Tom's adventure

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Movie
German title Tom's adventure
Original title The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1938
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Norman Taurog
script John VA Weaver
production David O. Selznick for Selznick International
music Max Steiner
camera James Wong Howe
Wilfred M. Cline
cut Margaret Clancy
occupation

Tom's Adventure (original title The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ) is an American adventure film from 1938 in Technicolor , directed by Norman Taurog . The script is based on Mark Twain's book about Tom Sawyer . It is the third film version in a long series of other films that revolve around Mark Twain's famous boy characters.

action

Mid-19th century: Tom Sawyer , a freckled cocky boy, lives with his cousin Mary and smug half-brother Sid with his aunt Polly in a small town on the banks of the Mississippi . Tom is an orphan. Often times, Aunt Polly, a woman with a big heart, has to call Tom to order because he likes to play pranks on others. When Aunt Polly punishes Tom for painting the fence on the house, Tom lets his friends do it for himself by tricking them into believing that painting is fun and even gets compensated with marbles, fishhooks and the like for giving them provide such great fun. When Tom meets Becky Thatcher, he falls in love with this special girl and ignores his first love, Amy Lawrence. Tom's attempt to impress Becky with a collection of Bible quotes fails, however. Tom got the pieces of paper with knowledge from the Bible from his schoolmates, but without dealing with the content and is not able to answer a single question correctly in a competition. Tom later finds an opportunity to gain Becky's admiration by taking the blame for the fact that the unflattering caricature about himself discovered by the headmaster, Mr. Dobbins , came from him. In reality, Becky caricatured the headmaster.

When Tom and his best friend Huckleberry Finn walk through the local cemetery one evening, the boys are carrying a dead cat and want to test Huck's remedy for warts, they witness an argument between three townspeople. Dr. Robinson, Indian Joe and Muff Potter are drunk and rob a grave. During their action, an argument breaks out between the men and Indian Joe stabs Dr. Robinson. Then he pushes the blood-smeared knife into the hand of the surprised Muff Potter and escapes. Tom and Huck, who saw everything, are scared and swear to each other to keep quiet about what they have seen.

After Tom has trouble with Becky and is wrongly reprimanded by Aunt Polly and Tom's friend Joe Harper is forced by his mother to wear shoes that he dislike, the boys decide to flee to become pirates on Jackson Island. Together with their friend Huckleberry Finn, they dress up as pirates and play on the banks of the Mississippi. In the meantime, a search party has been formed because the children's clothing was found along the riverbank, but no trace of them. It is feared that they drowned. After three days, however, Tom gets home protection and remorse about the grief in the families and decides to spy on the situation. He writes a letter to his aunt Polly, letting her know that he loves her and that he is in no danger. The letter doesn't reach Aunt Polly in time and so Tom, Huck and Joe can attend their own memorial service - hidden in the church. The boys are so overwhelmed by their feelings that everything clears up.

A short time later, the murder trial against Muff Potter takes place. With no witnesses, it looks bad for the vagabond. Tom, who has a strong sense of justice, cannot keep silent and says for Muff Potter and names the Indian Joe who is present in the courtroom as the perpetrator. He throws a knife at Tom and then escapes from the room. Fortunately, Tom can avoid the knife. The small town is impressed by Tom Sawyer's courage and demeanor and his teacher also sees his previous pranks after him. A school trip is organized in Tom's honor, which also includes a visit to a stalactite cave . With Becky, who is also very impressed by Tom's behavior, Tom separates himself from the rest of the class and together they roam the underground passages. In one of the corridors they come across a long-sought treasure chest that is filled to the top with gold . When they want to leave the cave with the box, however, the children realize that they have lost their way in the maze of many corridors. On the search for the exit, they come across Indiana Joe, who is hiding in this cave, of all places. When they flee from him in horror, he follows them, where he falls and finds death. After noticing that the children were missing, a search party was formed, but a rock slide made it difficult for them to advance. Tom and Becky meet the search party and together they find the way out of the cave. Back in their little town, both are celebrated as heroes.

background

Producer David O. Selznick in 1940

The shooting, which lasted from July 18 to October 5, 1937, took place at Malibu Lake in California , where the school was for the children, and in Culver City . Further recordings were made in December 1937. A Tom Sawyer Day was later proclaimed in Culver City in honor of Tom Sawyer. The film premiered in the United States on February 11, 1938 and opened in New York on February 17, 1938. The film was unsuccessful at the American box office, reportedly losing around $ 300,000, which was a large sum at the time. In the Federal Republic of Germany it was shown on March 12, 1954, in Austria it was already shown on January 15, 1954. The film was first released on DVD in Germany on December 6, 2013, with a German dubbed version.

