Rogue performance

British film-director Nicolas Roeg turns 80 this month, an occasion as any to reassess his cinematographic legacy.

British film-director Nicolas Roeg turns 80 this month, an occasion as any to reassess his cinematographic legacy. He has perhaps fallen out of the public eye in recent times, but his opus remains of huge importance to British cinema, and indeed to film in general. One could say that if there were such a thing as a 8216;Film Olympics8217;, Roeg would undeniably have been Great Britain8217;s flag-bearer in 2008. Renowned for his otherworldly atmospheres and a talent for jigsaw puzzle editing, he has also been credited with daring castings, having shot exciting films with the likes of Mick Jagger, David Bowie, or even Art Garfunkel.

While India was freeing itself from the shackles of the Raj, Roeg began his career as a tea-wallah at Marylebone studios in 1947. After a brisk rise through the ranks he started to receive critical appraisal in the 1960s for his work as a director of photography, working with Truffaut among others. During this period he developed the approach that became his 8216;trademark8217;: jarring visual designs used to contrast man8217;s alienation to his immediate environment; the juxtaposition of brief rapid scenes and flashbacks in the construction of intricate labyrinthine plots which led some critics to describe him as film8217;s answer to Borges; a desire to portray the ephemeral quality of life and its 8216;unknowability8217;.

In 1968, he co-directed his first movie, Performance, a groundbreaking debut if ever there was one. Described by Steve Rose as a 8220;brain-melting head trip8221;, it questions conceptions of the self by the confrontation of two radically different worlds, as an East London gangster James Fox goes into hiding in the crumbling Notting Hill mansion of a reclusive rock star Mick Jagger. Terrified by the sex, drugs, violence and psychedelic incomprehensibility, Warner Bros. didn8217;t dare release the film for two years after its completion.

Roeg followed up this 8220;kaleidoscopic psychodrama8221; with his solo directorial debut Walkabout in 1971, but it was Roeg8217;s next film Don8217;t Look Now that brought the Londoner his greatest success. A psychological thriller/horror film released in 1973 and adapted from a du Maurier short story, it is a deeply moving examination of how grief can overpower the emotions, telling the tale of a couple in Venice struggling to cope with the loss of their young daughter in a drowning accident. The film8217;s carefully-crafted pace and unease brings it to an unavoidable climax, and Roeg8217;s now characteristic use of fast cutting blurred past, present and future, disorientating and genuinely frightening the viewer.

This hit was followed up with a sci-fi critique of corporate America and consumerism exploiting androgynous David Bowie8217;s 8216;alien8217; nature in The Man Who Fell To Earth. Here, Roeg used the innocence of the extraterrestrial to demonstrate the corruption of modern society, creating an atemporal ambience beautifully shot in the arid deserts of New Mexico. Several more troubling creations ensued, including festival-triumph Bad Timing and Eureka, a Wellesian epic dealing with the disillusion of a mid-life success. In 1985, he closed a spell of cinematic excellence with Insignificance, the audacious tale of an unlikely meeting between Monroe, diMaggio, Einstein and diMaggio.

Since then, Roeg8217;s star has somewhat waned despite a succession of releases, the exception being an eerie adaptation of Roald Dahl8217;s The Witches starring Anjelica Huston. This does not take away from the power of his earlier work, or lessen the impact that it has had on subsequent generations of directors. He constantly strove to expand the medium of film beyond the realms of possibility, in a parallel exploration of humanity8217;s darkness and its estrangement from the dim realities of its environment. His films are still very much relevant to the post-modern viewer, the product of a mind perhaps disenchanted with 20th century society, seeking alternative realities to contend with. Nic Roeg8217;s body of work challenged existing beliefs, and his legacy, one of artistic freedom, finds a fitting epitaph in his own words: 8220;It8217;s all about understanding that there are no rules.8221;

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