Made In Britain: The Man Who Fell to Earth
Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 sci-fi The Man Who Fell to Earth had a rocky ride to cult classic status and there are some critics who still write it off as a load of pretentious tosh. Luckily for us, the Made in Britain team disagree and screenings happening across the UK on 18th June mark its re-release on DVD and Blu-ray (details on Facebook: www.facebook.com/MadeinBritainFilm).
It is unlikely that Man Who would have become a slow-burning success had Roeg had got his first choice of leading man, blockbuster novelist Michael Crichton. Late-70s era David Bowie, complete with raging cocaine addiction and Starman obsession, comes as close to being a humanoid alien struggling to cope with immense wealth, copious amounts of mind-altering substances and America’s pop culture juggernaut as possible. When poor, devoted Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) turns up to rekindle their flame, he waves a gun in her face and gleefully points out that he could kill her and no one would care – “they” would just take away her body and bring him another girl – it rings uncomfortably true. Unfortunately, Roeg can’t resist hammering the point home by having a twitching Bowie perch in front of a wall of blaring televisions, one of which is actually screening an Elvis film. Thanks, Nick. We get it.
Painfully blunt metaphors aside, the film has aged surprisingly well. Though some contemporary references are just past their use-by – Eastman-Kodak, for example, is no more – in other ways it seems to have been ahead of its time. It is a bit depressing to realise, for example, that had Man Who been made today rather than 30 years ago, Farnsworth’s homosexuality would have been treated as a much bigger deal.
After spotting Earth’s abundance on television, the aptly named Thomas Jerome Newton arrives from the planet Athena, where water has become scarce after years of drought, hoping to find the means to save his wife and children. Richard Branson-like, he sets about buying every corporation in sight and becomes obsessed with space travel. This rather upsets the US Government, which has been watching Newton ever since he landed and deploys the shadowy Mr Peters (NFL legend Bernie Casey) to stop him. Luckily for Mr Peters, it turns out that the fickle American consumer and endless bottles of Beefeater are about to make his job a lot easier.
Despite the blinding qualities of the White Sands location, the Athena scenes are beautifully shot and have an eerie, soft and dreamlike quality. The only duff note is the creaky model ‘space train’, but then this is a film about an alien visitor almost utterly devoid of special effects so no wonder it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Clark somehow manages to turn Mary-Lou into a sympathetic character, which is no mean feat given that Mary-Lou is a simple-minded alcoholic from a small town who spends much of the film either giggling or screaming. And in much the same way that Madonna turned in a great performance in Desperately Seeking Susan by pretty much playing herself, Bowie turns in a great performance as a hugely wealthy and successful man who is slowly losing both his mind and his sense of self.
Like all the best science fiction, The Man Who Fell to Earth is a brilliant satire.
Clare Moody