Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg
Forever associated with the Rolling Stones, Anita Pallenberg now gets her own documentary.
Responses to this film may well depend on exactly what it is that each viewer is hoping to find in it. Anita Pallenberg lived from 1942 to 2017 and, as its title indicates, this documentary puts her screen centre. Nevertheless, once it has filled in her background (she had a German father and grew up in that country but her mother was Italian and she was said to have been born in Rome), the film spends much the greater part of its 113 minutes covering the period when she was involved with the Rolling Stones. That is hardly surprising since she was around them for fifteen years, first as the lover of Brian Jones and then as the partner of Keith Richards with whom she had three children. In addition, she had a liaison with Mick Jagger when they were both filming Performance in 1970. But the impression given by Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill, the co-directors here, is that they nevertheless wanted to celebrate Anita Pallenberg as a ballsy woman who lived life her own way.
From the very first shots that we see of Pallenberg we can recognise that she had a face that the camera loved but, if one considers her as an example of an independent woman (at 19 she set off for New York and made herself a presence there), what she actually achieved is open to question. Having first been a model, she had a career as an actress and Volker Schlöndorff who directed her in two German films, including her first (1967’s A Degree of Murder), is on hand to talk about it. But, while she made two well-remembered films, Barbarella in 1968 and the aforesaid Performance, hers was hardly a distinguished cinema career. Admittedly she returned to acting late in life in films by Harmony Korine, Abel Ferrara and Stephen Frears but she did not have leading roles and there is no hint here that for Barbarella her voice was dubbed. At one point Dietrich is evoked as an inspiration but inevitably the comparison only emphasises how slight Pallenberg’s achievements were. Late on Kate Moss appears and speaks of her admiringly as the original Bohemian rock chick but, while she was indeed a celebrity, that was mainly down to her being part of the swinging sixties scene (her first encounter with Brian Jones came in Munich in 1965).
There is certainly no shortage of archive footage relevant to her life and two of Pallenberg’s children (a third died tragically when only ten weeks old) talk about her here, her daughter Angela from time to time and her son Marlon at greater length. However, the other key voices (save for Jagger who is silent) reach us in other ways. We hear from Keith Richards and Marianne Faithfull in voice-overs probably taken from pre-existing tapes and we have the words of Anita Pallenberg herself as read by Scarlett Johansson. The latter come from Pallenberg's autobiography entitled Black Magic which was not published but which was found after her death. While no explanation is offered as to why it never appeared in print, it does sound efficiently written although one cannot be certain if in part it exists as a self-justification.
What is undoubtedly good about this documentary is the efficiency with which it has been mounted even if one late sequence is overdramatised due to it incorporating brief moments of reconstruction. Lasting close on two hours the film is rather longer than the average documentary but it moves at a good pace and never starts to drag. For anyone whose prime interest is the lifestyle of the 1960s and 1970s as reflected in the pop music scene of that era this is a film that will satisfy. But, if considered as a film intended to elevate Anita Pallenberg, it is another story. Later in life she would prove herself to be a real survivor successfully going into rehab and putting behind her the drug-taking and heavy drinking that had previously featured so strongly in her life. But, while that could be thought of as her greatest achievement, this period of her life is hurried through and thus lacks weight even if the film seeks an upbeat tone at its close. Furthermore, although what we have seen earlier has brought out fully the downside of taking drugs (be it the fate of Brian Jones or the appallingly disrupted childhoods of Marlon and Angela due to the excesses of their parents), Anita Pallenberg’s autobiography finds her echoing Edith Piaf: claiming that the fires that she went through were cleansing, she declares "I don't regret anything". Her surviving children seem to be unusually forgiving of what they went through but, if this film endorses the view of a friend who declares that Anita was "one of the boys, one of the Rolling Stones", it doesn't paint a portrait of her which goes beyond her failings to find pathos in them and nor does it persuade us that her survival was something truly worthy of admiration.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Marlon Richards, Angela Richards, Volker Schlöndorff, Metka Kosak, Stash Klossowski, Sandro Sursock, Kate Moss, Theda Zawaiza, Arnold Böcklin, Jake Weber, and the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
Dir Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill, Pro Charlie Corwin, Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Bill, Ph Luca Ciuti, Catherine Derry, Nick Higgins, Will Pugh, Axel Schneppat and others, Ed Hannah Vanderlan and Adam Evans, Music Will Bates.
SK Global Entertainment-Dogwoof Releasing.
113 mins. USA. 2023. UK Rel: 17 May 2024. Cert. 15.
