The last unicorn (cartoon)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The last Unicorn |
| Original title | The Last Unicorn |
| Country of production | United States , United Kingdom , Japan , Germany |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1982 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Jules Bass , Arthur Rankin Jr. |
| script | Peter S. Beagle |
| production | Jules Bass, Arthur Rankin Jr. |
| music |
Jimmy Webb , America |
| camera | Tōru Hara |
| cut | Tomoko Kida |
The Last Unicorn (Original title: The Last Unicorn) is a cartoon by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. from 1982 based on a story by Peter S. Beagle .
action
After two hunters have come to the unicorn's evergreen forest, where autumn never falls or snow falls, the older of the two realizes that due to the presence of a unicorn they will never hunt anything there. The unicorn overhears him when he calls into the forest that it should stay where it is and that it should take care of its forest because it will be the last. This makes the unicorn thoughtful because unicorns don't just go away like that.
Then when a butterfly recites stories and songs, the unicorn asks him if he has seen others like it. He then tells him that they disappeared a long time ago, chased by the red bull.
The unicorn sets out to find this bull and the other unicorns. On the way it is found in her sleep by the witch Mommy Fortuna and her curiosity circus. Unlike most people, she immediately recognizes it as a unicorn and puts a spell on it. So she catches it and displays it with a horn that is specially attached to the audience and visible to all. However, your colleague, the untalented magician Schmendrick, also recognizes it and frees it at a favorable moment. When it jumps out of the cage, the spell and with it the second horn falls off. It releases all other animals, including a real harpy . She kills Mommy Fortuna and her colleague Rukh, while the unicorn and Schmendrick sneak away.
On the way, Schmendrick is captured by robbers. Due to a rather unplanned spell by Schmendrick, all the robbers leave the camp and he is able to escape. But the robber bride Molly Grue stayed and discovered the unicorn by his side. She recognizes it as a unicorn and decides to go with them. She also knows where one can allegedly find King Haggard, who is said to be the Lord of the Red Bull.
Shortly before the king's castle, which stands on a cliff, they set up camp for the night, but the red bull finds the last unicorn and hunts it. Schmendrick uses his magic again and orders this to do what she wants. In this way the unicorn is transformed into a being that the Taurus is not interested in: a human being. They continue on their way to King Haggard and tell him that it is a relative of Schmendrick by the name of Lady Amalthea. He doubts, but he feels that it is more. He gives Schmendrick and Molly something to do in his house. During their work there, they research how they can get to the red bull. While Haggard's adoptive son Lír falls in love with Lady Amalthea and does everything to impress her, she gradually becomes more and more human until she finally falls in love with Prince Lír and now wants to stay human forever, because she is something like Never knew love The cat of the house finally gives the decisive tip to outsmart a skeleton in the cellar in order to get into the cave of the red bull through a magic clock. The red bull discovers her in his cave and now also realizes that Lady Amalthea is a unicorn. He chases her and the others. When she suddenly stumbles, Schmendrick sees her transformation back as the only way to save her. This time he consciously uses his magic and thereby becomes a real magician, as he has always wanted.
The unicorn and his companions flee from the cave and the red bull places them on the beach below the castle. He's chasing the unicorn, which apparently doesn't want to fight back and has given up, along the beach when Prince Lír decides to save it. He opposes the red bull, but dies almost immediately from its attack. This shock causes the unicorn to compete against the red bull. It drives him further and further into the sea, what the captured unicorns, which until then could only be seen as narwhals under the window of King Haggard, observe. Only when the red bull gives up and disappears in the waves do all the unicorns dare to jump from the waves onto the beach and run back to their forests. The drum of the huge mass of unicorns and probably also the disappearance of the red bull and its magic brings the castle to collapse. King Haggard also fell to his death. Meanwhile, the unicorn touches the prince's mouth with the tip of its horn, whereupon he comes back to life. Then it goes away.
Schmendrick and Molly ride with Prince Lír and then say goodbye to him. During the night the unicorn comes to Schmendrick again and explains to him that it must now return, but also that it is afraid of it, because it has felt love and sorrow. As the only unicorn in the world, it still does. Then it makes its way back to its forest where it is expected.
Characters
At first the unicorn lives lonely, but contentedly in its forest. Like all unicorns, it only knows the feelings of joy, happiness and (although rarely) fear. But when it learns that it is the last of its kind, it goes out into the world to find the others. As Lady Amalthea, she falls in love with Prince Lír , which she does not forget later as a unicorn. Unlike all other unicorns, from this point on it is also able to feel grief - grief over the loss.
Schmendrick is initially an unsuccessful magician who travels around with Mommy Fortuna's circus. He recognizes the unicorn, but hides it from Mommy Fortuna to protect it. His only desire is to become a skilled wizard, so he frees the unicorn. As history progresses, he develops more and more skills in real magic.
Molly Grue meets Schmendrick and the Unicorn while working for Captain Cully's robbers. Even as a child she dreamed of unicorns and, out of romantic considerations, joined the robbers when those hopes were shattered.
King Haggard once saw two unicorns, which touched him so much that he wanted them to himself forever. So he let the red bull - a flaming bull - drive all the unicorns into the sea. He tries, for example, by adopting Lír or by catching the unicorns to bring meaning and joy into his life, but he does not succeed. Haggard stands for 'emaciated' or 'worn out' in English.
