Arthur Penn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Hiller Penn (born September 27, 1922 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † September 28, 2010 in Manhattan , New York City , New York ) was an American film director . With films like Bonnie and Clyde , Alice's Restaurant and Little Big Man , he is considered one of the most important directors in New Hollywood .

life and work

The son of a watchmaker of Russian origin and a nurse grew up with his mother in New York City after his parents divorced; at age 14 he returned to his father in Philadelphia and graduated from high school. He then studied at Black Mountain College and in Perugia and Florence before moving to the Actors Studio in Los Angeles . His role models are above all Ingmar Bergman and the directors of the Nouvelle Vague .

After the Second World War, in which Penn played at a front theater directed by Joshua Logan , he established himself as a director for television and Broadway . In 1959, he received a Tony Award for his theater production of The Miracle Worker , the life story of Helen Keller . (He had staged the play for television two years earlier, and three years later he was also to direct the film version as a director.)

Although he was able to make his first movie in 1958 with One Must Believe , an unvarnished biography Billy the Kids , and was even nominated for an Oscar in 1962 for Licht im Dunkel , his cinema career came slowly in Penn's high standards when selecting his projects Gear.

In the 1964 film The Train , Penn was replaced by John Frankenheimer . Mickey One and The Chase were flops . The paranoid and surreal film Mickey One in particular impressed the critics with its unusual use of cameras and elliptical narration. A man is hunted , re- edited by producer Sam Spiegel against Penn's intentions , caused a sensation by a shockingly long scene full of brutality in which a town sheriff portrayed by Marlon Brando is cruelly beaten.

Only Bonnie and Clyde was a unanimous success with critics and audiences. The film showed the famous gangster couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as restless teenagers deprived of all ideals. The end of the film became famous: Penn shows the grotesque death dance of lovers in a hail of machine guns by the police in a sequence that broke taboo at the time.

Penn's next film, Alice's Restaurant , a satire on the counterculture of the 1968 movement based on Arlo Guthrie's songs , was also a success. Little Big Man , an epic anti-western with a devastating portrait of General Custer , was Penn's most expensive film and greatest commercial success.

Penn's subsequent films The Hot Trail and the Missouri Duel were critical successes, but audiences no longer wanted to follow him in these mysterious and eccentric works. Ever longer periods of time now passed between new projects, so that Penn's filmography has relatively few works.

From 2000 Penn made a name for himself as a co-producer of the successful television series Law & Order .

"Penn was the chronicler of another America who was interested in alternative concepts to bourgeois forms of existence [...] The search for identity of the individual who tried to draw attention to himself with wild, often violent acts, became a central theme of Penn's films. They show the characters breaking out of pre-drawn life plans, the pleasurable and painful trying out alternatives. And they show how reality corrupts dreams and ideals. "

- Robert Mueller

Since 1955 he was married to Peggy Maurer, with whom he had two children. He died of heart failure one day after his 88th birthday in his adopted home New York after conquering pneumonia. His brother was the well-known photographer Irving Penn .

Filmography

Movie

watch TV

  • 1948–1955: The Philco Television Playhouse
  • 1954: The Lawn Party
  • 1955: The Waiting Place
  • 1957: The Miracle Worker
  • 1957: Invitation to a Gunfighter
  • 1957: Charley's Aunt
  • 1957: The Dark Side of the Earth
  • 1958: Portrait of a Murderer
  • 1968: Flesh and Blood
  • 1993: The Portrait
  • 1996: In the Face of Freedom (Inside)
  • 2000–2001: Law & Order (producer)
  • 2001: 100 Center Street (Episode: The Fix )

Awards

theatre

  • 1957: Two for the Seesaw: Tony Award nomination
  • 1959: The Miracle Worker: Tony Award
  • 1960: All the Way Home: Tony Award nomination

watch TV

  • 1956: The Miracle Worker: Emmy nomination
  • 1996: In the face of freedom (Inside) : Competition selection of the Valladolid International Film Festival
  • 2001: Law & Order : Emmy nomination for producer

Movie

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Robert Müller, epd Film 10/2007 p. 25: "Chronicler of the other America - For the 85th birthday of director Arthur Penn"
  2. Awards of the Berlinale 2007 , accessed on April 29, 2017.