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Nicolas Roeg (1928 - 2018)



"Film can be more of a reality than a page with words can ever be."

Filmography
Features (* = cinematographer)
Peformance* [co-director with Donald Cammell] (1970)
Walkabout* (1971)
Glastonbury Fayre* [co-director with Peter Neal] (1972)
Don't Look Now (1973)
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Bad Timing (1980)
Eureka (1983)
Insignificance (1985)
Castaway (1986)
Track 29 (1988)
The Witches (1990)
Cold Heaven (1991)
Two Deaths (1995)
Puffball: The Devil's Eyeball (2007)
The Film That Buys the Cinema (2014)

Shorts
"AIDS: Iceberg" (1987)
"AIDS: Monolith" (1987)
"Un ballo in maschera" [segment, Aria] (1987)
"Hotel paradise" (1995)
"The Sound of Claudia Schiffer" (2000)

Music Videos
Roger Waters - "5:06AM (Every Strangers Eyes)" (1984)
Roger Waters - "4:41AM (Sexual Revolution)" (1984)
Roger Waters - "5:01AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Pt.10" (1984)

Television
Sweet Bird of Youth (1989)
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - S02E16 - "Paris, October 1916" (1993)
Heart of Darkness (1993)
Full Body Massage (1995)
Samson and Delilah (1996)

Cinematographer Only
Information Received (1961)
Lawrence of Arabia [second unit] (1962)
Band of Thieves (1962)
The Guest (1963)
Dr. Crippen (1963)
Just for Fun (1963)
The Caretaker (1963)
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Nothing But the Best (1964)
Code 7, Victim 5 (1964)
The System (1964)
Seaside Swingers (1964)
The Girl-Getters (1964)
Every Day's a Holiday (1965)
Doctor Zhivago [uncredited, partial] (1965)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Judith [partial] (1966)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
Casino Royale [partial] (1967)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
Petulia (1968)

Books
Fragile Geometry: The Films, Philosophy, and Misadventures of Nicolas Roeg by Joseph Lanza (1989)
The Films of Nicolas Roeg by Neil Sinyard (1991)
The Films of Nicolas Roeg: Myth and Mind by John Izod (1992)
Nicholas Roeg: Film by Film by Scott Salwolke (1993)
The World is Ever Changing by Nicolas Roeg (2013)

Forum Resources
Nicolas Roeg (1928-2018)
10 Walkabout
303 Bad Timing
304 The Man Who Fell to Earth
566 Insignificance
745 Don't Look Now
BD 132 Eureka
Performance (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970)
Puffball (Nicolas Roeg, 2007)
Nicolas Roeg on DVD

Web Resources
Senses of Cinema profile and links to articles and resources
Cinephilia and Beyond's collection of resources on Don't Look Now, including videos, photos, and a draft of the script
1973 interview with Tom Milne and Penelope Houston, Sight and Sound
"Nicholas Roeg: Permutations Without Profundity" by Chuck Kleinhans, Jump Cut (1974)
"The Story So Far...: The Man Who Fell to Earth" by Paul Mayersberg (screenwriter of The Man Who Fell to Earth), Sight and Sound (1975)
1976 interview with Chris Petit and David Pirie, Time Out London
1980 interview with Harlan Kennedy, American Film
1983 video interview with Philip Strick, BBC
1983 interview with Harlan Kennedy, Film Comment
"Unfixing the Subject: Viewing Bad Timing" by David Silverman, Continuum (1991)
"Nicolas Roeg: Stranger in a Strange Land" by John Mount, National Film Theatre (Early 1990s?)
"'The Same Paranoid Space': Nicholas Roeg's Two Deaths" by Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal (1997)
2002 interview with Matthew Sweet, The Independent
2005 interview with Jason Wood, The Guardian
2008 video interview with Allan Shiach (screenwriter of Don't Look Now and Castaway), The Directors Cut
2010 interview with David Jenkins, Little White Lies
2011 interview with Ryan Gilbey, The Guardian
2013 interview with John Preston, The Telegraph
2013 interview with John Stezaker, Frieze
2014 interview with David Thomson and Bernard Rose about Roeg, BFI
2016 video interview with Don Boyd

We are going to need to add the 1972 music documentary that caught the start of the long running Glastonbury music festival to Roeg's filmography. Glastonbury Fayre has just been released on DVD in Britain with a commentary with Roeg and a review here that clarifies the situation - apparently Roeg shot the film and did a rough cut then left to make Don't Look Now, whereupon it was finished by Peter Neal (who is credited as the only director involved on imdb). However I would take issue with with the packaging hyperbole that the film has been "unseen for over thirty years since its cinema release", since the BBC showed the film a few years ago as part of their warm ups for their annual Glastonbury coverage.

I also love the BBFC warning on the back of the DVD that the film "contains full frontal nudity and drug taking". It seems so obvious that it was a Nic Roeg film now!

Interview with Roeg from the Winter 1984/85 edition of Sight & Sound in which he discusses working with Truffaut on Fahrenheit 451.

