Maybe Starman David Bowie was born to play the title role in The Man Who Fell To Earth, an avant-garde disjointed sci fi film from director Nicolas Roeg.
Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) is an alien who lands in New Mexico with some precious rings, a British passport and some rudimentary knowledge of patents. He needs to make money so he can build a rocket ship that can transport water to his dying planet.
Newton quickly makes money through his advanced business patents, he recruits a chief scientist (Rip Torn) who discovers that he is not what he appears to be and falls in love with hotel maid (Candy Clark) who also introduces him to the delights of gin & tonic.
The government intelligence service and rival businesses decide to look closely into his activities. They throw his patent lawyer and business associate (Buck Henry) out of the window and then hold Newton captive in a hotel plying him with gin.
The film plays with time as years go by and other characters age. We have flashbacks of Newton in his home planet with his family. The most memorable scenes is that of an alien with a British passport and the famous scene of Clark urinating her underwear when Newton reveals himself as an alien.
The film has a cult following but it is not a great film. It is too trippy and unstructured leading you to ask more questions than get any answers from it. Still I cannot think of anyone else who could had played the title role in that era and Bowie goes for it full frontal.
However the combination of Bowie and Roeg makes this a landmark science fiction film of the 1970s just as worthy as Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
