| | | A Film by Nicolas Roeg.
Features: Special Edition, DVD, Aspect Ratio 2.35:1, Hi-fi Stereo, English
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a daring exploration of science fiction as an art form. The story of an alien on an elaborate rescue mission provides the launching pad for Nicolas Roeg's visual tour de force, a formally adventurous examination of alienation in contemporary life. Rock legend David Bowie completely embodies the title role, while Candy Clark, Buck Henry, and Rip Torn turn in pitch-perfect supporting performances. The film's hallucinatory vision was obscured in the American theatrical release, which deleted nearly twenty minutes of crucial scenes and details. The Criterion Collection is proud to present Roeg's full, uncut version, in this exclusive new director-approved high-definition widescreen transfer.
"Interesting and mysterious." Newsweek
"First rate achievement. Stunning performances." The New York Times
"The casting of the androgynous-bent rock-star David Bowie as an alien was inspired." Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
"Highly original, fabulously photographed." Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
"[Roeg] has come up with some memorable imagery, as well as coaxing a suitably enigmatic performance out of Bowie." TV Guide
Editor's Note
In Nicolas Roeg's sci-fi tale based on the novel by Walter Tevis, a humanoid alien from a dried-up husk of a planet falls to Earth in a spaceship--and later falls again metaphorically through alcohol abuse and the manipulations of a hostile culture. Arriving as a secret ambassador from a dying world, the masquerading Mr. Newton (David Bowie) patents several basic devices, including a self-developing color film and music recordings in the shape of small silver balls, in order to amass the tremendous capital necessary to build a spaceship. Along the way he solicits the help of a crack patent lawyer (Buck Henry) and a country-fried small-town girl (Candy Clark) who introduces him to gin, which he soon begins to substitute for his customary glass of water. Newton debates the reality of returning to his dead world only to have the choice made for him when he is swept from the launchpad by government agents. After serving his time with men in black, he is released, blinded by x rays, into the world. As a last drunken hurrah, he records an album under the name the Visitor with the hope that it may someday be broadcast and heard by his family and friends back home. Connected throughout by intercut clips of television programs, classic movies, and film soundtracks, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH is an fine example of the postmodern technique of work referring to its own medium and history. Like much 1970s sci-fi, it is heavily indebted to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY; a scene in which an upset tray of cookies is juxtaposed with flying bodies echoes the film's flying bone and spaceship. Juxtaposing the free love enjoyed by Dr. Bryce (Rip Torn) with post-Altamont, pre-Reagan paranoia, Roeg's film manages to be at once artistically groundbreaking and a crystallization of the post-Summer of Love era.
Plot Summary
An alien being travels to Earth in human form with a plan to bring water to his own dying planet. Once on Earth, the superintelligent space traveler begins making the social and financial climbs necessary for his plot to succeed. But he finds earthly pleasures far more enticing than he ever imagined and gradually slides into a life of shallow debauchery.
