michael_gothard_archive

In this story about the Thirty Years War that ravaged Europe (1618-1648), Michael Gothard played Hansen, one of a band of marauders led by The Captain (Michael Caine).

“The Last Valley” was filmed at Halliford Studios, Shepperton, England, and in Trins, Tirol, Austria.

Filming seems to have taken place during 1969, because there were 40th Anniversary showings on 24 and 27 September 2009.

Per an uncredited source, Michael may have got this role as a result of his performance in “Michael Kohlhaas.”

"In [Michael Kohlhaas], Michael Gothard played the part of a young soldier who joined Kohlhaas' band, but who, refusing to obey, looted for his own gain, and finally died by hanging. His truculent performance, especially in the last scenes with Anita Pallenberg, earned him a very similar role in “The Last Valley”, James Clavell's ponderous allegory."

Quote taken from Michael Gothard Tribute Site

It seems likely that Michael’s performance in “The Last Valley” may have led to him being cast as Kai in “Arthur of the Britons.” He even wears the same studded tunic in both productions.

“The Last Valley” was the second project on which Michael appeared with Brian Blessed (who played another mercenary, Korski) – the first being “The Further Adventures of the Musketeers”, and the third being “Arthur of the Britons.”

Harry Fielder, a stuntman/extra/stand-in with whom Michael had worked on the “Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)” episode, “When the Spirit Moves You”, was an uncredited pillager in “The Last Valley”, and would later work with him on “The Devils.”

Madeleine Hinde, who played Inge, would work with Michael again soon after, on "Arthur of the Britons", in which she appeared as Eithna.

George Innes, who played mercenary Vornez, would later appear with Michael again in “Ivanhoe”, in which Innes played the Fool, Wamba, and Michael played Saxon noble, Athelstane.

Michael Gothard would also work with Michael Caine again, on “Jack the Ripper.”

Michael Gothard's own account of his on-set reunion with Michael Caine, in 1988 can be found here

Incidentally, Michael Caine has confessed that (unlike Michael Gothard) he is a terrible rider, and was lucky to escape unharmed during “The Last Valley.”

"I am absolutely useless. I act as though I can ride. In “The Last Valley,” I led a charge. If I'd have come off, they'd have all run over me.”


Watch "The Last Valley" on Youtube:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10

Details on IMDB

Keith (Michael Gothard) with his second victim, Sylvia (Judy Huxtable.)
( Read more... )

Filming of “The Last Valley”, at Halliford Studios, Shepperton, England, and in Trins, Tirol, Austria, seems to have taken place during 1969, because there were 40th Anniversary showings on 24 and 27 September 2009. It was not released until January 1971.

According to the review below, from a press book for The Valley (Obscured by Clouds), Michael's role as Hansen may have come as a result of his performance in “Michael Kohlhaas.”

In this intense chronicle of a peasant revolt, Michael Gothard played the part of a young soldier who joined Kohlhaas’ band, but who, refusing to obey, looted for his own gain, and finally died by hanging. His truculent performance, especially in the last scenes with Anita Pallenberg, earned him a very similar role in THE LAST VALLEY, James Clavell’s ponderous allegory.

Michael Gothard, who was later to star in Barbet Schroeder's "The Valley (Obscured by Clouds)", is credited by the BFI for a very minor role in Schroeder's first film, "More": a non-speaking part, as a guest at a party attended by the couple whose relationship is the focus of the film. The character, clearly high on drugs, and snatching at something that isn't there, serves as a dumb show for the couple's subsequent descent into drug addiction.

Doubts have been expressed as to whether this is actually Michael Gothard, or someone else.

This scene in "More" was filmed in Ibiza.


Picture from the BFI booklet


Barbetschroeder.com

More is 1969 film. The first directorial effort by Barbet Schroeder, the film became a hit in Europe, and today has now achieved the status of “cult classic.”

Starring Mimsy Farmer and Klaus Grünberg, it is principally set on the sun-drenched Spanish island of Ibiza. A young German student, Stefan, is taking a break from his university studies. He hitchhikes to Paris for some freedom. He says he wants to be warm for a change, to have a chance to see the Sun.

