On the surface, MARRIAGE STORY is a drama, but director Noah Baumbach has spoken at length about the surprisingly diverse range of genres that inspired his film. (thread) 
“There are many hidden genres in the movie: a thriller, a legal procedural, a romantic comedy, a screwball comedy, a tragic love story, even a musical,” says Baumbach. While MARRIAGE STORY doesn’t fully embody any of these genres, it borrows key elements from all of them.
Borrowing elements of unexpected genres is part of what makes MARRIAGE STORY so memorable. While not explicitly a thriller, Baumbach’s look at how divorce leads a couple to stressful levels of scrutiny was inspired in part by Alfred Hitchcock.
The case of mistaken identity at the heart of Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller NORTH BY NORTHWEST was an unlikely reference point for Baumbach’s exploration of “how ordinary, human missteps that might go unnoticed are suddenly highlighted in a divorce.”
If you’ve seen Baumbach’s 2015 film MISTRESS AMERICA, which featured Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke getting into madcap social situations, you know that he has a fondness for the rapidfire dialogue of ’30s and ’40s screwball comedies — a motif that pops up in MARRIAGE STORY.
Baumbach cites the screwball genre (particularly Ernst Lubitsch’s TO BE OR NOT TO BE and Howard Hawks’ TWENTIETH CENTURY — both classics portraying actors and couples) as his inspiration for the awkward-yet-hilarious “serving papers” scene in MARRIAGE STORY.
Baumbach is an avowed cinephile, and a number of his reference points in MARRIAGE STORY come from directors like Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and Peter Bogdanovich. Not a bad roster!
French director Jean Renoir’s iconic, deeply humanistic World War I film THE GRAND ILLUSION (1937) provided some unlikely inspiration for the tone of MARRIAGE STORY.
“I was thinking of the scene at the beginning of THE GRAND ILLUSION,” says Baumbach. “The French crash in German territory and the Germans invite them to lunch. That civilized aspect of war is what divorce can feel like.”
Film buffs might detect hints of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s existential relationship dramas throughout MARRIAGE STORY, and they’re right on the money. Baumbach cites the use of portraiture and framing in PERSONA (1966) as a guiding light for his film.
Baumbach looked to Bergman’s masterful close-ups for inspiration. “I knew that close-ups would be very important for our movie,” says Baumbach. “Scarlett and/or Adam are in every scene, and they both have such beautiful, expressive faces.” Who can argue with that?
Baumbach cites Stanley Kubrick’s dramatic use of space in films like the political satire DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) as another key influence. In building a world filled with high-stakes meetings, Baumbach sought to “create a sense of menace” in “seemingly ordinary” official rooms.
Peter Bogdanovich’s THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971) was another aesthetic influence. Baumbach praises Bogdanovich's "naturalistic” framing of close-ups, and sought to give MARRIAGE STORY a similar vibe of “watching a moment right out real life,” yet “precisely constructed.”
Of course, MARRIAGE STORY also draws on themes Baumbach's explored for his whole career. “I think my films all contend with our expectations for ourselves, for each other, for the world. And also, happiness: The presence or lack of it, the obstacles in one’s way to joy,” he says.
The struggles of divorce and finding happiness as a family unit are also an essential part of Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005), a story drawn from the director’s experiences and anchored in excellent performances and a lived-in quality.
The malleability of identity often comes into play in Baumbach’s films. His characters are intelligent people trying to figure out their identities and their relationships. Many of his films are about “the search for self, but at different moments in life,” says the director.
Baumbach has captured both the quarter-life crisis and middle age. In FRANCES HA, the title character is “looking for herself in various neighborhoods and apartments and people,” while in WHILE WE’RE YOUNG, “the search for identity is projected onto another younger couple.”
MARRIAGE STORY is “about individual happiness but also a collective happiness — the marriage is over but the family lives on,” says the director. By drawing from an array of cinematic influences, Baumbach adds layers of visual interest and emotional potency to the story.
