The Man Who Fell to Earth

Plot synopsis:
Thomas Jerome Newton is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth from a distant planet on a mission to take water back to his home planet, which is experiencing a catastrophic drought.
Newton uses the advanced technology of his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth, and acquires incredible wealth as the head of a technology-based conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, aided by leading patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth. His wealth is needed to construct a space vehicle with the intention of shipping water back to his home planet. While revisiting New Mexico, he meets Mary-Lou, a lonely, unloved, and simple girl who works as a maid, bell-hop, and elevator operator in a small hotel; he tells her he is English. Mary-Lou introduces Newton to many customs of Earth, including church-going, alcohol, and sex. She and Newton live together in a house Newton has built close to where he first landed in New Mexico.
Meanwhile, Dr. Nathan Bryce, a former womaniser and college professor, has landed a job as a fuel technician with World Enterprises and slowly becomes Newton's confidant. Bryce senses Newton's alienness and arranges a meeting with Newton at his home where he has hidden a special X-ray camera. When he steals a picture of Newton with the camera, it reveals Newton's alien physiology. Newton's appetite for alcohol and television (he watches multiple televisions at once) becomes crippling and he and Mary-Lou fight. Realizing that Bryce has learnt his secret, Newton reveals his alien form to Mary-Lou, and her resulting reaction is one of pure shock and horror. He leaves her.
Newton completes the spaceship and attempts to take it on its maiden voyage amid intense press exposure. However, just before his scheduled take-off, he is seized and detained, apparently by the government and a rival company; his business partner, Farnsworth, is murdered. The government, which has apparently been told by Bryce that Newton is an alien, holds him captive in a locked luxury apartment, constructed deep within a hotel. During his stay, they keep him sedated with alcohol (to which he has become addicted) and continuously subject him to rigorous medical tests – notably one involving X-rays which causes the contact lenses he wears as part of his human disguise to permanently affix themselves to his eyes.
Toward the end of his years of captivity, he is visited again by Mary-Lou, who is now much older and whose looks have been ravaged by alcohol and time. They have mock-violent, playful sex that involves firing a gun with blanks, and afterwards occupy their time drinking and playing table tennis. Mary-Lou declares that she no longer loves him, while he says that he doesn't love her either. She leaves him. Eventually Newton discovers that his "prison," now derelict, is unlocked, and he leaves.
Throughout the film are brief sequences of his wife and children back on his home planet, slowly dying, and by the end of the film they are dead and Newton is stuck on Earth, broken, alcoholic, and alone. He creates a recording with alien messages, which he hopes will be broadcast via radio to his home planet. Bryce, who has since married Mary-Lou, buys a copy of the album and meets Newton at an outside restaurant in town. Newton is still rich and young looking despite the passage of many years. However, Newton has also fallen into depression and alcoholism and the film ends with an inebriated Newton passing out in his cafe chair.

Tags: cult, psychedelic, murder, atmospheric

Review:
See it twice (I had to) and it will sink in, or read the IMDB reviews to get a taste before you digest it wholeheartedly.Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) lands, as surely all self respecting aliens would choose to do, in New Mexico.
To get the maximum benefit from the film, you simply have to take these unexplained occurrences - and also the rapid and disjointed passing of time - on board, because the whole is more significant and understandable than its component parts.Newton arrives on Earth to suck on the capitalist system, recruiting a top patent's lawyer (Buck Henry - superb as Oliver Farnsworth) along the way to help quickly mould his business idea, World Enterprises, into an immense scientific and commercial colossus.
An alien falls to earth in search of water for his planet, and somehow loses his way, corrupted by materialism, sex, alcohol, the physical world.I recall Candy Clark's cool, almost southern voice (just saw her in a cameo performance tonight, playing Christopher Walken's girlfriend in the 1986 "At Close Range, another great) purring at Bowie after he has built a little house for her at the end of a dock, "You're such a nice man," and there is something so unsettled about the cinematography -- cloudy and dark and too still -- in the scene that you know he is definitely NOT a nice man, but deeply troubled and unable to respond to human emotions.
The Man Who Fell To Earth is essential viewing(unless of course movies that are hard to follow or a naked David Bowie aren't your thing)..
