The Illustrated Man (1969)

Lyrical language, though it may make for unforgettable literature, does not necessarily make for great movies. In the Sixties Ray Bradbury was America's premier fantasist, for excellent and unarguable reasons. All of the familiar adjectives used by his reviewers - lyrical, poetic, haunting, charming and etcetera- were (and are) true. He wrote GREAT fantasies, and we all, all of us who were his fans in the Sixties, we all wanted to see movies made from the stories. We looked forward to The Illustrated Man with huge and pleasurable anticipation. I don't believe that it occurred to any of us that our own, personal visualizations were not necessarily shared by all other readers. And certainly not, it turns out, by film makers.Almost without exception, the screen adaptations of Bradbury's stories failed, to one degree or another. The Illustrated Man is probably the worst of the lot, excepting the dismal Twilight Zone segments. The script is bad, yes, but the design is worse - an ugly and dated "Sci-Fi" Hollywood modernism- unbelievable a decade before this movie was made, and laughable in 1969. Not surprisingly the best segments are those in which Steiger and Bloom are simply allowed to act their characters. And as other reviewers have pointed out, those scenes were hardly Oscar-bait.Even so, it's worth watching- as a failed example. Fahrenheit 451 is just as bad, and even more turgid, if possible. The TV adaptation of The Martian Chronicles is much better, a real attempt at a faithful rendering. But the absolutely best Bradbury adaptation is the Disney film of Something Wicked This Way Comes, and those who dismiss it as a "kid movie" are, I think ignorant of Bradbury's work. It's just terrific.

'The Illustrated Man' shows how good a writer Ray Bradbury was, not to mention how his head was full of fascinating ideas. It shows this because the film is incredibly dated today, from the acting styles to the visions of the future we witness. And yet I remained engrossed throughout, because beneath the anachronisms and barmy notions lie the same powerful film that resonated with me as a child.A lot of the film has little to do with the title character, although Rod Steiger's menacing performance will never let you forget the man with all-over body tattoos that come to life if you stare too hard. Also, Steiger himself has multiple roles throughout, and he delivers them with a mix of the theatrical bellow and long-faced stoicism of the period, but they still have their impact. Meanwhile of greater interest are the short stories each tattoo reveals. Like Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles', this film is a collection of tales woven around a central premise. We view his fears about where human society is heading, thanks to the all-pervading intrusion of technology into our lives.I'm reminded of a Poe line - "without music or an intriguing idea, colour becomes pallor, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless". What becomes of the human soul when the machines take over? Add the all-embracing pallor and single-chrome fashion of a typical 1960s vision of the future, and you have a very bleak picture indeed. Yet that's how people saw things then (our guesses on things to come will look just as ridiculous soon enough), and the central theme, given how far we've progressed technologically in the interim, cannot be any less relevant. I'm glad our modern perspective yearns for more colour though - never mind technology killing our souls - the achromatic architecture would make anyone suicidal enough already.Sojourns into futurity do of course suggest sci-fi trappings. Even putting aside the fact that predictions of the future quickly become dated, Ray Bradbury was never scientifically accurate at the time he wrote his stories. In 'The Martian Chronicles' for example, it is possible to breathe on Mars, water flows through canals, and a few blasts from a rocket's engines can terraform the atmosphere. 'The Illustrated Man' takes the same liberties with reality. Yet to dismiss it because of nonsensical scientific premises is to miss the point. The settings are not more than fabulous window dressing - fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. It is the exploration of the human condition in each tale that Bradbury is concerned with, and they are timeless.As such, while time has not been entirely kind to this screen adaption of 'The Illustrated Man', its emotional core remains intact. The Bradbury flair for the weird and the wonderful is untarnished, and his thoughts still clear. You just need to take a good long look at a rainbow afterwards.

This movie is just not very good. That's the bottom line, despite Ray Bradbury, former Oscar Winner Steiger, and some good cinematography. The sum total (only "1" star) does not equal the whole of its parts, which should add up to a high rating. I completely agree with the noted critic Roger Ebert's review in the Chicage Sun-Times of August 6, 1969, wherein he gave it 2 stars, noted its many flaws, and generally did not like this movie. His comments are interesting and insightful.This is not the worst movie ever made- the acting is OK but like the rest of the movie the acting is just not good enough to accomplish anything of value.I saw this movie in a theater in 1969 with some of the few people who saw it then. The theater was about 90% empty and was silent as a stone, except for possibly an occasional yawn. No one at the time seemed to care for it, it was not regarded as "artsy" or even notable sci-fi. It came and went quickly and was soon forgotten. I wish I could give it more than a 1 star rating because of the talent involved, but I can't help feeling the same as in 1969: Why? Why was such great talent and ability assembled to produce...this?Try as I might, I still can't make a case for it even now, so many years after I (and Roger Ebert) first viewed it.

The Illustrated Man is now on DVD - it's a reasonably okay transfer (the color is a little off, but not much), but as always people who "review" these things on the IMDb trumpet "misunderstood masterpiece" so often it's laughable. No, this film, which was a critical and box-office disaster, has not become a masterpiece in the intervening years - it's the same bad film it always was. Anyone who says (condescendingly, I might add) "It's for thinkers" clearly knows little about Mr. Bradbury, cinema, or thinking. The film has no sense of rhythm or pace, and it just sits there like a dead herring. Mr. Steiger is fine, so is Claire Bloom and Robert Drivas, but the script is bad, and the normally reliable Jack Smight seems hamstrung by the material.