Badlands (film)

Infobox Film
name = Badlands

---

caption = "Badlands" promotional poster
director = Terrence Malick
producer = Terrence Malick
writer = Terrence Malick
starring = Martin Sheen
Sissy Spacek
Warren Oates
music = James Taylor (theme "Migration")
cinematography = Tak Fujimoto
Steven Larner
Brian Probyn
editing = Robert Estrin
distributor = Warner Bros.
released = October 15, 1973 U.S. release
runtime = 95 min
country = United States
language = English
Spanish
budget = $500,000 (estimated)
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 3757
imdb_id = 0069762

"Badlands" is a 1973 film directed by Terrence Malick from his own script, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Warren Oates and Ramon Bieri are also featured. Malick has a small speaking part although he does not receive an acting credit.

The story, though fictional, is loosely based on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in 1957. [cite news | first=Vincent | last=Canby | coauthors= | title= Badlands (1973) |date=October 15, 1973 | publisher= | url=http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF173EB42CA6494CC0B7799F8C6896 | work=New York Times | pages= | accessdate = 2007-01-06| language = ]

Plot

"Badlands" is narrated from the perspective of Holly (Spacek), a teenaged girl living in a dead-end South Dakota town. One day she meets Kit (Sheen), a rebellious young greaser who sweeps her off her feet and takes her as his accomplice on a cross-country killing spree. Holly's narration, describing her adventures with Kit with romantic clichés, is juxtaposed with the grim reality of Kit's sociopathic appetite for grisly violence. This use of voice-over to create a dialectic between sound and image has become a dominant feature of Malick's work.

Production

Malick began work on "Badlands" after his second year as a student at the American Film Institute. "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 and [executive producer] Edward Pressmen the other half."cite news
last = Walker
first= Beverly
coauthors =
title = Malick on "Badlands"
work =
pages =
language =
publisher = "Sight and Sound"
date = spring 1973
url = http://www.eskimo.com/~toates/malick/art6.html
accessdate = 2008-09-17| language = ]

Principal photography took place in the summer of 1972, beginning in July, with a non-union crew and a considerably low budget of $300,000 (excluding some deferments to film labs and actors).

The film was edited by Robert Estrin; Billy Weber is credited as associate editor and both he and the art designer Jack Fisk went on to work on Malick's next three features "Days of Heaven" (1978), "The Thin Red Line" (1998) and "The New World" (2005).

Though Malick paid close attention to period detail, he did not want it to overwhelm the picture. "I tried to keep the 1950's 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."

Malick also pointed out that "Kit and Holly even think of themselves as "living" in a fairy tale," and he felt that was very appropriate as "children's books like Treasure 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."

Warner Brothers eventually purchased and distributed the completed film for a sum just under a million dollars.

core

The film's score makes repeated use of the short composition Gassenhauer from Carl Orff's Schulwerk, and apparently also uses other pieces from the Schulwerk. [cite web|title=Soundtrack listing for Badlands compiled by an Amazon reviewer|url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1LBOLOIOMAVL8#R3HVE9K0K62P5D] The same piece was used for a scene in the film "Ratcatcher" as well as the films "True Romance", "Monster" and "Finding Forrester".

Recognition

"Badlands" was met with great acclaim upon its release. It debuted at the New York Film Festival in 1973, reportedly "overshadowing even Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets"."cite news
last = Biskind
first = Peter
coauthors =
title = The Runaway Genius
work =
pages =
language =
publisher = Vanity Fair
date = December 1998
url =
accessdate = 2008-09-17 ]

"Malick's 1973 first feature is a film so rich in ideas it hardly knows where to turn," wrote Dave Kehr for "The Chicago Reader". "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."cite news | first=Dave | last=Kehr | coauthors= | title= "Badlands" review |date= | publisher = "Chicago Reader" | url=http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/capsules/682_BADLANDS | work=| pages= | accessdate = 2008-09-17| language = ]

Spacek later said that "Badlands" 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."cite news
last = Grant
first = Richard
coauthors =
title = "Lone star"
work =
pages =
language =
publisher = "The Guardian"
date = January 26, 2002
url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2002/jan/26/awardsandprizes.features
accessdate = 2008-09-17 ] In subsequent years, Sheen would often cite "Badlands" as his best work.

In 1993, "Badlands" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

References

Bibliography

* Michel Chion, 1999. "The Voice in Cinema", translated by Claudia Gorbman, New York & Chichester: Columbia University Press.
* Michel Ciment, 1975. ‘Entretien avec Terrence Malick’, "Positif", 170, Jun, 30-34.
* G. Richardson Cook, 1974. ‘The Filming of "Badlands": An Interview with Terry Malick’, "Filmmakers Newsletter", 7:8, Jun, 30-32.
* Charlotte Crofts, 2001. ‘From the “Hegemony of the Eye” to the “Hierarchy of Perception”: The Reconfiguration of Sound and Image in Terrence Malick’s "Days of Heaven"’, "Journal of Media Practice", 2:1, 19-29.
* Cameron Docherty, 1998. ‘Maverick Back from the "Badlands"’, "The Sunday Times", Culture, 7 Jun, 4.
* Brian Henderson, 1983. ‘Exploring "Badlands"’. "Wide Angle: A Quarterly Journal of Film Theory, Criticism and Practice", 5:4, 38-51.
* Les Keyser, 1981. "Hollywood in the Seventies", London: Tantivy Press
* Terrence Malick, 1973. Interview the morning after "Badlands" premiered at the New York Film Festival," American Film Institute Report", 4:4, Winter, 48.
* James Monaco, 1972. ‘"Badlands"’, "Take One", 4:1, Sept/Oct, 32.
* J. P. Telotte, 1986. ‘"Badlands" and the Souvenir Drive’, "Western Humanities Review", 40:2, Summer, 101-14.
* Beverly Walker, 1975. ‘Malick on "Badlands"’, "Sight and Sound", 44:2, Spring, 82-3.

External links

*
*
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/aug/22/drama Making of article] at "The Guardian"