Our 30 favorite turtleneck sweaters at the movies – Reel

The outfit in the movie? Black boots, a khaki suit and velvet that can be found in the Beatles and the Stones , Nick Drake , Nico and the Velvet Underground . There is also a lot of nostalgia, interesting clothes and styles.

If Bill Murray's character is secondary here, it is difficult not to fall under the charm of his velvet outfit: Wallabee-style shoes like at Padmore & Barnes, beige velvet pants, a purple turtleneck and a velvet blazer whose color inevitably brings back Astor Piazolla's music to make the whole thing sway. From Hong Kong to Buenos Aires, it is the story of an eternal recommencement between two characters who attract and repel each other.

Among the film's great stylistic finds: handsome plaid shirts that stray from the Scott Frazer Collection 's Gaucho style.

There are of course white tank tops, and perhaps a more surprising one for a film shot in these latitudes: a turtleneck. It is Leslie Cheung who wears it thick and probably warm in the back of a taxi. For the rest of his outfit, classic and a hint of originality : boots, black jeans like these and a blazer in probably wool and checks. It is one of the most seductive outfits of the film.

If we had to wait until "In the Mood for Love" to find a more sartorial elegance in Wong Kar-Wai, "Happy Together" confirms, if necessary, that the Argentinian air is rather successful in cinema .

9. The most colorful: Steve Buscemi in “ Fargo ” (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996)

For those who have never crossed the threshold of Joel and Ethan Coen's cinema, two possible first entries: "The Big Lebowski" or "Fargo". These two films perfectly condense the slightly wacky art of the Coen brothers. If you like shirts , we can add "Arizona Junior". And if we had to choose just one? Why not "Fargo", for its atmosphere, its large white spaces and... Steve Buscemi's turtlenecks.

The film tells the story of a kidnapping that goes awry. Jerry Lundegaard needs money. His father-in-law is rich but tight-fisted. So he hires two slightly odd guys to kidnap his wife and try to get some money from his father-in-law. As for the common sense, we'll pass. As for the setting, imagine a really harsh winter in Brainerd, a small town in Minnesota that lives at its own pace, here rather slowly, like many of its characters.

While we won't reveal the rest of the story , we can, however, focus on Steve Buscemi's style: boots, a sheepskin and fur coat, an almost red turtleneck and pants in the same vein , a good brown belt judiciously separating the two. Add a mustache and a chatterbox personality and you get a character who is at the very least nervous and colorful with the sweet name of Carl Showalter.

It's certainly not the most stylish character in our selection, but let's admit that attempting a kind of monochrome in such conditions is not lacking in panache .

10. The most original: Dominique Pinon in “ Delicatessen ” (Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991)

Although the turtleneck had not yet fully returned to cinema in the early 90s, the visual style of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's future blockbuster films was already there.

While Amélie Poulain's garden gnome patiently waits for his moment, "Delicatessen" opens the doors to a universe that is both very personal and very stylized. There is character, black humor and bitter laughter, nostalgia and burlesque, Prévert and many nods to cinema.

It's therefore no surprise that the most original and offbeat turtleneck in our selection is that of Dominique Pinon here.

The story takes place in a building populated by strange characters: there are moo box makers, a frog breeder, a rather creepy authoritarian butcher and many other faces as singular as they are strangely familiar.

In this setting halfway between a post-apocalyptic universe and a picture-postcard Paris, the building's new concierge is a former clown played by Dominique Pinon.

Perhaps this is where all his stylistic originality lies: he wears shoes that are, if not pointed , at least elongated, a textured brown suit, suspenders and a unique turtleneck with red, yellow, patterns and a slightly tired collar.

This isn't his only turtleneck. He actually has another one, but unless you're a knitting enthusiast, you're unlikely to see it anywhere else except in "Delicatessen": it's red, with elephants on it, and would definitely make a great Christmas sweater. Also in our endearing character's suitcase are some colorful socks , a green blazer, and a striped sweater.