While at a party in Paris, Stefan meets a free-spirited American girl named Estelle. He is instantly drawn to Estelle, and pursues her. He will even eventually follow her to the island of Ibiza. In Ibiza they slowly begin a relationship. Estelle introduces Stefan to many pleasures and freedoms, including taking drugs. Ultimately he will even try heroin, to which he eventually becomes addicted. The results are tragic.

Schroeder has said that the story of More was modelled on the myth of Icarus and Daedalus, “with Estelle representing the Sun”. The film was shot on location by the legendary cinematographer Nestor Almendros, who was to become a long-time collaborator with Schroeder.

More debuted in Cannes at the 22nd Cannes Film Festival, in May of 1969, and the U.S. premiere was in New York in August, 1969.

The film’s musical score was unique for the time, as it was written and performed by the group Pink Floyd, they would later release the music as an album …

Full review

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Vincent Canby: New York Times, 5 August 1969

… In "More" … drugs are simply the casual instruments of fate. Much more important — and interesting — is the manner in which Schroeder and his superb cameraman, Nestor Almendros, visualize the alternating agonies and ecstasies of a fatal love in a warm climate …

"More" … is Schroeder's film, a curiously effective dramatization of the kind of puritan ethic that demands that pleasure be paid for by pain and tragedy. It's 19th-century romance set to a rock tune on a portable cassette tape recorder.

Full review

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Roger Ebert: 24 November 1969

Barbet Schroeder's "More" is a weird, freaky movie about two hedonisitc kids who destroy themselves with drugs … "More" is not, however, a lecture. It's more of a celebration. The message seems to be: Sure, speed kills, but what a way to go. After some disorganized scenes in Europe, the two kids leave to spend the summer on a Mediterranean island. They lie nude in the sun (forever, it seems); get involved in a Nazi intrigue that's never made clear; experiment with pot, acid, speed, heroin and banana peels … "More," interestingly enough, never pretends to be inside the character's heads. It watches the trips from outside. That's a relief but not a solution ...

Full review

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New Wave Film.com

… Although dismissed by some critics as an over-indulgent celebration of drug-taking, More in fact proves to be anything but an endorsement of substance abuse. Stefan’s descent from naïve student to hopeless junkie might start out as a thrill-ride but ultimately it ends in a bleak and dusty cemetery. Like Icarus, he flies higher and higher but fails to see the dangers of the sun and comes crashing down to Earth …

Schroeder keeps his distance, maintaining an objective tone that will become a hallmark of his style in later years. He avoids getting carried away with kaleidoscopic lenses and incoherent montages, instead opting for a detached realism, not least in the graphic scenes of drug preparation which were originally cut by the censor but have now been restored.

Full review

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Gary Couzens: DVD Video Review, 10 February 2004

Nestor Almendros was the cinematographer. This was his third dramatic feature for the Spanish-born, Cuban-raised DP: he had previously shot some short films and La collectionneuse for Eric Rohmer and the European-based Roger Corman production The Wild Racers. Almendros and Schroeder got on well, and they worked together again on the The Valley Obscured by Clouds (similarly-themed to More, though shot in New Guinea), Maitresse and the documentaries General Idi Amin Dada and Koko the Talking Gorilla.

Even this early in his career, Almendros’s classical style of cinematography was already well developed. There’s an insistence on natural light, or at least light that has a justified source. The early scenes of the Paris streets at night time, for example, were shot with a new fast film stock and the only lighting were the available streetlights.

Artificial light that isn’t part of the scene itself is used sparingly, to augment what is there naturally. Almendros’s work adds considerably to a film, which does establish a mood … Almendros’s policy was that if something was in shadow in real life than it should be so on screen, and the last thing he wanted to do was overlight unnaturally …

Full review

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Horrorview

Schroeder’s debut feature “More” stands today as a visually true time capsule summary of the end of the hippie dream, beautifully photographed from natural light sources by Rohmer’s cinematographer Néstor Almendros, and made in the twilight shadow of the May ‘68 Paris uprising …

“More” is a provocative, slightly awkward, semi-improvised modern day recasting of the Icarus myth, in which the heroin-induced allure of sexual freedom and lack of responsibility represented by Estelle’s enticing gamine luminosity, attracts the addictive, sun worshipping personality of the film’s often unlike-able male protagonist like the doomed character from the Greek myth, and similarly results in his own flight from being a lost seeker on student-crowded Parisian streets towards casual crash-and-burn destruction from heroin addiction, alone and suicidal on the sparsely populated island resort so relentlessly baked by a remorseless sun.