Lír was abandoned as a baby, found and adopted by Haggard. He is the epitome of a prince hero who fights monsters and dragons and devotes his life to courage and honor. That's why he sacrifices his love for Amalthea to a higher goal. Its name is reminiscent of William Shakespeare's King Lear .
Mommy Fortuna is an old witch who uses her dark magic to turn animals into curios for her carnival. She is very proud of her power and especially of the harpy she has caught, even if she (like Rukh) is ultimately killed by her.
Rukh is Mommy Fortuna's henchman. He notices that Schmendrick freed the unicorn and is the only one in the midnight menagerie who really thinks the unicorn is a mare. He too is killed by the harpy.
The red bull is a giant flaming bull under Haggard's command. Haggard ordered him to drive all the unicorns into the sea. But the last unicorn can escape through a transformation into a woman, but in the end drives him into the sea in his true form. This is how the unicorns can be set free.
synchronization
The synchronization was commissioned by the Berliner Synchron GmbH Wenzel Lüdecke , the dialogue director was Joachim Kunzendorf.
| role | Original speaker | German speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Unicorn / Lady Amalthea | Mia Farrow | Traudel Haas |
| Wizard Schmendrick | Alan Arkin | Torsten Sense |
| Molly Grue | Tammy Grimes | Barbara Ratthey |
| King Haggard | Christopher Lee | Christopher Lee |
| Prince Lír | Jeff Bridges | Joachim Tennstedt |
| butterfly | Robert Klein | Frank Zander |
| Skeletal skull | René Auberjonois | Wolfgang Spier |
| Witch Mommy Fortuna | Angela Lansbury | Tilly Lauenstein |
| Ruhk | Brother Theodore | Melvin Quinones |
| Captain Cully | Keenan Wynn | Gerd Duwner |
| Pasture | Nellie Bellflower | Evelyn Künneke |
| Mabruk | Paul Frees | Kurt Waitzmann |
| cat | Don Messick | Arnold Marquis |
| Harpye Caelano | Keenan Wynn | Lothar Koester |
| Old rider | Ed Peck | Heinz-Theo branding |
| Young rider | Kenneth Jennings | Frank Glaubrecht |
Others
- The film, like other works by Rankin and Bass, was animated by the Japanese studio Topcraft , from which Studio Ghibli later emerged.
- The soundtrack The Last Unicorn, composed by Jimmy Webb , brought America a successful comeback.
- The first performance in Germany was October 21, 1983.
- The film was first released on DVD on June 17, 2004 and finally on Blu-ray Disc on December 1, 2011 . About a year later, on November 7, 2012, The Last Unicorn was released in 2D and 3D for the 30th anniversary on a Blu-ray disc.
- The original story of the book contains a few sub-threads that are not addressed in the film. So there is a village in front of the castle and an explanation of why the castle, the bull, Haggard and the other characters are what they are. However, the film only tells the main strand of the story and sticks to the book almost verbatim, especially in the dialogues. However, many important scenes from the book were not used in the film. So you don't learn in the film that Schmendrick is also immortal, as his master has put a curse on him that does not age him until he has found his true destiny. Some scenes have also been completely changed. In the film, for example, Schmendrick is kidnapped by the robbers in a forest while the unicorn is hiding behind bushes. In the book, Schmendrick and the unicorn instead come to a village that Jack Jingly later comes to to pay tribute to the mayor. Schmendrick is kidnapped after trying to trick Jack Jingly with a magic trick.
Reviews
“A literarily demanding, but abundantly kitschy cartoon fairy tale that expresses the desire for poetry to rule and the victory of beauty over violence and destruction. Technically on the staidest television level. "
“Technically, the film is far below the level of ' The Secret of NIMH ', for example . His animation is flat and poor in detail, Lester Abrams' character design of the unicorn and Jimmy Webb's music are very kitschy. On the other hand, the story for a fantasy epic is surprisingly intelligent and symbolic. [...] Finally, 'The Last Unicorn' is remarkable because the struggle between fantasy and lack of imagination is not reduced to a flat, black and white drawn good / bad conflict. "
"The victory of the beautiful over violence and evil is treated as a maudlin, mushy fable."
“With its aesthetic borrowings from the anime , the film was ahead of its time, but otherwise the film adaptation of Peter S. Beagle's book seems uninspired and kitschy. [...] Conclusion: Not fabulous at all: little magic, a lot of kitsch. "
literature
- Peter S. Beagle: The last unicorn. (Original title: The Last Unicorn). Klett-Cotta Hobbit-Presse, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-608-87502-6 . (German by Jürgen Schweier, 260 pages).
- Peter S. Beagle: The Last Unicorn and Two Hearts. (Original title: The last Unicorn and two Hearts). Klett-Cotta Hobbit-Presse, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-608-93872-2 . (German by Jürgen Schweier and Cornelia Holfelder-von der Tann, 304 pages).
Web links
- The Last Unicorn in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- The last unicorn in the online film database
- The Last Unicorn atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- The last unicorn (English)
- A unicorn for life , Tages-Anzeiger February 22, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | The last Unicorn. Retrieved February 22, 2018 .
- ^ The last unicorn : (CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997.
- ↑ The fantasy film. Heyne-Filmbibliothek, Volume 68. Heyne, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-453-86068-3 , pp. 201-205.
- ^ TV feature film lexicon
- ↑ Critique on cinema.de