Baal

Baal regularly gets mentioned as a golden age of BBC public service broadcasting. A Bertolt Brecht play, starring David Bowie and directed by Alan Clarke best known for productions such as Scum and The Firm.

This is certainly an experimental television production and Clarke has form for that. He also made Penda's Fen.

This is very much like a stage play with Baal singing in between scenes in split screen.

Based in the early part of 20th Century Germany. Baal is a renowned poet, drunk, womaniser and scrounger. At odds with the bourgeois society that he takes advantage of.

Baal is no hero, he looks ill and ragged with his debauchery and cruelty.

The action seemed at a distant to me and I felt the story was not better utilised. It was regarded as a flop at the time of broadcast.

Over the years its reputation has grown. More due to a combination of Bowie and Clarke. I doubt many would had remembered this production if it was not for them. An interesting failure.

This is not very good. I'd much rather watch Miss Julie (August Strindberg) or something by Ibsen. If this play hadn't been written by Bertolt Brecht, would we even give it the time of day? And despite Bowie's disgusting(ly good) performance, is there much here to recommend this staging? One only for Bowie completists, perhaps?

Something wonderfully good like Miss Julie, manages to keep focused as it delivers emotional blows. Whereas this offering veers all over the shop and is far, far, far too wordy. Perhaps this comes from Brecht's early "Laughing Gnome" period?

The heart's filthy lesson?

David Bowie has always been underrated as a dramatic actor, and Alan Clarke was usually a fine director. But this TV version of Brecht's early play is stiff and uninvolving--partly because it's far from Brecht's best and ill-suited to film, but primarily because Clarke's direction is so misguided. Apart from some split screen effects for the transitional song interludes, he shoots almost everything in long-shot, keeping the performers literally at a theatrical distance, the camera stock still. (The film also seems dankly underlit, although to be fair that might be the fault of the transfer I watched.) Bowie throws himself into this irredeemable-scoundrel part with verve and is more than willing to let the makeup etc. crew make him as ugly/unhealthy looking as possible. The other cast members are perfectly adequate. But this "Baal" feels like an academic performance record for the archives rather than a fully realized adaptation of a stage work. Maybe Clarke just didn't relate to the material.

We have a dramatic masterpiece here and the Music is used very well...both lyrical and instrumental, which has been re-released by Bowie's label.The opening "Baal's Hymn" sets the scene for the protagonist an ex-soldier, explaining his love of "the sky" alcohol, women and mass murder-----during an Orgy ,("When Baal saw lots of corpses scattered round,he felt twice the thrill ,despite the lack of room,space enough ,their not thick on the ground,space enough within this womens womb) - this line sums up the kind of character we are dealing with.The image of "the Sky" is also very important in this play,showing perhaps that Baal is bored with his life and wishes to die. Fantastic

This striking vehicle for the great rock star David Bowie makes an interesting comparison with the earlier 1970 New German Cinema adaptation in which the Bowie role of the outrageously misbehaving scruffy poet was played by none other than Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

The original production of the 1920s play by Brecht started Oscar Homolka, later to be seen as a sometimes comforting and heartwarming character actor in Hollywood films. The

But the Baal character, based on a part animal legendary figure of the 17th century, is hardly at all comforting and makes the scampish bum in Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning look like a paragon of the bourgeois.

I have not seen a more recent German adaptation but contrasting the 1970 and 1982 versions I prefer the way director Alan Clarke in the later one relies on old fashioned tableaux combined with simplified stylized backgrounds and split screens to the way in the earlier one Schlondorff used smeared lenses and hand held camera work.

Plus Bowie's rendition of the song lyrics is spot on.