Candy (1968)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Candy |
| Original title | Candy |
| Country of production | Italy , France , United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1968 |
| length | 124 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Christian Marquand |
| script |
Buck Henry Enrico Medioli |
| production | Robert Haggiag |
| music |
Dave Grusin , Roger McGuinn , Gianni Marchetti |
| camera | Giuseppe Rotunno |
| cut |
Giancarlo Cappelli , Frank Santillo |
| occupation | |
not listed:
| |
Candy is a 1968 Franco-Italian-American erotic fantasy comedy.
action
From space to the classroom
From the vastness of space, a pulsating light and energy creature descends to earth and finds itself as the bewitchingly beautiful Candy Christian in a breathtaking mini dress in the class of a high school in the strict Midwest of the United States.
Her father, who is also her teacher, tears her out of her daydreams (as which the opening sequence can now be interpreted). Mr. Christian, an old school teacher, more disciplinarian than pedagogue, gives a lecture to the class about their duties to the state, church and parents, which the students are infinitely bored with.
After class, the father speaks to his daughter in private and apologizes to her. He expresses concern that she will consider him a philistine and tries to give the modern understanding father. Candy obediently assures her father that there is no need to worry. But when a boy speaks to Candy, his father's jealousy breaks through immediately.
McPhisto
The lecture by the poet McPhisto, who has been invited as a literature teacher, is very different from the lessons with Mr. Christian. The students flock to the lecture hall in droves, stand and sit in the aisles. Candy stands out from the crowd as she is standing on a windowsill waiting for the teacher. McPhisto inevitably catches the girl's eye on his star-like entry.
His lessons consist of the recitation of one of his erotic poems, which especially attracts girls. Candy feels that McPhisto's eyes are only on her. Meanwhile, Candy's father asks who “this McPhisto” is. From the old teacher Miss Quinby he learns that McPhisto was one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
McPhisto leaves the lecture to roaring applause. Like an actor, after he has left the hall, he comes back to be applauded again. He gives Candy a note in which he offers to bring her home. In the car, Candy tells how impressed her presentation was. McPhisto tries to seduce her, but fails because he has consumed too much whiskey.
Emmanuel
When they get home, Candy and McPhisto's driver carry Zero McPhisto in, as he is not only full of alcohol inside. While Zero is taking off his boss's soaked pants, Candy asks the Mexican gardener Emmanuel to bring the ironing board into the basement. He misunderstood the request and said Candy wanted to make advances for him.
While the drunk McPhisto has fun with a doll, the shy gardener is so aroused by McPhisto's speeches and the supposed encouragement of Candys that he throws her on the pool table and rapes her. In this situation, Candy's father enters the basement with four other teachers and freezes in shock.
Emmanuel's sisters
After this scandal, the father asks his brother Jack what he should do now. Jack's wife Livia tries to make life in her hometown New York palatable for Candy. While Jack explains to his brother that Candy would be well protected in a New York private school, Livia praises the free life there. So the decision to send Candy to New York is not difficult.
On the way to the airport they are harassed by three motorcyclists, one of whom has the gardener Emmanuel in the back seat. As it turns out, it is Emmanuel's sisters Lolita, Marquita and Conchita who want to take revenge for Emmanuel being “dishonored” and no longer able to become a priest. On the tarmac, the sisters threaten Candy's father to hand over his daughter. The father is seriously injured in the scuffle that follows.
General Smight
Thanks to the intervention of Parachutist General Smight, the sisters are evicted. Smight takes Candy and her family aboard his military machine as his soldiers prepare to take off. On board, Jack and his wife try to persuade the general to get medical attention for Candy's father. When Jack appeals to his influential friends in Washington, this is brushed off with the objection that nobody here is interested in this "Pinkoville". Smight even suspects Jack to be a communist.
Only when Candy lets it be known that she would do anything to save her father does the general soften up. He pulls her into the cockpit and confesses that he has not seen a woman in six years. He orders her to undress "in the name of the free world". By pressing the naked Candy, he triggers the signal to jump. When he leaves the cockpit and realizes that his men have jumped off, he jumps after them. Livia takes over the now driverless machine, steers it to New York and signals to the airport to make preparations for medical treatment.
Dr. illness
An ambulance takes the family to Dr. Illness. Sickness celebrates the operation in front of an audience like a maestro in an operating theater equipped with spectator galleries and ceiling frescoes. Candy, her uncle and his wife also sit down in the gallery. The spectators are dressed as if they were going to the opera, the entry of the surgical team with the patient on the stretcher is accompanied by enthusiastic applause. Dr. Illness itself the hall and can be extensively celebrated by the audience. After the operation, which is more like a butchery, the father finds himself in a state of mental derangement.
When Candy met Dr. If she wants to inquire about her father's illness, his mother threatens to keep her hands off her son. When she escaped from her mother, she is also threatened by Sister Bullock, the mistress of Illness. In her father's hospital room, where a lavish post-operative party is taking place, she finally meets Dr. Illness. However, he only tells her about his achievements, Candy learns nothing of the father's condition. Uncle Jack wants to take advantage of this situation to seduce Candy; however, he is supervised by Nurse Bullock and the director of the hospital, Dr. Dunlap, interrupted.
Dr. Dunlap blames Candy for what he calls this orgy. Candy collapses under the impression of his sermon. Dr. Illness intervenes and takes her to another sick room to be "examined" there. He penetrates her from behind on the pretext of straightening her hip . Sister Bullock surprises them and wants to drive Candy away. First she threatens them with a syringe, then tries cunning. She claims that Candy's father left the hospital and was helpless through the night. When Dr. Illness, she also wants to have a tattoo to mark her as his property, Candy flees the hospital.
