BLAST! (Alfred Hitchcock, 1978)

If indelible sources are to be believed, the eastward tilt of 's Alfred Hitchcock's candlestick after 1970 was not as a result of the miraculous cleansing of his muddied windshield (the Damascan turnpike event that legend dictates changed his pictures forever, 'The Accident'1 is merely a red herring here), nor because of a return home to a land of chocolate biscuits and hung parliaments; no, his Frenchified fervour for seditionary sang-froid was caused by, no drumroll necessary, a blonde. So bewitched was the octogenerian psycho-sex-genius by model Hansa that he stowed his boat down a river of blood and pledged solidarity with the blue collar rioters, made a racket akin to a thousand bombings of Coventry and turned up on late night television, stepping up through the gears of his Alfred Hitchcock Presents strand and shooting into the Third Eye directly with opiated visual nightmares that singed viewer and unviewer alike. 'Quick, Hitch is on the telly,' became a fearful warning as much as an invitation.

Hansadid her work, changed the man, and vanished, as if imaginary. She and her like flit through 20th Century history, changing important people but never threatening to be important; Eva Brauns, one and all, obscured by events and ideas, muses for geniuses and tyrants.

Those last five years, until his death in 1980, the clearly fretful Alfred clocked several hours of scorched earth television and an ignored final film, Blast! (1978), in which a ragged Mae West drove all over England in a Ford Cortina searching for nuclear oblivion. The film kicks and wails. Full of classic West lines ('I don't know if saying I love you means I love you or if it's just a phrase I'm going through'), it follows a rejected singer who, trading on her lost-foreigner schtick, picks up young hitchhikers, only to kill them. And kill them she does, splendidly, with the pay-off 'but I never said I was going to Plymouth.'

It's Hitchcock's Peeping Tom, of course; but instead of killing his career as that earlier film had done for Michael Powell, this was left to slide, because, well, by this point nobody much minded what Hitchcock did one way or the other. Legends reach such a status, and some reach it early, so that even pouring luminous vomit over their legacies fails to stain them, such is their power. Hitchcock was so far in credit by this point that nothing was at stake. Ditto David Bowie, whose Herculean efforts through the seventies has bought him many years of larking about as Laughing Dave. Imagine, if you will then, the dreck we might have had from Paul McCartney if he hadn't died at the height of his fame: cashing in his Fab Four chips (which happen to be some of the worthiest currencies in the house) with children's songs and nagging charity efforts, no doubt, and endless permutations of that Beatles sound, forever square-rooted until insignificance. Or Bob Dylan: what if his motorcycle hadn't slipped on wet roads, killing him in 1967, just a year after McCartney had gone? It is a pop parlour game, a nonsense to imagine his next moves, but such is the power of rock'n'roll that it is never more potent when it is gossipy, never more dangerous than when apparently ephemeral (think of the sweet sting of the sudden dynamic chorus intruding on a previously inane ballad, the cruel drama of a hated has-been hitting gorgeous payola for two and a half-minutes), and so these games stretch beyond philosophy. For my diceroll, I'm going to say that had Dylan lived he would have become a television actor, star of a detective show. In the mid 1980s he would have made a musical comeback, dovetailed with a run for Senator of Minnesota, then insane riches, a Rickenbacker Rockerfeller. Snake eyes for me, perhaps. But every dream in a pop world (which is based on fabrications of mythologies anyway) adds a slither of substance to its history. Just look at how many people believe that Elvis lives. Smoke and mirrors only add to the illusion of depth, and Mr Presley is alive because people all over the world see him going about his business frequently.

I digress. As West does throughout Blast!, going to the places her passengers request, only without them. She expends her wit at service stations ('Whadda ya gawkin' at, lady? I gotta penchant for ponchos') and in grim post-coital scenarios (West: 'Best three minutes of my life.' Man: 'Hey, if three minutes is all Motown needs, it's good enough for me.' West: 'More of an opera buff myself.'), but it is all wasted on West's greyscale fellow travellers. It is as if Hitchcock, after thirty years in exotic locales with Ingrid Bergmans and Princess Graces, was horrified to find his homeland still drifting in postwar ruin, and unleashed a Hollywood ghost: West as Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates as Mother, an aged blonde in a frightwig with a knife. And in doing so, the Leytonstone Lugger locks into a nebulous mind-meld with British culture, somehow finding himself in the same waiting room as Peter Sutcliffe (as played by Ian McKellen in Derek Jarman's Ripper Yarn (1983), John Lydon and Billy Bremner.

