Avanti, Avanti!
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Avanti, Avanti! |
| Original title | Avanti! |
| Country of production | USA , Italy |
| original language | English , Italian |
| Publishing year | 1972 |
| length | 140 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Billy Wilder |
| script |
IAL Diamond Billy Wilder |
| production | Billy Wilder |
| music | Carlo Rustichelli |
| camera | Luigi Kuveiller |
| cut | Ralph E. Winters |
| occupation | |
| |
Avanti, Avanti! is the free film adaptation of the play of the same name by Samuel A. Taylor by Billy Wilder .
action
Wendell Armbruster, a bourgeois American industrialist and family man, is traveling to the Italian island of Ischia at the weekend because his father was killed in a car accident there. He has to bring the remains home immediately, because the pompous funeral of the multimillionaire is due to take place next Tuesday. The influential politician Henry Kissinger has also agreed to participate.
On the way, Wendell repeatedly meets the English saleswoman Pamela Piggott, who has the same destination as him. The two stay in the same hotel on Ischia, and Wendell soon learns that Pamela's mother died in the same car as his father. He is horrified to discover that his father and Pamela's mother had a relationship and that they had shared the hotel room during the summer holidays for ten years.
There is a wealth of formalities to deal with on site. Wendell is confronted with the perils of the Italian bureaucracy and a way of life that is completely alien to him. Despite the active support of the hotel manager Carlucci, new obstacles keep appearing. The winegrowing family Trotta, in whose vineyard the car crashed, is demanding compensation for the damage caused. Because Wendell refuses to pay the asking price, the Trottas steal the bodies in order to back up their demands. Only when Wendell gives in are the dead taken back to the morgue.
The impatient and arrogant Wendell, who had previously treated Pamela rudely - he even called her fat ass - is increasingly succumbing to the charm of the Mediterranean way of life. Wendell's change leads to Pamela and he falling in love. Like the deceased before, they now enjoy togetherness under the southern sun. They are photographed by the hotel employee Bruno while they are bathing naked. Bruno, a former American mafioso who was expelled from the USA, wants to use the pictures to blackmail Wendell so that he can return to the USA. The problem is solved by itself, however: Bruno is shot in Pamela's room by his pregnant fiancée, a Sicilian maid who works in the hotel , because he wanted to leave her.
Because a police investigation is taking place in her room after the murder, Pamela is billeted in Wendell's suite at Carlucci's instigation without her knowledge. She misunderstood this accommodation as an expression of Wendell's sympathy for her and openly admits her affection while she is giving her clothes to him. The surprised Wendell clears up the matter soberly, to which Pamela reacts with great disappointment. Finally the two get closer in Wendell's bathroom. With the question “Permesso?” Wendell asks permission to kiss her, which Pamela finally gives him with the answer “Avanti!” . They spend the afternoon in bed together.
Wendell has already prepared himself for the fact that the funeral will be postponed and that he can spend more pleasant days in Ischia when the influential American diplomat JJ Blodgett, who is friends with the Armbrusters, arrives from Paris at the instigation of his wife . Blodgett Wendell's father wants posthumously the diplomatic status lend and deal so all bureaucratic obstacles. The joint departure should take place in the afternoon.
Pamela and Wendell accept Carlucci's offer to bury the two dead in his family grave on Ischia. The bodies of Wendell's father and Bruno are swapped before the coffin is sealed. So Bruno is appointed US diplomat by the unsuspecting Blodgett and loaded into the waiting helicopter to be buried in America. This makes his heart's desire - return to the USA - come true.
Before Wendell's departure, Carlucci promises to reserve the same suite for him and Pamela every year - as Wendell's father and Pamela's mother did before.
background
Billy Wilder has always been concerned with the confrontation between the values of America and Europe. That is why he often chose European locations for his films, for example in An Foreign Affair , Ariane - Love in the Afternoon , One, Two, Three and Fedora . Perhaps the sharpest contours of the clash of different ways of life are in his comedy Avanti, Avanti! .
The setting is provided by a southern Italian island idyll at the beginning of the 1970s, where horse-drawn carriages ride next to motor scooters and where church bells ring next to nuns who go to the cinema to watch the film Love Story . The ingredients are then blackmail, murder, some nude scenes and under the motto at some point I'll tell you how we got Batista out of Cuba, gripping American diplomat and secret service agent who, as deus ex machina, brings the action to a melancholy-conciliatory conclusion.