Before the shooting of this film began on July 18, 1937, the producer David O. Selznick had already made two unsuccessful attempts at filming. Norman Taurog, the director, is said to have discarded the recordings made in March and June because they were in black and white and he wanted to create the film in Technicolor . Color films were still a rarity in Hollywood in 1938 and were quite expensive. As the cameraman James Wong Howe mentioned in his biography, there were various disputes between him and the technicolor cameraman Wilfried Cline about the colors, since Cline was more for brilliant basic colors and he had insisted that the film be better with muted earth tones highlight characters living in the rural south. Also because of the lighting in the cave scene, there should have been different opinions.

Under Taurog's direction, Huckleberry Finn, who was first played by Ted Limes, was replaced by Jackie Moran. Likewise, the role of Aunt Polly was transferred from Elizabeth Patterson to May Robson. Tommy Bupp, who was originally supposed to play the role of Tom Sawyer, was replaced by Tommy Kelly, one of the reasons being that Bupp was too big for Jackie Moran. Allegedly, 25,000 boys are said to have previously been cast for the title role, as Selznick wanted an unknown child for the role of the orphan boy. Tommy Kelly , who then got the role, was the child of an East Bronx firefighter. This was his first film. His performance has received praise and is considered one of the best among all actors who have played Tom Sawyer in the film. In the following years, however, contrary to Selznick's discovery Freddie Bartholomew, Kelly only had a mediocre career. He later retired from acting and embarked on a successful career outside of Hollywood.

Contemporary sources pointed out that great care was taken to make the film so that the scenes actually correspond to the time in which it is set, so to rule out anachronism . For this, many experts were interviewed and corresponding American school books for the children concerned and newspapers from Missouri sighted and of course Mark Twain was book Life on the Mississippi ( Life on the Mississippi ) is used. Just a year later, Selznick shot the classic film Gone With the Wind , which is also set in the old southern states. As in many Selznick productions, the native Austrian Max Steiner was responsible for the film music. Steiner sometimes used earlier film compositions from older films by Selznick or himself, such as Four Sisters , David Copperfield and The Little Lord .

According to the film industry's magazine The Hollywood Reporter , Selznick is said to have adapted the typical American colloquial dialogues and situations to the English understanding of the language for a release of the film in Great Britain with the help of an English sales consultant.

Books and film

Mark Twain in 1907

Mark Twain's books on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are considered classics of youth literature and are standard children's literature, especially in the USA . Selznick's lavish production from 1938 is the third film adaptation of the often filmed material. In this film adaptation, the screenwriter John VA Weaver manages a subtle balance that takes into account the episodic structure of the novel with numerous characters and subplots and places the most formative events of the book at the center of the film. There is, for example, the whitewashing in relation to the fence to be painted, the murder in the cemetery and the escape in the cave. Nevertheless, the original story was temporarily changed for dramaturgical reasons. For example, in the movie, Indiana Joe falls into an abyss and dies. In the novel, he gets lost in the cave and dies of starvation.

Author Mark Twain was a creative thinker who questioned the established order of things and used his quick wittedness to pillory the hypocrisy and boring conformity of his time. Unfortunately, parts of the book that underline his special kind of humor do not (and probably could not) appear in the film, probably also for fear of possible censorship. To underline the dramatic climax of the film, which is represented by the cave scenes, Taurog worked with flying animals and filmed the faces of the terrified children in close-up. The whole thing was supported by Max Steiner's impressive music.

