This film shows a German student escaping across the Berlin Border and being shot to death, while on the soundtrack, various platitudes about dying for freedom can be heard.
Direction
Lucas at 22, already subverting heroic cinema.
Editing
Sound-image collision that still stings.
Director
George Lucas
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Lucas made this as a USC student project; Randal Kleiser, who plays the runner, became his roommate and later directed Grease.
This is essentially Lucas's thesis on heroism: the runner dies believing he's free, the audience knows he's been sold a lie. He'd spend decades wrestling with this—Luke rejecting the Emperor's false freedom, Anakin dying for love instead of ideology.
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