The La Rosa café
Candy wanders aimlessly on the streets of New York in search of her father. In the Sicilian Café La Rosa she wants to rest a little. There she is harassed by the gangster "The Big Guy" and his men. When the underground filmmaker Jonathan J. John enters with his camera, the gangsters flee because they do not want to be filmed. “G3”, as he calls himself, pushes Candy into the men's room to shoot an avant-garde film. During the "shooting" the pipes break and the cabin is submerged. In search of the gangsters, the police officers Charlie and his supervisor enter the café. The bartender points to the men's room. When the policemen break open the door, they are met by a surge of water. Angry, they beat the filmmaker. Candy takes the opportunity to escape.
The hunchback
The police take up the chase of the completely soaked Candy. In the park she meets a hunchbacked juggler who promises her dry clothes. The apparently completely demolished man leads them to a magnificent villa. While Candy is changing, the hunchback's friends break into the villa and rob it. The hunchback throws Candy on the piano and wants to do "rub-a-dub-dub" with her. Candy initially refuses; when the hunchback says sadly that it is because of his hump, she lets him go.
Now the two policemen reach the villa and storm it. The hunchback is recognized by them as the long-sought criminal "The Little Guy". Due to his abilities as a "human fly", the hunchback can escape. The police arrest Candy and the hunchback's friends. In the police car, the sergeant subjects Candy to an improper body search. They lose control of their car and race into a restaurant where a group of transvestites is having a demonstration. The policemen club the troops together and Candy is able to flee.
Grindl
To get home again, Candy stops a truck. She climbs into the trailer and sees that the interior is furnished as a temple. The Indian guru Grindl sits meditating on a throne. He asks them to free themselves from everything material. He explains to her that her name is sacred and that she is chosen to work with him to overcome the limitations of matter and negative thoughts. Of course, Grindl doesn't want anything different from the other men. After they have climbed the six (sexual) levels of enlightenment, the guru informs her that she can only reach the seventh level with the mysterious "teacher with the bird".
The teacher with the bird
The car is stopped at the border with California and examined by the police for contraband. Candy escapes and is followed by the police. But they suffer an accident and surprisingly turn out to be the New York police officers.
Candy goes on into the desert and sees a veiled man with a giant toucan on his shoulder. She sees in him the promised “teacher with the bird” and follows him. The stranger leads them into a cellar vault, lit by innumerable candles, with column reliefs and statues of Indian gods. The stranger also wants to unite sexually with Candy. During the union in which Candy enjoys the highest lusts ever experienced, Candy loses his plaster of paris face mask. Now, to her horror, Candy recognizes her father in the stranger.
Final scene
In the final scene, between waving flags and music, she walks through a wide meadow where a psychedelic festival is taking place. There she meets all those she has met in the course of the film: Emmanuel as a hippie, guarded by his sisters, her father / uncle as a Janus-like double face, General Smight as Don Quixote. Dr. Illness gives the gangsters a miracle drug that turns them into children. Grindl floats on wire ropes in the midst of a group of monks dressed in saffron. In the end she returns - in reality or in her dreams? - back to the cosmos.
History of origin
The novel Candy was published by Olympia Press in Paris in 1958 . The author Terry Southern used the pseudonym Maxwell Kenton. Immediately after its publication, the book was banned in France. In 1960 the novel was published again by Putnam in the USA, this time under the real name of the author and co-author Mason Hoffenberg . In 1963 the novel reached second place on the fantasy bestseller list. Through the film Dr. Strange (1964) Terry Southern earned a reputation as a screenwriter. This was followed by participation in other films such as Death in Hollywood (1965), Cincinnati Kid (1966), Barbarella (1967).
Although he did not work on the screenplay for Candy , his success as a screenwriter will have contributed to the film being made into a film. Shooting began in Rome at the end of 1967 with 17-year-old Swede Ewa Aulin (Miss Teen Sweden 1965) in the title role. Ewa Aulin is portrayed as a beginner in the credits, although she had already starred in the Italian film La Morte ha fatto l'Uovo (Eng. "The Trap") in 1967 . Aulin only appeared in a few films, most recently in 1973 in the crime film Una Vita lunga un Giorno (Eng. "Five Riddles to Death").
The main character's name was modeled after Voltaire's Candide . The naivety of the character resembles Candide from Voltaire's novel, but Candy shares the fate of the innocence pursued by all men because of her attractiveness more with Candide's lover Cunegund. The lover of explicit sexuality is disappointed, all scenes are only hinted at. Ewa Aulin and Anita Pallenberg's bare breasts only appear briefly. Despite the huge number of stars, the film had little success when it was released. Only later was he recognized by parts of the criticism and a fan base. In 2001 the film was released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Remarks
The film songs are from John Kay and Steppenwolf . The opening and closing sequences were designed by Douglas Trumbull .
criticism
The Protestant film observer draws the following conclusion: “In the film, due to the sheer juxtaposition of mostly incoherent, more or less successful episodes in which the only occupation of the girl Candy is to be seduced, the critical and satirical intent of the novelists is often not convincingly expressed, which is why the strip overall is not artistically satisfactory. It is lavish and cocky, played excellently and (only) on the surface amoral par excellence. "
Web links
- Candy in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 131/1969