Bad Timing

BAD TIMING is the one Nicolas Roeg film (from his initial period of peerlessly brilliant movies) which had so far eluded me; actually, for some reason, I had missed out on its one and only TV screening in my neck of the woods.

Following in the footsteps of Mick Jagger in PERFORMANCE (1970) and David Bowie in THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976), Art Garfunkel was the third pop star to be engaged as an actor by Roeg. Harvey Keitel, on the other hand, was not Roeg's first choice for Inspector Netusil: the role had previously been offered to Albert Finney and Bruno Ganz (both of whom turned it down) and Malcolm McDowell (who was unavailable). While their casting is indeed eccentric, contrary to the general opinion, I found them both very good in their difficult roles. Despite her young age and the complexity of the character she was playing, the stunning Theresa Russell - who turned down SUPERMAN (1978) to do this but, ironically, is now currently engaged on SPIDER-MAN 3! - is simply astonishing in the film and she should by rights have become a huge star because of it; as it is, she ended up being criminally underused and her career has subsequently been disappointingly uneven.

While the film's working title was ILLUSIONS, its eventual title could be referring to the chance meeting between Garfunkel and Russell at a party (had either of them left earlier, they might never have met), to Garfunkel's inexplicably sluggish movements on the night of Russell's suicide attempt (which are under Keitel's dogged scrutiny) or even to estranged husband Denholm Elliott's reporting of Russell's recovery just as Garfunkel is about to break down under Keitel's relentless questioning and confess to his ravishment of her while she was practically comatose. Tragically, Garfunkel's plight in the film was eerily mirrored in real-life towards the end of shooting when his own girlfriend Laurie Bird - whose brief acting career included two films for Monte Hellman, TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971) and COCKFIGHTER (1974) - committed suicide in their apartment. Clearly one of Roeg's most personal films, BAD TIMING is not only a harrowing study of male-female relationships or more precisely "l'amour fou", but is also another depiction by Roeg (as had been the case with all his previous pictures) of characters stranded in a foreign land, in this case two Americans in Vienna. In hindsight, the tumultuous and almost deadly Garfunkel-Russell relationship is mirrored in the one between Garfunkel and Keitel, especially in the film's latter stages when the interrogation and subsequent revelation take center stage; the latter sequences, then, are capped by an enigmatic ending - due to Elliott's nick-of-time appearance and subsequent dematerialization - could this be a figment of Garfunkel's agitated state of mind? BAD TIMING is shot in Roeg's typically fragmented style which, this time around, can perhaps be explained by the fact that the narrator (Art or Theresa) is under a lot of emotional (Keitel's interrogation of Art) and physical (Theresa's life-saving surgery) strain. In another sense, BAD TIMING can even be seen as a sophisticated precursor to the erotic thrillers so prevalent in filmdom from the late-80s onwards.

For the third consecutive time, Anthony Richmond serves as director of photography for Roeg and the film also boasts a splendidly eclectic soundtrack - Billy Holliday, Keith Jarrett, The Who, Tom Waits, not to mention some typical Viennese zither music a' la THE THIRD MAN (1949) - an inspired choice to be sure but, ironically, the prohibitive rights issue costs were also one of the reasons why BAD TIMING has been out of the public eye for so long.

The Criterion DVD is therefore a very welcome introduction for me to this essential film. Intriguingly, it transpires that the film's backers, The Rank Organization, dubbed BAD TIMING "a sick film by sick people for sick people" and subsequently not only dropped their famous gong logo from the credit titles but refused to show it in their chain of theaters! Interestingly, the outline of the story emerged from an aborted collaboration between Roeg and famed Italian producer Carlo Ponti. Disappointingly, unlike Criterion's other Roeg DVDs, WALKABOUT (1971) and THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, there is no Audio Commentary to be found here although Roeg is in a jovial mood in the accompanying interview. Also, a couple of the deleted scenes were quite good, particularly one in which Russell crashes a party and embarrasses Garfunkel with her drunken and lewd antics. For the record, during the four-year hiatus between THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and BAD TIMING, Roeg had been connected with several high-profile projects which were eventually helmed by other people, namely FLASH GORDON (Mike Hodges, 1980), HAMMETT (Wim Wenders, 1982) and OUT OF Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985). Unfortunately, Roeg's decline has proved to been one of the saddest in recent memory but his two current productions - PUFFBALL and ADINA - sound promising at least and hopefully they will come to fruition eventually!

Actually, after this viewing of BAD TIMING, I regret not purchasing Roeg's previous film, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, when Deep Discount DVD had their recent Criterion sale. However, I should be giving Roeg's subsequent film, (also starring his then wife Theresa Russell) EUREKA (1984), a first look via my VHS copy; actually, had it not been for the recent interview with the still gorgeous Russell conducted for the BAD TIMING DVD, I wouldn't have known that Roeg and Russell had separated!

