Watch This: Jonathan Demme’s 11-Minute Video for New Order’s “The Perfect Kiss”

As we remember Jonathan Demme, who died today at the age of 73, we will of course remember all of those films he directed that have changed the vocabulary of the cinema. As a craftsman he was, of course, a great master of angles and shots and all the technical aspects of film. His unique gift though, was perhaps his great empathy, a novelist’s empathy. We know that he was a caring, good person in real life, but even if we did not have that from factual evidence, we would get it from his work.

This is not the place for a full remembrance of the man, who was so helpful to filmmakers as a member of our advisory board, and was one of our great shining stars of film, but we will be remembering him and appreciating him through his work soon.

Speaking of his work, which so often jumped to the beat of popular music, here is a characteristically excellent long form music video he made for the British band New Order in 1985. Demme’s cinematographer here, by the way, is Henri Alekan, who also shot Cocteau’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST and Wenders’ WINGS OF DESIRE. Demme always traveled in interesting company.