MovieChat Forums > The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) Discussion > Opening scenes

Opening scenes

posted 9 years ago by ulysses1904
6 replies | jump to latest

I saw this in the theater when it first came out in 1976 and have seen it many times since. I love the xylophone music in the background during the opening scenes, wish I knew the name. I can play the bass part on the piano, it has that odd 5/4 time signature. That guy in a suit watching Newton's first steps, I always assumed he was someone from the government that was tracking Newton from the start. Later in the movie when Newton starts to fall apart we see some unknown guy standing over his bed watching him suffer, makes me think it's the same guy or from the same organization.

I like the scene where Newton is scared by the huge funhouse face rocking back and forth, thinking for a second that's what earthlings are like. Then he sees his first earthling, the drunk sitting on the amusement ride. Which to me foreshadows Newton himself becoming one of those drunk earthlings.

I despise the directors cut, or whatever it's called. With Nathan Bryce's sex scenes that somehow Newton is telepathically picking up on. I can see why it was left out of the original cut, it was pointless. And the scene with Newton and Mary Lou and the pistol, completely pointless.

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] PurpleProseOfCairo 9 years ago

I first saw it (a couple of times) in the summer of 1976. They used to run really good double bills in those days and I remember seeing it together with Don't Look Back (itself three years old by then - the distributors would just say "Well we have to send it out with SOMETHING supporting it - here, this'll do!" Nowadays we consider ourselves honoured when Pixar put on a short animation before the main feature).

I read the book that summer too and was quite taken with the whole thing. I didn't actually see it again until this week, almost forty years later, and, while I was disappointed with the movie as a whole (disjointed, rambling, formless) - that opening scene transported me back to the summer of 76. The sounds, the visuals, Newton's heavy breathing as he stumbled down the hill, that unsettling soundtrack, it was a real Proustian rush!

When I was a pretentious young cineaste, I loved movies like this, analysing them imposing my theories on them. I think this looks dated now and the sex scenes (which I don't remember in the UK 1976 release) are terrible - that "Aren't we outrageous, it's the Seventies maaan!" vibe. The pistol/sex scene is particularly bad.

Bowie is good though, I must say - I don't think he ever found a role he could inhabit like this again.

[–] lantzn 8 years ago

I agree with just about everything you've said. I was 17 when this was in theaters. My wife and I just watch the Criterion release today and Bowie made the perfect alien. He was at the height of his cocaine addiction and looked anorexic, which added to it all.

[–] DaveBowman2001 8 years ago

Bowie is good though, I must say - I don't think he ever found a role he could inhabit like this again.

I loved him in The Prestige. In a way a similar genius/mysterious character, just more down to earth so to speak.

[–] nephihaha 8 years ago

The pistol scene is surely just a whole way of exploring the Mary Lou song?

--
It's not "Sci-Fi", it's "SF"!

"Calvinism is a very liberal religious ethos." - Truekiwijoker

[–] nephihaha 8 years ago

The guy you see is a Man in Black. He could be human, or another visitor - Newton mentions that other species had visited his planet, and probably the Earth too.

--
It's not "Sci-Fi", it's "SF"!

"Calvinism is a very liberal religious ethos." - Truekiwijoker