The setting is Vienna. A young American woman (Theresa Russell) is brought to a hospital after overdosing on pills, apparently in a suicide attempt. A police detective suspects foul play on the part of her lover, an American psychology professor (Art Garfunkel).

Although his is only a supporting role, we must single out Harvey Keitel -- this is a great role for him and he exhibits some nice hair. I think younger audiences (myself included) might know him more as a gangster... this was a pleasant departure from that.

Garfunkel's character gives a lecture on the connection between voyeurism, spying and politics (and says conservatives do it but feel guilty). I feel like there was something important here, not just to the film but as a social criticism at large. Unfortunately, I am not entirely sure what it is.

Lastly, I loved The Who recurring motif.

Anyone who could sing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' with such spiritual clarity must have other talents and so it proved. Harvey Keitel is the actor with the heavier rep but he is often horribly stagey here. Art Garfunkel's performance however, remains authentic and true to life right till the end with an extraordinary level of concentration. He is brilliantly able to show simply thinking, often looking off screen in a state of enigmatic contemplation. It is one of the all time great screen performances and he sadly became an untapped resource in the business.

The constant smoking in the film was rumoured to be an early example of product placement ("thanks, I only smoke these") but the director subsequently denied this, claiming it was meant to dramatise the nervousness of the assortment of neurotic characters. I think it would have been more effective if we hadn't seen what ultimately transpired between the two leads in the film, leaving us to speculate as to whether a line had been crossed into moral horror. This unwillingness to trust the audience and go for the explicit in order to shock is one of the great failings of modern cinema. some commentator at the time described 'Bad Timing' as 'a sick film, made by sick people for sick audiences', but although it's often meretricious, the adults depicted are recognizably that of the real world. It is truthful in many respects. See it as a reminder of the days when British films could be half way decent.

When this movie was shown on television a couple of days ago, I had never heard of it before, but given the fact that it has received less than 600 votes until now, even though it is already from 1980, means that I'm not the only one who didn't know of its existence. Apparently some things went wrong with the distribution and the dark content of the movie was probably not what they were used to see at that time either. Does that mean that it is a bad movie? Far from it, the story for instance is multi-layered, interesting and quite impressive.

It all starts with a young American woman who is brought to a hospital in Vienna after a suicide attempt by overdosing on pills. But the police detective that investigates the case suspects that there is more going on than what her lover, an American psychology professor, wants to admit. As the doctors do everything possible to save the woman's life, the professor is thoroughly interrogated by the detective. Through a series of flashbacks, we see how the relationship between the two started and evolved and what that had to do with the suicide attempt. Everything will be shown: their passionate sexual relationship, her drinking problem, the numerous affairs that both have, her hidden marriage...

As I already said, this is a multi-layered story. For me, that makes this movie only more interesting, but I have the feeling that not that many people can cope with it, as today we are only used to see straight and easy stories which don't demand too much of our brains. This movie combines all kinds of aspects like espionage during the Cold War, romance, thriller, drama,... but always feels like one solid film. That only proves the skills of the director and the screenwriter of course. It was the first time that I saw a movie from the hand of director Nicolas Roeg and Yale Udoff is a complete stranger to me as well. But together they made the entire story work.

The fact that this is such a solid movie also has a lot to do with the good acting. Not that I expected anything else from people like Harvey Keitel and Theresa Russell, but Art Garfunkel certainly surprised me. Normally I don't like all those singers / would-be actors who only appear in movies to get the movie a larger audience (not that it worked this time) and not because they know anything about acting. But when their performance is OK, I'll be the first one to admit it as well and so I say here that Art Garfunkel was really very good in this movie.

Overall this is a very good movie with an interesting story and some very fine acting. It's too bad that it isn't better known, because it certainly deserves to be seen by a much larger audience. I give this movie at least a 7.5/10, maybe even an 8/10.

His movie rates high in production value and acting and has an innovative approach to an old story…

The film is basically a character study… Alex (Art Garfunkel) is a depressingly dark and shadowy American psychoanalyst living in Vienna… Theresa Russell plays Milena, a resonant, carefree American girl… They meet by chance at a party and are thrown into a roller-coaster ride of an erotic relationship… He wants to smash her free spirit because he can't understand it, but she won't let him… The result is a near-fatal break-up…

Roeg comes close to the story from the middle (obeying Jean-Luc Godard's authoritative saying, a film "must have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order." We quickly move to the different parts of Alex and Milena's relationship, moving through time as if it were Jell-O. The editing is intricate, but not confusing… As we change location back and forth, we begin to see more clearly how these two unlikely lovers ever got together…

The motion picture is filled with exceptional images, and Theresa Russell is outstanding