David Lynch, giant of American cinema with immense influence, director of “Twin Peaks” and “Mulholland Drive”, has died at the age of 78, his family announced Thursday in a press release published on his Facebook page.
“It is with great regret that we, his family, announce the death of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” notes the press release. The director, author of ten feature films released between 1977 and 2006, had captivated a cohort of admirers fascinated by the disturbing strangeness of his films.
“There is a big void in the world now that he is no longer with us,” adds his family, who did not give details on the causes of his death and asked for respect for his privacy.
Born in 1946 in Montana (northwest), David Lynch is considered a master of cinema who revolutionized the image and marked this art with the disturbing and haunting atmosphere of these films.
From the black and white zombie story “Erasehead” (1977), his first feature film financed by odd jobs, to one of his consecrations with “Sailor and Lula” (1990), Palme d’Or at Cannes, most of his works have become cult.
Another critical masterpiece is “Elephant Man” (1980), a moving film about a deformed creature from Victorian England.
In 1990, he created “Twin Peaks”, a legendary series which revolutionized the genre and transformed millions of viewers into detectives haunted by the mysteries it unraveled over two seasons. A quarter of a century later, he did it again with “Twin Peaks: The Return” (2017).
Nominated several times for the Oscars, he received an honorary statuette in 2019 for his entire filmography. In France, he won the César for best foreign film for “Mullholland Drive”.
David Lynch in five works
With “Elephant Man”, his second feature film in black and white, David Lynch enjoys public recognition. Fascinated by deformity, the young director depicts the story of Joseph Merrick, a British man from the end of the 19th century suffering from a deforming illness. The man with the monstrous body shape becomes a beast across the country.
John Hurt, in the title role, completely disfigured by makeup made from Joseph Merrick’s death mask, won one of the film’s eight Oscar nominations. Anthony Hopkins, also named, plays the doctor Frederick Treves who sympathized with his patient and whose diary serves as the plot of the film.
A severed ear decomposing on a lawn, the red lips of a cabaret singer played by Isabella Rossellini, a sinister dwarf and the heady chorus of Angelo Badalamenti’s languid soundtrack: with “Blue Velvet”, David Lynch installs his surrealist universe and won the 1987 Oscar for best director.
-A Dennis Hopper as a psychopathic erotomaniac brings an additional touch to this “disturbing strangeness” that David Lynch excels at creating behind the apparently peaceful facades of a small American town. Always his fascination with appearances.
Twin Peaks, a small imaginary town bordered by giant pine trees, a café where fruit pie is served, a dwarf dressed in red, a woman at the log, phones ringing in the void, and Laura Palmer, a high school student recovered one morning from a lake, her body wrapped in a bag.
In this Lynchian environment, Agent Cooper hangs on his dictaphone (Kyle MacLachlan), emblematic character of this flagship work of the director which revolutionizes the author’s series.
With its two seasons and 30 episodes, David Lynch and Mark Frost have won the loyalty of a horde of viewers hungry for answers to an insoluble mystery. He extended the experience with a feature film “Twin Peaks Fire Walk with me” (1992), in which David Bowie appeared, then, 26 years later, wrote the third season of this cultural phenomenon, a long film of almost twenty hours, where we find nods to his entire filmography from “Eraserhead” to “Lost Highways” (1997).
«Sailor et Lula» (1990)
Nicolas Cage (Sailor) and Laura Dern (Lula) are madly in love with each other but they are pursued by Lula’s mother’s henchman. This alcoholic witch wants to get rid of Sailor out of romantic spite and to neutralize an embarrassing witness to the suspicious death of her husband. The chase towards Texas leads the two rogue lovers to have strange encounters in no less unusual places.
David Lynch is freely inspired by the noir thriller written by Barry Gifford, flirts with comedy, summons the Wizard of Oz, Elvis Presley and Chris Isaak, to better delve into the unbearable and wins the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990 .
«Mulholland Drive» (2001)
Originally conceived as a series, this distressing thriller plays with the false pretenses of Hollywood, its crooked producers and other ogres of this formidable image factory.
Award for Best Director at Cannes, César for Best Foreign Film, “Mulholland Drive” – named after the famous road bordered by the houses of stars – follows a twisted plot which takes an amnesiac brunette beauty (Laura Elena Harring) and a blonde, naive apprentice actress (Naomi Watts), in a game of splitting personalities.
Along with “Inland Empire” (2006), these two films mark the end of David Lynch’s career as a director – apart from a short film in 2020 released on Netflix with a monkey accused of murder in the title role. From then on, he devoted himself to transcendental meditation and other forms of artistic expression.
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