Herostratus

10/09

Like others who have written here about HEROSTRATUS, I too saw this amazing and unforgettable film in the early 70's. I have subsequently longed to see it again.

This film is what I like to call "transformative" cinema. Tranformative in the way the films of Bergman, Pasolini, Godard & DaSica can be. You may detest this film. But, you will not easily forget it.

I'd also like to say that if you like the novels of J.G.Ballard, particularly the books of the 70's, you will probably appreciate this film. I've always considered it particularly "Ballardian". This film grabs corporate capitalism by the throat. Yes, it is cynical.

I am happy to report that Herostratus is now available on DVD. It can be obtained at Amazon UK.

A surreal exploration of the potential endgame of the cynical capitalism behind Swinging London - and a vague play on the Faustian legend. A young man sells his suicide to an advertising agency in return for a month of luxury. The agency will market his suicide to advertisers, filming his jump from a high building past their posters in the windows. The price gets higher the nearer the ground. As a film it illustrated the hard edge to those loose days; I saw it in 1968 at the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead. Several people fled during some highly graphic abbatoir close-ups. Some of the acted images have never left me, particularly the hero walking into the agency director's office carrying an axe and sinking it into his desk. What a way to get attention! 35 years later I would really like to see this film again but for some reason it seems to have disappeared without trace ... Don Levy - you out there?

There is a very enticing sequence in this movie featuring Helen Mirren that has gone somewhat viral on the internet recently. She's really hamming it up, turning the seduction up to 100, and she looks absolutely stunning while doing so. After seeing The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover for the first time, I have become far more curious to explore Mirren's body of work, as that has become one of my favorite films of all time. Not only did the sultry 1967 version of her have me intrigued, but so did the schizo editing style of the sequence. Aesthetically, it reminded me of a strange DVD I somehow ended up with that I used to throw on in the background at parties, called Bizzare! (originally Secrets of Sex).

Any way, I'm glad that the Mirren sequence drew me in... because this movie has a lot to offer and I've never seen anything quite like it. Immediately from the first couple of minutes, you know you're in for an obscure sensory ride. I don't think I've ever seen a feature film this long that maintains such "art-house" cutting throughout it's length. The film weaves very consistently through surrealist sequences, quick cuts of intense historical footage, and traditional dialogue-based scenes.

The movie has plenty of strong suits. It's photographed very tastefully. The UK setting is quite gorgeous to look at and immerse yourself in. Michael Gothard carries the film in a unique and thrilling way, through his impulsive and virile character. Co-star Gabriella Licudi is divine looking in all of her orange clothes and accessories, and she puts in an extremely strong performance. I didn't expect to feel any emotive response as I reached the end portion of the movie, but one sequence fronted by Licudi took me by surprised - and all of a sudden the tears hit me. I was totally won over by her presence and will definitely be exploring more of her catalogue soon. She sucked me in a similar way to my favorite Euro actresses of the 60's/70's tend to, such as Catherine Deneuve, Claudia Cardinale, or Isabelle Adjani.

It has far less faults than it does strengths. I would certainly trim a bit of fat off of the overall length if it were up to me - I think this would have sat perfect at about 1 hour and 50 minutes to 2 hours, rather than 2 and 20, but I can't complain much - this is a one-of-a-kind offering and it is what it is. The plot may require a slight suspension of disbelief in the beginning but once you open up to it's concepts, everything else that happens around it is very relatable and correlates with general human experience. The film requires patience but if you have that, and a love for the atypical, chances are you will find plenty to love about this bizarre movie.

