Last update - 00:00 18/01/2007
The director who fell to earth
By Uri Klein
There is something hallucinatory about Nicolas Roeg's best films, and there is also something hallucinatory about his status as a British director. Even though Roeg, 78, has directed a considerable number of good films, and even though those that were flawed were generally interesting, it is difficult to size up his contribution to British cinema from his four-decade career. He operates as if in a vacuum; his cinema's virtues - and perhaps limitations - stem from this sense of isolation.
Four of Roeg's best-known films are to be screened at the British Film Festival, scheduled to open today at the cinematheques of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Nazareth. What should this event be called? A homage? A mini-retrospective? These four films, all of them worthy, provide only a partial picture of Roeg's career, with its many twists and turns; perhaps the most appropriate description of the event would be a tribute to the director who, to paraphrase the title of one of his films, has fallen into British cinema from another planet.
It is a pity the festival is not offering a sample of Roeg's work as a cameraman, which predates his work as a director. Roeg grew up inside the industry to become one of the leading cameramen of 1960s British cinema. Among other things, he filmed parts of David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia," Daniel Mann's "Judith" (which was filmed in Israel and featured Sophia Loren as a Holocaust survivor), Francois Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451," John Schlesinger's "Far from the Madding Crowd" and Richard Lester's "Petulia."
Nevertheless, the festival is planning to screen "Walkabout" (1971); this is the earliest of the four films to be shown, and the last one Roeg shot himself. Festivalgoers will therefore be able to see his work as a cameraman as well, though not in the service of some of the important directors with whom he worked.
It is especially regrettable that the festival is not screening "Performance," the first film Roeg directed, with Donald Cammell in 1970. The film, which has never been distributed in Israel, is a hypnotic cinematic kaleidoscope of shifting identities, sex, drugs and pop music. Its main attraction is lead actor Mick Jagger, who played a waning rock star; Warner Brothers, which funded the production, had expected a film based on Jagger's great fame, and when it saw the result, it was so alarmed that it shelved the film for two years. When the film finally made it to theaters, it was not a box-office success, but it eventually became a cult film. Today it is considered one of the masterpieces produced in Britain at the start of the 1970s.
Bereavement in Venice
The festival is fortunately showing "Walkabout," Roeg's second film. Of the four being shown, this is the least familiar to the Israeli audience. It tells the story of two British children who are abandoned in the Australian outback after their father commits suicide. Roeg turned their survival story into both a concrete adventure and an abstract hallucination; the two protagonists are exposed both to the physical reality of the wilderness and to the mythical and sexual forces that shape their strange experience.
The other three films are familiar here, whether as box-office successes or as TV movies. "Don't Look Now," from 1973, is perhaps Roeg's only film that can be defined as a box-office success. This is an expressive horror film based on a short story by Daphne Du Maurier. It tells the story of bereaved parents (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) who spend a horrifying vacation in Venice after their little girl drowns.
Also scheduled to be screened is "The Man Who Fell to Earth," from 1976, a science fiction fantasy starring pop icon David Bowie, who plays a messenger from another planet sent to find water. This is one of Roeg's most perfect and impressive films.
The final film being presented is "Bad Timing," from 1980. Although it was not a success, I believe this is one of Roeg's most interesting films: a melodrama that deals with psychoanalysis via the story of an American psychiatrist in Vienna (played somewhat unsuccessfully by Art Garfunkel). He is ensnared by a woman (the excellent Theresa Russell, who was Roeg's wife for a number of years), who gradually undermines all his principles.
The choppy manner in which Roeg presents the story of the two protagonists reminded many of French director Alain Resnais' first films ("Hiroshima Mon Amour," "Muriel" and others). Indeed, like Resnais, Roeg deals with questions of consciousness and memory, and draws attention to emotional and sexual thought processes and the urges that shape them. Sometimes the result is successful and impressive, and at other times it is pretentious and flawed, but for the most part, Roeg's films do not leave us indifferent, and it is hard to look away even at their lowest points.
For children and adults
Roeg's career has also included strange works like "Eureka" from 1984, starring Gene Hackman and Theresa Russell; "Insignificance" from 1985, which portrayed a fictive encounter in a New York hotel between Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Joseph McCarthy; "The Witches" from 1990, a film that seems to deviate entirely from Roeg's oeuvre, as it is based on a story by Roald Dahl and seemingly intended for children (though it reveals severity and irony when examined in depth - making it one of the most adult children's films ever produced); and television productions. The latter include Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" in 1989, starring Elizabeth Taylor; Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" in 1994; and "Samson and Delilah" in 1996, starring Elizabeth Hurley as the biblical temptress. His most recent work is an 18-minute-long film produced in 2000, intriguingly entitled "The Sound of Claudia Schiffer."