Full review
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Samuel Wilson – Mondo 70

Volker Schlondorff's adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's 19th century historical novel about a 16th century rebellion in Saxony is a relic of that strange time when Hollywood was willing to try its luck on practically anything. American producers bankrolled a German crew working in Czechoslovakia with an international cast, including some Rolling Stones hangers-on (and according to legend, Keith Richards himself as an extra) and while IMDB says it opened in the U.S. in May 1969, I can't find evidence of that initial American run, under either its original title or the alternate rubric, Man on Horseback.

It received its American TV premiere as a CBS Late Movie in December 1972. Kohlhaas doesn't seem to have played theatrically in New York until 1980, after Schlondorff had earned some notoriety as the director of The Tin Drum. In a way, it's a typical film of the 1969-71 period -- idiosyncratically ambitious and an absolute commercial disaster in America …

Like Julian Buchs' A Bullet for Sandoval, this ostensibly more prestigious production is a story in which a righteous man's revenge far exceeds his original grievance. Unlike the more stylized spaghetti western, Kohlhaas is a stark, grimy history play in the manner of the Czech directors on whose territory much of it was shot, as well as Schlondorff's "New German Cinema" movement.

The two films have in common a generic continental concern of the period with the cruelty and injustice of history, the injustice in either case guaranteeing an excess of cruelty when victims finally lash out. In Kohlhaas the excesses of rebellion take Schlondorff close to spaghetti territory, especially in the town-sacking scene, during which Stanley Meyers' score is suddenly enhanced by dissonantly anachronistic electric guitars while Michael's less reputable men run amok.

This turn of the rebellion toward viciousness and outright crime probably came as a rude surprise to those original viewers who may have seen Kohlhaas's movement building into some sort of proto-hippy youth uprising after the deserter (Michael Gothard) and his doxy (Anita Pallenberg) are introduced. What looks like an idealistic feud, and remains one in Kohlhaas's own mind, is quickly corrupted.

Because Michael himself remains incorruptible, it's perhaps inevitable that he ends up paying for everyone else's sins in a suggestively gruesome finale. That sort of finish sets apart the more artistically ambitious "history of cruelty" films from spaghetti westerns, which usually allow their antiheroes to go out, if they even lose, in a blaze of glory, with their boots on ... The history-of-cruelty films prefer to emphasize the inexorable power of Power, the inescapable embrace of injustice, even if Michael Kohlhaas is allowed the symbolic grace note of freeing the horses ...

Full review

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New York Times: 20 June 1980

A handsome, straightforward adaption of the 1810 novella written by Heinrich von Kleist, about a rigorously honest man named Michael Kohlhaas, a successful horse dealer who, when the courts refuse to uphold his claim against a rich landowner, takes the law into his own hands. The setting is a small German principality and the time the mid-16th century. In his pursuit of the landowner, the single-minded Kohlhaas gathers together a small armed band that first burns down the landowner's castle, sacks one city and eventually threatens the entire country. Thus Kohlhaas, first seen as the unquestioning recipient of God's favor, suddenly becomes a bandit, operating outside the laws he once invoked and which will eventually doom him.”

Full review

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Review from unknown source

He was discovered in Herostratus, Don Levy's very interesting film, in which he played the principal role. His spectacular performance, which alternated moments of violence with lyric sequences done in very long takes, was noticed by Volker Schlondorff, who signed him for Michael Kohlhaas.

