Nobility obliges (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | noblesse oblige |
| Original title | Child Hearts and Coronets |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1949 |
| length | 101 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Hamer |
| script | Robert Hamer, John Dighton |
| production | Michael Balcon |
| music | Ernest Irving |
| camera | Douglas Slocombe |
| cut | Peter Tanner |
| occupation | |
| |
Nobility obliges (Original title: Kind Hearts and Coronets) is a British feature film from 1949. The screenplay comes from John Dighton and Robert Hamer and is based on the novel Israel Rank by Roy Horniman , which is set at the turn of the century. The screenwriters rewrote it to a black comedy about a series of murders against a noble family.
action
The film, which is set in the early years of the 20th century, has a framework story: Louis Mazzini D'Ascoyne, the 10th Duke of Chalfont, writes his memoirs on the death row of a London prison. It is the last night before his execution.
We learn his life story: Louis' mother is the daughter of the 7th Duke of Chalfont, the head of the proud (fictional) family D'Ascoyne at Chalfont Castle in Kent . She falls in love with the Italian opera singer Mazzini, runs away with him and marries him. Expelled from her family because of this, she has to live in poor conditions in Clapham after her wedding . Louis emerges from the marriage. His father is so moved by the birth of his son that he has a heart attack the first time he sees him; the mother is alone with the child.
Little Louis is brought up very carefully by his mother, knowing his origins, to the best manners and perfect self-control. Again and again she shows him the family tree of her family and familiarizes him with the family history. The dignity of Duke of Chalfont was bestowed on the D'Ascoynes by King Charles II in the 17th century . The 1st Duke received it for his services as an officer during the restoration of the monarchy. For unspecified reasons, the family has the right to inherit the ducal dignity in the female line. In theory, Louis could one day become Duke too.
The D'Ascoynes ignore the Mazzinis, however. Letters from Louis' mother to her family always go unanswered. When she is looking for a position in the private bank of Lord Ascoyne D'Ascoyne for her adult son, he informs her that he does not know of the existence of a son. Louis can therefore not take up a professional job and has to make ends meet as a salesman in a fashion store. Louis' mother has an accident one day and, before she dies, expresses a wish to be buried in the D'Ascoynes family crypt on Chalfont. Louis writes to his mother's brother, the 8th Duke of Chalfont, but he refuses the request.
Louis now makes the decision to take revenge on the D'Ascoynes for the injustice he had done to his poor mother and to become Duke of Chalfont himself. He can only achieve this if not only the incumbent 8th Duke dies, but also all the other candidates who stand in the line of succession before Louis, seven in number. Since this situation is unlikely to ever occur naturally, Louis has to remove all relatives who are in the way, including the current Duke (all played by Alec Guinness ):
He drowns the son of the owner of the private bank, who once refused to work for Louis, during a boat trip in Maidenhead (and his lover); he lets the young amateur photographer Henry D'Ascoyne die in an explosion that he arranges in his darkroom ; he administered poison to Pastor D'Ascoyne; he murders the suffragette Lady D'Ascoyne by shooting down the balloon from which she drops leaflets; Army General D'Ascoyne dies in an explosives attack in the officers' mess. Louis is very adept at making the murders look like accidents or natural deaths. Another contender for the title dies without Louis causing it: Admiral D'Ascoyne goes down with his ship after a collision with another ship.
Meanwhile, Louis has worked his way up in society. Shortly after the banker's son was murdered, he joined his father's bank, which he won for himself with a superbly stylized letter of condolence. He gradually acquires his trust and eventually becomes a partner. There are also changes in Louis' private life: when he proposed marriage to his childhood sweetheart Sibella, he was turned down in favor of the then wealthy businessman Lionel Holland, but has so far had an adulterous relationship with Sibella. But now he is courting Edith D'Ascoyne, the beautiful widow of the amateur photographer Henry D'Ascoyne who he murdered. In order to marry her, he has to give up Sibella, because Edith appears to him as the more worthy duchess. Edith agrees to his proposal and informs the head of the family, the 8th Duke of Chalfont, of the planned engagement.
On the occasion of his own wedding, he invites Louis and Edith to Chalfont Castle. The next day Louis accompanies the Duke to the hunt in the surrounding woods and shoots him after he has lured him into one of his own poaching traps; he makes the murder look like a hunting accident. Since the Duke has no son himself, the title now passes to Louis' last competitor, the private banker. He suffered a stroke when he found out about it and shortly before his death made Louis a partner and heir. Louis is there and moves into the castle as the 10th Duke of Chalfont with Edith.
He introduces himself to his enthusiastic subordinates with a speech in the castle. But while Louis is busy greeting everyone individually, a Scotland Yard detective appears and arrests him for murder. Louis wonders in which of his murders he could have made a mistake, but finally learns that he is suspected of murdering Lionel Holland, Sibella's husband who has since filed for bankruptcy because Louis has no longer given him a loan; he was found dead. A few days earlier he had desperately announced to Louis that he would have to kill himself, but since no suicide note was found, Louis is now suspected of having killed him as a rival for Sibella; in truth, Lionel, who is portrayed as a fool, had no inkling of his wife's infidelity for years. Apparently she made the suicide note disappear in order to blame Louis for a murder. In a theatrical performance during the trial in front of the House of Lords, she describes Louis as the murderer of her husband; he wanted to get him out of the way because of her. The Lords fall for it and vote guilty. Louis is sentenced to death by hanging.
