Man of Flowers
1983 film by Paul Cox
Man of Flowers is a 1983 Australian film about an eccentric, reclusive, middle-aged man, Charles Bremer, who enjoys the beauty of art, flowers, music and watching pretty women undress. Werner Herzog has a cameo role as Bremer's father in flashbacks. The film was directed by Paul Cox and was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
Charles Bremer (Norman Kaye) is a wealthy, reclusive man. He finds erotic satisfaction in the beauty of art, flowers, and a young woman (Alyson Best), who undresses for him. During the undressings he listens to operatic music such as Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. Throughout the film, he reads letters he has sent to his mother. His mother had long since died, and the letters, it is later revealed, are addressed to himself.
Cast
Production
The idea for the film came out of a discussion between Paul Cox and Chris Haywood where they decided to make a low budget erotic film, along with Haywood's then-girlfriend Alyson Best. Paul Cox wrote the first draft.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Man of Flowers” is 1983 film by Paul Cox. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Flowers, film and Paul, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1983 film by Paul Cox” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6746388. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983 and 1984.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Man of Flowers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.