In this intense chronicle of a peasant revolt, Michael Gothard played the part of a young soldier who joined Kohlhaas' band, but who, refusing to obey, looted for his own gain, and finally died by hanging. His truculent performance, especially in the last scenes with Anita Pallenberg, earned him a very similar role in “The Last Valley”, James Clavell's ponderous allegory.

Full review on the Michael Gothard Tribute Site

Also known as “Man on Horseback”, Michael Kohlhaas was filmed in Bavaria, (Germany), Bratislava, (Slovakia), and Moravia, (Czech Republic).

There are two versions, one English, one German.

The release date was 11 April 1969, in West Germany.

The film was nominated for the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1969.

Michael Kohlhaas is a Kafkaesque tale based on an 1811 novella by Heinrich von Kleist, which is itself based on the 16th-century story of Hans Kohlhase.

The story is about a man obsessed with getting justice. Michael Kohlhaas is taking some horses to market when he is forced to leave two of them behind as security for a toll imposed by the landowner, Wenzel von Tronka, whose property Kohlhaas needs to traverse.

By the time he returns, Kohlhaas has learned that the toll was illegal, and - to add insult to injury - he finds his horses in a desperate condition, having been worked, and not fed. The man he left to care for them has been beaten, and run off the property.

Kohlhaas doesn’t really care about the horses, because he refuses to take them back in that condition. His only concern is the matter of principle.

He tries to go through legal channels to get redress, but when his wife is casually killed while petitioning for him, he resorts to assembling a war band, to try to force the authorities to take his side against Wenzel von Tronka.

They band goes on the rampage, attacking Von Tronka’s castle. Von Tronka gets away, so Kohlhaas searches for him, sacking nunneries and towns. He shows the occasional flicker of remorse, but he is so obsessed with getting justice from Von Tronka that it overrides everything.

This leads inevitably to Kohlhaas’ destruction.

Michael Gothard plays the part of John, one of Kohlhaas’ band of rebels, who meets his end at Kohlhaas’ behest, after admitting to a rape.

This is the first film in which Michael is seen riding a horse. He seems competent and confident on horseback, and one might wonder where, and when, a state school pupil would have learned to ride.

According to family friend, Ritva, Michael used to go to the country during school holidays. If, as seems likely, he went to stay with his maternal grandparents in or near Bream, on the edge of the Forest of Dean - where horse-riding is a popular activity - it may have been there that Michael became such a skilled rider.

A full account of Ritva's interview is here.

Michael Kohlhaas is now available on DVD.

Warning: As well as scenes of violence, including sexual assaults, torture and hangings, there is some animal abuse in this film. They scare a cat very badly. Also, they needed horses that appeared to have been starved, and it seems unlikely that the production company just found some starving horses and made them well again.

IMDB entry

This film is about Polly, a rich girl from Chelsea, who wants to experience 'real life', so she gets a job in a factory in Battersea. She makes friends with the girls working there, and gets a crummy flat.



In this scene near the start of the film, Polly has gone to the pub with new friends Sylvie and Rube. There they meet three guys including Terry, played by Michael Gothard.



They spend the evening with them.



Sylvie and Rube get up and sing with the band.
( Read more... )

This seminal film of the 1960s must have been an important break for Michael; he was working with many others who were rising stars, such as Dennis Waterman, Maureen Lipman, Liz Fraser and Susan George.

Michael plays Terry, a friend of the hero, Pete (Dennis Waterman).

In this gritty drama, Terry gets his girlfriend Rube (Adrienne Posta) pregnant. She has an abortion without telling him first. Terry has a fabulous scene confronting Rube’s friend Sylvie (Maureen Lipman) and her mother Mrs McCarthy (Liz Fraser). He later dies in a motorbike accident, just after getting engaged to Rube.

Release date: 13 March 1968

Review

New York Times, 31 July 2012

“The supporting roles in this movie are as strong as they were in "To Sir With Love," and several members of the cast—including Adrienne Posta were in the earlier film. It seems that in British movies of this genre one always has either a birth or an abortion, and Miss Posta—in a part that consists mainly of being a rather leaden ball of fluff, has the abortion scene. Maureen Lipman, plays Miss Posta's sister—a wise, mischievous young woman, who, but for her lack of education, would probably have become a considerably less charming intellectual. Michael Gothard plays a boy next door, who dies, twitching, in a motorcycle wreck. Other minor characters, including some real Battersea residents in a pub, are convincing, too.”

