Bugsy (film)

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Movie
German title Bugsy
Original title Bugsy
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1991
length 130 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Barry Levinson
script Dean Jennings ,
James Toback
production Warren Beatty ,
Barry Levinson,
Mark Johnson
music Ennio Morricone
camera Allen Daviau
cut Stu Linder
occupation

Bugsy is a gangster movie from the year 1991 . The film takes up the last ten years of the bully Bugsy Siegel . The film celebrated its world premiere on December 10, 1991. The European premiere took place in February 1992 as part of the Berlinale .

action

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel is a notorious gangster around Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano in New York . His nickname "Bugsy" is a slang word for a crazy guy and cannot be pronounced with impunity in his presence. Siegel is married, but he is a playboy and uses every opportunity to get closer to the female sex.

His friends and business associates send him to Los Angeles in the late 1930s to boost the gambling business there. The local boss of La Cosa Nostra Jack Dragna actually rules there , and Siegel is supposed to involve him in the new business in order to avoid an argument.

Siegel lives up to his nickname and acts accordingly in Los Angeles. When he z. For example, if you spontaneously like a house, he simply walks through the front door and buys the house directly from the owner, intimidated by his notorious name, even though he originally didn't want to sell. This reveals a weakness of Siegel. Money does not matter to him, it is, as he will say later in the film, just printed paper. He generously accepts the surprised owner.

Similarly daring, he comes into business with Jack Dragna. He offers two alternatives. The first is a 25% stake in the new business, the second is the opportunity to shoot him - Siegel. Siegel speculates that Dragna will not take the second option, as he would then come into conflict with Lucky Luciano . Dragna therefore also agrees, but with the secret will to be able to switch off Siegel later.

Siegel meets Virginia Hill on a film set . If his previous adulteries were minor short-term affairs, the relationship with Virginia Hill developed a different quality. Siegel will ultimately divorce his wife. During a trip through the desert with Virginia Hill and Mickey Cohen , there is another argument with Virginia Hill. The sometimes irascible seal stops on the open highway of the neighboring state of Nevada and runs into the desert. When he perceives the light and landscape there, a spontaneous inspiration comes to him. He wants to build a casino here that will put the previous gambling dens in the shade.

But he cannot implement his idea immediately because the angry Hill leaves Siegel and Cohen in the desert . Siegel met Cohen after allegedly stealing $ 56,000 from a Dragna store. Cohen was now hired by Siegel, but had to return the 42,000 US dollars - the true sum of the booty. Siegel confronts Dragna with the difference and places Dragna under Cohen's command, Dragna's resistance is violently broken.

The construction of the new hotel casino is not progressing because Siegel has extravagant wishes and is constantly ordering changes to already completed construction sections. This causes construction costs to explode ; Thus, the originally estimated million finally become 3 million US dollars, which Siegel promises the bosses in New York as the final cost figure. Ultimately, however, it will be 6 million US dollars, and even childhood friend Meyer Lansky tells Siegel that he can no longer help him. As a result of his divorce, Siegel himself no longer has any large financial resources of his own to use and begins to sell his shares.

Ultimately, Siegel does not care about money here either; The erection of the flamingo alone is a success for him, even if he should not earn anything from it later. Siegel shows himself here again as an idealist. He's only having an affair with an Italian countess because he wanted to get to Mussolini through her husband and shoot him. This plan is unnecessary, however, since the Italian dictator dies without his participation.

In addition, it has since come out that there should be a Swiss numbered account for two million US dollars, which was created by Virginia Hill in Switzerland . Hill, who really loves Siegel, ultimately admits the existence of this account, but the will to return it comes too late.

Due to the unfavorable start date at Christmas and bad weather on the opening day, the start of the Flamingo flopped. Siegel was shot through the window of his home in Los Angeles on June 20, 1947. Two gangsters tell the shocked Virginia Hill that Bugsy is dead and Meyer Lansky will take over the casino.

Film and reality

The film is based on real people, but provides its own view of the real events, which however do not always correspond to the facts or indicate unexplained circumstances to this day; u. a .:

  • The idea of ​​the flamingo was not Siegel's idea; he bought into an already existing project. Nor was the Flamingo - as the film indirectly implied - the first casino in Nevada to exercise the freedom to operate a casino legally.
  • Mickey Cohen probably already had contact with Lansky and Siegel through Lou Rothkopf, his ad-hoc recruitment in the film contradicts this.
  • In the film, Siegel murdered Harry Greenberg at the time when Luciano was about to be expelled from the United States. In reality, Greenberg was murdered on November 22, 1939 - presumably by Albert Tannenbaum with the help of Siegel; the presence of Virginia Hill in the act is fiction. The motive for the murder was not a testimony made against Lucky Luciano, but rather the Louis Buchalter boss of Murder, Inc. , who was harassed by the judiciary , saw Greenberg as a potential witness for prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey . Accompanying Whitey Krakower - brother of Siegel's wife Esta - is murdered in 1941, which is not mentioned in the film.
  • Who ordered the murder of Bugsy Siegel has not yet been finally clarified; In addition to his childhood friends Lansky and Luciano, there were other mafia giants who were involved in the project and were dissatisfied with the development.
  • When he was murdered, Siegel was not alone in the house, as the film plot suggests. Siegel read the newspaper during the attack and did not watch any demo recordings of his own. He was also at the Virginia Hill home during the murder.
  • To what extent the 2 million US dollars in the numbered account was ever paid back to Lansky or someone else - and even the existence of this account - is ultimately not verifiable. There is also evidence that Virginia Hill was generally used as a cash courier by the Chicago Outfit . In the film Siegel is portrayed as ignorant, and that too cannot be proven in the end.
  • Virginia Hill, who married the ski professional Hans Hauser in 1950 , did not commit suicide in Austria ten years later, as indicated in the credits, but almost 20 years later on March 24, 1966. This suicide was also called into question in Austria when her Mafia- Connections became known.

Reviews

  • "An elaborate, staged, skilfully polished film, which is more interested in the seductive surface than the draft of an interesting or even critically accentuated story." ( Lexicon of international film )
  • "Bugsy is big, exciting cinema (...) entertainment at its best." ( Cinema )

Awards

After winning the Golden Globe for best drama, Barry Levinson's directorial work was the favorite at the 1992 Academy Awards with ten nominations. There the gangster film could not prevail in important categories such as best film , director and leading actor against Jonathan Demme's thriller The Silence of the Lambs and in the category Best Original Screenplay against Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise and was only awarded the trophies for best production design and that Awarded the best costume design .

Other major awards were the prices of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in the categories Best Film , Best Director and Best Screenplay . Warren Beatty was named Best Actor by the National Board of Review .

Barry Levinson was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award in 1992 . Warren Beatty and Annette Bening were nominated for the MTV Movie Award in 1992 .

The film was also a competition entry at the Berlinale 1992 , but received no prize.

The German film and media evaluation FBW in Wiebaden awarded the film the title valuable.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cold Case: How a Babe May Have Helped the Mob Rub Out Bugsy | NBC Southern California. In: nbclosangeles.com. Retrieved August 29, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Mobster Bugsy Siegel murder finally revealed to be a love triangle execution | Daily Mail Online. In: dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved August 29, 2015 .