Walkabout pretty well blew my mind when I saw it in film school.
RIP.
Walkabout pretty well blew my mind, too. When I saw it at the tender age of 8.
(My mom for some reason thought it was like Swiss Family Robinson …)
Performance. Still haunts me. Still relevant.
Are his films part of the Criterion Collection? I’ve never heard of them.
Watched Performance again recently. It’s actually my least favourite of his (older) films, but I like the others a lot. Especially Walkabout and The Man Who Fell To Earth.
I guess the temptation with Roeg is to wonder how it all seemed to slip away from him in the 1980s…and to tsk and shake a head that he never seemed to find the spark he had in that run of incredible films in the 70s.
But…then you realize that Roeg was like 42 or so when he directed Performance, and well into his mid to late 50s when he seemed to lose the path a bit. But…a lot of directors start to fade creatively as they get to that age. I think the real lament is that Roeg didn’t start directing until later in life. That incredible run of 1970s films was the peak of a natural creative arc where we only saw glimpses of the rise.
My buddy Brian Jones (not the Rolling Stones dead guitarist) is Jim Henson’s biographer (Brian’s biographies are great – he’s done Washington Irving, George Lucas, Henson, and coming soon…Dr. Seuss). He had this neat thread about Roeg and one of this last/only films where he was given a budget and mainstream marketing campaign.
Dahl was right.
On the ending anyway. He was wrong about lots of things.
He really gets fantastic performances in both of those, especially Man Who Fell.
I have to confess I thought Roeg had passed away a long time ago, but it’s sad news nonetheless. Walkabout was a hugely influential film. It was made during a time when the domestic Australian film revival was barely a year old, and struggling with its image. What was popular with local audiences were larrikin sex comedies like Alvin Purple, Stork, and Barry McKenzie, but the international success of Walkabout encouraged the nascent industry to reevaluate their goals, and invest in an existing production company to establish the first state film body, the South Australian Film Corporation, which three years later would release Picnic at Hanging Rock. Even though he was English, Roeg helped Aussie national cinema change priorities and breakout by focusing on “arty” films.
My memory of watching The Witches at my grandparents as a little kid remains one of my most terrifying viewing experiences ever - I would love to revisit it at some point, but I don’t want to undo my childhood scares! His prospecting film starring Gene Hackman, Eureka, seems ripe for rediscovery, especially when you see the supporting cast (Joe Pesci, Rutger Hauer, Joe Spinell, and Mickey Rourke - WTF!!!).
Yeah, I finally saw this due to Mark Cousins championing it as an overlooked minor masterpiece and putting it on his top 10 list for Sight & Sound. I finally tracked it down a few years ago (they haven’t made it very easy to see), and really dug it.
Wow, we’re in sync then! After watching Mark Cousins amazing documentary series, The Story of Film, I started to check out his favorite films, which is how I ended up watching Eureka. :)
I’ll echo the praise for Walkabout, Performance, and Man Who Fell To Earth. I remember my roommate at the time and I dropping acid on the 4th of July and going to see the latter in a little revival house in San Francisco, followed by going to see fireworks (real ones).
Adam and Joe Mark Cousins is best Mark Cousins.
hm… nobody mentioned Don’t look now, which is one creepy horror film with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie . Usually I feel bored when there are prolonged sex scenes in movies, but Roeg did great work in this one. The atmosphere of decaying Venice is just fantastic