The (really) very last trick of the Olsen Gang

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The (really) very last trick of the Olsen Gang
Original title Olsen-bandens sidste stik
Country of production Denmark
original language Danish
Publishing year 1998
length 105 minutes
Rod
Director Tom Hedegaard , Morten Arnfred
script Henning Bahs
production Lars Hermann
music Bent Fabricius-Bjerre
camera Peter Klitgaard
cut Grete Møldrup
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
The Olsen Gang flies over the mountains

The (really) very last prank of the Olsen Gang is a Danish crime comedy from 1998. It is the fourteenth film with the Olsen Gang , which was made 17 years after the series originally ended as the final film. Both a leading actor, Poul Bundgaard, and director Tom Hedegaard died during the filming; the film was finished anyway.

action

For seventeen years Egon has been a research subject at the Institute for Theoretical Crime , a psychiatric institution for people who are considered incurable criminals. Now he is allowed to leave the institution for the first time temporarily to report live on his life on a TV talk show. Benny, who is now working for a taxi company, and Kjeld, who is now in a wheelchair and lives in a retirement home, are also watching this program. The two of them, who have not visited Egon in all these years, immediately go to the television studio to look for their former gang leader.

While looking for the toilet in the Nordisk Film building, Egon found a prop in the cloakroom: an old-fashioned suit with a bowler hat, the style of which corresponds to his old one; Egon immediately changes his clothes so that he can leave the building unhindered. On the street he meets Benny, who greets him effusively. Together they make their way to Kjeld, in whose room in the old people's home they meet. Kjeld has met a woman, Ruth, with whom he wants to buy an apartment together in Malaga . He has whispered her prospect of a rich inheritance from a company partnership and is now dependent on Egon's plan to actually get the money. And in fact, Egon developed a number of plans during the long time in psychiatry, all of which, however, were confiscated by the director of the institution and are still in his safe. So the gang sets out to crack this safe in order to then realize the greatest of Egon's plans - the robbery of the English crown jewels.

But not only Kjeld and Benny recognized Egon on television, but also State Secretary Hallandsen from the Ministry of Justice. He has a problem: A suitcase has appeared in Denmark containing the highly explosive Wandenberg documents. If these were to become public, the entire world order could collapse, as the documents provide precise information about all the major scandals of the last few decades. A first attempt by Hallandsen's assistant Holm-Hansen, with the help of two police officers, to make the documents from the central archive of the Foreign Ministry, where they are stored, disappear inconspicuously has already failed. The broadcast gave Hallandsen the idea that Egon Olsen would be up to the problem and asked Holm-Hansen to track down Egon. Holm-Hansen, for his part, asks Detective Inspector Jensen for advice, who should have retired long ago, but has been waiting for it for seventeen years because of a computer error. Jensen advises Holm-Hansen to monitor the last Franz Jäger safe of the 1944 model still in Denmark, as Egon will appear there sooner or later. This is the safe in the Institute for Theoretical Crime.

In the institute, the Olsen gang disguised themselves as doctors in white coats. Egon manages to get his plans out of the safe, which alerts Holm-Hansen, who immediately saves him from being arrested again by the prison director. Kjeld and Benny flee unnoticed.

Hallandsen hires Egon to steal the Wandenberg documents - of course for an appropriate reward. With two police officers as helpers and skillful distraction of the archive staff, Egon manages the coup within a few minutes. But instead of the reward, he is locked in a dungeon of the Ministry, where he is once again to be eliminated by the stupid pig and his assistant Alf. He manages to get a message to Kjeld and Benny, which allows them to free him at the last minute.

Hallandsen personally brings the suitcase with the documents to the state-of-the-art and poorly secured state file destruction facility. However, Egon knows the security systems of the engineers who were also arrested and can actually recover the document case with Benny and Kjeld - as well as with the help of a boat hook, a bottle of liquid soap and some other utensils. When Hallandsen found out about this, he suffered a severe shock, locked himself in the toilet and no longer spoke to anyone. The minister appoints Holm-Hansen as his successor, who puts the stupid pig and Alf back on Egon.

