American crime
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | American crime |
| Original title | American crime |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Tommy O'Haver |
| script | Tommy O'Haver Irene Turner |
| production |
Henry Winterstern Christine Vachon Jocelyn Hayes Katie Roumel Kevin Turen |
| music | Alan Ari Lazar |
| camera | Byron Shah |
| cut | Melissa Kent |
| occupation | |
| |
An American Crime is a true story-based US feature film from 2007. It premiered in January 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival and in Germany on July 27, 2007 at the Fantasy Film Festival . The date for the German DVD release was May 16, 2008.
content
In spring 1966, in a sensational trial, the events surrounding the death of a young girl are rolled out. Flashbacks based on actual testimony and accompanying comments by the protagonist Sylvia tell the story of the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens .
In July 1965, the showman couple Betty and Lester Likens gave their two daughters Sylvia Marie and Jenny in Indianapolis to the care of Gertrude Baniszewski because they were going on a tour of the fair . After a failed marriage and a relationship with a much younger man, Gertrude Baniszewski has six children herself and convinces Lester Likens that she would not mind two more children. For a maintenance payment of $ 20 a week, she wants to take the two girls in with her.
Since Gertrude cannot work much because of her asthma, does not receive any support for her eldest five children from their father and even gives the father of her youngest child money, she soon finds herself in financial need. She takes out the annoyance about the check for the second week, which does not arrive by the expected date, on the two girls by slapping them over the back with a belt in the basement, which was not unusual at the time. When the check arrives the next day with a letter to the daughters of the Likens couple, Gertrude hides it.
But not only the financial hardship, but also the upbringing of the daughters, suffering from the unstable and weakened mother, contributes to the constant increase in tension. The second oldest daughter Paula confides in Sylvia that she is pregnant because of her relationship with an adult, married man. When he gets violent against Paula and threatens to rape her, Sylvia stops him by revealing this pregnancy. In her anger about this, Paula tells her mother that Sylvia called her a prostitute in front of others.
Gertrude soon puts the burden of her own inadequacy on the intimidated Sylvia, who is concerned about the protection of her little sister Jenny. For all the suffering of the Baniszewski family and every alleged wrongdoing, Sylvia is punished - increasingly harder and more and more humiliating. She is burned with a cigarette for allegedly stealing money, and for "hanging around" with boys she has to insert a glass bottle into her vagina in front of the Baniszewskis and the children of the neighborhood . She is thrown into the cellar, where she hardly gets to eat or drink and has no possibility of personal hygiene. In the course of time it becomes the leisure activity of the young people living in the area to "play" with Sylvia in the house of the Baniszewskis. She is kicked and beaten, burned with cigarettes and matches, hosed down with cold water and tied to a pillar, while Gertrude Baniszewski is the only adult who accepts this abuse as a "punishment", sometimes simply ignored by the mist of her asthma medication. The grown-up neighbors, who occasionally hear Sylvia's screams of pain, want to stay out of the affairs of the Baniszewskis, and Gertrude also spreads that she had to send Sylvia to an educational institution. In between she seeks forgiveness, almost spiritual absolution from the tormented woman.
The Likens parents have extended their tour of the fair to Florida and therefore extended it, which means that Sylvia's redemption is a long way off. The situation escalates further after the parish priest, who knows Sylvia as a friendly, pious girl, visits Gertrude. Paula, who after initial satisfaction no longer approves of her mother's derailments, but also does not take any defensive measures, confessed to the pastor that she was actually pregnant - a circumstance that Gertrude had tried with all her might to suppress. Cornered, she performs the most sadistic torture on the defenseless girl: with the help of two of her younger children and a neighbor boy who was unhappily in love with Sylvia, she burns her the words “I'm a prostitute and proud” with a hot embroidery needle of it “(I'm a prostitute and proud of it) in the stomach.