Full review

Michael was to work with Dennis Waterman again, in 1985, on an episode of “Minder” – “From Fulham with Love.”

Alfie Bass also featured in “Up the Junction”; he and Michael appeared together again on “Arthur of the Britons” in 1973.

Michael’s former girlfriend N.B., who first met him in 1984, says:

'He didn’t like watching himself. I never got him to show me any movie he had worked in. From what he told me, I think he liked the film “Up the Junction” and “Arthur of the Britons.” And the French one, “La vallée.”'

Watch Michael Gothard’s scenes as Terry on Youtube:
Pub scene 1
Pub scene 2 and after
Argument, party and Terry’s last ride
Warning: The third clip includes Terry's death.

IMDB entry

Mosk – Variety, 17 January 1968

Don Levy, for his first feature pic, which took about three years to make, does not lack ambition. His theme is the revolt of a young poet failure against the so-called system and general world corruption. But he does not keep it simple, blending stock footage, subliminal cutting and a mixture of melodrama, sentimentality and violence. All of which makes this somewhat overdone, overlong and repetitive …

Michael Gothard has intensity and should emerge a promising new young actor. Others are effective in their more stereotyped roles via Gabriella Licudi as the hard-boiled woman and Peter Stephens as the embodiment of the so-called Establishment.

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The Times, 27 April 1968

In a lengthy review of "Herostratus", the protagonist is described with classic British understatement as, "rather well played by a newcomer Michael Gothard."

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Kine Weekly, 25 May 1968

Don Levy’s experimental feature … represents a considerable technical achievement, especially in relation to its low budget. The visual qualities are excellent, with striking colour effects. The narrative is intercut with all kinds of imagery, ranging from gruesome, nightmarish symbolism to newsreel clips of world events. But although these images often have a haunting quality, they become increasingly irritating, obscuring meanings instead of elucidating them. In fact, despite many gaps in logic, the film works best at its narrative level and as a fairly straightforward allegory about the conflict between the individual and society.

The performances – Michael Gothard’s engaging, self-centred Max, Peter Stephens’ ruthless and complacent Farson, and Gabriella Licudi as the cool and beautiful Clio – are lively and convincing. But nothing emerges from the extemporised dialogue that would not have been more effective with a written script.

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Michael Armstrong – Films and Filming, June 1968

The performances are so good that I cannot even start to criticise them. Michael Gothard’s Max is one of the most exciting performances from a young actor I have seen for a long time. Peter Stephens as Farson is superb. He makes the character both detestable and tragic … while Gabriella Licudi’s Clio is so rich in depth and understanding, so sensitively played that the glamour-shell which so many beautiful actresses have imposed upon them, cracked fully to reveal an actress whose emotional range and expressive means are as highly charged as they are broad.

All three performances are continually bursting from the screen only to be held back, strangely enough, by the impositions of the film itself; held back by the film’s editing style …

All the dialogue was improvised. I thought about twenty percent was scripted due to the firmness with which it is played … I find watching any improvised scene that one is aware, continually, of the poor actor’s mind working … The actors in this film almost defeat this obstacle …

The film is strange in that it’s basic fault, I feel, lies in conception and initial working methods … the basic problem with the film’s resultant distortions is that Levy applied too much conscious thought to his conception.

Full review:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

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Jean Delmas – Jeune Cinema, November 1968

"Farson cares for Max as one cares for stock before slaughter; he even services him with love. Farson's "secretary" Clio, who has first refused, is finally subdued by her employer, and allows herself, despite herself, to be seduced. She will make love in service, and give account of it to her boss, who wants to use it to humiliate his subject.

... through the interaction between Farson and Max, creates a confrontation between two worlds of terrifying impact. Two types of man: the impassive shark with empty eyes and ample double chin, and against him a boy exploding with vitality and insolence ...