I will end by saying that it does have a very bleak tone, overall. So as long as you can get down with that, I would recommend checking this movie out. It is about suicide, and power, after all. To learn that both the lead actor and the director later killed themselves in real life did not come as a huge surprise. <3

This forgotten artifact of British art-house cinema, has been resurrected (like so many other forgotten British films) by BFI's Flipside releases. The release marks it's first commercial distribution since its release in 1967. The film had made quite an impact at the time with - particularly - other film makers and film critics, when the film was exhibited at festivals. In one publication Herostratus was described as "the great white hope of British art cinema'. Directed by Australian born film maker and physics graduate, it has a powerful and prescient message about fame and greed, and the dangerous, dark aspects of marketing and advertising. Like the film itself, director Don Levy, has fallen into obscurity. I had not heard of him until I read of this release (in fact I had never heard of this film until this time).

Max (Michael Gothard), is a struggling poet. He is agonised by society around him, and like Travis Bickle in the later film Taxi Driver (1976), he foments a distinctive hatred whilst holding up alone in a disheveled flat in a distorted, crumbling London. But unlike Bickle, Max's ideas are motivated by fame. He proposes to a marketing executive, Farson (Peter Stephens), an offer he cannot refuse. Max will publicly kill himself by jumping off of a tall building, and the advertising company can own this commodity, and do whatever they please with it. The machinations of the marketeers begins, as they attempt to come up with adequate exposure for the death-as-entertainment, subversive performance art piece. The silence that preceded Max's encounter with Farson, is perfectly highlighted in a line from Albert Camus, in his book 'The Myth of Sisyphus': An act like this (suicide) is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. As the workings of the sadistic minds of advertisers is quietly taking place in the background, Max begins a relationship of sorts with Farson's secretary, Clio (Gabriella Licudi), with devastating consequences.

As a commodity, Max is used, humiliated, and displayed as despicable for his desperate attempt at using his death for fame and immortality. The title of the film is taken from a character from ancient Greece who wanted immortality; which he gained by setting fire to the Temple of Artemis. The film is most certainly relevant today with our wealth of deluded people, hungry for fame with no substance. Fame has itself become a commodity: We are in an age of fame that is hinged on one act; one single moment. And like the fame that Max is attempting to gain, it is also very fleeting.

The films technical brilliance is in its editing, a process that took Levy two years to perfect. Levy approached editing like science (he did have a PhD in Experimental Physics). The film is littered with subliminal images. Short sequences of static shots, obscure imagery, and images of animal slaughter. The latter of these are often used to juxtapose with images of a female stripper. The snippets also seem to appear, not just as fractured images of a deranged mind, but also almost synonymous with televisual adverts themselves. Almost self contained. In one, a very young Helen Mirren (uber-MILF) seduces the camera and its audiences, stating that you want her. The use of jump-cuts and long takes is reminiscent of the then new European movements, mostly evoking some of the work of Godard and Antonioni.

It's an interesting piece of forgotten cinema. As with many art-house films of this type, it is highly pretentious. But it is watchable pretension. It's idea does not really carry throughout the film, and it could have gone in more interesting angles. But this could perhaps be just an opinion from today's perspective: Marketing has certainly become more all-pervasive since the late 1960's. As a closing statement, it is ironic that later, both Don Levy and Michael Gothard ended their lives by suicide. The film remains though, and is at times visually arresting. Classic? No. But as an artifact of British '60's cinema, it is a delight.

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Herostratus screened at the Orson Welles theatre in Cambridge (Mass.) for two weeks in (I think) 1968. At a party in New York a few years later, I met the owner of a theatre (I can't recall any names, alas) where it played for three days; he said he detested it and withdrew it.

I have never been more moved by a film. I can compare it only to such transforming experiences as seeing L'Avventura in the early 'sixties, although the art of Herostratus is far more mysterious. The mystery is compounded by the great gulf of years that separates me from that screening, by the fact that almost nobody I meet has seen it or even heard of it, and by the apparent lack of any body of explication and commentary.

Without seeing it again I wouldn't attempt a precis of the plot, but what remains in memory is the cool classicism of the narrative(innocence vs. worldliness and levels of manipulativeness that Henry James might have appreciated) as mediated through an unobtrusive but arresting surrealism of technique.

It's been 35 years--I'd really like to revisit Herostratus.