11. Most surprising: Michael Keaton in “ Batman ” (Tim Burton, 1989)

Is Batman a fan of the Cobra belt ? Is the purple suit only available to the Joker? And what could be the link between former Apple boss Steve Jobs and the taciturn Bruce Wayne? The answers to these questions can be (re)discovered in Tim Burton's dark "Batman".

You know the story: "Batman" is a masked vigilante, he likes the dark, gadgets, bats and hunting dangerous criminals. The setting is called Gotham City, it is a fictional city partly inspired by Chicago in the 30s and the clothing style is to match: overcoats, suits and felt hats.

The casting is perfect, the film deliciously retro. At the forefront, Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger and Jack Nicholson provide the show punctuated by the music of Prince and Danny Elfman. Behind the scenes, Tim Burton pays homage to German expressionism and slips in a few of his little obsessions. Let's admit that they are a little different from those you usually come across here .

The Joker played by Jack Nicholson sums up the question of style in a little amusing phrase addressed to Batman: "Nice outfit!" And indeed, Michael Keaton only shines here with the costumes of his real personality : if Batman has the monopoly on cool, Bruce Wayne's outfits are much more sad.

There is only one exception to this succession of grey suits and black tuxedos: a secret, casual and, to be honest, somewhat surprising outfit, which is revealed at a key moment in the story. Glasses, black turtleneck, bleached jeans like here and probably sneakers. Doesn't that remind you of someone?

12. The most professorial: Patrick McGoohan in “ Scanners ” (David Cronenberg, 1981)

While the golden age of the turtleneck in cinema is now behind us, all is not lost: it will soon return, in force and thanks to action and superhero films. In the meantime, it is making a comeback here and there in the 80s.

This is evidenced by "Scanners", a pivotal work in David Cronenberg's cinema of body and mind. This fantasy genre film dates from 1981. It was recently re-released in theaters and is aging well: we discover a Big Pharma-type company, characters with strange telepathic powers and a Michael Ironside who is more disturbing than ever in a leather jacket and turtleneck.

This is one of Patrick McGoohan's best roles in cinema, but you may know the actor better for his TV series: "The Prisoner", a cult series from the 60s and still relevant today, or even "Columbo" .

In "Scanners", he plays the role of Doctor Paul Ruth: a slightly mad scientist whose style may remind you of your old science or philosophy teacher: autumn/winter atmosphere, bleached beard, dark turtleneck and pants, black loafers, charcoal blazer with fine stripes. It's sober, classic, elegant. Add the glasses and you get a sort of caricature of the middle-aged professor.

The style trait here is to be found in the blazer and its stripes, the only notable "eccentricity" of an outfit deliberately devoid of colors. The beard, the haircut, the round glasses do the rest, reminding us at the same time how everything is linked: the body, the mind, the clothes. In the background, a beautiful invitation to reflect on normality and difference.

13. The most frightening: Jack Nicholson in “ The Shining ” (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

This Stanley Kubrick film is probably not unknown to you. It is inspired by a novel by Stephen King and in its genre, it is a classic. It is also a source of multiple inspirations for cinema, fashion or even music . 40 years later, nothing seems to alter its strength, not even the passage of time.

Here, Jack Nicholson settles with his wife and son in a large hotel lost in the middle of the mountains. He has just landed a job as a caretaker, and the whole family is preparing to spend the winter isolated from the rest of the world. The son has strange powers, and the hotel in question is really not a place like the others.

You probably remember the flagship outfit of the character played by Jack Nicholson. It is a workwear model: Lee blue jeans, a checked flannel shirt, a Margaret Howell velvet jacket and workboots on his feet. For the record, they are Timberland type boots, but other more qualitative pairs like Un taxi mauve " (Yves Boisset, 1977)

You won't have missed it: light turtlenecks are popular in this selection, and for good reason, we particularly like beige, white or ecru tones at BonneGueule, whether for tops or bottoms like here .

