Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007)
Tasked with producing profitable low-budget films for RKO studios in the early 1940s, Val Lewton delivered such well-regarded films as Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Seventh Victim (1943), and The Curse of the Cat People (1944).
Relying on innuendo and intimation, his films were minimalist productions focused on atmosphere and mood over elaborate effects.
He brought directors Jacques Tourneur and Robert Wise to prominence and resurrected the career of Boris Karloff post-Frankenstein (1931).
Narrator Martin Scorsese shepherded this documentary to fruition. His passion for film history and appreciation for its unheralded stars is admirable.
Sadly, Lewton died a poor man following a heart attack at age forty-six. Thankfully, he’s finally receiving some much deserved recognition.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Extraterrestrial Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) came to earth seeking water to take back to his planet.
With the help of patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry), he used his advanced technology to build a major company as a front for his activities.
When one of his employees, Dr. Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn), realizes the truth, he exposes Newton to the government who capture and experiment on him. After several years confinement, Newton’s now middle-aged human girlfriend, Mary Lou, visits him in prison, but discovers he hasn’t aged.
After many years in prison, Newton escapes and builds a lonely life on earth, haunted by his failure to save his home planet.
In the 1970s, Nicholas Roeg directed a series of unconventional and offbeat films including Performance (1970), Walkabout (1971), and Don’t Look Now (1973), but as tastes changed his films have become less boundary pushing and more mainstream, like the children’s film The Witches (1990).
This weird and ambiguous film is the perfect debut for David Bowie; Buck Henry is good, but it’s stunt casting; and watching this, it’s difficult to believe Rip Torn would later become Patches O’Houlihan.
I applaud the film’s willingness to stretch the limits of the medium, but it never finds a dramatic rhythm, and becomes a series of impressions rather than a narrative. It is a sort of hypnotic visual feast, but there are long stretches of boredom, which approximate the long stretches of boredom in Newton’s life, but doesn’t make an enjoyable film.