As a musical leitmotif, the ballad Senza fine runs through the film, which was composed by the Italian songwriter Gino Paoli and which was a huge hit in the 1960s. Using other popular Italian songs, a musical arrangement was created for which the Italian film composer Carlo Rustichelli was responsible. The strip was cast with largely unknown actors. For the British Juliet Mills, the film was the high point of her career.
The title of the film is derived from the first Italian phrase Wendell learns from Pamela: It is the answer to the question Permesso? ('May I (enter?')): Avanti! ('(Only) in!'). The second Avanti in the German film title was added by the German distributor. This changes the meaning to: 'Forward, go ahead'. In a figurative sense, Avanti means 'Go ahead!', 'Go ahead!', Literally 'forwards'.
In contrast to other films by Wilder such as Eins, Zwei, Drei , the various allusions and gags that are present are applied at a rather slow pace. A key scene in Wilder's commitment to love in the film is the identification of the dead in the morgue. The Italian coroner works through the documents to be presented. The oath taken from Pamela and Wendell can be interpreted as a yes in a wedding ceremony. In the further course of the scene, the two children of the deceased lovers continue to imitate their behavior, with the hotel staff from the porter to the barman being available to both of them with details.
Billy Wilder tried to explain the failure of the film in the United States: “It would have been a really brave and dramatic revelation if the son had found out that his father in an accident had traveled to Italy, not because he had a girlfriend there, but because he was gay and was found naked in the car with the bellboy. That would have been a really brave film. So the film is simply too conservative, too good, too mild .... That way, the popcorn bag does not fall out of the hand. ” On the other hand, he counts Avanti Avanti, which went quite successfully in Europe, to the films that he himself really liked.
German dubbed version
The German dubbed version was created in 1973. The film was released in West German cinemas on December 20, 1973 and was first broadcast on ARD on August 31, 1980 .
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Wendell Armbruster | Jack Lemmon | Georg Thomalla |
| Pamela Piggott | Juliet Mills | Monika Peitsch |
| Carlo Carlucci | Clive Revill | Harry Wüstenhagen |
| JJ Blodgett | Edward Andrews | Siegfried Schürenberg |
| Arnoldo Trotta | Franco Angrisano | Martin Hirthe |
| Armando Trotta | Franco Acampora | Joachim Kemmer |
| Concierge | Antonio Di Bruno | Erich Fiedler |
| Dr. Fleischmann | Harry Ray | Friedrich W. Building School |
| stewardess | Maria Rosa Sclauzero | Ursula Herwig |
| Customs officer | Raffaele Mottola | Jochen Schröder |
Reviews
- Lexicon of international film : intelligently constructed, cultivated comedy of humanity. A remarkable commitment to love and mutual understanding.
- Prisma Online: Sympathetic film fun from Billy Wilder, who has found in Jack Lemmon the ideal interpreter for his American satires and a perfect comedian for his neurotic heroes. So also in this comedy classic with swipes at American and Italian ways of life.
- Roger Ebert on January 1st, 1972: “Avanti! Avanti! ”Is not a film in which a laugh follows every minute, and it is about half an hour too long. He also suffers from the problem that the audience saw everything a few minutes before Jack Lemmon. Nevertheless, the film has a certain charm that comes partly from the enchanting locations, and partly from the cheerful lightness that is usually inherent in a collaboration between Lemmon and Wilder ...
- " Avanti!" Isn't a laugh-a-minute kind of a movie, and it's too long by maybe half an hour. It also suffers from the problem that the audience has everything figured out several minutes before Jack Lemmon does. Still, the movie has a certain charm, some of which seeps in along with the locations, and there is in most of the many Wilder / Lemmon collaborations a cheerful insouciance ...
Prices
For his portrayal of Wendell Armbruster, Jack Lemmon received the Golden Globe in the category Best Actor in a Comedy in 1973 . The film also had five Golden Globe nominations. Clive Revill received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Web links
- Avanti, Avanti! in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Avanti, Avanti! in the German dubbing index
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neil Sinysaard, Adrian Turner: Billy Wilder films. Berlin Verlag Volker Spiess, 1980, ISBN 3-88435-011-0 , pp. 109-111.
- ^ Billy Wilder, interviews, Conversations with filmmakers series. Edited by Robert Horton, Verlag Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2001, ISBN 1-57806-444-9 .
- ↑ Avanti, Avanti! In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 6, 2018 .
- ↑ Avanti, Avanti! In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .