Tonight (Mon) at Anthology - 9pm
Bowie-Brecht BAAL
Free!
9:00 PM
BAAL - FREE SCREENING!
1962, 62 min, digital
This screening is part of: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: THE FILMS OF ALAN CLARKE
Film Notes
With David Bowie and Zoë Wanamaker.
Clarke began his career directing for the stage, and though often (misleadingly) stereotyped as a naturalistic filmmaker, his early interest in Bertolt Brecht is apparent in various ways, small and large, throughout his body of work. Never so clearly, of course, as in his one actual Brecht adaptation, BAAL. Starring David Bowie, this hour-long piece appropriately shows Clarke at his most unrestrainedly avant-garde, taking full advantage of the video technology at his disposal to indulge in split screen and superimposition effects, patently artificial sets, and intermittent songs performed by Bowie directly to the camera. As debauched artist-poet Baal, who defies bourgeois society and roams the countryside womanizing, brawling, and eventually committing murder, Bowie is typically magnetic. |
