Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Movie review - "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976) ***

 Okay, so... am still processing... it's long, felt long, has a story but you have to pay attention, which is fine, kind of ends, Nic Roeg is a bit of a dirty perv with that useless subplot of Rip Torn having sex with nubile 18 year old students who are naked and one of them talks to Torn's unerect penis (we get a bit of Bowie's too), and then Claudie Jennings turns up in it as Bernie Casey's wife and she'd nude too. 

David Bowie is perfect, so entertaining and compelling, Candy Clark is lovely (Roeg shoots her body from all angles of course but it's an excellent performance), Torn is good, Buck Henry effective. The most positive depiction of a gay relationship in movies til that time? (Henry and his partner - supportive, loving, long term).

I'm not sure how Bowie got a hold of a British passport but most of it is believable enough though in today's world big business would surely trump the CIA. Very moving with the family back home and the experiments. Anti climactic ending. Varying make up - superb to dodgy.

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