I have just watched "The Man Who Fell to Earth" from beginning to end after seeing several scenes here and there from years of flipping past the sci-fi channel or whatever other channel this film might've been shown on.
Well...quite simply, David Bowie, in his first and probably one of his best on-screen performances, is an alien on Earth trying to find a way to get water back to his world.
The rest of the cast performs rather competently, although nobody's performance shines as much as Bowie's (although Candy Clarke is pretty good in some scenes, and Rip Torn's deadpan performance is a bit of dry humor).Dispute me if you must, I give this movie ***1/2 out of ****..
I went into this film expecting something more like Walkabout, because that is all I had seen of Nicholas Roeg's work previously, and the thought of David Bowie being in it enticed me.
In that hour, Bowie's character outlines three basic patents -- including two which we can recognize today as digital cameras and music.A particularly fascinating scene has our newly rich and already bored alien watching about 20 TV sets at once, while holding a small, battery-powered propeller.
No it's not a musical.My favourite lines in the movie are the CIA guy saying "This is modern America and we intend to keep it that way" (when threatened by the future-shock tech Mr.Newton has brought; also, "Yes, I think you've had enough, Mr. Newton." Great effects, especially the sex scene, parts of which were banned in the US when first released..
Maybe I'm the problem...Anyway David Bowie here plays a part which seemed to haunt him for years to come, in the aftermath of the film alone, he used images from the movie for two of his album covers, a 12-inch single sleeve while it also seems to inspire tracks on his "Station To Station", "Low" and "Scary Monsters" albums not to mention the famous "Ashes To Ashes" video.
In one of the film's most telling lines, he forgives his captor-torturer, as he admits his own race would gave treated a visiting earthling in the exact same way.There's solid back-up to Bowie's central role with a variety of convincingly portrayed stock characters.
I would still say there were too many scenes which for me played like Bowie's own cut-up method for lyrics at around this time, by which I mean I found them puzzling, strange and unconnected.
And why no Bowie soundtrack?Still, an interesting if confounding movie, as strangely addictive in its way as television is to Newton..
But something just doesn't feel like it goes the way it should, even when things are fascinating in a scene, maybe even brilliant, and the actors do end up trying their best along with Roeg's knack at capturing a mood in a specific, strange but bewildering way.It isn't totally clear where the plot could be headed, aside from the usual oblivion of the protagonist to the wretched TV, excess of alcohol, and some drugs to boot.
I even loved the quirky, old rock and roll/jazz type of music Roeg used, when the first assumption would be Bowie would glam-rock the whole place up.If there's anything that keeps the Man Who Fell to Earth from being a truly spectacular cult item though, if only for this reviewer, it's a certain mood overall to the piece, an uncertainty as to what to do with everything in the book and how to make it so unusual a piece of science fiction that its own alienation could potentially affect the viewer in unexpected ways.
I mean, I wasn't sure if David Bowie was going to be able to carry a movie like this, but he was great.
Still, for me to like a movie, it needs to have a good plot or at least interesting characters.Speaking of 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is something else I must say.
I'll be completely honest - out of all of the interesting scenes in The Man Who Fell to Earth, the one that I remember the best is the one where David Bowie shows Candy Clark his real eyes and she wets herself.
And why is it that they use footage from one of the Apollo rockets (I think it's Apollo 11, but I'm not sure) blasting off into space when David Bowie is supposed to be "The Man Who Fell to Earth"?
The film when watched in spoon fed fashion causes brain damage, the same way the TV wall in Bowie's suite was drilling into his mind - incoherent images that fails to capture reality - the water on earth is an illusion that lured Bowie into his destruction.The chaos that frustrated me, including totally unrelated scenes and broken scene sequences illustrate the frustration and confusion experience by Bowie.
An alien (David Bowie) comes to Earth to bring back glorious water to his ailing planet.
David Bowie plays a sad, quiet alien who comes to earth to find water for his drought-stricken home planet..
David Bowie plays an alien who comes to Earth to get water for his dying family.
Torn (a great actor) seems confused at first (although that COULD be because of Roeg's scatter shoot editing) but, as the movie progresses, he gets better.So, it is far too long and Roeg should have stuck to the story but the acting and storyline keep you watching..