There's a Nic Roeg season at the BFI Southbank in London next month.

There is indeed - and I've just uploaded a full 1080p HD trailer of Walkabout onto YouTube.

He was there last night introducing 'Eureka'. Didn't have an awful lot to say about it, I don't think he remembers much.

Interesting to note that Jenny Agguter was in the audience watching the film as a punter.

Duncan Hopper wrote:He was there last night introducing 'Eureka'. Didn't have an awful lot to say about it, I don't think he remembers much.

A shame - I once chaired an event involving producer Jeremy Thomas and editor Tony Lawson, and they had quite a bit to say about Eureka.

Was that a few years ago at the Riverside studios? If it was, I remember the panel out numbering the 3 or 4 of us in the audience.

Oh come on, it was more than that! Not much more, granted, but those of us onstage were definitely in the minority.

Duncan Hopper wrote:Interesting to note that Jenny Agutter was in the audience watching the film as a punter.

She'll be discussing Walkabout after the screening this Saturday, along with Luc and Nic Roeg.
I thought this show would have sold out by now. There are still quite a few seats left.

It was a relatively late reschedule, so it's only just been announced.

I'm sad to hear Roeg not giving the old college try when discussing Eureka. It's a film that's charlie sheen crazy and it has some over the top acting but I think it's the last true Roeg film. Insignificance is honestly much better, tighter and enjoyable but contains none of the sexual obsession or uncomfortable violence that always kept the audience tittering between a profound reaction or nausea. It's a film that needs rehabilitation and he should be the first out there stumping for its merits.

MichaelB wrote:It was a relatively late reschedule, so it's only just been announced.

No, the reschedule was announced on the BFI website on or before the 28th January.

Nic Roeg's participation was announced this week.

MichaelB wrote:Nic Roeg's participation was announced this week.

Ah, I see.
I thought Jenny Agutter might be a bigger draw though!

Roeg on Eureka, filmed during the 2 March event mentioned above.

A Guardian interview about the current BFI retrospective.

Walkabout has an unexpected fan.

An oldie but goodie: John Simon on The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Roeg's career in general

I suppose John Simon is a useful negative barometer of film quality. The more he hates something the better it is.
Interview with Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg and Nicolas Roeg here.

Robin Davies wrote:I suppose John Simon is a useful negative barometer of film quality. The more he hates something the better it is.

Wasn't Bruce Beresford's King David one of the only 1980s films that he unequivocally liked?

Does anyone know more about this mysterious entry on Amazon?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicolas-Roeg/dp ... 39&s=books" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This is listed as a paperback book but then it says below:
"An new and exciting digital film project from one of the world's best-loved film-makers."

As can be seen by my recent comments on Nicolas Roeg's films in the Criterion Collection Forum, I've recently been revisiting these. So, I'm not going to comment specifically on any of the ones I've already discussed.

I will say that it's unfortunate his post-1985 films (after Insignificance) have been, overall, unavailable on U.S. home video. Other than Track 29, Witches, Aria & The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (he directed a segment each of the latter two), I haven't seen any of his post-'85 work. For example, Cold Heaven, Castaway, Puffball, etc. are not available on Region 1 DVD's/Blu's.

Too bad, because I did want to see at least some of these films - despite the fact that most of them didn't get good reviews...

As a fan of his, I'm sorry to say that COLD HEAVEN, FULL BODY MASSAGE and PUFFBALL are all pretty uninspired and drab (although the last one, which looks to be Roeg's last feature, has enough bizarre ideas to keep it from being completely forgettable). I have a soft spot for his TV adaptation of HEART OF DARKNESS which isn't entirely successful but demonstrates Roeg's unique touch on occasion.

Roger Ryan wrote:As a fan of his, I'm sorry to say that COLD HEAVEN, FULL BODY MASSAGE and PUFFBALL are all pretty uninspired and drab (although the last one, which looks to be Roeg's last feature, has enough bizarre ideas to keep it from being completely forgettable). I have a soft spot for his TV adaptation of HEART OF DARKNESS which isn't entirely successful but demonstrates Roeg's unique touch on occasion.

Thanks - it sounds like I'm not missing much.

As I implied in an earlier post, I thought Roeg's Track 29 (1987) was a P.O.S. - one of the worst films I've ever seen. Not only poorly done, but illogical -

Spoiler

i.e., the main character (T. Russell) thought that the Gary Oldman character was her long-lost son, but as it turns out he was a figment of her imagination. However, if he was a figment, how could he interact with the truck driver (who drove him into town) and her friend - both of whom saw him? What a crock. I guess the film implied that her imagination "created him" out of thin air, which is fairly ridiculous...

Witches (1990) was a mainstream, by the numbers kid's film - not bad, but not great either.

So, I'm not going to go out of my way to see Roeg's post-1990 films. If they're ever made available on R1 home video I may check them out, however. I doubt any are Criterion-worthy, but who knows?!....