| Stranger Than Paradise | |
|---|---|
1984 movie poster |
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| Directed by | Jim Jarmusch |
| Produced by | Sara Driver |
| Written by | Jim Jarmusch |
| Starring | John Lurie Eszter Balint Richard Edson Cecillia Stark Danny Rosen |
| Music by | John Lurie |
| Cinematography | Tom DiCillo |
| Editing by | Jim Jarmusch Melody London |
| Studio | Cinesthesia Productions Inc. |
| Distributed by | The Samuel Goldwyn Company |
| Release date(s) | 1984 |
| Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country | United States Germany |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $100,000 |
| Box office | $2,436,000 |
Stranger Than Paradise is a 1984 American absurdist/deadpan comedy film. It was written and directed by Jim Jarmusch and stars jazz musician John Lurie, former Sonic Youth drummer-turned-actor Richard Edson, and Hungarian-born actress Eszter Balint. The film features a minimalist plot in which the main character, Willie, has a cousin from Hungary, Eva, stay with him for ten days before going to Cleveland. Willie and his friend Eddie eventually go to Cleveland to visit Eva.
The film has an unusual style, as it was shot in black-and-white and features only non-professional actors. It is also notable for its historical importance, particularly its influence on independent cinema. The low-budget aesthetics of the film set an example for later independent directors.
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The film is a three-act story about self-identified "hipster" Willie (John Lurie), who lives in New York City, and his interactions with the two other main characters, Eva (Eszter Balint) and Eddie (Richard Edson).
In the first act, Willie's cousin Eva comes from Hungary to stay with him for ten days because Aunt Lotte, whom she will be staying with, will be in the hospital. Willie at first makes it clear that he does not want her there, but soon begins to enjoy her company. This becomes especially true when Eva steals food items from a grocery store and gets a TV dinner for Willie. He ends up buying her a dress, which she later discards. After ten days, Eva leaves, and Willie is clearly upset to see her go. Eddie, who had met Eva previously, sees her right before she goes.
The second act opens with a long take showing Willie and Eddie winning a large amount of money by cheating at a game of poker. Willie decides, because of all the money they now have, to leave the city. They decide to go to Cleveland to see Eva. However, when they get there they are just as bored as they were in New York. For example, they end up tagging along with Eva and a friend, Billy, to the movies. They eventually decide to go back to New York.
The final act begins with Willie and Eddie, on their way back to New York, deciding to go to Florida. They turn around and "rescue" Eva. The three of them get to Florida and get a room at a hotel. They end up losing all of their money on dog races. At this point, they decide to go back and bet on horse races. Willie refuses to let Eva come along, so she goes out on the beach for a walk. She ends up being mistaken by a drug dealer, and is given a large sum of money. She goes back to the hotel, leaves some of the money for Willie and Eddie, and writes them a note explaining that she is going to the airport, and then goes there. When she arrives, she discovers that the only flight to Europe left that day is to Budapest, which is where she originally came from. She decides to wait until the following day, and goes back to the hotel. Willie and Eddie end up winning all of their money back at the horse races. But when they get back, Eva is gone, and Willie reads her note and they go to the airport to stop her from leaving. When they get there, Willie is forced to buy a ticket to get on the plane to find Eva. However, he gets on right before the plane takes off, and ends up going on the flight to Budapest. The second to last shot shows Eddie outside watching the plane leave, and he realizes what has happened. The final shot shows Eva back at the hotel, returning to an empty room.
Writer and director Jim Jarmusch had initially shot his first feature, Permanent Vacation (1980) as his final thesis while at New York University's film school, and spent the following four years making Stranger than Paradise. At NYU, he had studied under iconic 20th century director Nicholas Ray, who had brought him along as his personal assistant for the production of Lightning over Water, a portrait of Ray that was being filmed by Wim Wenders.[1] It was Wenders who granted Jarmusch the leftover film stock from his subsequent film Der Stand der Dinge (1982) that would enable the young director to shoot the 30-minute short subject film that would become Stranger Than Paradise. This short was released as a standalone film in 1982,[1] and shown as "Stranger Than Paradise" at the 1983 International Film Festival Rotterdam. When it was later expanded into a three-act feature, that name was appropriated for the feature itself, and the initial segment was renamed "The New World".