Between the two there lies the strange fog of impossible communication, as between two totally different biological species. "You resemble more and more the corpse you will be," says Max. But the other answers him: "what is the use of your honesty and freedom?" What indeed? For in a society that can consume anything, even suicides, there is still some merchandise that will not sell (like honesty or integrity) because no one wants it."

What drives Max to suicide is despair at the indifference of others, rather than the quest for glory of the first Herostratus. 'I am doing it because no-one gives a damn. I will look down at the people passing in the street. All of a sudden someone will see me up there and they will say to themselves, "He mustn't jump!", and they will forget about themselves for a minute, and think about me.'"

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Dick Richards - Daily Mirror, 21 August 1970

"Experimental, but fascinating."

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Richard Whitehall, 1972

"Under the greatest of difficulties, Levy has produced a dazzling film d'auteur quite unlike any other British film ever made. Long takes, through which the actors improvise brilliantly, alternate with clusters of staccato, sometimes subliminal imagery as Levy explores the ramifications and resonances of his theme: the revolt of a young failed poet against the horrors and corruption of society, and the means he takes to make his protest known."

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John Rusnell Taylor – The Times

"… Tremendously ambitious … it would be difficult to imagine anything farther from the norm in British film-production …It is brilliant and it is faintly repellent, but repellent because it means to shake us up … shot spectacularly in colour, and edited with complete assurance …"

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Peter Lennon – The Guardian

“'Herostratus' is one of the most successful films with experimental intent that I have seen for a long time."

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Kenneth Tynan – The Observer

"The photography is superb, daubing the screen with images of alienation."

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Patrick Gibbs – The Daily Telegraph

"The central idea is to criticise the ambivalence of our ‘competitive’ society."

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Kevin Thomas - LA Times

"The key to Levy's success is his utterly inspired, exhaustive use of the camera's resources to allow us to experience the feelings of his tortured hero. Indeed, rarely has the camera, backed by extraordinary acting, been used to give such objective form to a man's inner anguish. The world of HEROSTRATUS is cold, stark metallic, expressed with an imagery as succinct and evocative as anything in Antonioni at his best.

Counterpointing it is the hell of the poet's imaginations, juxtaposing slaughterhouse eviscerations with the glamorous, dominating temptresses of the advertising media. At the same time, HEROSTRATUS is the timeless story of a youth's coming of age – of both his philosophical and sexual rites of passage. The lovemaking sequence is one of the most profoundly beautiful of its kind ever filmed."

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La Libre Belgique

"‘Herostratus’ is without doubt one of the great films of the year ... One does not know what to admire most in this film. The direction, the sets, the acting or the scenario. The psychological truth of the principal characters, the intensity of the dramatization, the handling of the actors and the originality and vigour of the cinematographic style are perfect."

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Pierre Apruxine – Arts and Artists

"‘Herostratus’ rises far above the experimental and directly ranks among the masterpieces of the Seventh Art."


Richard Mayne – The Critics, BBC

"… a fantastic assault on one’s visual sensibilities … I was absolutely engulfed by this film and would like everybody to know it."

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Lorenza Mazetti – Via Nuova, Rome

"… this disturbing piece of work … which rides so close to the quick … plunging us … into the neurotic world of impotence and frustration lived by the young today …"

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Margaret Hinxman – Sunday Telegraph

"… terrifying and moving …"

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Molly Plowright – Glasgow Herald

"… the most astonishing film of my experience – right on the frontier of cinema as we so far know it … the visuals are more beautiful and the content more terrible than anything else I have seen, and the steady stare into the human mind makes the Godard and the Losey look like the fumbling side glances they actually are."


Also Out - The Guardian, 22 August 2009

"The visually impressive Herostratus is a more arty and oblique affair that takes its own sweet time telling a tale of a poet, the great Michael Gothard from Ken Russell's The Devils, who markets his planned suicide into a media event, diluting the "purity" of taking one's own life. A young Helen Mirren also stars. The extras are particularly fine, with short films and interviews scattered amongst the three titles, all given the full restoration treatment."