Despite David Bowie's spot-on casting in the lead as an alien, and director Nicolas Roeg's penchant for the sublimely bizarre, "The Man Who Fell To Earth" showed me nothing.
So casting him in Nic Roeg's cult sci-fi The Man Who Fell to Earth as Thomas Jerome Newton had a certain inevitability: the bloke who frequently sung about starmen should now play one.
(Of course, there's also a pleasing symmetry in the fact that Bowie's son Duncan Jones, has written and directed a film set on the Moon.) While Roeg's may not be the only movie to feature a drunk alien (see also E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Superman III) it's full of iconic, unforgettable images - the timeslips, Newton's draught-ridden planet, the multi-screen viewing.
Some Bowie jokes throughout the movie - his inability to sing the English hymn Jerusalem in church, and the display for the recently released 'Young Americans' album in the record store towards the end of the film to name but two.Bowie at his best, mind you it's a role he has played for most of his working life!.
The Man Who Fell to Earth features a great turn by David Bowie, who was beginning his coke fueled Thin White Duke period.
This really plays into his performance and it's hard to tell where Bowie ends and Thomas Jerome Newton begins.In fact I rate all of the performances in the film highly.
The characteristic Bowie beauty of the alien Thomas is stark contrast to his real self, which, while not revoltingly ugly, does NOT look like David Bowie.The sex scenes are more artistic than crude or pornographic, although during the scene with the pistol, you do see a flash of The Gentleman's "assets." Bowiegasm waiting to happen, although I found the film and Bowie sexy for reasons higher than getting to see his "lowers."One thing that may disappoint many a fan of the music of this beautiful and gifted fellow is that David, that grand and enchanting monarch of the music world, has nothing to do with this film as far as music is concerned, due to contractual disputes.
He's the EMPEROR of rock-n-roll) sings like an angel (am listening to the LOW album as I type this.)The thing that I loved about this film is that I felt for Thomas's plight, both in connection with his homeworld and in connection with Earth.A must-see for Bowie fans everywhere..
David Bowie plays the role of an alien that comes to Earth.
"The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a story about an alien (David Bowie) who has come to Earth on a desperate mission to save his family.
David Bowie is excellent as Newton, and there also good performances by Buck Henry, Rip Torn, and Candy Clark.
(At least unlike most films, they were almost fair by showing David Bowie naked too.)I don't even mind the occasional slow moving film with little plot (made it through all of Babette's Feast) and I just watched Easy Rider and could appreciate it's message about American's fear of difference and truly free people - despite finding the movie overall very slow and rather boring.
Somehow though this failed to interest me on any level (other than the enjoyment of seeing David Bowie be an alien).The whole film really served no purpose, I felt that I didn't get anything from it and that I had wasted hours of my time.
Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth is a bit of a trippy viewing experience full of layered themes of isolation and loneliness excellently portrayed through main star David Bowie's performance to which he later re-counted was the perfect role as to what he was experiencing personally at that time in his life (The Thin White Duke era) .
The film aims high in terms of its ideas but doesn't always hit the target, it ends up being a mixed bag.It's a not so complex plot and one we have seen many times before and since, An Alien Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie) falls into earth in order to gather what he needs (in this case water) to collect and bring it back in order to save his dying planet (Which remains unnamed).
Candy Clark is possibly the weakest point in terms of acting although she does a decent job portraying a damaged soul dependent on drink and Newton, it's her more hysterical scenes that get slightly irritating.Roeg goes for an evocative style in terms of his direction it's like he's out to shock with soft porn sex scenes featuring male and female full frontal nudity.
Does it make Newton (David Bowie) try to forget his past life?At the start of the film we see what appears to be a comet entering earth's orbit.
I picked this up on it's anniversary re-release a couple of years back and wanted to share with my partner but was worried she would think it trash...she didn't.The film is a basic simple story of an alien coming to earth to take water back for his planet.
Maybe Starman David Bowie was born to play the title role in The Man Who Fell To Earth, an avant-garde disjointed sci fi film from director Nicolas Roeg.Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) is an alien who lands in New Mexico with some precious rings, a British passport and some rudimentary knowledge of patents.
