We are the children of Fritz Lang and Werner von Braun. We are the link between the 20’s and the 80’s. All changes in society passes through a sympathetic collaboration with tape recorders, synthesisers and telephones. Our reality is an electronic reality.
I first saw Radio On in 1979. I knew nothing about the film at the time, but a trailer I saw at a local arts cinema a week or two before the film was screened captured my imagination. It was a tracking shot, in grainy black and white, from a car speeding along the Westway to the soundtrack of Bowie’s Always Crashing in the Same Car. Tower blocks, a flyover, crash barriers, a gasometer; a feel of dirty modernity. Something about the sound of the music of David Bowie in his Berlin phase, the sight of the bleak urban landscape of West London and the sensation of the speed and movement of the car caught hold of me and has never really let go.
This is the original British road movie and, for me, it is yet to be equalled. Radio On was directed by Chris Petit, former film critic of Time Out, disciple of Wim Wenders and just returned from self-imposed exile in Germany. Petit’s eyes explore the urban landscape of Britain in the late 1970s with a German sensibility. Indeed, he uses Wenders’s cameraman, Hans Schmidt, to shoot the film in monochrome. The post-punk soundtrack of the film – Bowie, Kraftwerk, Lene Lovich, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Devo – perfectly captures the grey anxiety of that time.
The film concerns a car journey from London to Bristol by a man who wants to find out how and why his brother died. As he travels he plays the compilation tape his brother sent him for his birthday. He engages briefly with a number of different socially detached people he meets on the road. Among them an Eddie Cochran worshipping garage attendant, played by a young Sting. But it’s not the plot that provides the main interest in Radio On, nor is there much development of character. The real subject matter is the landscape of 1970s Britain. And the star is the camera.
Dir. Chris Petit
UK-Germany 1979 | Black & white | 104 mins
Cast: David Beames, Lisa Kreuzer, Sandy Ratcliff, Sting
(Stills, video clip and film poster courtesy of Bfi and Chris Petit)