Mark Twain (1835–1910) was a representative of American realism and famous for his sharp-tongued criticism of American society. He wanted to influence people in general and the society in which he lived. Since he had been confronted early on that his family had been foisted with worthless land, which had far-reaching consequences, this experience haunted him throughout his life. The thought of suddenly being penniless was a nightmare for him. The time in which he lived was marked by the gold rush and the subsequent years of the boom, but also by profits that were lost as quickly as they had been achieved. Twain let that flow into the final scene when Tom finds the gold pot in the cave. But there is something else that resonates in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , laughter as an antidote to greed, corruption and deceit, which Twain thought were too common in the world. Laughter was his escape, his weapon. In Twain's 1922 posthumously published work The Mysterious Stranger who is a nephew of Satan, he has him say: “... in spite of your poverty you undoubtedly have a really effective weapon: laughter. Nothing can withstand the attack of laughter. "

further films

  • 1930 Paramount Publix film adaptation of Tom Sawyer directed by John Cromwell , with Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer and Junior Durkin as Huckleberry Finn. Mitzi Green played Becky Thatcher and Clara Blandick can be seen as Aunt Polly.
  • 1936 Tom Sawyer (OT: Tom Soyer ), Soviet film adaptation by Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatvornitsky.
  • 1960 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , 6-part BBC TV series with Fred Smith as Tom Sawyer and Janina Fay as Becky Thatcher. Title song John Gilbert is the Boat , sung by Peggy Seeger .
  • 1968/1969 The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (US TV series, 20 episodes)
  • 1969 Las Aventuras de Juliancito , Mexican film adaptation.
  • 1980 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn ( Huckleberry Finn and his Friends ) 26-part series with Sammy Snyders as Tom Sawyer, Ian Tracey as Huckleberry Finn, Holly Findlay as Becky Thatcher and Brigitte Horney as Aunt Polly.
  • 1981 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn ( Приключения Тома Сойера и Гекльберри Финна ), Russian film adaptation, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin.
  • 1984 Tom Sawyer , Canadian adaptation, produced by Hal Roach Studios.
  • 1998 The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer ( Tom Sawyer ). Directed by Adam Weissman starred Phillip Van Dyke (Tom Sawyer), Bethany Richards (Becky Thatcher) and Laraine Newman (Aunt Polly).

A 1980 animated series from Japan is also about Tom Sawyer's adventures. The original title is: Tomu Sôyâ no bôken .

Reviews

The lexicon of international films said the film was “humorous” and “excellent in details, but the episodes lacked the brackets, so that they would stand next to each other somewhat unmotivated and [that] the film as a whole lacked density [ e]. Conclusion: Still lovable entertainment (alternative title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). "

Turner Classic Movies stated that director Norman Taurog had made a “beautiful entertainment film” based on Twain's novel “thanks to the excellent camera work by James Wong Howe.” This is supported by the fact that “Lyle Wheeler has been nominated for an Oscar for his artistic direction be. The supporting roles with May Robson, Walter Brennan and Victor Jory, who [gives] an unforgettable dark Injun Joe, are also excellent. "

Variety comes to the judgment The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is of "visual beauty" and also shows an "almost verbatim reproduction of Mark Twain's story." [...] The self-confidence that Tommy Kelly, who was selected from hundreds of boys, is also praised , show in his first role. Among the adult players, Walter Brennan's performance as Muff Potter is described as “outstanding” and May Robson “don't miss the chance” to breathe life into Aunt Polly, who is confronted with Tom's heavenly and hellish fantasies. Victor Jory as Injun Joe is praised for the “diabolical malice” with which he plays his role.

The US film critic Emanuel Levy described the film as "the first, best and most conscientious" of the many Hollywood films of Twain's book. The film would capture the spirit of the book and one summer on the Mississippi . Levy also praised the “great” production design, which was deservedly nominated for an Oscar, as well as the “impressive” camera work by Wong Howe.

Awards

At the Oscar ceremony in 1939 was Lyle R. Wheeler in the category "Best Art Direction" for an Oscar nomination, but had to Carl Jules Weyl to admit defeat, the trophy for his performance in the adventure film The Adventures of Robin Hood ( The Adventures of Robin Hood ) went. At the Venice Film Festival in 1938, however, the film received an award for Best Foreign Film.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (original print information). Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  2. ^ David Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, Abacus, 1993 p. 268
  3. ↑ Tom's Adventure DVD edition at JPC.de. Retrieved April 10, 2014
  4. ↑ a b c The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at TCM - Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  5. ↑ Local History: Child film stars take city by storm in 1938 from The- Times-Tribune.com.Retrieved April 10, 2014.
  6. ↑ a b c d The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (various articles). Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  7. ↑ Tom's Adventures in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used . Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  8. ↑ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Variety Staff. December 31, 1937. Retrieved February 18, 2013.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.variety.com  
  9. ↑ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) review by Emanuel Levy (English). Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  10. ↑ IMDb Awards