Pharos of Chaos (1983)
(Leuchtturm des Chaos)
Country: GER
Technical: col 119m
Director: Manfred Blank, Wolf-Eckart Bühler
Cast: doc.
Synopsis:
A German crew interviews actor Sterling Hayden, who is moored on his barge at Besançon, his brain addled by alcohol, hashish and his own inner demons.
Review:
Divided into the days of a week's filming, except for more portentous chapter headings devoted to the McCarthy hearings, Hollywood and Alcohol, this is a fairly structureless succession of shots of Hayden, seated on his barge as he holds forth, barely able to complete a thought or even a coherent sentence. To break the monotony, the filmmakers treat us to shots of the Doubs river and the towpath, but the results illuminate little but the actor's annoying mannerism of emitting a 'Hmm?' at the end of every phrase. What it is possible to determine is that he never got over the guilt of having named names before the HUAC, and that he was a man in the Hemingway mould, only a lot more humane, given to quoting R.L. Stevenson and Mark Twain, so dismissive is he of his own status as a writer. There emerges a picture of a shipwreck of a man, dividing his time between human society and isolation, but essentially unable to live with himself without the help of a bottle, while the makers are far too content to sit back and watch: cinema it ain't.
(Leuchtturm des Chaos)
Country: GER
Technical: col 119m
Director: Manfred Blank, Wolf-Eckart Bühler
Cast: doc.
Synopsis:
A German crew interviews actor Sterling Hayden, who is moored on his barge at Besançon, his brain addled by alcohol, hashish and his own inner demons.
Review:
Divided into the days of a week's filming, except for more portentous chapter headings devoted to the McCarthy hearings, Hollywood and Alcohol, this is a fairly structureless succession of shots of Hayden, seated on his barge as he holds forth, barely able to complete a thought or even a coherent sentence. To break the monotony, the filmmakers treat us to shots of the Doubs river and the towpath, but the results illuminate little but the actor's annoying mannerism of emitting a 'Hmm?' at the end of every phrase. What it is possible to determine is that he never got over the guilt of having named names before the HUAC, and that he was a man in the Hemingway mould, only a lot more humane, given to quoting R.L. Stevenson and Mark Twain, so dismissive is he of his own status as a writer. There emerges a picture of a shipwreck of a man, dividing his time between human society and isolation, but essentially unable to live with himself without the help of a bottle, while the makers are far too content to sit back and watch: cinema it ain't.
(Leuchtturm des Chaos)
Country: GER
Technical: col 119m
Director: Manfred Blank, Wolf-Eckart Bühler
Cast: doc.
Synopsis:
A German crew interviews actor Sterling Hayden, who is moored on his barge at Besançon, his brain addled by alcohol, hashish and his own inner demons.
Review:
Divided into the days of a week's filming, except for more portentous chapter headings devoted to the McCarthy hearings, Hollywood and Alcohol, this is a fairly structureless succession of shots of Hayden, seated on his barge as he holds forth, barely able to complete a thought or even a coherent sentence. To break the monotony, the filmmakers treat us to shots of the Doubs river and the towpath, but the results illuminate little but the actor's annoying mannerism of emitting a 'Hmm?' at the end of every phrase. What it is possible to determine is that he never got over the guilt of having named names before the HUAC, and that he was a man in the Hemingway mould, only a lot more humane, given to quoting R.L. Stevenson and Mark Twain, so dismissive is he of his own status as a writer. There emerges a picture of a shipwreck of a man, dividing his time between human society and isolation, but essentially unable to live with himself without the help of a bottle, while the makers are far too content to sit back and watch: cinema it ain't.