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LA Times

"In this coruscating work, Michael Gothard astonishes as the eponymous young poet who hires a PR firm to turn his planned suicide into a media spectacle. Bursting with psychological and aesthetic urgency, Herostratus proved as prescient about the failure of the ’60s counterculture, as it was inspirational for the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Nicolas Roeg."

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Amnon Buchbinder - You CAN Get Out: Herostratus Now, 3 September 2009

"The finished copies arrived in my hands yesterday and I have to say the BFI did a really nice job! From the striking and perfectly emblematic cover (featuring Don’s widow, the remarkable Ines Levy who collaborated with him in a variety of ways, including appearing in all his films and playing a number of visually striking roles in Herostratus), to the booklet which not only covers all of the films on the disc but offers a touching piece about Herostratus‘ lead, Michael Gothard (never mind the small number of really good films he did, like Ken Russell’s The Devils; try watching a piece of crap like Scream and Scream Again and see how the film comes to life when Gothard appears).”
( Read more... )
Full discussion

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Wonders in the Dark

It was a striking face. It was a visage first glimpsed when he played the puritanical Felton in Richard Lester’s Musketeer movies … Such was my first acquaintance on film with Michael Gothard, but others followed, most famously as the maniacal witchcraft specialist in Russell’s The Devils. He seemed made for Russell, and yet I have always felt, at the back of my mind, that there was something untapped, a missed opportunity somewhere.

It was then I heard of Herostratus.

Gothard plays Max, a young man in his early twenties, a virgin, who has slowly drifted into depressive madness up in his flat with what could only be described as schizophrenic décor. One day, after a fit of vandalism in his apartment, from which he is evicted, he goes to an advertising agency executive and offers him a rather strange proposition. He announces that he intends to commit suicide, and offers the boss, Farson, the opportunity to market it or otherwise as he sees fit.

… it’s impossible to think of another film, so unseen, that has been so influential to other filmmakers. Russell, yes, but also Kubrick, Roeg and even Danny Boyle, with its shots of a deserted almost apocalyptic London in the early hours looking ahead to a celebrated sequence in 28 Days Later. Some may think of the plot recalling Capra’s Meet John Doe, but it’s to Faust one really looks for inspiration, and what an original twist it is, for here the Mephistopheles is not the seeker of the soul but the recipient of one offered up. The contract not for several years’ good luck or eternal youth but for going ahead with the proposal and jumping from the roof of the company offices opposite St Paul’s.

Even the casting of a splendidly oily Peter Stephens seems deliberate, with his features more than resembling those of legendary Mephisto Emil Jannings (fair mention, too, to the enigmatically seductive Licudi, whose face Levy seems intoxicated by).

Back it always comes to Gothard, though, and that sequence in the flat, for one quickly becomes aware of the parallel to Kubrick’s depiction of Alex in A Clockwork Orange. The same insouciant capacity for destruction, the same angry pose, the same love for classical music and both characters’ fates centring around a decision to commit suicide. Then think of Gothard, for though it’s impossible to see anyone other than Malcolm McDowell as Alex, Gothard could have been him a decade earlier, if Burgess’ novel had been filmed soon after it was written.

Here was a special talent, a live wire, capable of going off into orbit if uncontrolled (as in The Devils) but with a dangerous, cadaverous anarchy, hypnotic from the opening shots of him running through the streets like Tom Courtenay’s Colin Smith a few years earlier. Sadly, his talents were channelled into wrong areas and he lay neglected like a real-life Withnail, killing himself at 53.

It’s a film ripe with promise, with hope for a new path for British film, and yet in the end all its achievements are by proxy.

Full review

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Jesse P. Finnegan - Foreign Pick: Film Comment, Mar/Apr 2010

“Utterly luminous, occasionally brutal, it concerns one angry — or possibly mad — young man (the gifted, ghoulish Michael Gothard), who offers London’s biggest ad agency the chance to "handle" his public suicide … Now, recovered after 40-odd years, Herostratus seems less like a lost artifact than a votive offering, left purposefully to be found by a future generation of audiences.”