Reporter: Why did you kill 'em, love?

West: I was hungry.

Reporter: Any final words for our readers?

West: When referring to God, use an upper case H for all personal pronouns,
just in case.

Reporter: That's it?

West: That's it.

Blast! Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Produced by Alma Reville Written by James Costigan, Alfred Hitchcock Starring Mae West, Barry Foster Universal Pictures Release Date UK: Oct 1978 US: Nov 1978 Tagline: '...move. Stick and move. Stick and move. Stick and...'

1. Hitchcock's boating accident in 1970 in Cuba has been widely discussed to the point of invisibility, so I won't add any more reportage here; I'll simply pause to nod to its iconic power on his myth, before dismissing its significance completely. One, he fully reccovered, two, no charges were brought, three, Hitchcock was shooting again inside a week. Hansa, the
Austrian pummel horse, comes six months later, like a premonition. Hitchcock didn't shoot for three years after her arrival. She's the BC/AD coin-flipper here, if there is one.

GESTERN IST NICHT DORT (YESTERDAY ISN'T THERE) (Dieter Buchmann, 2001)

That such a thoroughly modern piece of art could cause slow-burning collective shock... should please anyone with concerns of the future of humanity. That it should be a B-movie set in near future Germany made with only ten thousand Euros should warm the cockles of the romantic hearth. So: this near-future Germany then, where people are getting nostalgic for old things and playing with modern technology, much like us, here, now; but they do this so much that a collective short-term memory loss takes hold. Heads filled with dreams of future technologies (we see social networking ear-pieces and fleshy interfaces instead of keyboards) and sharpened memories of ephemeral history (a gameshow called Pop AD! in which contestants reel off huge lists of the pop charts in 1983, or dialogue from popular sitcoms) mean that slowly the country becomes aware that practical details of recent days slip from view. It starts with small things, like keys being lost, doors left open, and proceeds to a state where people cannot remember the way to the school their child goes to, or even cannot remember their child. Banks begin to fall apart because administrative skills are all but forgotten; panicked individuals wander the streets, not knowing who they are, reciting a list of Best Actress Oscar winners (and nominees) from 1926 onwards, for comfort.

The hero, played by Kurt Hauser, (who famously starred alongside David Bowie in Lindsay Anderson's Mime in 1973, and so by appearing here brings flashing memories to the surface of the audience) devises strategies to help him try to remember his wife, whose whereabouts he cannot decipher. A computer expert, he builds a keyboard with actors and pop stars faces instead of letters on the keys, which brings him to the attention of a secret underground group collating a Memory Advancement Database (M.A.D.) which aims to collect real-life memories. 'Without MAD, there is nothing' the boss of the organisation tells Hauser.

Gestern... was a remake of Sehnsucht (Nostalgia), which was made by Fritz Lang in 1930, and remade in 1935 in Hollywood by Lang himself. This first remake, titled Nostalgia and starring Henry Fonda, was a minor success. Since the success of Gestern... a band of fans of the Lang versions have gathered on the internet claiming that they can find remakes of the movie every year since its release; some even claim to find the original story in both The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Bible. Thinker Roland Barthes described the story as 'the only one ever told; but we have always forgotten it as soon as it passes through our ear canals, which profess to listen but are instead waterways filled with refuse and abandoned shopping carts'1

Dieter Buchmann himself has a mysterious past, with lists of film credits speculative at best. It is believed that he was the writer/director (listed as Dietmar Baumann) of Time-Traveller (1994), in which Ralph Macchio, after being told by a clairvoyant that he will become a war criminal and perpetrate mass genocides (and that, if he kills himself to stop this he will become a martyr and even more will die to honour his name), travels back in time to kill his own father, prevent his own birth, and thus prevent multiple organism deaths. He discovers that the much-used narrative device of changing the past to alter the future isn't true- he kills his father, but is still born in the future, but with a taste for blood from birth. (The tagline for the film was 'Man Builds Time Machine. Man Goes Back In Time To Kill His Father. Nothing Happens').

Naturally, Gestern Ist Nicht Dort was forgotten by everyone immediately, except by those few who could recite every line perfectly. Its warnings, whatever they were, remain more relevant than ever, I'm sure.

