| Badlands | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Terrence Malick |
| Written by | Terrence Malick |
| Produced by | Terrence Malick |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography |
|
| Edited by | Robert Estrin |
| Music by |
|
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $300,000 (estimated) |
Badlands is a 1973 Americanneo-noir[2]periodcrimedrama film written, produced and directed byTerrence Malick, in his directorial debut. The film starsMartin Sheen andSissy Spacek, and follows Holly Sargis (Spacek), a 15-year old who goes on akilling spree with her partner, Kit Carruthers (Sheen). The film also starsWarren Oates andRamon Bieri. While the story is fictional, it is loosely based on the real-life murder spree ofCharles Starkweather and his girlfriend,Caril Ann Fugate, in 1958.[3]
Badlands was released in 1973 to positive reviews from critics, who particularly praised its cinematography, soundtrack—which includes pieces byCarl Orff—and the lead performances. At the28th British Academy Film Awards, Spacek was nominated for theMost Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles award, and Sheen won the Best Actor award at theSan Sebastián International Film Festival.
In 1993, the film was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5][6]
In 1959, Holly Sargis narrates the film as a 15-year-old living inFort Dupree, a dead-endSouth Dakota town. She has a strained relationship with her father, a sign painter, since her mother's death frompneumonia years earlier. Holly meets Kit Carruthers, a 25-year-old garbage collector, troubledgreaser andKorean War veteran. He resemblesJames Dean, an actor whom Holly admires. After Kit charms Holly, he takes her virginity. As they become closer, his violent and antisocial tendencies are gradually revealed.
Holly's father disapproves of Kit and kills her dog as punishment for seeing him. Kit breaks into Holly's house and insists she run away with him. When her father threatens to call the police, Kit fatally shoots him. After Kit and Holly fake suicide by burning the house, they head for thebadlands ofMontana. They build a tree house in a remote area and fish and steal chickens for food. They flee when found by three men (who Kit later tells Holly werebounty hunters) whom Kit shoots dead. They seek refuge with Kit's former co-worker, Cato, but when he attempts to summon help, Kit shoots him, too. A young couple arrive and are forced into the storm cellar. Kit shoots into the closed cellar door and leaves without knowing if they are dead.
Law enforcement pursue Kit and Holly across the Northern Plains. They stop at a rich man's mansion and take supplies, clothing, and hisCadillac, sparing the man and his deaf housemaid. As they drive across Montana towards Canada, the police find and chase them.
Holly, who has grown tired of Kit and life on the run, refuses to go with him and turns herself in. Kit leads the police on a car chase, but is soon caught. He charms the arresting officers andNational Guard troops, tossing them his personal belongings as souvenirs of his crime spree. Holly reveals at the end that she received probation and married her defense attorney's son. Kit was executed for his crimes.
DirectorTerrence Malick makes a cameo as the man at the rich man's door, while Sheen's sons – Charlie Sheen andEmilio Estevez – appear briefly as two boys sitting under a lamppost outside Holly's house.
Malick, a protégé ofArthur Penn (whom he thanked in the film's end credits),[7] began work onBadlands after his second year attending theAmerican Film Institute.[8] In 1970, Malick, at age 27, began working on the screenplay during a road trip.[9] "I wrote and, at the same time, developed a kind of sales kit with slides and video tape of actors, all with a view to presenting investors with something that would look ready to shoot," Malick said. "To my surprise, they didn't pay too much attention to it; they invested on faith. I raised about half the money andexecutive producerEdward Pressman the other half."[8] Malick paid $25,000 of his own funds. The remainder of his share was raised from professionals such as doctors and dentists.Badlands was the first feature film that Malick had written for himself to direct.[9]
Sissy Spacek, in only her second film, was the first actor cast. Malick found her small-town Texas roots and accent were perfect for the part of the naive impressionable high school girl. The director included her in his creative process, asking questions about her life "as if he were mining for gold." When he found out she had been a majorette, he worked a twirling routine into the script.[10] Several up-and-coming actors were auditioned for the part of Kit Carruthers. When Martin Sheen was suggested by the casting director, Malick was hesitant, thinking he was too old for the role. Spacek wrote in her autobiography that "the chemistry was immediate. Hewas Kit. And with him, I was Holly."[11] Sheen based his characterization of Kit on the actorJames Dean.[12]
Principal photography took place inColorado starting in July 1972, with a non-union crew and a low budget of $300,000 (excluding some deferments to film labs and actors).[8] The film had a somewhat troubled production history: several members of the crew clashed with Malick, and another was severely injured when an explosion occurred while filming the fire scene.[13][14] Malick's first cinematographer, Brian Probyn, quit mid-shoot after balking at the director's unorthodox methods.[15][16] He was replaced byTak Fujimoto then byStevan Larner who finished the film.[15] "Amazingly, despite the input of these different hands, the film looks remarkably seamless," said producerEdward R. Pressman.[15]
TheFrank G. Bloom House inTrinidad, Colorado, was used for the rich man's house. Malick himself had an uncredited cameo after the actor hired to play 'Caller at Rich Man's House' failed to show up.[17] The script's beginning was mostly filmed in the southeastern Colorado towns ofLa Junta andLas Animas, including the scene in which Holly runs out of the latter town's Columbian Elementary School.[18] The closing credits thank the people ofOtero County "for their help and cooperation."
