The girl at the end of the street (film)

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Movie
German title The girl at the end of the street
Original title The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
Country of production Canada
USA
France
original language English
Publishing year 1976
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Nicolas Gessner
script Laird Koenig
(also template)
production Zev brown
music Christian Gaubert
Frédéric Chopin
camera René Verzier
cut Yves Langlois
occupation

The girl at the end of the street (original title: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane ) is a feature film from 1976 , which was made as a literary film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Laird Koenig in a Canadian-US-American-French co-production. Laird Koenig originally wrote the novel as a play .

The film belongs to the genre of crime novels / thrillers . The main character is exposed to subtle threats from her environment (bossy landlady and her pedophile son), which she finds difficult to deal with as a child, despite her maturity and reason.

action

A few months ago Rynn Jacobs moved with her father Lester, a poet, from England to a house in Wells Harbor on the coast of the US state of Maine . The father has not been seen for weeks, Rynn organizes her everyday life alone.

When Rynn apparently celebrates her 13th birthday alone with a cake on Halloween evening, she receives a visit from Frank Hallet, the landlady's grown son. He makes her suggestive compliments and sexual advances, which she confidently defends against. Frank apologizes half-heartedly and leaves. The next day the dominant landlady Mrs. Hallet appears. She wants to get mason jars from the cellar, but Rynn nervously prevents Mrs. Hallet from entering the cellar. In the village, Rynn meets Frank Hallet, who offers to drive her home, which she refuses. Police officer Ron Miglioriti, who saw the scene, brings Rynn home and warns her of a closer acquaintance with Frank. The next time Mrs. Hallet visits, the situation escalates with Rynn's attempt to prevent the landlady from entering the cellar again. Rynn threatens Mrs. Hallet with telling her father about Frank's indecent behavior on Halloween and that the police should do something about the obviously parthenophile Frank. Mrs. Hallet then hits Rynn in the face. Despite Rynn's urgent warning and an invitation to leave the house, Mrs. Hallet eventually enters the basement, where she appears to make a terrifying discovery. While she hurries up the stairs in a panic, the basement hatch falls on her head and she has a fatal accident.

In Rynn's unsuccessful attempt to drive Mrs. Hallet's car off the property, she is surprised by the teenager Mario Podesta, who is riding his bike to a children's birthday party, where he is performing as a magician. He is the nephew of Ron Miglioriti and depends on a walking stick because he limps as a result of polio. After his appearance, Mario comes back and drives the car in front of Mrs. Hallet's office without knowing what is actually going on. As a thank you, Rynn invites Mario to dinner. The two are sympathetic and make friends. Frank Hallet walks in and suspects that Rynn might be responsible for his mother's disappearance. He brutally kills Rynn's hamster with a burning cigarette, harasses the girl and becomes violent against Mario. However, he succeeds in driving Hallet away with a sword. Mario tells Rynn that his uncle has already been investigating Frank Hallet for sexual harassment of a young girl. He doesn't understand why Rynn refuses to call the police. Therefore, in addition to the accident of Mrs. Hallets, Rynn also reveals the circumstances of the death of her own parents.

Accordingly, they had been separated for a long time, their mother had left the family. The father was seriously ill and knew that he would soon die. To prevent Rynn's access to his mother after his death, they moved to the United States. The father made arrangements for Rynn's future life in the greatest possible independence from adults and committed suicide by drowning in the sea. His body was never found. However, the mother managed to find Rynn's whereabouts and one day stood at the door. According to her father, Rynn should mix a white powder into the tea for his mother, which, contrary to his statements, was not a sedative but cyanide, which caused the mother to die. Rynn preserved her body according to instructions from a book from the city library and hid it in the basement, where it was discovered by Mrs. Hallet.

Mario and Rynn bury the two bodies together in the pouring autumn rain in the garden, whereupon Mario catches a cold. Since Ron Miglioriti never saw Rynn's father on any of his visits, he had doubts about his existence. Mario, disguised as Mr. Lester Jacobs, plays his role so convincingly that even his uncle doesn't recognize him. Then Mario and Rynn, who have long since fallen in love, have their first sexual experiences with each other.

