The Invasion of the Desecrators: Donald Sutherland is here at his peak

Deciphering his unforgettable role with Philip Kaufman in 1978.

This “Classics” article was published in Première n°551 (May 2024). We are sharing it online in tribute to its main actor, Donald Sutherland, who died this week at the age of 88.

A little New Hollywood, a little horror, but never too B-movie or auteurist, Invasion of the Defilers wouldn’t it be a film entirely driven by its star, the superb Donald Sutherland ? While the film is released in 4K, First led the investigation into the authorship of this strange object.

By François Grelet

The great Donald Sutherland is dead

Last Paranoid Mustache

It took eleven years forInvasion of the Body Snatchers by Don Siegel manages to find its way to French cinemas. Not entirely a coincidence: eleven years is also the time it took for the film to move from the status of a small B series to that of a great TV classic – this unexpected metamorphosis probably justifying its late export.

By crossing the Atlantic in 67, the “body snatchers” of the VO title have become “pro grave-fans” : a translation so cheap that it alone can explain why the theme of “body snatchers” never really caught on with us. It should be noted that this theme is not the clearest since it presents a race of aliens ” plants “ who contaminate friendly Earthlings with their spores, which they can then replicate in giant pods (but only during their sleep). Result of this process: a perfect duplicate, devoid of any feeling or emotion, and whose appearance reduces the original model to dust.

This concept was developed in a station novel by Jack Finney, then deepened and popularized by Don Siegel’s film, as well as its three pseudo-remakes and its numerous variations. It ended up becoming so embedded in the Anglo-Saxon collective unconscious that they now use the term “pod people” (pod people) to designate individuals with cold conformism, hurried pace and a lack of humanity.

It only took three months to The Invasion of the Defilers (in short), a distant adaptation of the book and the original film, to arrive in French cinemas. Bad timing: The Gendarme and the Extraterrestrials came out at exactly the same time, February 79, and there probably couldn’t be room in the hexagonal rooms for two works exhibiting polymorphous aliens. The one signed by Jean Girault attracted more than 6 million of our compatriots, while the one designed by Philip Kaufman intrigued barely 250,000. A cosmic failure.

At the time, science fiction ” AND “ was nevertheless very fashionable (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien Or Supermanall appeared in the same delta between late 77 and mid-79), but on our lands the legend of “body snatchers” would only remain a matter for movie buffs. No “people-pods” In Little Robert, no thank you friend. The other official adaptations of Finney’s book, whether imagined by a trendy filmmaker (the Body Snatchers by Abel Ferrara in 93) or carried by a panzer cast (Invasion2007, with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig), have not changed this observation, no one ever wanted to see that in our country.

Aesthetic manifesto

Symbol of this local discount, The Invasion of the Defilers only exists in France in a sad Blu-ray, already obsolete at the time of its release in 2017, while the Anglo-Saxons are entitled to two editions in ultra-high definition. The first was published by the Americans Kino Lorber in 2021, the second arrived recently via the English Arrow. The master is identical, but the Brits have pushed it a little further than the Yankees. Their packaging is sumptuous, they are real fetishists, and their image is superiorly encoded, textured, detailed. This is not trivial since the operational manager Michaël Chapman, who has just escaped from Taxi Driver and ready to move on Raging Bullbrought together the look of New Hollywood (mobile camera, obsession “bitumen and neon”full grain film) to that of film noir from the 1950s (oblique frames, distorting focal lengths, cast shadows).

The Invasion of the Defilers is above all an incredible aesthetic manifesto, a summit of fusion cinema, an avant-garde gesture carried out in the comfort of a mini-major (United Artist), this is what jumps out most when coming across this copy staggering. This observation actually distinguishes it from its predecessor, a sharp B series and political parable, or from the other two adaptations (the Ferrara is an astonishing exercise in style in fashion). “super craftsman” And Invasionan obese, mutant executive-designed blockbuster).

We will thus find a little of the influence of the film in several classics of 90s fun like The Master of Illusions by Clive Barker or The Den of Madness by Carpenter – where neo-noir and big paranoia also collide. But this pas de deux between retro and future, sticky doubles and auteurism, has apparently condemned this object to occupy a bastardized place in the history of cinema, like its author, the irregular and elusive Philip Kaufman (who would follow up with a sort of anti-American Graffiti, The Lordsthen would set about writing the Raiders of the Lost Ark for…George Lucas!).

Although depicting the end of hippie ideals as a backdrop, its Invasion… is not really a political allegory like its predecessor, and is content to expose a group of four Americans, a little intellectual, a little good-natured Democrats, prey to what they first imagine to be a crisis of paranoia in the most progressive city in the world, before being photocopied by screaming aliens… Not really something for the video store, nor an Oscar production. Nor is it a New Hollywood highlight or a body-horror craze. Damn, but what is the DNA of these Desecrators ?

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Paranoia 70s

If it were necessary at all costs to integrate it into a corpus, we could look at Kaufman’s film as the first chapter of an industrial trend where there would also appear The Thing (82) and Fly (84). Three auteur horror films, three remakes ” HAS “ of B series filmed in the 50s. But all this ultimately says more about the methods of the time than about the works themselves. We could then suggest that The Invasion of the Defilers presents itself as the last part of a trilogy which would be entitled, let’s say, “Donald Sutherland and paranoia”. Let’s imagine that it begins in 71 in Klute’s New York, by Alan J. Pakula, and continues in 74 in the Venice of Don’t look back no Nicolas Roeg, and obviously concludes in 79 in a San Francisco colonized by extraterrestrials. Beyond this decade, which they occupy from one end to the other, the three films therefore have in common this acute feeling of paranoia typical of their time as well as their star, Donald Sutherland. In Klute, he played a washed-up and hunted investigator, a character a thousand miles from the roles of slightly zany, slightly babasic rebels who had made him famous – in MASH Or Gold for the brave, For example. It is this facet that was summoned in Don’t turn aroundwhere this time he played a grieving dad pursued by a ” ghost “ among vaporettos and Byzantine churches. Long coat, spectacular perm and chevron mustache, Sutherland became not only a hero of tragedy, but also a look. A frizzy look so unforgettable and identifiable that Philip Kaufman asked him to bring it out five years later, before sending a colony of aliens after him. To light it in the least welcoming neighborhoods of San Francisco, all that remained was to borrow from Pakula, not his chief operator, the immense Gordon Willis, but the man who was his cameraman and disciple on Klute, Michael Chapman. The curl (of hair) seemed indeed curly.

All these elements put end to end are perhaps a simple and authentic coincidence, but also reveal a saga whose link is held through a solid politics of the actor. It must therefore be made clear that Sutherland is at his peak here. In the three films, he wonderfully lugs around his large frame deprived of sleep and good weather. His lamenting voice, his diction “hot potato” and his sad look each time capsize the most beautiful actresses of the time (in order: Jane Fonda, Julie Christie and Brooke Adams), but he always ends up losing the girl – and even when we believe that he won, as in Klute, well he loses! He actually becomes something other than a simple incarnation of 70s paranoia, probably one of the most moving and unexpected romantic figures in American cinema. His charm is devastating, his talent bordering on insolence. No wonder deep down that they all wanted, one day or another, to be Donald Sutherland.

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