In Un taxi Mauve, Philippe Noiret also wears his light turtleneck sweater and sports a gentleman-farmer outfit that could perfectly illustrate the point made by my colleague David in his Readers' Letters : a tweed hat, a khaki Barbour -type jacket, a beige turtleneck, sturdy brown pants (corduroy, for example) and a pair of all-terrain boots.

It's a style that adapts to all situations. Country walks, a trip to the local pub, dinner with friends or a quiet evening by the fire: in this forgotten film by Yves Boisset, you'll find hardly anyone but Fred Astaire to rival the elegance of Philippe Noiret. It's one of the American star's last roles, and for that reason alone, the film is still worth watching.

For the setting: the lands of Ireland and their folklore . For the rest: a gallery of characters who have come to hide their secrets, a slightly old-fashioned film and in the background an atmosphere that would not have displeased Bruno Cremer from the Maigret series. It is not a thriller, but there are still a few mysteries to solve.

You'll also find cable knits, Mac, shearling and a few stylistic oddities that we don't know what to think about.

Like the film she shared a few years earlier with Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling is once again disturbing and icy. She is dressed by Bruce Oldfield, wears Cartier jewelry and also light turtlenecks: it goes to show how much this piece plays with the boundaries of genre.

16. Most melodramatic: Al Pacino in “ Bobby Deerfield ” (Sidney Pollack, 1977)

For once, you won't find Robert Redford in this Sidney Pollack film . You will, however, come across Al Pacino in Europe and on a completely different path than the middle one: "Bobby Deerfield" is mainly a love film, shared between melodrama and Formula 1.

Among the things that interest us: a camel turtleneck and everywhere else orange, beige and brown. If we exclude the reproduction of Matisse that slips onto the screen for a moment, these are the three colors to remember from "Bobby Deerfield".

This is not insignificant. It is even a clue for your next outfits, even more so if you already have a cognac leather jacket or our deer leather jacket. Otherwise, don't worry: it will come!

Because if "Bobby Deerfield" is worth seeing for the meeting between Al Pacino and his future partner Marthe Keller, it also proves to be inspiring here and there through the prism of clothing.

It's a film that makes you want to go around Mahogany " (Berry Gordy, 1975)

This may come as a surprise to those of you who know Diana Ross as a singer: in this film produced by Motown, she is also an actress and stylist and the least we can say is that her creations are not lacking in color or vitality.

Also in the cast are Anthony Perkins and Billy Dee Williams, the future Lando Calrissian from "Star Wars."

If "Mahogany" is a film about fashion and its backstage, it is also an opportunity to see other ideas for pairing with the turtleneck. Billy Dee Williams' first outfits confirm this. We can do even cooler: shearling jacket, pink turtleneck, light blue jeans, brown boots.

That's it for the first meeting, and what Billy Dee Williams teaches us here is that the turtleneck in cinema is not condemned to formal outfits.

In "Mahogany", Billy Dee Williams has a very impressive collection of sweaters. They come in all textures and colors: pink, but also red, white, purple, navy, brown... If he most often matches them with leather jackets, he tries the white turtleneck and gray blazer several times and, unsurprisingly, it's very successful.

Diana Ross herself makes no mistake about it, for example when it comes to taking Billy Dee Williams shopping. If she tries to open his eyes to materials, style and quality, guess what piece of her wardrobe she keeps preciously?

18. The most haute couture: Helmut Berger in “ A Romantic Englishwoman ” (Joseph Losey, 1975)

We can thank the filmmaker Joseph Losey: among other things, he released "A Citizen Rebels " (Enzo Castellari, 1974)

If there were only two things to remember from "A Citizen Rebels," it would probably be this little piece of music and this incredible image of Franco Nero below.