Gestern Ist Nicht Dort Directed by Dieter Buchmann Produced by Stefan Ardnt Written by Dietmar Baumann Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Release Date: UK/Germany April 2001, US Feb 2002 Tagline: 'Where Ist My Mind?'

1. The Way It Wasn't by Roland Barthes, published by Hill & Wang, 2004

ELEPHANT GUN (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)

Made back to back with The Man Who Fell To Earth, Elephant Gun shares similarities with its sister film. Both have musicians as leads: David Bowie as the titular alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth, and Elvis Presley as the washed-up actor travelling to Las Vegas to gamble his last money on a roulette wheel. What is astounding about Elephant Gun is that it manages to make Elvis, the most famous man on the planet, unknowable. Here he is a smudge, a sad hollow middle-aged man.

The ironies abound of course. And they are traps that Roeg avoids with his straight-faced delivery. We see inklings of Elvis impersonators in Vegas, but there is no face-off, no acknowledgement; Buddy (Presley) sadly heads for his table, ignoring the glitz around him, the glitz that in real-life he represented to it's fullest. It could be seen as Elvis' disavowal of his own present, that he plays a man burning out inside and gambling his life away in this city of hellish castles.

There is a dazzling sequence at the centre of the film, in which Buddy looks at a collection of photos of good times past, and we are treated to a flashback sequence of recreated stills that echo previous Presley films. We see him in Hawaii, in LA, and in poignantly happier times on a previous visit to Las Vegas with an unnamed blonde, who the Buddy keeps seeing around town, but cannot remember her name to call and get her attention. In Roeg's Don't Look Now, he manages to create a sickening sense of dread building up to the climax; here he creates a sense of loss and fear. Buddy sees suspicion everywhere. He wins money, only to find out he actually lost.

The narrative becomes eliptical and deliberately listless. What is apparent is the growing awareness that Buddy hasn't picked Las Vegas on a whim, or because it is the sin capital of the world. The presence of a double is somehow, made evident. Is Buddy haunted by a possible alternative path his life may have taken? Does Buddy know someone who has huge fame? The repeated allusions in background conversations to an unnamed successful actor who is in town irks Buddy; what is the story? We have more questions than answers. Buddy is weary, looking for answers and avoiding them. The film drifts into existential whodunnit territory, with no idea of what the crime might be, never mind the protagonist. Cynical exchanges with a bartender litter the narrative:

Bartender (Rip Torn):Hey are you..

Buddy (Presley): Thirsty. Yeah. Gimme another.

Bartender: No I mean, didn't you used to be... I mean, aren't you-

Buddy: No. I've never been no-one. Not ever.

Bartender: Hey. Everybody is someone. I'm someone. She's someone. You're someone.

Buddy: Well set the alarm for me. Maybe I'll wake up and find out who.

There are two Presley songs on an otherwise electronic and low-key jazz score: The haunting and lovely How Many Tears Can A Sad Man Cry?, a Hank Williams style confession, and the charging drunk-in-denial Loose Booze, Loose Blues, which shockingly for an Elvis song is largely instrumental except for his distinctive echoing grunts and desperate full-throated wails.

Contractual disputes over the exact details of Elvis' movie contract and fans' shock at this departure for the star caused a lot of press and a limited release for Elephant Gun. The film came out just four months before the death of Presley. His casting was seen as a folly at the time, as watching the most famous face on the planet distorted through cracked art lenses was absurd. But this absurdity is what makes the film work. Roeg explains his choice:

'I wanted to do a biopic of Superman; I wanted him trapped in an alternative universe living a life with no powers. He would be having dreams about Earth, which he had never been to. I liked the idea that Superman, a fictional character on Earth, actually exists in another world; and that in our stories, we are sending a message to him. I wanted this man to be haunted by a possible superhero alternative to his life that wasn't happening. Then Richard Donner announced he was making the Superman movie the world wanted; so I conceived of Elephant Gun. In real-life, Presley was Earth's fictional Superman; his tragedy was that he was also real.'1

Elephant Gun Directed by Nicolas Roeg Written by Nicolas Roeg Starring Elvis Presley Rip Torn Music by John Phillips/ Elvis Presley Columbia Pictures UK/US Release Date: April 1977 Running Time: 145 mins.

1 Sight and Sound, May 2003