Anna ... exile in New York

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Anna ... exile in New York
Original title Anna
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1987
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Yurek Bogayevicz
script Yurek Bogayevicz,
Agnieszka Holland
production Yurek Bogayevicz,
Zanne Devine ,
Deirdre Gainor ,
Julianne Gilliam
music Greg Hawkes
camera Bobby Bukowski
cut Julie Sloane
occupation

Anna ... exile New York ( Anna ) is a film drama with Sally Kirkland from the year 1987 . The film is based on the experiences of Elżbieta Czyżewska , who emigrated to the United States in the 1960s .

action

After the Prague Spring , Anna, a Czech actress, was arrested and deported. She and her lover Daniel are looking for work in New York . She gets a job as a substitute in a theater. She also helps the young Krystyna, who also came to New York from Czechoslovakia , but does not speak English. Anna and Daniel help her learn the language and get her work in the film business. As Anna is outstripped by Krystyna, the two women fight. Krystyna takes Anna's life story, which she spreads out in a television interview and sells as her own. Anna then has a fit of anger and the two women break up. Mentally battered, she turns the audience against herself while acting. After Daniel leaves her for Krystyna, Anna suffers another nervous breakdown, appears on Krystyna's film set and shoots the younger opponent. Krystyna has to be treated in a hospital for several days, as she reports in a letter to her family home, but forgives Anna and plans to relax with her in Hawaii. She plans to finance a lift for the older one to look younger and thus receive role offers.

background

Sally Kirkland had to learn Czech for the role of Anna and to speak English with a Czech accent. She saw the part as the role of her life and was very committed to the film. For the preparations, Kirkland, according to his own statements, roamed New York and sought conversation with Czech immigrants. The elevator operator in Kirkland's apartment complex was a director from Prague . She gave the script to him, who read it in English, while Kirkland is said to have written each of his words phonetically in order to better memorize the accent. The owner of a Czech travel agency went through the script scene by scene with Kirkland, which the actress recorded in order to later imitate it. Unlike many others who compared Anna… Exile New York to Joseph L. Mankiewicz 's Oscar- winning film All About Eva (1950), Kirkland spoke of an “ultimate love story” between the two women that would stem from communication problems.

For Porzkova it was the first demanding film role. “It's the first script I've ever received in which the girl is not a total chick and naked all the time,” said the model in a 1986 interview with the New York Times . Like her film character, Porizkova came from Czechoslovakia and was raised by her grandmother at the age of three after her parents fled the country from the Soviet invasion in 1968.

Reviews

Rita Kempley wrote in the Washington Post on February 26, 1988 that the film had many "wonderful" scenes. The script is not plausible in places. Stephen Holden (The New York Times) saw an "intense mother-daughter relationship" that developed into a merger of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eva (1950) and Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966).

According to Claudia Wefel ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ), the two female figures make the film clear the harshness of American show business: “A milieu in which the meteoric rise from the awkward farmer's daughter to the celebrated mannequin and to the adored actress in the same breath a dozen other ambitious minds and can cost a career. ” The fact that Anna does not freeze into a cliché is due to the “ convincing representational art ” of Sally Kirkland and Paulina Porizkova. With the title role, Kirkland succeeded in “exploring the full range of acting variations” , while Porizkova could obviously do more than just look “beautiful” . Wefel criticized Yurek Bogayevicz's staging style, which was "obviously not a master of allusions and subtle images" . Epd Film (10/88) remarked something similar: "What makes this film more annoying than Agnieszka Holland's bad script is the twisted direction by Yurek Bogayevicz."

The filmdienst rated Anna ... exile New York primarily as "psychologically differentiated character study, supported by convincing starring" will, especially Sally Kirkland in the title role. The actress is similar in intensity to Gena Rowlands , the film to the Hollywood classic All About Eva . The political dimension is only partially successful, but the main character's political background remains “blurred” . Anna… Exile New York remains "true to the patterns of American entertainment: it is undoubtedly well done, but is careful not to challenge the viewer too deeply."

Awards

Sally Kirkland's performance has won various film awards, including the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award (1987, shared with Holly Hunter for Broadcast News ), the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Drama, and the Independent Spirit Award (both 1988 ). Also in 1988, Kirkland was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress , but was left behind by Cher ( Moonstruck ).

Agnieszka Holland was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award in 1988 for the script, as was director and producer Yurek Bogayevicz and producer Zanne Devine (Category: Best First Feature).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Holden, Stephen: At Film Festival, Commanding Roles For Women . In: The New York Times, September 25, 1987, Section C, p. 1.
  2. ↑ cf. Gross, Michael: Notes on Fashions . In: The New York Times, September 30, 1989, Section C, p. 10.
  3. ^ The Washington Post
  4. ↑ cf. Wefel, Claudia: Everything about Anna or The Ruin of Disguise . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 27, 1988, p. 31.
  5. ↑ cf. Critique in film-dienst 20/1988 (accessed via Munzinger Online )
  6. ↑ cf. Awards in the Internet Movie Database (accessed May 26, 2011).