“DEADPAN ALLEY”

By Raymond Benson

The maverick independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch burst into art-house public consciousness in 1984 with his strikingly original slice-of-life comedy, Stranger Than Paradise, and we hadn’t really seen anything like it before. I remember going to see it at the little cinema across from Lincoln Center in New York City. As the guy interviewed in front of the theater in the supplemental documentary on this Criterion Collection doozy says, the queue of people to get inside was indeed full of “hipsters.” It was the picture to see if you were in tune to the downtown arts scene, avant-garde theatre/music/film/literature, and far-from-Hollywood-mainstream moviemaking.

For me, it was my favorite film of the year. Audience members who dug it found subtle humor in the three main characters’ seemingly aimless existences and motivations to live their lives in a spontaneous, who cares? fashion. Those viewers who had wandered in not knowing what to expect may have left the theater scratching their heads.

The story, such as it is, concerns Willie (musician-turned-actor John Lurie), a bachelor in Manhattan, who gets a visit from his Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint). The two hang out with Willie’s friend Eddie (Richard Edson), and they sometimes get along, sometimes not. Eventually, Eva goes to Cleveland, and a year later the two guys go to visit her. Cleveland is Nowheresville, so they decide to go back to New York—but on the spur of the moment change their minds and travel to Florida with Eva. There are some shenanigans with gambling, horse races, dumb drug dealers, and mistaken identity, after which the three characters go their separate ways—but not intentionally. To say more would give away the oddball sequence of events that is really the whole point of the picture.

Shot in a seriously deadpan, almost drab style, the comedy comes from the sheer dullness of the characters and their everyday lives. The black and white cinematography by future director Tom DiCillo captures an equally dreary and wintery New York, Cleveland, and Florida that emphasizes the dingy worlds in which these misfits inhabit. Overlay this with Lurie’s own unique unconventional chamber-music score and a blistering “theme song” of “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and you have an exercise in supreme existential irony.

Criterion has upgraded their original DVD to Blu-ray with a high-definition digital restoration, supervised and approved by Jarmusch. It looks great, and its graininess is perfect for the presentation’s thematic ideas. The movie comes with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack and an audio commentary from 1996 featuring Jarmusch and Richard Edson.

Supplements include Jarmusch’s first full-length feature film from 1980, Permanent Vacation, also in a high-definition digital restoration. It’s even wackier and more poker-faced than Stranger, about a young loner (played by Chris Parker), who wanders around New York in a similarly purposeless fashion as the characters in Stranger. Not as effective as the main feature on the disk, Vacation is a trial run “student film” that shows promise.

There’s also an interesting 1984 German television documentary about Jarmusch’s first two films, with interviews with the casts and crews of both. A short, silent behind-the-scenes documentary made by Jarmusch’s brother Tom during the making of Stranger reminds me of someone’s old Super 8 home movies that hold interest for everyone who is in them but not for the guests who are made to sit through them.

The thick accompanying booklet is jam-packed with illustrated material—Jarmusch’s 1984 “Some Notes on Stranger Than Paradise,” critics Geoff Andrew and J. Hoberman on the picture, and author/critic Luc Sante on Permanent Vacation.

Stranger Than Paradise is a timely artifact from the mid-80s, when independent filmmaking was booming and making waves. It’s a trail-blazer and an A+ experience for deadpan hipsters.

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