... who desire everything
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | ... who desire everything |
| Original title | The Sandpiper |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1965 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Vincente Minnelli |
| script |
Dalton Trumbo , Michael Wilson |
| production | Martin Ransohoff |
| music | Johnny Almond |
| camera | Milton R. Krasner |
| cut | David Bretherton |
| occupation | |
| |
... who desire everything (Original title: The Sandpiper ) is an American film drama by the director Vincente Minnelli from 1965.
action
The artist Laura Reynolds lives alone with her nine-year-old son Danny in a wooden house on California's Pacific coast. She would like to raise him alone and by himself, far from the constraints of the world, but she is forced by a court order to send the boy to a private boarding school in the Episcopal Church . The boarding school director and pastor Dr. Edward Hewitt is provoked by Laura's self-assured demeanor and her combative, free-spirited arguments. But the judicial decision is enforced with police force and the illegitimate child is taken to boarding school. The headmaster secretly admires the attractive and self-confident loner and visits her. He is irresistibly drawn to her.
Laura confesses to Edward that she has withdrawn from the male world to the solitude of Big Sur out of personal disappointment . Edward's looks, subtle charm, and palpable kindness gradually make her reciprocate his affection. He invents more and more unscrupulous excuses for his unsuspecting wife Claire, and he does not let his friend Ward Hendricks talk him out of the affair, who, as Laura's ex-patron, thinks he is also entitled to them. Edward is torn apart by his delightful romance with Laura in the paradisiacal wild coastal nature on the one hand and the feelings of guilt towards his wife on the other. His honest thinking, intensified by the love affair, also led him off the previous path to success as head of the private school. He recognizes the bottomlessness of the ostensibly law-abiding, but in reality corrupt tax evasion society and prepares his exit.
In the end he confesses to Claire that he has fled, but thereby also loses Laura's trust, who sees the sanctity of the intimacy of man and woman as superior to the marriage vows. In a conversation with Claire, he becomes painfully aware of the loss of those ideals of Franz von Assisi with which he had once started his career and whose realization he came intuitively closer to in his romance with the courageous Laura than in established society. In an emotional speech at the boarding school's end-of-year party, he announced his resignation from the school administration in the presence of both his wife, who was now separated from him, and Laura. Purified, taciturn and melancholy, he says goodbye to a - literally - 'phase of life', to the two women as well as to American society, and travels to South America. The credits run in front of an aerial shot of the California coastal road.
background
For the female lead, producer Martin Ransohoff initially intended Kim Novak , but she declined and was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Burton, who were married in the 1960s, duel in the film over love and marriage, passion and society, idealism and trust. Taylor received a higher salary ($ 1 million) than Burton ($ 750,000) for their role, and in order to save on taxes (a behavior that is very problematical in the film, by the way), the couple made sure that that the interiors were shot in a Paris studio. The outdoor shots in the crashing sea cliffs contrast the subtle man-woman play of the two stars and increase the contrasts without exaggerating.
Charles Bronson can be seen in another role . He embodies a funky wood sculptor who creates a nude bust in front of the priest, for which the leading actress is sitting as a model. He is the male counterpart in provocation in the form of the mostly unemployed 60s avant-garde, whose amorality, directness and nonchalance he lasciviously reveals. With the thematization of the incipient social generation conflict, dropout behavior and celibacy as well as echoing existential considerations, the feature film also has a documentary character for the early 1960s , even if it did not become a cult film. The self- discovery trip, in which the figures have embarked, leads back to the original, ungletted material that underlies the discovery of what is actually 'human' and culminates on the beach in a duel between the priest and the nude artist for life and death. Richard Burton's credible frightening of himself can be seen as a perfectly fitting figuration of what has become a basic feature of individualism since the 1960s .
The figures and dramaturgy are almost classically stylized in the depth and gestalt psychology of the time. The story is mainly told from a male perspective, but Richard Burton's strong self-consciousness of the man from the woman is consistently brought to the viewer and is also credible in view of the 'most beautiful woman in the world' of those years. However, her emancipation is dismissed as something traumatically caused, which may be an indication of Liz Taylor's real life story. Nevertheless, the power of female intuition and its healing effects are convincingly reproduced by her - as Laura she shines the broken wing of a sandpiper (hence the American film title), but gives him his freedom and thereby gives him a new life. Which also mentions the psychological substory of the film.
The main story of the film is not entirely new in literary terms. It is, for example, very clearly reminiscent of Ödön von Horváth's 1937 novel Jugend ohne Gott ( Youth without God) , in which a teacher has to deal with the loss of humanistic ideals in Nazi Germany, through the looks of others to love, to his ideals and the truth in finds out a murder case and eventually travels to Africa as a missionary.
The film grossed more than $ 10 million, despite scathing reviews.
criticism
The film-dienst judges: “Heart-wrenching 'soul and society drama' enriched with stars and beautiful images of grandiose Pacific riffs - a prime example of classic Schnulz confection.” The Protestant film observer comes to a similar assessment : “Prominent cast, effective presentation and deep dialogues should not hide the fact that it is just a noble boy with sometimes strange libertinisms. "
Awards
The song The Shadow of Your Smile by Johnny Mandel (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics) won an Oscar for best film song in 1966 .
Others
Part of the film is included in the documentary Trumbo (USA 2007) about the Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo , who was banned from working during the McCarthy era in 1947 and had to go into exile.
Web links
- ... everything desirable in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Trumbo in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 355/1965