Nicolas Roeg‘s 1976 film ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth‘ is probably one of the highlights of David Bowie‘s acting career, but it’s not the only reason this film deserves to be seen 45 years after its release. The English director was a special figure in the film-making landscape of the time and his film brings together the science fiction genre with the pop culture (love and rock’n’roll included) of the 70’s. With a solid training in the industry, Roeg was part of the technical team and cameraman in movies like ‘Doctor Zhivago‘, ‘Lawrence of Arabia‘ and ‘Casino Royale ‘ and later embark on a career as a film director during which he made a few films that can be defined as unusual, each in its own way. In ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth‘ he casts David Bowie, another science fiction enthusiast, but it is not the first film in which Roeg cast a rock star. It was preceded by ‘Performance‘ from 1970 in which Mick Jagger appeared. ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth‘ seen today is much more than an aliens movie, it is also a reflection of the culture and cultural landscape of the time, a film which is a little anarchist, a little strange and very interesting.
Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) is an alien who arrives after a forced landing on Earth in New Mexico. His civilisation is advanced enough to have already visited Earth (‘we have all been visited’) and to have observed it well enough to speak English with a British accent. Several patents of some fundamental technological inventions quickly turn him into a great tycoon, but his real goal is to build a spaceship to transport water to his planet and species that are suffering because a terrible drought. Despite being technologically savvy and able to watch ten television screens with different programming simultaneously (aliens are passionate about television, as we know from other movies) Newton is naive about the earthly secrets of sex and alcohol. The meeting with Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) will fix these gaps in education, but will also give birth to a troubled inter-galactic relationship. Contact with a few large corporate sharks and shadowish government agents will make his stay on Earth a culture shock and an experience with unexpected consequences for everyone.
Fans of rigorous science fiction have plenty of reasons for dissatisfaction with the story of this film. It has dozens of ‘holes’ and the continuity does not seem to have been at all in the attention of the screenwriter and the director. There is no indication of the passage of time in the film, although the aging of those around Newton indicates a different rhythm of time for the two civilizations. The point of view of the story is that of the alien, strong in knowledge and later rich in wealth, but vulnerable because of the fate of his race and especially because of loneliness. However, the scientific pretext should not be scrutinised more than we do with a rock music video. The charm and intensity of the film are based on its visual qualities and on the acting of David Bowie to whom the role fits perfectly physically and psychologically. (Bowie doesn’t sing, but the soundtrack enjoys the participation of musicians like John Phillips and Mick Taylor). Years later, the mega-star singer and actor would confess that he was under the influence of drugs most of the time this film was shot – quite a short time, by the way, three months of filming in New Mexico and in studios in England, followed however by nine months of editing. The culture shock in the story (which is based on a novel with autobiographical elements by Walter Tevis) was doubled by the culture shock between the fantasy world filled with excesses of the ’70s pop art and the technological fantasies of the science-fiction genre. The result is a fascinating and unusual film, as the experience of the meeting of two worlds may be.