The film returns to the framework story: In the days before his execution, Louis receives visits from Edith and Sibella. While Edith forgives him for the affair with Sibella and marries him, Sibella offers him a deal: She lets us know that she has seen through him as the murderer of the D'Ascoynes, and if he now agrees to kill Edith too and marrying her instead (making Sibella Duchess), Lionel's suicide note will miraculously emerge, proving that Lionel killed himself in desperation over his financial ruin. Louis has no choice but to respond to this blackmail attempt. When the date for the execution is getting closer and closer, without Sibella keeping her part of the agreement, because there is no news from her, Louis decides to accept his fate and write down his life story, including all the murders committed, in detail.
The night before the execution, he reads the manuscript again. The next morning the prison director and the hangman came to pick him up from the cell. The hangman asks if he can read another poem, and Louis allows it, politely as always. This delayed the execution and a law enforcement officer could rush to the last minute with the news that the suicide note had been found. Louis is released.
When Louis steps in front of the prison, not only are his numerous subordinates waiting there to cheer his release, but also two carriages. Edith sits in one, Sibella in the other. Both women open the door of their carriage and give Louis the choice of one of them. Before he can react, a newspaper reporter approaches him and offers him a copy of his memoir. Only then does he remember his manuscript, which is still on the table in the cell ...
background
The film was produced by the legendary Ealing Studios , famous at the time for comedies of this type. The scenes at the family home of the D'Ascoynes, Chalfont were in Leeds Castle in the English county of Kent turned.
The English original title of the film is Kind Hearts and Coronets , an allusion to the 1842 poem "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" by Alfred Tennyson , which says about noble virtues: " Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood ”(“ A good heart is more [worth] than a crown, and a strong faith is more than blue blood ”) - the verses are quoted in the film by Edith D'Ascoyne to illustrate how wrong the family members of the D ' Ascoyne are. In France, the title of the film was called Noblesse oblige , also called nobility . The film was censored for the US audience: the adultery between two protagonists was not mentioned and a nursery rhyme containing the word “ nigger ” was translated differently. The ending has also been redesigned in such a way that Louis' actions are exposed: After Louis has been reminded of the manuscript in his cell by the offer of the newspaper reporter, a guard brings the memoir to the prison director, who then reads it. The US version was six minutes shorter than the English.
The film was voted 25th place for the best comedies of all time by the readers of the film magazine Total Film in 2000 , and in 2004 - also in a poll by Total Film - it was ranked seventh best British films of all time .
Although later one of his favorite films, producer Michael Balcon was not at all convinced of its success at the time the film was developed; rather, he thought it was "not for sale".
In the humorous British crime series The Persuaders (German title: Die 2 ) produced in 1970 , with Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in the title roles, the subject was once again poked fun at in the episode Adel destroyed . Moore, in the role of Lord Brett Sinclair , then also played several people from his noble family in this episode, who are successively killed by an unknown family member in order to get the title of duke. In 1985 Dieter Hallervorden shot the comedy " Didi and the revenge of the disinherited ", which is also influenced by the plot in " Nobility Committed ".
synchronization
| role | actor | German Dubbing voice |
|---|---|---|
| Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini | Dennis Price | Lothar Blumhagen |
| Members of the D'Ascoyne family | Alec Guinness | Siegmar Schneider |
| Edith D'Ascoyne | Valerie Hobson | Eva Katharina Schultz |
| Sibella | Joan Greenwood | Uta Hallant |
| Mama Mazzini | Audrey Fildes | Gisela Reissmann |
| hangman | Miles Malleson | Werner Schwier |
| Lionel Holland | John Penrose | Michael Chevalier |
| Crown Attorney | Cecil Ramage | Siegfried Schürenberg |
Awards
The director Robert Hamer was in 1949 with noblesse oblige for the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival nominated. The film was also nominated for a British Film Academy Award for Best British Film a year later . The British Film Institute selected Adel Committed in 1999 as the sixth best British film of all time .
Reviews
The Lexicon of International Films wrote: “A macabre murderous comedy that intelligently jokes horror and caricatures the English way of life with satirical wit and biting irony. Outstanding Alec Guinness in the role of the eight victims, who as representatives of ancient decadence are afflicted with bizarre peculiarities. ”The Evangelical film observer came to a similar assessment:“ Elegant, elegant murderous comedy typically Anglo-Saxon character with a brilliant performance by Alec Guiness in eight roles. The formal advantages in no way cancel out the profundity of the material. Therefore [...] only suitable for sensible adults. "Katharina Stumm remarked on critic.de :" Director Robert Hamer unfolds the plot retrospectively and creates a humorous counterpoint through the dignified restraint in the comments of the would-be duke to his murderous hustle and bustle. "In 1990, Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz judged in the Lexicon" Films on TV " :" A classic of the black film comedy that lives from the chameleon-like art of transformation of the main actor (...) as well as from the bizarre logic of the script. " : 3½ stars = exceptional)
literature
- Roy Horniman: Israel Rank. A criminal's autobiography . (Abbreviated authorized translation from English by Vera Fleischmann.) Hermann Paetel, Neu-Finkenkrug near Berlin 1927
- Michael Newton: Kind Hearts and Coronets . BFI film classics. BFI Publ., London 2003, 87 pp., ISBN 0-85170-964-8
Individual evidence
- ^ Kind Hearts and Coronets . Movie locations. Retrieved May 10, 2012.
- ↑ Banned in the USA: Kind Hearts and Coronets .
- ↑ Nobility committed to the German dubbing index
- ↑ Nobility obliged at two thousand and one
- ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 26/1965.
- ↑ Review on critic.de
- ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 21
Web links
- Noblesse oblige in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- List of links to the film (Engl.)