1976

DIRECTOR: NICOLAS ROEG PRODUCERS: MICHAEL DEELEY AND BARRY SPIKINGS SCREENPLAY: PAUL MAYERSBERG, FROM THE NOVEL BY WALTER TEVIS STARRING: DAVID BOWIE (THOMAS JEROME NEWTON), RIP TORN (NATHAN BRYCE), CANDY CLARK (MARY-LOU), BUCK HENRY (OLIVER FARNSWORTH), BERNIE CASEY (PETERS), JACKSON D. KANE (PROFESSOR CANUTTI)

The Man Who Fell to Earth

BRITISH LION (BRITAIN) • COLOR, 139 MINUTES (UNCUT VERSION)

An alien establishes a corporation on Earth with plans to save his drought-ravaged planet.

Candy Clark and David Bowie

David Bowie as the alien

“I think we are all strangers in a strange land,” British director Nicolas Roeg has observed. “People from another place are often like aliens.” In his brilliantly bizarre sci-fi drama The Man Who Fell to Earth, Roeg took the familiar trope of an alien landing on Earth and broadened it into a statement about the alienation all humans feel. Through lush visuals and the inspired casting of David Bowie as the androgynous extraterrestrial, The Man Who Fell to Earth expresses the tragic isolation of being an eternal outsider.

Perhaps because Roeg began his career as a cinematographer (working on Fahrenheit 451 [1966], among other films), striking imagery dominates his films. In The Man Who Fell to Earth, according to screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, “We substituted images… rather than plot to drive the story forward.” Using wide tracking shots, prismatic light, and rich color schemes, Roeg and cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond continually contrast the strange with the common. The vast New Mexico sky, the wall of TV sets, the rippling lake, the luminescent space orb, even a sheet of cookies is transformed by Roeg’s camera into an exquisite slow-motion free fall in space. Paintings—particularly Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus—are prominent, as is water.

Water is the substance Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie) travels to Earth to find. Leaving behind his wife and children on the advanced planet of Anthea, Newton becomes a Gatsby-like tycoon in hopes of replenishing his barren world. Keeping his true identity a secret, the alien is soon corrupted by the American society he studied by watching Earth television. Uneducated Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) teaches Newton to filter reality, as she does, through sex and copious amounts of gin, while Mr. Farnsworth and Mr. Bryce help to make their boss—and themselves—wealthy. Only Bryce, played by Rip Torn, suspects the visitor’s true origins. But when Newton prompts Bryce to voice the question he’s been dying to ask, all he can muster is: “Are you Lithuanian?”

For David Bowie fans, the film captures Ziggy Stardust himself in the prime of his 1970s superstardom. In every frame, Bowie’s captivating oddness—the vivid orange hair, the ghostly white skin, the mismatched eyes—is accentuated. Whether struggling through church hymns, playing table tennis, or lounging in seedy New Mexico motel rooms, he exudes an ethereal otherness that isolates him from his average surroundings. “I was definitely living in two separate worlds at the same time,” Bowie said of making the film. “My state of mind was quite fractured and fragmented.” The movie is fragmented, too—a puzzle of non sequitur dialogue and imagery that create a confusingly beautiful mosaic.

David Bowie and Candy Clark

In the days just before David Lynch came along, The Man Who Fell to Earth was as stylishly weird as mainstream cinema got. In certain ways, Roeg anticipates Lynch with his surreal atmosphere and use of 1950s music (Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” Louis Armstrong’s “Blueberry Hill”). Bowie originally planned to provide the soundtrack—he even recorded some demo tapes—but Roeg ultimately had John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas handle the music. (Bowie incorporated his recordings into his 1977 album Low.) For his pitch-perfect portrayal of a spaceman, the musician was awarded a Golden Scroll from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films. “I actually was feeling as alienated as that character was,” Bowie later said. “It was a pretty natural performance. What you see there is David Bowie.”

David Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton

Rip Torn, Nicolas Roeg, and David Bowie on location in New Mexico

Life on the planet Anthea

Except for some stunning alien makeup and fleeting glimpses of space travel and time warps, the film contains few traditional sci-fi elements. “This is a science-fiction film with not a lot of science-fiction tools in it,” said the director. “It’s human science fiction.” Critics, most of them unaware that Bowie was a trained actor before he became a rock star, were pleasantly surprised by his characterization, though they felt the film was too long and strange for most audiences. For its American release, distributors cut several key scenes, rendering an already enigmatic film even more puzzling. It was finally restored for its fortieth anniversary in 2016, the same year as David Bowie’s death.

FAR-OUT FACTS

Roeg and Mayersberg shifted the setting from the novel’s Kentucky to New Mexico, primarily because of the state’s high rate of UFO sightings.

In a 1992 Movieline magazine interview, Bowie revealed that he was heavily using cocaine during the film’s shooting and could barely remember the experience. “I was totally insecure with about ten grams a day in me,” he said. “I was stoned out of my mind from beginning to end.”

The blood used in the surgery scene was Anthony Richmond’s own. Richmond wanted something more authentic than red makeup, so he requested pig’s blood from a butcher. “Bowie heard that and wouldn’t entertain it,” the cinematographer recalled in 2012. “But he would entertain human blood. We had a nurse on set, and Nic [Roeg] made her take my blood. Can you imagine doing that nowadays?”

MIND-BLOWING MOMENT

Following an emotional confrontation with Mary-Lou, Newton strips away his clothes, his eyebrows, his contact lenses, and other artificial accoutrements to reveal his true self: a hairless, androgynous being with golden catlike eyes.

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