| The Falls | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Peter Greenaway |
| Written by | Peter Greenaway |
| Music by | Michael Nyman |
Release date |
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Running time | 185 min |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Falls is a 1980 film directed by Peter Greenaway. It was Greenaway's first feature-length film after many years making shorts. It does not have a traditional dramatic narrative; it takes the form of a mock documentary in 92 short parts.
The world has been struck by a mysterious incident called the "Violent Unknown Event" or VUE, which has killed many people and left a great many survivors suffering from a common set of symptoms: mysterious ailments (some appearing to be mutations of evolving into a bird-like form), dreaming of water (categorised by form, such as Category 1, Flight, or Category 3, Waves) and becoming obsessed with birds and flight. Many of the survivors have been gifted with new languages. They have also stopped ageing, making them immortal (barring disease or injury).
A directory of these survivors has been compiled, and The Falls is presented as a film version of an excerpt from that directory, corresponding to the 92 entries for persons whose surnames begin with the letters FALL-. Not all of the 92 entries correspond to a person – some correspond to deleted entries, cross references and other oddities of the administrative process that has produced the directory. One biography concerns two people – the twin brothers Ipson and Pulat Fallari, who are played (in still photographs) by the Brothers Quay.
The Falls includes clips of a number of Greenaway's early shorts. It also anticipates some of his later films: the subject of biography 27, Propine Fallax, is a pseudonym for Cissie Colpitts, the central figure of Drowning by Numbers (1988), while the car accident in biography 28 prefigures that in A Zed and Two Noughts (1985).
The largely formal and deadpan manner of the narration contrasts with the absurdity of the content.
The soundtrack is mainly by Michael Nyman and is partly based, like his later music for Drowning by Numbers, on the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra K. 364 . It also includes numerous clips from various songs popular among the avant-garde of the time, including pieces by Brian Eno (in particular "Golden Hours" from Another Green World) and snippets of "Jugband Blues", the last song Syd Barrett recorded with Pink Floyd.
The Falls has an 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, [1] with Nathan Lee of The Village Voice calling it "the most playful and engaging of Greenaway's compositions". [2]
Vincent Canby writing in the New York Times gave The Falls a mostly positive review, saying 'though The Falls is much too long for its own good, its rewards are real'. [3]
Peter Greenaway, is a British film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Mannerism painting in particular. Common traits in his films are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.
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"Born in Newport in 1911, Luper was, according to Greenaway's introduction to the exhibition catalogue, in Moab, Utah in 1928 when "Uranium was 'discovered' there. He was in Antwerp in 1939 when the Germans invaded Belgium. He was in Rome when the Americans arrived in 1944. He met Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest in 1945 and followed him to Moscow in the 1950s. He was at an East-West German checkpoint in 1963". The 92 suitcases thus tell Luper's story from 1928 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, sketching not so much the biography of one man as the story of a century related through some of its key events."
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Before the Rain is a 1994 Macedonian war film written and directed by Milcho Manchevski, starring Katrin Cartlidge, Rade Šerbedžija, Grégoire Colin and Labina Mitevska. Photographed by Manuel Teran, edited by Nicolas Guster and featuring an original score by Macedonian band Anastasia, the film was praised in reviews and at festivals for its sophisticated interplay of three seemingly unrelated short narratives and the emotional effect of its directing. It was seen by audiences in more than 50 countries.
India Song is a 1975 French drama film written and directed by Marguerite Duras. It stars Delphine Seyrig, Michael Lonsdale, Mathieu Carrière, Claude Mann, Vernon Dobtcheff, Didier Flamand and Claude Juan. The film centres on Anne-Marie (Seyrig), the promiscuous wife of the French ambassador in India, and was based on an unproduced play written by Duras. Although set in India, the film was shot mostly on location at the Château Rothschild. It was selected as the French entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 48th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.
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