David Bowie: The Man Who Fell to Earth

While The Man Who Fell to Earth earned only mixed reviews upon release, the film has grown a strong cult following, befitting to such a strange and beguiling feature film. Bowie followed up with the World War I drama Just a Gigolo (1978), which was directed by icon David Hemmings. The film may not be talked about very often but any film that features such an oddball ensemble of players (Kim Novak and screen legend Marlene Dietrich rounded out the cast) deserves a full restoration down the road.

As Bowie was ever transforming musically in the 1970s and 1980s, so to was his on-the-side acting career. In 1980, Bowie stared in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man playing the title role sans make-up; the critics were impressed. In 1983 came another iconic and startlingly weird film role as John Blaylock in Tony Scott’s erotic vampire revisionist movie The Hunger. Seductive and entrancing, the blistery pop film centered on the love triangle of immortal Miriam (Catherine Deneuve), her companion John and gerontologist Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon). A movie this off of center was likely never going to be understood or widely praised at the time (it wasn’t) but has over time garner a nice cult following; a remake of the film was even tinkering around Warner Bros. a few years ago.

After co-starring in Julien Temple’s Absolute Beginners (1986), Bowie claimed one more iconic film performance in the decade with another strange tale – Labyrinth (1986). The dark adventure fantasy from director Jim Henson befuddled filmgoers and critics at the time, a norm for Bowie’s film career but has once again proved a classic bit of filmmaking outside of its time. In particular, with modern cinema’s obsession with universes and the fantastical, Labyrinth in its singular ingenuity concerning a self-centered 16-year-old girl (Jennifer Connelly, in a breakthrough role) tasked with saving her younger brother after the Goblin King (Bowie) whisks him away at her request, serves as a mighty predecessor to all the Hobbits and Harry Potters and their ilk. Bowie again furthered his own myth and mystique.

Of which made a wondrous about-faced turn as Bowie followed that up playing Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). We like to praise actors for their range and ability to take risks but this has to mark as one of the most unusual and impressive double bills in cinematic history.

As the 90s rolled on, Bowie of course hold nothing to prove but still took interesting parts in a few films along the way. He appeared in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) with another singular visionary, David Lynch, and portrayed Andy Warhol in the biopic Basquait (1996) for director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell in the Butterfly). It was a small but vital role reinforcing the power of a creative star turn.

The last major part that Bowie took on for the silver screen was a particular doozy: as Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan’s visually dazzling mystery The Prestige (2006). The film centered around a dueling pair of magicians (played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale), but it’s Bowie’s presence again- perfectly complimented by Wally Pfister’s Oscar nominated cinematography- that lends the film weight, gravitas a genuine sense of magic.

It may have the music, the glam rock, the Ziggy Stardust and the “Space Oddity” and the “Life on Mars” that made Bowie the legend, but his gifts and contributions to the cinema are undisputed. His musical legend and wholly original mythical presence even provided some of the backstory of Todd Haynes’ 1998 glam rock epic Velvet Goldmine, a film much like Bowie’s own that took some time to truly find its adoring audience. Velvet Goldmine, told in a similar fashion as Citizen Kane, traces the career and subsequent disappearance of fictional 1970s glam rocker Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Slade was traced in the Bowie mold. While the icon reportedly was cool on the script and refused to offer his songs for the film, Velvet Goldmine makes for an intriguing quasi-biopic.

It is in the soundtrack of our lives that Bowie’s legend shines the brightest and surely enough, the cinema has utilized that to maximum effect in magnificent ways. Examples run the gamut, but the startling cue to “Young Americans” following the brutality that closes Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2003), the swoony silliness of “Heroes” entangled in the “Elephant Love Medley” of Moulin Rouge! (2001), and the same song climaxing the rousing bridge cross in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) are a few recent favorites showcasing the flexibility and universality of his classic works.

On a personal note, one of my absolute favorite sequences on screen in the past few years is the joyous, wonderfully energetic sight of Greta Gerwig dancing and side-stepping the streets of a modern/classical New York City in Frances Ha (2013) to the accompaniment of Bowie’s “Modern Love.” Bowie’s passing is blisteringly sad but his cultural imprint will live forever.