MOVING PICTURES

Mournful Mission

THE BELCOURT’S MUSIC CITY MONDAY TURNS THE 'RADIO ON' A MASTERPIECE ROAD MOVIE

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC

The new 4K restoration of Christopher Petit’s 1979 debut feature Radio On made its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival last October.

The movie is a rare example of an English road film. When a London DJ named Robert gets news of his brother’s suicide he makes a trip to Bristol to investigate the details for himself. Along the way he spins records, feeds coins into jukeboxes and listens to the radio. True to its title, Radio On begins with opening credits that appear like typing across the screen before viewers hear the sound of a car radio being dialed back and forth between stations before the opening strains of David Bowie’s “Heroes” come throbbing from the soundtrack. Radio On features gorgeous — especially in this restoration – blackand-white footage shot by Wim Wenders' collaborator, Martin Schäfer. The other highlight is the new wave music soundtrack that accompanies Robert on his mournful mission — it makes this flick a great pick for the Belcourt Theatre’s Music City Monday program.

Petit was working as the film section editor for Time Out when he first began musing on his tale of brothers and driving and music. Petit read an article in Sight & Sound in which filmmaker Alain Resnais pointed-out the surreality of developed London compared to the relative wildness of the countryside that surrounded it. Petit realized the creative potential of filming in these overlooked spaces and the thin plot of Radio On mostly serves as an excuse to get Robert out on the road and listening to music for their own sakes. Petit got a copy of his script to German director Wim Wenders who saw similarities to his own productions like Kings of the Road (1976). Wenders jumped on board as a producer before bringing Schäfer and other collaborators to the project.

In addition to several Bowie songs, Radio On’s outstanding soundtrack includes tunes from electronic music pioneers, Kraftwerk, prog guitar god Robert Fripp, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, The Rumour and Devo. Petit lists his soundtrack’s musical artists along with their songs in the film’s opening credits, and even though Radio On isn’t a “musical” in the traditional sense, this film’s soundtrack is far from background music. In the movie’s opening shot, tracking through a cluttered apartment at night, Schäfer’s lens lingers on a handwritten quote scrawled on paper and pinned to a bulletin board along with a magazine photo of the tailfin of a vintage American car, a Bugler tobacco package and a photo of a model in a bikini. The quote is from the band Kraftwerk:

We are the children of Fritz Lang and Werner von Braun. We are the link between the ‘20s and the ‘80s. All change in society passes through a sympathetic collaboration with tape recorders, synthesizers and telephones. Our reality is an electronic reality.

In less than four minutes of screen time Petite manages to invite viewers into an experience that was unique in British filmmaking in 1979, and perhaps in the time since. Critic John Patterson, writing for The Guardian in 2004, said the film “...followed no major domestic cinematic currents or trends, and generated none of its own.” Critic Geoffrey Nowell-Smith praised the movie’s uniqueness in a contemporaneous review in Screen, calling Radio On “a film without cinema.”

Radio On probably isn’t for everybody: there’s very little dialog, the nighttime black-andwhite footage is almost impenetrably inky, Sting has a cameo. For all its difficulties, Radio On is an experience of pure cinema nearly completely stripped of plot and characters, leaving viewers with mostly mysterious and beautiful moving images set to one of the great movie soundtracks. If you’re already going back to the theaters, a big screen and big speakers are ideal for screening this new restoration. If you’re still avoiding movie crowds you can also catch this one streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Radio On screens during the Belcourt Theatre’s Music City Monday program on January 24. Go to www.belcourt.org for times and tickets.