Black Angel (1980)

[Silver Nemesis]

I'd never even heard of this film before today, but a YouTube recommendation has brought it to my attention. Black Angel is a short fantasy film that was commissioned by George Lucas to be shown in theatres before The Empire Strikes Back (1980). The movie was shown before TESB in many UK cinemas before disappearing and being thought lost. In late 2011 it was rediscovered, and writer/director Roger Christian has since posted it on YouTube for audiences to watch for free. He's been trying to finance a feature length remake on crowdfunding sites for the past few years.

Christian cites Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky – one of my favourite directors – as an influence on the movie, and I can certainly see shades of Andrei Rublev (1966) and Stalker (1979). Equally noteworthy is the influence Black Angel had on other filmmakers. Apparently the use of step printing during the fight scene inspired Lucas to adopt the same technique during the phantom Vader scene on Dagobah in TESB, and John Boorman had the film specially screened for the cast and crew of Excalibur (1981) before they began shooting their own movie. I suspect the location photography, and in particular the shots of Eilean Donan, might also have influenced Russell Mulcahy when he made the first Highlander (1986) movie. Black Angel was the first film of cinematographer Roger Pratt, who went on to serve as director of photography on movies such as Brazil (1985), Batman (1989), Shadowlands (1993), 12 Monkeys (1995) and two of the Harry Potter films.

This is a fascinating piece of overlooked cinema history and I'm amazed that I hadn't heard of it until now. Here's the entire film for anyone who's interested.

The final twist has obvious similarities with Ambrose Bierce's short story 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' (1890), but it's executed well. I'd love to see an accurate adaptation of the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight made in this same style.

[Silver Nemesis]

John Rhys-Davies was a guest on Michael Rosenbaum's podcast back in March. Among other things he discussed his work on the Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings films, and towards the end of the interview,he mentioned this short film and said that director Roger Christian is finally making a feature length version of it. Whether it will happen remains to be seen, but Rhys-Davies seemed to think they'd be shooting it this year. He discusses the project at the 1:04:14 mark.