Jack Fisk served as art director for the film in his first of several collaborations with the director. During production, Sissy Spacek and Fisk fell in love[19] and were married on April 12, 1974. The film was originally set to be edited by Robert Estrin. When Malick saw Estrin's cut of the film, he disliked it and removed him from the production. Malick andBilly Weber recut the movie. Estrin remains credited as the sole editor, however, with Weber credited as associate editor.[13] Both Weber and art designerJack Fisk worked on all of Malick's subsequent features through 2016 (The Tree of Life,To the Wonder,Knight of Cups).[20]
Though Malick paid close attention to period detail, he did not want it to overwhelm the picture. "I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum," he said. "Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time."[8] At a news conference coinciding with the film's festival debut, Malick called Kit "so desensitized that [he] can regard the gun with which he shoots people as a kind of magic wand that eliminates small nuisances."[3] Malick also pointed out that "Kit and Holly even think of themselves asliving in a fairy tale", and he felt this was appropriate since "children's books likeTreasure Island were often filled with violence." He also hoped a fairy tale tone would "take a little of the sharpness out of the violence but still keep its dreamy quality."[8]
The film makes repeated use of the short compositionGassenhauer fromCarl Orff's andGunild Keetman'sSchulwerk, and also uses other tunes byErik Satie,Nat "King" Cole,Mickey & Sylvia andJames Taylor.[21]
Warner Bros. purchased and distributed the film for just under $1 million.[8] Warner Bros. initially previewed the film on a double bill with theMel Brooks comedyBlazing Saddles, resulting in very negative audience response. The production team was forced to book the film into several other theaters, in locations such asLittle Rock, Arkansas, to demonstrate that the film could make money.[13] The film has a 97% rating onRotten Tomatoes and an average score of 8.9/10 based on the reviews of 59 critics, with the general consensus being "Terrence Malick's debut is a masterful slice of American cinema, rife with the visual poetry and measured performances that would characterize his work."[22] OnMetacritic, the film holds a weighted score of 94 out of 100 based on 21 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[23]Variety stated that the film was an "impressive" debut.[20]Roger Ebert added it to his "Great Movies" list in 2011.[20][24]
Badlands was the closingfeature film at the 1973New York Film Festival,[3] reportedly "overshadowing evenMartin Scorsese'sMean Streets."[25]Vincent Canby, who saw the film at the festival debut, called it a "cool, sometimes brilliant, always ferociously American film"; according to Canby, "Sheen and Miss Spacek are splendid as the self-absorbed, cruel, possibly psychotic children of our time, as are the members of the supporting cast, including Warren Oates as Holly's father. One may legitimately debate the validity of Malick's vision, but not, I think, his immense talent. Badlands is a most important and exciting film."[3]
In April 1974,Jay Cocks wrote that the film "might better be regarded less as acompanion piece toBonnie and Clyde than as an elaboration and reply. It is not loose and high-spirited. All its comedy has a frosty irony, and its violence, instead of being brutally balletic, is executed with a dry, remorseless drive."[7] According to executive producerEdward Pressman, apart from Canby'sNew York Times review, most initial reviews of the film were negative, but its reputation with critics improved over time.[13]David Thomson conversely reported that the work was "by common consent [...] one of the most remarkable first feature films made in America."[26] Writing years later forThe Chicago Reader, Dave Kehr wrote: "Malick's 1973 first feature is a film so rich in ideas it hardly knows where to turn. Transcendent themes of love and death are fused with a pop-culture sensibility and played out against a midwestern background, which is breathtaking both in its sweep and in its banality."[27]
Spacek later said thatBadlands changed the whole way she thought about filmmaking. "After working with Terry Malick, I was like, 'The artist rules. Nothing else matters.' My career would have been very different if I hadn't had that experience".[28] In 2003,Bill Paxton said: "It had a lyricism that films have only once in a while, moments of a transcendental nature.... There's this wonderful sequence where the couple have been cut adrift from civilisation. They know the noose is tightening and they've gone off the road, across the Badlands. You hear Sissy narrating various stories, and she's talking about visiting faraway places. There's this strange piece of classical music [an ethereal orchestration ofErik Satie'sTrois Morceaux en forme de Poire], and a very long-lens shot. You see something in the distance – I think it's a train moving – and it looks like a shot of an Arabian caravan moving across the desert. These are moments that have nothing to do with the story, and yet everything to do with it. They're not plot-orientated, but they have to do with the longing or the dreams of these characters. And they're the kind of moments you never forget, a certain kind of lyricism that just strikes some deep part of you and that you hold on to."[29]
Martin Sheen commented in 1999 thatBadlands "still is" the best script he had ever read.[9] He wrote that "It was mesmerising. It disarmed you. It was a period piece, and yet of all time. It was extremely American, it caught the spirit of the people, of the culture, in a way that was immediately identifiable."[9]
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
