Strange and Strange Too, collections of promo videos made by Anton Corbijn for Depeche Mode, were originally released on VHS in 1988 and 1990 respectively. As such, Mode fans have long been crying out for the clips to be resurrected in a more up-to-date format, and now the wait is over. Both films are packaged together on DVD/Blu-Ray for the first time – newly restored, with various outtakes and notes by the director – and look and sound stunning.
Corbijn, who went on to direct big screen movies, first worked on a Depeche Mode video in 1986 – agreeing primarily as it meant a trip to America – and works with the band as creative director to this day. Strange arrived at a time when music videos were styled with heavy MTV rotation in mind: big hair, boldness, brashness and catchiness was common, Corbijn’s grainy, black and white arthouse influences rather less so. (This is something he’s maintained down the decades: his video for the band’s Ghosts Again, from this year, nods to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.)

Shot in Super 8, Strange starts off suitably oddly with model and stylist Nassim Khiafra welcoming the viewer into “Museo Depeche Mode”, a wooden shed in barren Almería. An apposite segue for Corbijn’s Question Of Time video: shot in the Mojave Desert, a bug-goggled biker kidnaps a baby and delivers it to the Mode via motorbike. Intercut with live footage of the band, Corbijn shot it himself in 1986 on a shoestring budget, and would shortly after explore the desert theme further with U2’s The Joshua Tree.
Depeche Mode’s 1987 LP Music For The Masses generated a jawdropping triptych of videos. Strangelove sees sassy models walking dogs in Paris, the band in shades and leather jackets; the Powell & Pressburger-esque Never Let Me Down Again features a bubble car and Chelsea boots which walk on their own, turning a spiv chancer who puts them on into a nightclub dancer; and Behind The Wheel explores themes of domination, vocalist Dave Gahan hitching a lift with a girl on a Vespa after the bubble car from Never… breaks down. There’s a Roman Holiday vibe to this one, and speaking of cinematic parallels, the Bong megaphone – a visual motif of the MFTM album campaign – is intermittently seen in Strange, the only item shot in colour throughout. The fishtank scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumblefish is a precedent here, certainly.
Violator, released in 1990, was a worldwide hit album, with Strange Too emerging later that year. Filmed in colour by Corbijn this time, with occasional dips into black and white – as with the New York-shot Policy Of Truth – the band dress as cowboys to visit a ranch, or possibly brothel, in Personal Jesus; dress Gahan as a king in a deckchair for Enjoy The Silence, or Martin L Gore as a sensitive clown on Halo; introduce lustful, Blue Velvet-like weirdness to Clean, Gore amorous on a sofa as projections of the band run in the background. Depeche Mode’s World Violation tour took the band to another level, with Corbijn’s projections accompanying their performances: tour footage was used for the World In My Eyes video.
Anton Corbijn became the perfect creative director for Depeche Mode, cleverly visualising the themes addressed in their songs, and doing so in stylistically timeless fashion with humour, feeling and surreality.
Depeche Mode: Strange/Strange Too is released on DVD/Blu-Ray via Sony/Mute on Fri 8 Dec. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT
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