Nicolas Roeg, director of "The man who fell on Earth", "The Witches", dies at age 90



[ad_1]

Renowned director and filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, whose offbeat films included "Performance", "Do not Look Now", "The Witches" and "The Man Who Falled to Earth" passed away. He was 90 years old.

His son Nicolas Roeg Jr. told the BBC that his father died on Friday night.

A daring and influential artisan, Roeg's idiosyncratic films have influenced filmmakers including Danny Boyle and Steven Soderbergh.

He worked since the beginning of the company and in the 1960s he was in great demand as a director of photography, responsible for the development of films like "Petulia", "Away from the crowd" and " Fahrenheit 451 ".

The controversial, strangely convincing "performance" that Roeg co-directed with Donald Cammell and starring Mick Jagger, was almost unpublished and was later recited by Warner Bros .; the studio's executives found this incomprehensible as a gangster thriller. It was eventually cross-checked, released in 1970 as a modest company and decades later, it received a favorable reception as a classic British film.

His fractured story shows the influence of Richard Lester, as well as Jean-Luc Godard and other European authors of the time, although Roeg works with an ever darker palette and a deeper psychological level.

He also defined Roeg as a director to watch. His subsequent tours such as "Walkabout", "Do not Look Now" and "The Man Who Fell to Earth", starring David Bowie, testify to a strong development in his style. Each was a captivating and idiosyncratic tale with highly stylized performances – and a beautiful gloomy cinematography.

Roeg immediately hit again with his saga of the Australian outback, "Walkabout", on which he once again played twice. As in "Performance," the story was fractured and offered a certain mysticism that captivated audiences.

Two years later, in 1973, Roeg directed "Don 't Look Now", with two main stars, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, in the lead roles. This occult story taking place in Venice was perhaps his most realized and sullen thriller, though it never reached a mass audience, as "The Exorcist" had eclipsed it the year of its publication.

As he had exploited Jagger's threatening call in "Performance," Roeg wondered wonderfully using Bowie's extraterrestrial character in "The Man Who Fell On Earth," another strange but satisfying film about a visitor of 39, another planet.

More recent films, such as the troubling 1980s romantic tragedy "Bad Timing: A Obsual Sensual", are the first of his films with future wife Theresa Russell; "Insignificance", based on Terry Johnson's bold piece; and "Eureka", along with Gene Hackman, proved less popular even as he was telling dramatic stories in a slightly simpler way.

Perhaps his most successful recent film is "The Witches" from the 1990s, a studio work performed by Anjelica Huston based on a strange children's tale by Roald Dahl.

"Castaway", in 1987, was best known for its beautiful cinematography. His selection "A ballo in maschera" from the 1988 "Aria" compilation film was impressive, but "Track 29", co-star of the future Oscar winner, Gary Oldman, was confusing for many critics . Among his many long-term projects that have not come to the screen, Roeg is preparing to find funding for "Kiss of Life", which is based on the French edgy novel "Mygale", which will later be realized in the feature film "The Skin I Live". In "Pedro Almodovar.

Nicolas Jack Roeg was born in London. After his military service, during which he worked as a projectionist, he started in the film industry in 1947 as a desk boy and apprentice editor. In 1950, he worked in MGM's London studios and rose through the ranks to become an assistant cameraman and then to enlighten a cameraman. During the 1950s, he worked on "Bhowani Junction" and "The Trials of Oscar Wilde". He was the director of photography for low budget films such as "Jazz Boat", "The Great Van Robbery" and "Information Received".

Roeg first made a strong impression on the profession as a second goal of the 1962 epic, "Lawrence of Arabia." Subsequently, his missions ranged from lighthearted "Just for Fun" and "Seaside Swingers" to prestigious articles such as "The Caretaker" and "Nothing but the Best" and a wide variety of missions including " The mask of the red death "by Roger Corman. , "Lester's films" A fun thing that goes on the way to the forum "and" Petulia "," Fahrenheit 451 "by François Truffaut and" Far From The Madding Crowd "by John Trlesaut. second unit director on "Judith" in 1965 and shot some scenes from 1966 for James Bond parodying "Casino Royale".

When his first film "The Witches", "Cold Heaven", did not make an impression, he came back on television: "Heart of Darkness" of 1993, "Full Body Massage" of 1995 and "Samson and Delilah" of 1996 were cohesive . dramatically centered, while the televised adaptation of Roeg's 1989 Sweet Bird of Youth with Elizabeth Taylor was an adequate representation of Tennessee Williams' melodrama. His soap opera "Two Deaths", produced in 1996 by BBC Films, about the Serbo-Croat conflict, was well received, even if it was not widely distributed.

His first film on screen for over 10 years, "Puffball: the eyeball of the devil", dates from 2007, was little known.

In 1994, Roeg was named a member of the British Film Institute, an award given to individuals "in recognition of their outstanding contribution to film or television culture". The London Film Critics Circle awarded Roeg its Dilys Powell Award for Film Excellence in 2011 and Roeg published his memoirs, "The World Is Ever Evolving" (Faber and Faber) in 2013.

Roeg is survived by his third wife, actress Harriet Harper, as well as his four children with his first wife, actress Susan Stephen, who includes producer Nicolas Roeg Jr., Luc Roeg, first ad Sholto J. Roegand first d. Waldo Roeg; and two children with his second wife, actress Russell, actor Max Roeg and cameraman Statten Roeg.

Related stories:

Kim Porter's family remembers her as a "special angel"

Eddie C. Campbell, West Side blues master, dies at 79

Julie Andrews will play a key role in "Aquaman"

[ad_2]
Source link