With this technology he hopes to patent a number of lucrative inventions in order to generate enough wealth to aid his desperate cause.As things turn out for Tommy, he soon becomes addicted to alcohol and TV (what a combo), guzzling down high-quality liquor while endlessly viewing television, having 20 TV sets sitting out in front of him, all at once.If nothing else, this rather unusual Sci-Fi/Thriller from 1976 is well-worth a view just to catch David Bowie at the absolute pinnacle of his world fame as a Pop Idol.Directed by Nicolas Roeg, this film contains some really impressive make-up effects..
The ultimate down to earth sci-fi ever - dramatic story, fantastic production, the definitive Nicolas Roeg film with David Bowie as the alien of all aliens.
The Criterion Collection presents the film in director's uncut version (139 minutes) with options of audio commentary by director Nicolas Roeg along with actors David Bowie and Buck Henry, and a second disc full of behind the scenes interviews with screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, video with Candy Clark and Rip Torn talking about their experiences on the set, production designer Brian Eatwell and costume designer May Routh, and an audio radio interview with author Walter Tevis, whose novel was adapted to screen and a reprint special accompanies the DVD package."The Man Who Fell to Earth" is the most dramatic sci-fi alien film ever, holding its own without laser gun battles or explosive action sequences or anything super hi-tech.
Once i used to be a mad Bowie fan, and, as most of them do, i tried to obtain everything related to this man.And there was a film having David in his best, and all way long ,and with a sci-fi plot!
Plus, every now and then, you'll be seeing him in his alien form, scaring the life out of poor Mary-Lou (played by "American Graffiti" star Candy Clark), so that was interesting!A must see for all Sci-Fi fans, and of course, David Bowie fans!.
(None of the sex scenes was really necessary, and they all appear to have been a personal indulgence of the director.) This film, or at least the publicly released version of it, is now being seen again far and wide, as we look back in retrospect at the extraordinary phenomenon which was David Bowie.
Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth to get water for his dying planet.
(A major example of this is the change of Betty Jo, Newton's middle aged house keeper to Mary Lou, a young woman who he becomes sexually involved with.) I've read the book and scene the movie (both multiple times) and I believe that the over all feeling of the book is preserved in the film.
He is so believable as Thomas Jerome Newton, a man from Anthea, that I've actually begun to question whether or not he might truly be from another planet.I'd go further into detail about how every bit of this movie works, but I certainly don't want this comment turning into a term paper (Heaven only knows I write enough of those).A truly timeless film, The Man Who Fell to Earth speaks to every generation (I've watched it with everyone from my college girlfriends to my mother).
And the more you understand the story, the more you get pulled into the film's vision.I have not read the book nor the original screenplay, but Bryce (Rip Torn) may have a lot to do with this whole movie, after all his character is one of the first to be introduced  in the film(If you blink you'll miss him) This might explain how Newton (David Bowie) soons carry his similar characteristics.
As for the rest of the movie, it is well-done, not to be taken seriously, yet this is a flick that can plant images and thoughts into your mind about what happens if a cosmopolitan "ALIEN" such as Newton could drop into the earth's atmosphere.Like I said, re-view the film (Restored version) and decide for yourself..
However I like Roeg's work, and had enjoyed the novel.Whenever you've read the book, the film (however good or bad) always seems a disappointment.
I think the only reason I could possibly recommend this film is that David Bowie is great.
I think she was a lot skinnier than Bowie.Also it was a little weird when the two people in the beginning of the movie have sex and they take pictures of each other doing that.But anyhow...
As I may have pointed out Bowie does do a good performance (everyone else is serviceable), the cinematography at times can get really striking and outright beautiful and the old man make-up on Rip Torn at the end is like looking at him today.
While I consider myself a fan of director Nicolas Roeg - his WALKABOUT and DON'T LOOK NOW are two of my favourite films - and a fan of David Bowie's music, I didn't think much of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH at all.
This sci-fi oddity comes across as more of a collection of beautifully-shot vignettes rather than a real movie, and it suffers as a result.I think this film is trying too hard to be cult and in doing so it ends up alienating the mainstream audience instead.
Unfortunately this film, which starred David Bowie playing a rather shy little alien sent to earth to take water back to his planet, was made in such a way that you completely get lost and you end up thinking "what a load of rubbish!"But if you look deep into this film, beyond the outrageously bizarre sex scenes and all the urinating, you will see that the plot outline is simple.