Desire (1983)

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Movie
German title desire
Original title The hunger
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1983
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Tony Scott
script Ivan Davis ,
Michael Thomas
production Richard Shepherd
music Denny Jaeger ,
Michel Rubini
camera Stephen Goldblatt
cut Pamela Power
occupation

Desire (Original title: The Hunger ) is a British horror film from 1983. The director is Tony Scott , who made his feature film debut with this film. The main roles are Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie to see as a vampire couple that human blood need not to lose eternal life. Surprisingly, one day John begins to age and turns to gerontologist Sarah Roberts ( Susan Sarandon ). His wife falls in love with the doctor. The plot is based on the novel The Kiss of Death (The Hunger) by Whitley Strieber from 1981.

action

In a new wave disco, Miriam and John Blaylock are looking for a couple to swap partners. They also find one and drive to his house in New York , where there is also tenderness. Suddenly Miriam and John pull out small knives that they wear around their necks and cut through each partner's carotid arteries and drink their blood.

From flashbacks it is clear that John Blaylock has been immortal since the 18th century. Miriam, on the other hand, has lived for several millennia. Flashbacks show them in ancient Egypt . The condition of eternal life is that they must drink human blood occasionally.

One day John starts to notice signs of aging. John learns from Miriam that all his predecessors in Miriam's favor began to age rapidly after a few centuries and that Miriam turned away from them. Miriam tries to save John from getting old and seeks help from gerontologists who, however, have no advice either.

With his death in view, John turns to gerontologist Dr. Sarah Roberts at the Park West Clinic , but she doesn't have time for him and thinks he's crazy. She sends him to a waiting room hoping that after a while he will go away on its own. John waits a few hours, during which time he is aging drastically, then he wants to leave - only then does Sarah, whom he meets on the staircase, notice that he had not lied because he has become much older during this time. But she can't stop him.

John, aging faster and faster, panics and hopes to stop the aging process by drinking human blood. In search of fresh blood, he loses all inhibitions and kills the young girl Alice, who comes several times a week to play classical music with Miriam and John. But his aging cannot be stopped, it does not lead to his death, but his destroyed body can no longer lead a normal life. When Miriam comes home in the evening she finds a completely aged John and is horrified that he killed the young girl. John asks for redemption through death, but this is not in the power of Miriam. She keeps his body next to the bodies of her former companions in a coffin in the attic of her house.

The gerontologist Sarah has become curious in the meantime and visits the luxurious house of Miriam and John in a posh area of Manhattan to talk to John again. At the door she meets Miriam, who reports that John has gone to Switzerland. Miriam gains power over Sarah and saves her from a car accident without being there. Sarah has visions, imagines the phone is ringing and sees Miriam even though she is not there.

Magically attracted to Miriam, she visits her again and is seduced by the experienced woman. On a love night, Miriam lets her friend taste her own blood, which also makes her immortal. Sarah doesn't understand what has happened to her at first. She feels sick and a blood test shows that she has foreign, non-human blood in her body. Sarah goes to Miriam and demands clarification. Miriam reports that she gave her eternal life, but Sarah doesn't believe her. Sarah is now feeling an increased hunger for fresh blood, but cannot bring herself to kill people. Miriam will do that for you for now.

After Sarah kills her own lover in Miriam's house and drank some of his blood, she goes to Miriam and cuts her carotid artery in her house. When Miriam now wants to bring Sarah to the attic of her house, the coffins of her former companions open; they attack those who have now become undead. On the run, Miriam falls down the stairs and begins to age at an extreme rate. Meanwhile, their undead companions crumble to dust.

In the final scene, Sarah is in a spacious apartment in the London high-rise Barbican . She is surrounded by young people and a wooden coffin rests in a storage room. Miriam's voice can be heard, calling desperately for Sarah.

Reviews

The film is sometimes compared to Blade Runner , shot by the director's brother Ridley Scott , a year earlier, largely because of the similar aesthetics of the images . Arnd Schirmer described the film in the Spiegel as "chic, empty and boring". The Frankfurter Rundschau called the “decorative aestheticism” of the film “kitsch”.

The Lexicon of International Films wrote that desire is a "modern horror film about the hunt for eternal life and the process of premature aging." It was "told in a cumbersome way, photographed in a chic way and provided with hideous bloody effects".

Awards

In 1984, Milena Canonero was nominated for the Saturn Award for the costumes and for Dick Smith and Carl Fullerton in the make-up category .

backgrounds

The band in the disco scene at the beginning of the film is Bauhaus . The first shot of the film shows the singer Peter Murphy while the Bauhaus play Bela Lugosi's Dead can be heard. The film uses compositions by Schubert , Ravel , Bach , Gregorio Allegri , Léo Delibes (from his opera Lakmé ) and Édouard Lalo .

The film has two storylines. On the one hand the story follows Miriam and John and on the other hand it follows the gerontologists and their research on monkeys. The action is symbolically connected in parallel in two scenes. At the beginning, when the partner swaps, scenes are faded in that show a monkey killing another monkey in the hospital's gerontology department. The partner swap scene ends with the death of the other couple. As John waits in the hospital waiting room and ages rapidly, Dr. Sarah Roberts and her team at the same time watch the film of a monkey that ages very quickly in time-lapse footage and eventually dies.

Susan Sarandon reported on her lesbian love scene in the 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet. She resisted the idea that her character should get drunk before she let herself be seduced by one of the most beautiful women in the world: “You don't have to be drunk to want to sleep with Catherine Deneuve - no matter what sexual orientation you had before. "

David Bowie said that prior to the scenes in which he appeared as an old man, he shouted loudly for hours in the middle of the George Washington Bridge to change his voice accordingly.

Based on the film, the television series The Hunger was created in the years 1997–2000 . a. David Bowie played along. She was u. a. nominated for the Emmy Award .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Desire. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used