Christopher Nolan Almost Cut Inception's Most Crucial Element

Christopher Nolan's Inception is a movie obsessed with time. Every tick of the clock is one step closer to disaster; seconds become minutes, become hours, become days, months, and years, as its characters descend through layers of dreams, and Hans Zimmer miraculously translated that concept into the music itself. One of the movie's most ingenious tricks connects Zimmer's thunderous score to Édith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien," the song used to warn Nolan's dreamers that their "kick" is approaching.

Recently, Zimmer has exclusively revealed to Collider that the Piaf song almost didn't make it into Inception at all — and it was because Nolan had cast Marion Cotillard. Cotillard played Mal Cobb in Inception only a few years after winning the Academy Award for portraying Piaf herself in La Vie en Rose. Rather than just being a really cool sound that could be dropped into the score, it was actually a fundamental part of the story. "Chris and I — I don't know who came up with it — but we both loved the Édith Piaf song. It was written in the script, and the slowing down of it was written in the script," said Zimmer. "Everybody goes, 'BRAAAM,' which then became a sound effect in every trailer. But with us, it was a story point. It's a very different thing to use that idea as a story point than just a way of getting from one non sequitur to the other in a trailer." Then came Cotillard, and suddenly using Piaf presented Nolan and Zimmer with a strange problem. Zimmer explained:

“But the Édith Piaf song nearly didn’t make it because when Chris cast Marion Cotillard, we thought, ‘Hang on a second, she played Édith Piaf. Is this a bit odd?’ But I found a recording that sounded like it was from the ’40s, like the German army was marching up the Champs-Élysées. It was really dirty and crackly and mono, and it was really moody. We loved it. We had to send somebody from Warner Brothers to Paris to talk to the man in charge of the estate so that we could use it. He gave us permission, and then we found the real recording of the version I’d found on YouTube or somewhere, and it was this pristine, clean recording. So we had to go and mess it all up just to make it moody again.”

The decision certainly worked. Inception went on to earn $839.8 million worldwide, while the sound Zimmer and Nolan created became so influential that its enormous blasts were imitated across movie trailers for years afterward.

Hans Zimmer Is Returning to North America

Zimmer will revisit music from throughout his career when Hans Zimmer Live – The Next Level comes to North America in 2027. The all-new production features Zimmer himself alongside a 19-piece ensemble, with the composer promising something closer to a "rave" or "roller coaster" than a conventional orchestral concert. Following its hugely successful European run, the North American leg begins February 17 in Hartford and continues across the U.S. and Canada through April.

Hans Zimmer Live – The Next Level begins its North American run on February 17, 2027. Tickets go on general sale September 25 at 10 a.m. local time. Stay tuned at Collider for more.