In his feature film debut, David Bowie plays a man who, well, literally falls to Earth. It turns out he's from a distant desert planet and has come to help his people by bringing back some of the Earth's water supply for them. He assumes the identity of Thomas Newton and uses his alien technology to start a massive corporation to raise the millions of dollars he'll need to build a spaceship to one day return to his home planet and save his family.

As he spends more time on Earth, he hires his eccentric homosexual lawyer (played by Buck Henry, who surprisingly isn't going for laughs in this part) to run the corporation for him and becomes rather reclusive. He retreats to a small hotel in New Mexico where he meets Mary Lou (Candy Clark).

The two begin a romance and they end up living together but their bliss is short lived as they both develop a drinking problem and Newton becomes more and more reclusive, spending his days shut in and glued to the multiple television sets with which he has furnished his house. When he finally gets his plan to return home into action, the government intervenes because they've find out he's from another planet, and things go horribly wrong.

After that intentionally vague plot description, let me state just how wonderfully composed every frame of this movie is. Nicholas Roeg's (Don't Look Now, Bad Timing) wonderful sense of style is displayed perfectly not only with the sweeping landscape shots but also the more intimate and subtle shots used throughout the film. The movie is both beautiful and disturbing in the way it looks and in what it's trying to say.

While the supporting cast members all turn in solid performances, the show here pretty much belongs to Bowie, who puts in quite a solid effort as Newton. With his already natural alien look, he's quite convincing and rather sympathetic without coming across as corny, which would not have been hard given the subject matter that the film deals with. Many musicians aren't able to properly make that transition from stage performer to film performer but Bowie makes it happen in this film, he's as good as anyone really could have been in the role thanks in no small part to his naturally odd screen presence but also through some seriously good acting. With his stage show having always been on the theatrical side it's not a shock that he was able to make the transition to the big screen but the fact that he does it so well and so seamlessly is a pleasant surprise indeed.

Bowie's androgyny works in the films favor as well, particularly in the restored 'Hello Mary Lou' scene in which Bowie and Clark are entwined in the nude. If it weren't for the presence of Bowie's 'dangly man bits' it would be difficult to tell them apart and in the shots where he's not pulling a full frontal it is indeed a bit hard to tell who is who. In fact, in one scene, Clark doubled for Bowie while he was off set ill, and all she had to do to pull it off convincingly was to pull the white hat that the character was supposed to be wearing over her face.

Roeg's wonderful direction and a rock solid performance from Bowie make The Man Who Fell To Earth a movie that is best experienced rather than simply viewed, as it is not without it's faults. There are a few plot holes that don't quite get resolved and characters that could have been better developed, but if you're willing to suspend your disbelief for two-and-a-half-hours, it's a wonderfully made and very bleak film that is a little bit disconcerting with its portrayal of mankind and human nature. Parts of the film are quite poetic, others quite sad but even during some of the slower parts Roeg's film is strong enough to keep your attention held firmly in place.

The look of the film is rather unique as well. The 2.35.1 widescreen canvas is absolutely the right format for the film, and Roeg makes full use of the format pulling in some really nice pans and some interesting close ups thanks for talented cinematography from Anthony B. Richmond (who would work with Roeg again three years later on Bad Timing). The color scheme is also very interesting – it's quite seventies with its regular use of strange blues and greens but it doesn't look dated at all, merely alien – and somehow that's appropriate.

For the record, this is the complete version of the film – just like the Anchor Bay release. There have been home video versions released in the past that were slightly trimmed and you don't have to worry about that with this two disc set as it is fully uncut.

The DVD

Video:

Criterion presents The Man Who Fell To Earth in a 'new, restored high-definition digital 2.35.1 anamoprhic widescreen transfer, supervised and approved by director Nicolas Roeg.' In short, this transfer is pretty darned impressive. There are a few spots in the movie where the colors look a little muted but the movie has always looked this way and it's almost certainly a stylistic choice on the part of the cinematographer and not a fault of the authoring or transfer of the film itself. There's an insane amount of both foreground and background detail present throughout the image, and there are no problems with mpeg compression. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and black levels stay strong and deep. Color reproduction is, overall, very nice and aside from a perfectly understandable amount of fine film grain, there's really not much worth complaining about here. The director approved transfer on this DVD is a thing of beauty. There's no color bleeding at all and line shimmering and edge enhancement are never problematic during playback.