Mario falls ill with severe pneumonia as a result of the cold and Rynn visits him in the hospital. Weeping, she confesses her love to the unconscious Mario and explains that her father's plan that she should master her life all by herself did not work out. Because she couldn't live without Mario. When Rynn woke up to noises that night and a figure in a wizard's costume emerged from the basement, she initially mistook it for Mario. In fact, it is Frank Hallet, who firmly believes that he has found sufficient evidence of the events in Rynn's house to blackmail her. He regards the idea of ​​a secret relationship with Rynn in return for his silence. She only apparently agrees and prepares two cups of tea, adding potassium cyanide to one of them unnoticed. Rynn anticipates that Hallet will suspect the tea may be poisoned and first pours the deadly powder into her own cup. She confirms his premonition through her hesitant behavior and Hallet swapped, actually becoming suspicious, the cups and drinks the poisoned tea. With the last of his strength, he strokes her hair and compliments her on her lovely appearance. To the sounds of Chopin's First Piano Concerto, which is playing on the record player , Rynn watches the dying Mr. Hallet for the entire credits.

Reviews

  • According to the lexicon of the international film , the work is a "solidly staged, atmospherically dense crime thriller that aims to entertain rather than provide a psychogram."
  • Cinema wrote that the film was "compelling, surprising and even humorous". If Alfred Hitchcock had made a film of Pippi Longstocking , "his work would look like this witty, little-known thriller jewel." Jodie Foster "shone" in her role.
  • Franz Ulrich judged in the film service that the film was "a technically experienced entertainment film, a bit superficial and non-binding, but at least cleverly staged, with well-managed actors, exciting and pleasant to consume."
  • Helmut W. Banz criticized in the time the film version of Laird Koenig's novel, "Gessner film, undecided between romantic horror, mysterious psychological thriller and an attached social commentary fluctuating, it makes a Freudian-verquasseltes confusion." The director yield the attraction of the child stars Jodie Foster "so rigorously that the subtle irony of the original curdles into a gag."

Awards

The film received the 1978 Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Films for best horror film, and Jodie Foster received the 1978 Saturn Award for best leading actress in a horror film. Nicolas Gessner (director) and Laird Koenig (screenplay) were nominated for the Saturn Award.

background

The film is based on the 1974 novel of the same name by Laird Koenig, who also wrote the script himself. Filming took place in November and December 1975. The exterior shots were taken in the small towns Knowlton / Lac-Brome (Gemeindeverband Brome-Missisquoi , Quebec ) and Ogunquit ( Maine ) that served as models for the fictional place "Wells Harbor." A studio in Montreal was also used for the interiors . The production cost was approximately 1.1 million Canadian dollars . The world premiere was in November 1976 in the USA, the first performances of the German dubbed version in Germany and Austria took place in April 1977. The girl at the end of the street was broadcast for the first time on German television on October 24, 1978 ( ZDF ).

Foster biographer Robert Fischer sees the film as a special milestone in the career of then 13-year-old Jodie Foster, because “for the first time a film was entirely hers: she can be seen in every scene, the story is told from her point of view. “According to the monograph by Philippa Kennedy, one of the producers tried to persuade Jodie Foster to appear nude several times, which she indignantly refused. In the shot in which Rynn Jacobs can be seen naked from behind and from the side and slips under the covers with Mario, Jodie Foster's then 20-year-old sister Connie Foster stepped in as a body double .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lexicon of International Films . Editor: Klaus Brüne. Volume 5, L-M. Reinbek near Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-16322-5 , p. 2370.
  2. ↑ Cinema Filmarchiv accessed September 5, 2010.
  3. ↑ film service 7/1977.
  4. ↑ Helmut W. Banz: FilmtipPrograms . In: Die Zeit , No. 17/1977.
  5. ^ Saturn Awards 1978 accessed September 21, 2010.
  6. ↑ Filming locations for The Girl at the End of the Street. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  7. ^ A b Robert Fischer: Jodie Foster. Hollywood's child prodigy. Original edition. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-05975-1 , p. 64.
  8. ^ Budget and box office earnings for The Girl at the End of the Street. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  9. ↑ On TV this week . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1978 ( online ).
  10. ↑ Philippa Kennedy: Jodie Foster. The Most Powerful Woman in Hollywood. Macmillan, London 1995, ISBN 0-333-61519-0 , pp. 49f.