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BFI Monthly Film Bulletin, 1968

"While the title of his film suggests a critical attitude to its hero ..., Levy's techniques betray a strong affinity with him. Max expresses his rage and contempt for society by smashing up large pieces of it with an axe. Levy attacks it with equal vigour, making analogies (inevitably through inter-cutting) between a stripper's body and the carcasses in an abattoir, between sex-oriented advertising and Hitlerian rhetoric ...

Max, expressing himself only through destruction, becomes the embodiment of the society he despises and rejects; trapped within it, he is - as Farson tells him - good only for "tearing down other people's work". His destructiveness is contagious. He causes the photographer's death and turns Clio into a mirror image of himself, making her conscious of the trap she lives in. Yet the camera uncritically caresses every muscle of his body ...

Still, despite its all too obvious faults, Herostratus remains a passionate, exhausting and disturbing film. The photography ... has an occasional poetic beauty - particularly in the sequence beside the railway bridges where Max finds a child nursing a doll in an abandoned van; and there is some remarkable use of colour, notably in Max's room, all black and white except for the colour of his own skin and the pink plastic flesh of a hanging doll."

Full review

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Ian Jane - Rock! Shock! Pop!

"The plot of the film follows a young man named Max (Michael Gothard) who finds an advertising executive named Farson (Peter Stephens) in order to convince him to have his impending suicide broadcast as a sort of protest against where society is going. Max intends to jump off of a skyscraper and he wants everyone to see it.

As Max and Farson go about setting this all up, Max falls for a woman named Clio (Gabriella Licudi) and of course, Max then changes his mind about all of this, but by this point it’s too late, he’s set the train in motion and now he has to ride it out.

This is a film set in the unfortunately all too real society in which its various citizens care only about themselves. The world that surrounds Max has lead to his understandable narcissism and jaded view and his suicide is initially thought of as his way of essentially flipping us all off on the way out.

Bits of stock footage and symbolism hint at a time when the world wore a more united front but by the time it all comes around to our protagonist, it’s obvious that all of that has changed and not necessarily for the better interests of anyone. This is a subject and point of view that’s been exploited plenty of times since and quite often with better and more interesting results than Levy manages to accomplish here, but you’ve got to give the film credit for getting there before the likes of better known and more popularly embraced filmmakers like Herzog and Kubrick.

It’s interesting that Gothard, who hung himself in 1992 after a long battle with depression, plays the suicidal Max. It’s also interesting that the film is titled Herostratus, named after the ancient Greek fable in which a man destroys the most beautiful temple in the land in hopes of achieving fame only to wind up executed, his name forbidden to be uttered even after his death."

[Presumably the interest in the title lies in the relative obscurity to which Michael Gothard has been consigned since his death.]

Full review

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Slarek - Cine Outsider

"The real surprise is that despite of the film's experimental structure and Max's air of self-importance, we actually start to care for him and his fate, thanks largely to a captivating central performance from Michael Gothard and the shifting balance of power, as the destructive, cocksure and playful anarchist of the early scenes is transformed by big business into a ineffectual commodity whose only purpose is take his own life at the prescribed place and time.

So browbeaten and humiliated is he by then that he keeps the appointment, by which point he has become a figure of pity, shuffling around the rooftop and huddled against the cold while unfeeling marketing man Pointer prepares his camera and barks at him to jump from the chosen side.

This is one of those scenes that CG would nowadays have neutered, as actor Michael Gothard stands and even struggles with his fellow performer Antony Paul close enough to a genuinely lethal drop to catapult my stomach into my mouth and make me wonder all involved had taken leave of their senses."

Full review

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Ithankyou - Don Levy Hero! 25 January 2011

"... Herostratus ... must rank as one of the true, and most challenging, classics of 1960s British film. The film uses an unconventional narrative structure, mixed with beautifully judged sound and cinematography, to create an assault on our senses and our complacency: as a society and as individual viewers. The film's main actors Michael Gothard and Gabriella Licudi, gave their all and it shows in the unflinching honesty of the film."

Full review

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20 August 2009 review on Movie Talk by Peter Fuller


Thanks to Tzaratango and Belsizepark for finding many of these reviews.

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