Nicholas Roeg Overview

In "Performance," Roeg's first feature film as director, Mick Jagger plays a reclusive rock star who, amid a hedonistic tangle of sex and drugs, insinuates his identity into that of a small-time gangster taking refuge in his home. Making use of... [more]

In "Performance," Roeg's first feature film as director, Mick Jagger plays a reclusive rock star who, amid a hedonistic tangle of sex and drugs, insinuates his identity into that of a small-time gangster taking refuge in his home. Making use of his skills as a cinematographer, Roeg splices in images that run parallel to the narrative. Undetected by the naked eye, these images infuse the film with the shifting, blurry feeling of the unconscious and help to suggest the breakdown of the boundaries of identity. Virtuoso film technique and striking cinematography characterize many of Roeg's efforts, whether the setting is the barren expanse of Australia's outback ("Walkabout") or the reflective mirrors of Venice's canals ("Don't Look Now"). He uses photography in a manner that lends mystique to unconventional encounters and unusual plots. "Don't Look Now" (1973) established Roeg as an avant-garde master of unconventional narrative. The film intercuts past, present, and future to create an unsettling psychological drama. The visual effects Roeg achieves through cinematography further a plot that includes psychics and a drowned daughter. Plot and cinematography again combined to award cult-classic status Roeg's 1976 film "The Man who Fell to Earth." This time Roeg cast David Bowie as an alien sent to Earth to save his ailing planet. With an epic sense of space on the screen, Roeg portrays this dim and dismal planet as an Eliot-like wasteland of disjointed angst. Once on Earth, the alien starts a high-tech company to reap the billions he'll need for his return-voyage space ship -- only he hasn't counted on the intensity and perversity of human greed. Born in 1928, Roeg spent his younger years working on the photography of such masterful films as "Lawrence of Arabia" and Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451." Recently, he's worked with John Malkovich in "Heart of Darkness" and Michael Gambon in "Two Deaths." He also directed the popular film "The Witches" (1990). Where he will head next nobody knows, but odds are that anything photographed by this expert of film technique will be worth watching. [show less]