Candy Mountain. 1987. Switzerland/Canada/France. Directed by Robert Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer. Screenplay by Wurlitzer. With Kevin J. O’Connor, Bulle Ogier, Tom Waits, Joe Strummer. Digital restoration courtesy Film Movement. 97 min.
Jim Jarmusch, rumored to have made an appearance in Candy Mountain, once said that “Robert Frank is, to me, the godfather of so many different things.” A fraught but fascinating collaboration between Swiss photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer, the author of Two-Lane Blacktop and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Candy Mountain in many ways embodies their shared passions: for New York and Nova Scotia, open roads and dead ends, music and musicians (the film features self-conscious appearances by Tom Waits, Leon Redbone, Joe Strummer, David Johansen, Rita McNeil, Arto Lindsay, and Dr. John), and strange encounters and unlikely friendships. Frank, who worked closely with another great French actress, Delphine Seyrig, when he and Alfred Leslie made Pull My Daisy in 1959, here casts Bulle Ogier as one of the eccentric outsiders trying to find her place in the world.