next feature film - a little picture called Memento.

You might have heard of it.

The rest, as they say, is history.