Herostratus

The 1960s was a weird time with lots of cultural experimentation. So, as a 20 year old in 1968, I went along to the Manchester Film Theatre to see this British independent avant-garde film with an open mind. I found it one of the strangest movies I'd seen but described it in my diary as "superb" and commented: "I would certainly like to see it again." Yet, for the next 40 years, the film was inaccessible and only in 2007 did the British Film Institute intervene to make it available once more. It took me another five years to rent it via Lovefilm. But, in all that time, the stunning imagery lived with me and in particular I was haunted by a scene towards the end in which a woman (Gabriella Licudi) sobs in despair.

Written and directed by Don Levy, it was the only full-length film he ever made and it is a long (142 minutes) and slow work distinguished by its innovativeness and opacity. The narrative is pretty minimal and therefore can be briefly stated: a very angry young man called Max (Michael Gothard) decides he has had enough of life and offers an advertising company the opportunity to exploit his public suicide. This explains the erudite title: Herostratus was an Ancient Greek arsonist who destroyed the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and his name has become a metonym for someone who commits a criminal act in order to become famous.

The film looks and sounds amateurish and indeed had a tiny budget (but took six years from conception to completion). However, clearly Levy wanted some of the dialogue to be hard to hear and some of the scenes to be difficult to watch. One of the most startling and memorable sequences inter cuts the dancing of a sexy woman with the butchering of a dead animal and one of the most inexplicable (but again memorable) images is of a parasol-carrying woman clad in black with a white face. This is a work full of odd interjections ranging from the voice of the elderly Malcom Muggeridge to a near-wordless burlesque by a very young Helen Mirren in her first film role. There are extracts from semi-contemporary newsreels scattered about the film which seem to be inviting us to question what kind of world we have created.

Seeing "Herostratus" after such a long interval and at the more mature age of 66, I found that I was less tolerant of the pretentiousness of the whole thing but still captivated by the bewildering images. Also I was disturbed to read after the viewing that both the director and the lead actor subsequently committed suicide.

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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A struggling, psychologically unbalanced poet decides to commit suicide and convinces a top marketing expert to promote it to the general public via the media. The title references this destructive behaviour in that Herostratus was a character from ancient Greek mythology who destroyed one of the Seven Wonders of the World in order to achieve fame.

This British underground film was unseen for close to forty years before it was resurrected by the BFI. It is a very odd film indeed, pretty much fully an avant-garde piece. The story-line is essentially quite basic and not a huge amount of plot really happens, which for a 142min film is unusual. For me, by far the most interesting thing about this one was its visual ideas. It's a film which is relentlessly experimental in approach with elements of surrealism. The memorable visuals are often achieved by way of very bold editing techniques used throughout, where contrasting images are juxtaposed with each other. There is recurring imagery used extensively, including a mysterious black clad woman wandering the backstreets of London, an exotic dancer interspersed with images from a slaughterhouse, old newsreels and many billboard advertisements. There is a hell of a lot more than this as well but this is a film which throws a lot at you and it can be hard recalling precisely everything that occurs. There is a mixture between very long single takes and fast edits, the former are used for dramatic intensity. Michael Gothard is the lead here and he is an actor associated with intense performances, so he is a good fit it has to be said. The film overall is certainly a fascinating watch but it is slow in places and there are patches where it does get a bit tedious. The narrative was semi-interesting but the visual invention is really what it's worth seeing for and it is for sure a film that should be seen by those drawn towards experimental cinema. Look out too for an appearance of a very young Helen Mirren.

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

HEROSTRATUS was, sadly, the only feature-length narrative project realized by the remarkable scientist, visual artist, and filmmaker Don Levy. Though little-known and seldom screened, its influence has been greater than one might think and may be visible in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, PERFORMANCE, and perhaps in the early films of Werner Herzog.

The film is remarkable not only for its very high visual quality (often on the level of the best of Antonioni and Tarkovsky) and for its sometimes innovative relations of sound and image, but also for the attitude and working method of the director: a highly personal and historically deeply rooted concept of surrealism, linked to the scientific method, that shapes the stream of consciousness woven into the narrative into something close to visual music.

I had the opportunity to see this film twice in the 1970's, and thirty years later, images are still vividly present. I'll mention just two: first, the black-clad woman (Ines Levy) lighted from behind, face painted white, carrying a black parasol, seen either slowly stalking out of an alley towards the viewer, or standing on a rooftop, viewed from below, recalling for me drawings by Hans Bellmer. Second, the lengthy hyper-violent sequence in which the protagonist demolishes his paraphernalia-packed apartment. A swaying suspended doll stands out within the jagged rhythms of the editing and will much later in the film be flashed into another key sequence: one example for the rich network of associations that go far beyond story-telling structures. On the soundtrack during the demolition: one of the virulent fugues from Beethoven's MISSA SOLEMNIS.

The film's female lead is named Clio, and CLIO is, in Greek mythology, the muse of history.

HEROSTRATUS does have some flaws, but is by any applicable standards a work of depth and integrity. Had it received more extensive distribution, it might have turned out to be a key film of the late 1960's. It's to be hoped that current plans for a commercial DVD release will soon bear fruit and that this film will receive the (belated) recognition that it richly deserves.