The Man Who Fell to Earth
January 2006 Reviewed by: Wes Marshall Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

David Bowie is the titular character, come to earth in search of a way to take water back to his dying planet. He brings with him several devices unknown on earth, which he promptly patents as inventions, making him wildly rich. While trying to use his wealth to develop a way to ship water, he falls prey to human frailty, predatory businessmen, and love.

Although the film is ostensibly science fiction, scratch the surface and what we really have is a tragedy. The characters played by Bowie, Clark and Henry all start off as sad and end up as heartbreaking. David Bowie was the perfect choice for this alien, given his bizarre looks and his then recent concertizing as Ziggy Stardust. While he sometimes seems bizarre, what would you expect from an extraterrestrial? Candy Clark acts beautifully, touching you with her open, naïve love and willingness to have her heart torn apart. Henry’s unguarded affection for another man is doomed from the start, and he leaves you feeling the pain.

All of this is handled with great restraint by director Nicolas Roeg. A cameraman by trade -- he had worked on Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago -- Roeg had already made two of the most beautiful films of the 1970s (Walkabout and Don’t Look Now). The Man Who Fell to Earth was to be his magnum opus, but when Cinema 5 Distribution, the American distributor of the film, saw it, they pronounced it unintelligible and cut 30 minutes, which really did make it unintelligible. The film ended up being a cult piece watched only by Bowie fanatics.

In 1994, The Criterion Collection came to the rescue, offering a $100 laserdisc set that restored Roeg’s original cut, which made a lot more sense of both the character development and the plot line. Since then, the film has seen two other DVD releases, a 1998 DVD by Fox Lorber that was letterboxed, and a 2003 edition from Anchor Bay that was anamorphic and included a featurette called Watching the Alien.

Criterion’s new release beats all versions. Most importantly, Roeg, a man with an artistic eye, has overseen the remastering, and the film looks gorgeous. We also get the audio commentary by director Nicolas Roeg and actors David Bowie and Buck Henry that was on the 1994 laserdisc, new video interviews with actors Candy Clark and Rip Torn and with screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, trailers and television spots, and for the readers amongst us, a paperback reprint of Walter Tevis's original novel.

Roeg would go on to make more movies, but he would never again regain the incredible eye-catching beauty and multifaceted depth of storytelling that he accomplished with Walkabout, Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth. Thankfully all three are available on DVD. Walkabout has long been available in a director-approved edition from The Criterion Collection, and now we have The Man Who Fell to Earth. Perhaps Criterion will tackle Don’t Look Now next? We can only hope.

• Go Back