If the name of this Italian actor means nothing to you, just note that his career has mainly developed around genre films: westerns for the most part, but also historical, police and even fantasy films. More recently, you may have seen him in Quentin Tarentino's "Django Unchained" or James Gray's "The Lost City Of Z". In 1974, he shot this strange thriller from the poliziottesco wave with Enzo G. Castelleri.

His character is the victim of an assault. The police are powerless or corrupt. He then decides to lead the investigation and track down the criminals himself. It is not a masterpiece but a curiosity, especially for its great variety of Italian costumes. Franco Nero would be perfect in our Woody and the Robots costume, for example" (Woody Allen, 1973)

If you feel like Woody Allen is making the same movie over and over again, and there's little talk of style, chances are this one won't change your mind.

Of course, like his first films, it is burlesque that prevails here. But you will find the same signature typography in the credits, the same New Orleans spirit in the music, the same funny and gently neurotic characters in the cast. This way of making cinema summons both the Marx Brothers and Ingmar Bergman, and that is what has made it charming for over 50 years.

While we rarely think about clothes in a Woody Allen film, here is one that gives us a glimpse of what tomorrow's wardrobe could be like by setting its story in an improbable future: Woody Allen wakes up in 2173, after 200 years of a very long sleep caused by a medical error.

It's impossible to know whether fashion or even Earth will still be relevant. What is certain, however, is that the present of "Woody and the Robots" looks like a nightmare: a society of control, uniform and tasteless clothing like in George Lucas' "THX 1138", robot suits and computerized tailoring. If that doesn't scare you yet: imagine a suit, shirt and tie all in white for the obligatory passage to confession!

While beautiful materials and character have disappeared from the clothes of the future, there is one piece that still holds its own: the turtleneck sweater. Here it is available in black or gray on the shoulders of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. If the society in the film were freer and color was more allowed, we could risk slipping in a touch of burgundy, to go with the omnipresent black of the shoes and pants.

The couple is in any case perfect, the turtlenecks more timeless than ever , but the most attentive among you will notice a major absence: in 1973, no one imagined that the fashion of the future would be written with a Last Tango in Paris " (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)

Haunting music, twilight colors. Still glowing from the success of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather," Marlon Brando threw himself the following year into one of Bernardo Bertolucci's most talked about films.

"Last Tango in Paris" was born out of a fantasy and opens with a painting by Francis Bacon. These are the first clues of a film that imagines itself returning to the origins of the world for a while and transforms the icon of "The Streetcar Named Desire" into a real wreck.

Anything is possible: two men can love the same woman and have the same dressing gown, a woman can have a shoe fetish on screen and turn out to be a costume designer behind the scenes .

From the first minutes, we discover an imposing but totally haggard man. He is 48 years old, with a slow step, a defeated look, and graying hair. He has everything of a wounded animal. Haunted by death, Marlon Brando will here cling like a leech to all that there is of life and light in this story: Maria Schneider.

If there is something decidedly pathetic about him, this man still has the French Connection " (William Friedkin, 1971)

Perhaps one day we'll stop and look at Roy Scheider's style in Steven Spielberg's "Jaws." In the meantime, here's the film that introduced him to the general public: William Friedkin's "The French Connection," a gripping dive into the daily life of the police and the fight against drug trafficking. While there are many purely cinematic things to remember , clothing is no exception.

First of all, note Gene Hackman's pork pie hat, a real gimmick and even a reference when it comes to illustrating this type of hat in cinema. We could also mention the elegance of Fernando Rey, one of the key actors in Luis Buñuel's cinema. But the most interesting thing is perhaps to be found in Roy Scheider's versatile style. Nothing seems to scare him.

He thus appears in a workwear register from the first movements of the film: big black and gray checked wool shirt, light blue jeans and brown boots. With a few variations, it is the same kind of outfit as that of Kevin Costner in " Shaft " (Gordon Parks, 1971)

"Right on!" Another continent, another universe. The setting is similar to the one you can discover in the excellent American series " Music is by Isaac Hayes and you definitely know it: it is better known than the film itself.

