The last game
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The last game |
| Original title | Bang the drum slowly |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1973 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | John D. Hancock |
| script | Mark Harris |
| production |
Lois Rosenfield , Maurice Rosenfield |
| music | Stephen Lawrence |
| camera | Richard Shore |
| cut | Richard Marks |
| occupation | |
| |
The final game is an American sports drama from 1973 , based on the novel of the same name by screenwriter Mark Harris.
action
Henry Wiggen is a star of the New York Mammoths baseball team. He is a very valuable player for his manager Dutch. Contract negotiations with the team's board of directors are difficult. Henry wants a new contract that pays him more money. Henry also sells insurance to other sports comrades. The somewhat retarded catcher Bruce Pearson is one of Henry's best friends. Henry's nickname on the team is Author because he once published a book. Bruce misunderstood the nickname and often called Henry Arthur instead .
Henry and Bruce leave the Mayo Clinic. Bruce went there for a screening because he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma . There is only a short time left to live. The two friends drive to Bruce's hometown in Georgia . Bruce has always wished to show Henry his place of birth. As a sign of accepting his imminent death, he burns all of his old baseball items the first night.
Nobody in the team knows anything about Bruce's fate. In the pre-season, Dutch plans to replace Bruce with a young talent, Piney Woods. Henry confuses management when he accepts a new contract with a special condition. He will only continue with Bruce. If one leaves the team, the other leaves too. Dutch tries to get Henry to withdraw from the contract. At the same time, a series of defeats for the Mammoths begins. The team begins to fall apart.
Bruce wants to rewrite his life insurance with Henry's help. The beneficiary is now his girlfriend Katie, who is secretly only interested in Bruce's money and who uses his intellectual handicap. One day when a player picks on Bruce, Henry loses his nerve. He inadvertently reveals that Bruce will soon die. That remains no secret, the team and team management quickly found out about it. Everyone now takes care of Bruce, the morale of the team increases.
At the end of the season, Bruce is too sick to play. The team fights to win the World Series , but Bruce travels to Georgia to see his parents. After the finale, Bruce dies. Henry vows never to tease anyone again.
Reviews
The lexicon of international films wrote that it was a sympathetic film from the sports milieu, which lives primarily through its brilliant leading actors.
Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that the film was the ultimate baseball film. It is less about death than about the daily life of the baseball professionals.
Awards
Vincent Gardenia received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1974 .
In the same year Robert De Niro won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor .
background
The film premiered on August 26, 1973 in New York. In Germany it was broadcast as a TV premiere on ZDF on February 17, 1991 .
The novel by Mark Harris on which the film is based was published in 1955. The first cinematic implementation took place in 1956 in the television series The United States Steel Hour . Here Paul Newman and Albert Salmi played the main roles.
Together with the gangster film Hexenkessel ( Mean Streets ) by Martin Scorsese , which was produced in the same year, this film marked the breakthrough for Robert De Niro, who was still little known at the time.
The pre-season was filmed in Florida . The home stadium of the New York Mammoths was Shea Stadium , home of the New York Mets .
Web links
- The last game in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The last game. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ^ Review by Roger Ebert (English). Retrieved March 1, 2020.
- ↑ Rob Nixon on TCM (English). Retrieved March 1, 2020.