The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Caméra d'Or award for debut films. It also won the Golden Leopard and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention at the 1984 Locarno International Film Festival, the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1985 and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Picture of 1985.[2]
The film made $2,436,000,[3] significantly more than its budget of around $100,000.[4]
Film critic Pauline Kael gave the film a generally positive review.
The first section is set in the bare Lower East Side apartment of Willie, who is forced to take in Eva, his 16-year-old cousin from Budapest, for ten days. The joke here is the basic joke of the whole movie. It's in what Willie doesn't do: he doesn't offer her food or drink, or ask her any questions about life in Hungary or her trip; he doesn't offer to show her the city, or even supply her with sheets for her bed. Then Eddie comes in, even further down on the lumpen scale. Willie bets on the horses; Eddie bets on dog races. Eva, who never gets to see more of New York than the drab, anonymous looking area where Willie lives, goes off to Cleveland to stay with Aunt Lotte and work at a hot-dog stand. And when Willie and Eddie go to see her, all they see is an icy wasteland - slums and desolation - and Eddie says 'You know it's funny. You come to someplace new, and everything looks just the same.' The film has something of the same bombed-out listlessness as Paul Morrissey's 1970 Trash – it's Trash without sex or transvestism. The images are so emptied out that Jarmusch makes you notice every tiny, grungy detail. And those black-outs have something of the effect of Samuel Beckett's pauses: they make us look more intently, as Beckett makes us listen more intently.[5]
Stranger Than Paradise has been released on DVD by The Criterion Collection.[6] The DVD contains a second disc which includes Jarmusch's first film, Permanent Vacation (1980). Both films were restored for the DVD release using high-definition digital transfers overseen and sanctioned by the director. Supplementary footage on the second disc includes Kino ’84: Jim Jarmusch, a series of interviews with the cast and crew from both films by a German television program, as well as Some Days in January (1984), a behind-the-scenes Super-8 film by the director's brother. An accompanying booklet features Jarmusch's 1984 essay "Some Notes on Stranger Than Paradise" as well as critical commentary by Geoff Andrew and J. Hoberman on Stranger Than Paradise and by Luc Sante on Permanent Vacation.[6]
Stranger Than Paradise broke many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking,[7] and became a landmark work in modern independent film.[6] According to allmovie, it is "one of the most influential movies of the 1980s", and cast "a wide shadow over the new generation of independent American filmmakers to come.[8] It is cited for giving "an early example of the low-budget independent wave that would dominate the cinematic marketplace a decade later."[9] The success of the film accorded Jarmusch a certain iconic status within arthouse cinema, as an idiosyncratic and uncompromising auteur exuding the aura of urban cool embodied by downtown Manhattan.[10][11] In a 2005 profile of the director for The New York Times, critic Lynn Hirschberg declared the film to have "permanently upended the idea of independent film as an intrinsically inaccessible avant-garde form".[12]
In 2002, Stranger Than Paradise was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was included in Jonathan Rosenbaum's Alternate 100, which was a response to the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies list.[13] In 2003, Entertainment Weekly ranked the film #26 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films".[14] Empire Magazine put the film at 14 on its list of the 50 greatest independent films of all time.[15]
| Stranger Than Paradise | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by John Lurie | ||||
| Released | 1986 | |||
| Genre | New Age | |||
| Label | Enigma | |||
| Professional reviews | ||||
| John Lurie chronology | ||||
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The film features an original soundtrack written by John Lurie, who also stars in the film. The song "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins features prominently in the soundtrack. The music is performed by The Paradise Quartet, consisting of Jill B. Jaffe (viola), Mary L. Rowell (violin), Kay Stern (violin), and Eugene Moye (cello). The recording engineer for the sessions was Ollie Cotton.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Bella By Barlight" | |
| 2. | "Car Cleveland" | |
| 3. | "Sad Trees" | |
| 4. | "The Lamposts Are Mine" | |
| 5. | "Car Florida" | |
| 6. | "Eva & Willie's Room (Beer For Boys – Eva Packing)" | |
| 7. | "The Good And Happy Army" | |
| 8. | "A Woman Can Take You To Another Universe (Sometimes She Justs Leaves You There)" |
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