If the name of the director Gordon Parks means nothing to you, simply note that he worked mainly in the field of photography, mainly photojournalism but also, and this is interesting for us, fashion photography.

"Shaft" opens on a winter morning. It is a tribute to the shoe shiners of yesteryear, to leather and to the turtleneck. It is also the most emblematic film of the blaxploitation genre. This style, a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino is particularly fond of it and for the black community of the early 70s, it is above all a way of finally existing differently in cinema.

In the centre, the impressive Richard Roundtree. This is the film of his career and he plays here the role of a cunning and solitary detective who particularly appreciates leather: take a look at his collection of brown jackets and black blousons typical of the seventies.

In his wardrobe, you will also find brown pants, blazers and boots. But "Shaft" would not be "Shaft" without its thick turtlenecks. In terms of style, it is even the centerpiece of the film, whether beige or black and know that our detective shares at least two things with Bullitt " (Peter Yates, 1968)

It's no secret that Steve McQueen is one of the most sought-after actors by the press and fashion brands. Take a look at your Instagram feed, for example: forty years after his death, the American actor continues to inspire the world of clothing, and while we now talk much less about his films than about his outfits, you'll find in "Bullitt" something that skillfully reconciles fashion and cinema.

Here he plays the role of a police lieutenant caught up in crime, politics and corruption: it's a thriller and it takes place on the streets of San Francisco.

It is an aesthete's film, and what still stands out today is its staging, its particular relationship to time and music, here unforgettable and composed by Lalo Schifrin. If "Bullitt" has been copied dozens of times in cinema, the same goes for the style of its main character: who has never dreamed of this brown shawl collar cardigan, this beige Mac or this pair of shoes repopularized by Sanders ?

Some of you may have already taken the plunge, even if only by picking up Les Créatures (Agnès Varda, 1966)

"It was winter and nothing seemed alive." This is perhaps a phrase that will stay with you for a long time and that you will discover in Les Créatures: a film that is as strange, fantastical and insular as it gets, which will give you a furious desire to watch Une Femme est une femme " (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961)

Paris, at the dawn of the 60s. Let's open the show with a portrait of a woman and a perfect illustration of what fashion cycles teach us about our time. Among Anna Karina's great lovers in the cinema is Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Long before chaining together stunts, leather jackets and popular successes, the ace of aces of French film turned several pages of history with Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville and François Truffaut . For Belmondo as for Godard, the 60s will remain as a period of great artistic intensity. As evidenced by "A Woman is a Woman".

It is an imperfect film, as if in perpetual construction, with at its center a golden triangle formed by Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Anna Karina divides her life here between the music hall and Jean-Claude Brialy and she wants a child within 24 hours. That is the countdown of this love story to rediscover. If the sociological background seems a little dated today, the form is still as free, modern, full of ideas and great colorful clothes.

You can look at it any way you want and still find the right amount of wit, color, and inspiration. This is one of Godard's strengths as a filmmaker. If you don't know anything about the history of cinema, music, painting, or literature, you'll find a multitude of paths to follow in his films. This is also true for fashion, and not just for Anna Karina, whose outfits are inspiring here.

When he filmed this revisited musical, Jean-Paul Belmondo was not yet 30 years old. It was 1961 and his character's style could easily fit into the 2020 picture: derbies, a gray coat with wide lapels, dress pants, a brown blazer and... a light gray turtleneck. The cuts have changed a little, but it is a very current outfit, simple and judiciously tailored for fall thanks in part to its color palette.

The turtleneck plays its role here to the full: warmth, sobriety, a hint of dressiness just right that contrasts with the more formal and colorful style of Jean-Claude Brialy. This is a first successful example of a turtleneck + blazer combination. You will discover many more.

As for the film's phrase, it comes back hands down to Anna Karina, when Brialy unfairly points out to her that her Scottish dress doesn't suit her at all: "So much the better, I don't want to please anyone!" Something to think about.