In a sequence that does not correspond to the real events, Paula is shown helping Sylvia to escape; the boy next door drives her to the fair where her parents work. She is welcomed there with tears, but returns with her parents to the Baniszewskis' house to fetch Jenny. As she walks through the door alone, she can already hear the eldest daughter Stephanie, who is desperately trying to wake up a lifeless body, while Gertrude apathetically claims on the couch that the girl is not dead, that it was only faked. Her first fear for the sister Jenny dissolves in despair - and with it the image of Sylvias when she sees that it is her own body over which the children bend.
The events up to this point have been interrupted by insertions with the testimony of the children. At the end you see Gertrude Baniszewski taking the stand and claiming that she did not know anything about it, that she was ill and too weak to get up. She only noticed that the children had quarreled during the time when Sylvia was tortured - all children, including her own, must have lied about Gertrude's instructions on torture and her involvement in it.
The film ends with a listing of the convictions and the further life of Gertrude and the children, narrated by Sylvia's voice; when Gertrude Baniszewski steps into her cell, Sylvia is sitting there, and Gertrude seems to be apologizing.
Finally, the film reverts to a picture from the beginning of Sylvia sitting on a children's carousel with her belated comment that she has returned to the fair, the only place she has ever felt safe. The film ends with her words: “Reverend Bill always said: No matter what the situation, God always has a plan. I'm still trying to find out what his plan was. "
Background information
The film is based on real events including the actual death of Sylvia Likens as a result of the ordeal. Some tortures that Sylvia Likens also had to endure at the time (such as eating her feces and carving the letter "S" into her skin) are not taken up in the film. In addition, it is said in the film that Gertrude has six children. In reality, however, she had seven children.
The crime described took place in 1965 in Indianapolis, Indiana. The crime has been described as "the most terrible crime ever to take place in the state of Indiana."
The family was so poor that they did not have an oven and only three spoons. The father of the two siblings, Lester Likens, later stated in court that he did not want to spy on the house and therefore saw no signs of such poverty in relation to the apparent poverty of the family.
Gertrude Baniszewski was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, was released after 18 years and died of lung cancer in 1990.
Catherine Keener first turned down the role of Gertrude Banieszewski, but then decided otherwise.
Jack Ketchum took the case as an opportunity to write his book Evil - this novel was made into a film under the title Jack Ketchum's Evil . The content is similar to An American Crime , but with significant differences.
Sylvia Liken's story is also described in "In the Basement - Meditations on a Human Sacrifice" by the American writer and suffragette Kate Millett . Similar to Truman Capote's "Cold Blood", Millett chooses the form of a report. As a result, the descriptions appear distant and at the same time very immediate. In a review published in 1980, Millett was not concerned with "the reconstruction of a strange death", but with the "depth patterns in our collective soul". At the same time, the book is sharply criticized: "Kate Millett reduces human history to the image of the victim woman and the destroyer man (represented here by the henchman Gertrude, who ritually does to Sylvia what men have done to her)."
Reviews
"Thanks to great leading actresses and a director who refrains from exploiting the case in a gimmicky manner, a differentiated drama succeeds that traces the reasons why such excesses of human cruelty can occur."
“Director and writer Tommy O'Haver shows great courage when he dares to tackle the story and tries to trace the causes of the atrocities on film. But even if O'Haver approaches fate with a lot of respect for the people and the greatest possible care in his research, he ultimately fails to find meaning behind this American crime. "
publication
The film was shown at some film festivals in the United States, but was not given a theatrical release. On May 10, 2008 it ran for the first time on the US television channel Showtime . The film was also released in Germany on May 16, 2008 as a direct-to-DVD production. However, it was shown in theaters in other countries such as Sweden , Greece and Spain and was still able to reap $ 1.3 million of its $ 2 million production costs.
Web links
- An American Crime in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- An American Crime in the German dubbing file
- Director's blog about the film
- Indianapolis Star newspaper report on the murder of Sylvia Likens
Individual evidence
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ An American Crime. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ An American Crime on boxofficemojo , accessed October 21, 2011