| Features | Performance, A Compilation Of New Video Interviews With Actors Candy Clark And Rip Torn | | All New Featurette "Watching The Alien" | | Audio Interviews With Costume Designer May Routh And Production Designer Brian Eatwell | | Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo | | Director, Actor Commentary | | Gallery Of Posters From Roeg's Films | | Interactive Menus | | New Video Interview With Screenwriter Paul Mayersberg | | Photo Gallery | | Plus: An Exclusive Reprint Of Walter Tevis's Original Novel, Courtesy Of Vintage Books, And A Booklet Featuring A New Essay On The Film By Critic Graham Fuller And An Appreciation Of Tevis By Novelist Jack Matthew | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English | | Trailers And Television Spots |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Image |
| Release Date: 9/27/2005 |
| Running Time: 139 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1976 | | Catalog ID: 1616 | | UPC: 00715515016629 | | Number of Discs: 2 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew | Buck Henry | | Candy Clark | | David Bowie | | Rip Torn | | Anthony B. Richmond - Cinematographer | | Brian Eatwell - Production Designer | | Graeme Clifford - Editor | | John Phillips, et. al. - Original Music By | | Michael Deeley, et. al. - Producer | | Nicolas Roeg - Director | | Paul Mayersberg - Writer | | Si Litvinoff - Executive Producer | | Walter Tevis - Based On Novel By | | John Phillips - Original Music By | | Michael Deeley - Producer | | Paul Mayersberg - Screenplay | | Stomu Yamashta - Original Music By |
| Awards |
Berlin International Film Festival (1976) | | | Nicolas Roeg, Nominee, Golden Berlin Bear |
| Memorable Quotes| "The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you anything."----Thomas Newton (David Bowie) to Bryce (Rip Torn) |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] 1976 sci-fi masterpiece....[It] probes environmental degradation and the corporate state in ever-relevant terms." 09/22/2005 p.118Entertainment Weekly
"It remains visually stunning..." -- Grade: B 10/07/2005 p.59 Premiere
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Roeg is a true cinematic poet, but he's a determinedly modernist one..." 11/01/2005 p.110 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH crowned Roeg as the heir to '60s time-tweaking experimental mentalists like Godard and Resnais." 03/01/2007 p.126 Uncut
3 stars out of 5 -- "[E]ntirely of its own kind, and at times mesmerising." 03/01/2007 p.121 Sight and Sound
"[A] kaleidoscopic jumble of images and ideas....[With] some bravura camera and editing tricks..." 03/01/2007 p.83 Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide 8 of 10
...highly original, fabulously photographed adaptation of Walter Tevis' classic fantasy novel is riveting for the first two-thirds, goes downhill toward the end. Still tops of its kind.
Reel.com 10 of 10
In good sci-fi the genre isn't the heart of the tale, but rather an examination of what makes us human, and whether that's a good thing to be. Nicolas Roeg's 1976 masterpiece, The Man Who Fell to Earth is what a sci-fi film should be: challenging, beautiful, explorative, and thoroughly alien...Nicolas Roeg's early films (Walkabout, Don't Look Now) showed an eye for cinematic splendor, but The Man Who Fell to Earth is the product of an artist at his peak. The cinematography is unbearably beautiful, from shots of the New Mexico desert to visions of a dying Anthea. Mirrors play a key role in the visuals, and there are often shots of mirrors reflecting other mirror, giving the illusion of reflection into infinity. Notions of viewing, sight, and vision come up repeatedly throughout the film--via both dialogue and visuals--from Farnsworth's extreme Coke-bottle glasses to the multiple televisions Newton watches as he mourns for and forgets about his abandonment of his people, planet and, especially, family. Roeg also deals heavily with the concepts of alienation and the other. Newton may be the only alien, but all the characters (all of us?) are outside of society's status systems, and no one could possibly embody universal otherness any better than David Bowie, who, in his frailty and detachment, is the perfect personification of the alien. - James Emanuel Shapiro
Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
It requires an almost courageous leap of the imagination to take Nicholas Roeg's "The Man Who Fell to Earth" seriously. Here's a film so preposterous and posturing, so filled with gaps of logic and continuity, that if it weren't so solemn there'd be the temptation to laugh aloud. And yet, at the same time, this is a film filled with interesting ideas - it's like a bunch of tentative sketches for a more assured film that was never made...There's also an interesting relationship, lightly sketched in, between Buck Henry (as the president of Bowie's business ventures) and Chicago actor Ric Riccardo. The suggestion of affection and caring here is, once again, a nice contrast to the Bowie character's inexorable dropping-out act. The film's cinematography is sensational at times; as he did in "Don't Look Now," Roeg once again presents sex scenes spectacularly intercut with contrasting, contradictory material (one of the breakups is done as counterpoint to "The Third Man"). "The Man Who Fell to Earth" was apparently at least 30 minutes longer in its British version. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the connections and the structure worked better in Roeg's original cut. But what we have here are pieces of a vast, ambitious, complex conception. Some of the pieces are, in themselves, so very good that we really regret they don't fit together. - Roger Ebert
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