BADLANDS (93’)
by Terrence Malick
cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Ramon Bieri, Warren Oates
USA, 1973
Restoration curated by The Criterion Collection
Introduced by Miriam De Rosa
“It would hardly be an exaggeration to call the first half of Badlands a revelation -– one of the best literate examples of narrated American cinema since the early days of Welles and Polonsky. Compositions, actors, and lines interlock and click into place with irreducible economy and unerring precision, carrying us along before we have time to catch our breaths. It is probably not accidental that an early camera set-up of Kit on his garbage route recalls the framing of a neighbourhood street that introduced us to the social world of Rebel Without a Cause: the doomed romanticism courted by Kit and dispassionately recounted by Holly immediately evokes the Fifties world of Nicholas Ray -– and more particularly, certain Ray-influenced (and narrated) works of Godard, like Pierrot le fou and Bande à part. Terrence Malick’s eye, narrative sense, and handling of affectless violence are all recognizably Godardian, but they flourish in a context more easily identified with Ray. Unmistakably Malick’s own, however, is the narration and dialogue: like the movie’s violence, it remains laconic, idiomatic, detached, and chillingly real throughout.” (Jonathan Rosenbaum)
