Leuchtturm des Chaos
1983 [GERMAN]
Action / Biography / Documentary
80%
AUDIENCE
7.1/10
396
Plot summary
A superb, moving and thrilling interview with American actor Sterling Hayden (1916-86), held in Besançon, France, on board a dilapidated barge, when he was 65 years old. An unparalleled portrait, in his own words and without any qualms, of a legendary Hollywood star, icon of film noir and the western, who was also a marine, an OSS agent, an anti-communist informer, a writer and a wandering sailor: the hero of his own life.
Director
Tech specs
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Movie Reviews
A fascinating opportunity to spend some intimate time
Pharos of Chaos
A fascinating opportunity to spend some intimate time learning about the life and career of Sterling Hayden as he lives - aged 67 (ish) - on his dilapidated Parisian barge. Unfortunately, the film allows the subject to randomly rabbit on - frequently about alcoholism, from which he clearly suffered. Without any constructive or even vaguely penetrative direction, this becomes little more than a video diary; sometimes engaging and lucid, other times completely in the realms of "Grey Gardens". It is frequently too much of a monologue - it's as if Manfred Blank was too unwilling and/or intimidated to subject Hayden to anything like the degree of interrogation necessary to elicit anything meaningful from this character who undoubtedly had something to say.