Musicians in Movies: The Man Who Fell to Earth (Dir Nicolas Roeg , 2h18m, 1975)

Most of the musicians we have discussed this season have, at best, a minor connection to cinema; we already know that Sinatra believed The Man with the Golden Arm should have won him an Oscar, only Ringo Starr would really continue acting after A Hard Day's Night, with George Harrison regarding the film as "adaquate" in a 1987 interview. From my research, Jagger has never publicly commented on his role in Performance - ironic given he was one of the few to walk away from the picture largely intact (!) whilst Kristofferson will be better remembered for A Star is Born (1976). Thus, inevitably for a season considering musicians in movies, this way comes David Bowie. 

In a career that lasted from the late 1960s to his death in 2016, Bowie became as well known as an actor as a musician-appearing in filmss as various as a vampire in The Hunger, a British soldier in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, a ruler of muppets in Labyrinth, and cameos in everything from The Prestige to Zoolander. Yet, it is his debut starring role, as the alien Thomas Jerome Newton, that Bowie is arguably best known for, the singer's alien rockstars, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, and the increasingly drug-addled Bowie of 1975 appropriately reflected via the adaption of Walter Tevis' 1962 novel, in a tale of an alien traveller arriving on Earth in search of a salvation for his dying home planet and finding the corruptive influence of alcohol, sex and money.

1975. Nicolas Roeg has directed the outback survival tale, Walkabout, and icy thriller Don't Look Now, released as a double-bill with The Wicker Man. Donald Cammell has brought the Tevis novel to Roeg's attention - Roeg has, once more, partnered with a rockstar to play his protagonist after co-directing Performance, Bowie being picked for the role over Peter O Toole and, slightly bizarrely, author Michael Crichton. Bowie of this era is as electrifying a presence as he is unpredictable - this is the Bowie of the White Soul/Thin White Duke personas, painfully underweight and heavily addicted to cocaine, though Roeg and Bowie both downplayed this in more recent interviews, though, much like Station To Station, Bowie claimed he could remember little of its production

Into this enters Thomas Jerome Newton. Like Jagger's Turner, there may be a fair degree of perfect casting - a self-styled "Starman" an alien, now trapped in the increasingly bad energies of the land he has travelled in - but here the similarities end. Introduced stumbling through the Arizona desert sun -there's the sense both of fragile humanity, as the traveller sprawls across a bench, and the start of an unnerving sense of who, or what, Newton is, as the ring he sells off is revealled to be one of hundreds, whilst a sequence soon after sees the traveller drink from a stream. Yet, this is no mere transient, and, arriving at the home of lawyer  Farnsworth (Buck Henry), Newton soon reveals himself to be in property of highly advanced technology. Via a jumpcut, Newton is now hugely rich, and in charge of World Enterprises Corporation, turning the company's focus, to the bemusement of his underlings and rivals, towards going into space.

Throughout all of this, Newton - Bowie - is detatched; it's easy to consider these early sequences as working in part because David Bowie of 1975 is being whisked from hotel to studio to stadium, sealed, as Newton is, from the outside world by their own choice. This is about to change; arriving back in New Mexico, Newton begins a friendship, and soon a relationship with hotel worker Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), who introduces him to earthly vices, from sex and alcohol to religion. We see, before our eyes, through the often stark cinematography of Roeg and DoP, Anthony B. Richmond, Newton slowly transform into a addled shadow of himself, an alcoholic recluse glued to banks of televisions, his mission, represented by vignettes of his planet, and surreal, often abstract imagery, forgotten as Newton loses himself in hedonism. 

There is a terrible vulnerability to Newton, to the rake thin Bowie, particularly when confronted by philandering teacher turned World Enterprises employee, Dr. Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn), who believes he has uncovered Newton's true identity as an extraterrestial. Even as the film steps toward a dark denoument, Newton's trust in Mary-Lou, in Bryce, fatally misplaced and his attempts to reveal his true identity only leading to further addictions and tighter confinement, so Roeg focuses all the more on Bowie, on his gaunt face, on the shock of dyed red hair that will eventually arrive back on the cover of Low, fading into an airbrushed sunset. He is not only otherworldly in this latter half of the film, albeit in a very different way to the rock and roll guises he'd slipped into over the last five years, but almost painfully fragile, Richmond's camera often lingering on Bowie's face for seconds at a time. There is something frightening about this fragility, even as Newton remains young whilst the rest of the cast ages around him.

The delineation between Bowie and Newton is at points paper-thin, and there something tragic about the eventual fate of the on-screen alien; away from the worlds of celuloid, Bowie would eventually escape to Berlin and quit his addiction, but not escape the shadow of Thomas Jerome Newton; Bowie in costume would appear on the cover of Low, which also featured (depending on who you ask) reworked tracks from the unrealised score of the film. Bowie would play many roles over the next forty years of his life, but few would creep back from the set to the studio like The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Newton's spectre and his fate would haunt the rockstar,  his final creative work of his life, the musical Lazarus, acting as both sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth, and summary of Bowie's career. 

It's easy to consider Newton as just another alter-ego, another mask to add to the pile, of Ziggy and Jareth, Aladdin and Jack, and, ultimately, the "role" of David Bowie himself. We have considered rockstars playing fictionalised or heightened versions of themselves, clawing their way back to fame via a choice role, or simply the musician/actor as mutable roles played by the same person. No other acting role, arguably, remains as inportant to understanding their respective player, their respective rock and roll star, as Newton does for David Bowie.

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

The Man Who Fell to Earth is available via BluRay from Criterion and streaming from AppleTV

Next week, and next month, we round out 2025 with a month-long tribute to the great David Lynch, beginning with his nuanced, empathetic portrait of Joseph Merrick in The Elephant Man. 

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