When the Olsen gang wants to drive to the construction site of the Øresund connection , where the suitcase should be properly handed over, Ruth suddenly gets into the car instead of Kjeld and claims that Kjeld is not doing well and that she will replace him. She also accuses Egon of always cheating Kjeld out of his share, so she'll be careful. Egon reluctantly complies.

Arriving at the construction site, Egon, Benny and Ruth are knocked out by Alf and the stupid pig and then taken to a construction pit, in which they - including the Wandenberg documents and the suitcase with Egon's plans - are to be buried. Thanks to Ruth's empathy, with which she gets Alf on her side, and Egon's ingenuity to open a door through a peephole, they can break free.

Meanwhile, another old friend arrives in Denmark - Kjeld's son Børge, who now lives in London as an internationally wanted financial fraud. He learns from Kjeld what has happened and then goes looking for Egon, Benny and Ruth. When he arrives at the construction site, he meets the gang, who have just happily escaped. While he is celebrating the reunion with Benny, Egon demands that Holm-Hansen adhere to his demands, but the next moment he has to watch helplessly as Ruth and Alf throw the suitcases with Egon's plans and the Wandenberg documents onto a building material truck, where they are disappear never to be seen again. When Commissioner Jensen and his assistant Holm arrive, who have been following Børge, it is Holm-Hansen's first official act to finally sign Commissioner Jensen's retirement.

At the end of the film, Egon, Benny, Kjeld, Ruth and Alf, who followed them as a butler, travel to Børges villa in Portugal to spend a peaceful retirement there. Egon wants to set about executing the only plan that is left to him, the theft of the crown jewels. But he looks for the map in vain - the driving away Børge has taken it and reads it with interest.

History of origin

In 1981, The Olsen Gang flies over the plank and The Olsen gang flies over all mountains, a two-part story at the end of the 13-year Olsen Gang series. After that, the makers planned never again to make a film about the Olsen Gang. When the main actress Kirsten Walther died in 1987 , another film finally seemed a long way off, as an Olsen gang film without Walther's figure of Yvonne was not believed to be feasible. Nevertheless, the desire for another film always remained with some of those involved, especially Poul Bundgaard campaigned for it for years.

1996 turned Sprogøe, Bundgaard and Grunwald for a Danish energy supplier to four and a half minute promotional film Olsen bandens save plan , in which Erik Balling led the tribe director of the Olsen Gang, director. Encouraged by this experience, the decision to make a fourteenth Olsen Gang film was matured in 1997. Henning Bahs wrote the script, while Balling did not take part in the making of the film due to his poor health, but acted as a consultant and had a short guest appearance in the film (see notes). At the end of 1997, MDR was won as a co-producer. The MDR suggested that Leipzig be included in the script as the location and Uwe Steimle in the role of a Saxon commissioner, which Nordisk Film rejected. Shooting began on April 20, 1998. Initially, all interior scenes were filmed in Nordisk Film's studios.

The project suffered a major setback on June 3, 1998, when Poul Bundgaard died at the age of 75. Work on the film was initially interrupted after the interior shots were almost complete. At first it was considered to stop filming altogether, after discussions with Bundgaard's family it was decided to finish the film. Bundgaard in particular had repeatedly expressed his wish for a new Olsen gang film, even though he had been seriously ill for years.

It was now looking for a new actor who could duplicate Bundgaard or the figure of Kjeld in the outstanding exterior shots. After test shoots with an amateur actor who looked deceptively similar to Bundgaard were unsatisfactory, the actor Tommy Kenter , who was given the look of Bundgaard through complicated make-up work, was hired. He played Kjeld during some of the remaining scenes, while in others, like in the finale at the Øresund construction site, he was completely written out and replaced by Ruth. In the original it was dubbed by the well-known Danish actor and voice imitator Kurt Ravn .

Director Tom Hedegaard also died on August 6, 1998, just a few days before filming was completed, and Morten Arnfred took over his post for the rest of the shooting days. The last stone fell on August 24, 1998.

German synchronization

The German dubbing of the film took place in April / May 1999 in the dubbing and recording studio in Leipzig. The dialogue book was written by Wolfgang Woizick , who was already responsible for the DEFA dialogue books for two earlier Olsen gang films and who invented the expression “mighty mighty” in 1970. Woizick was not provided with a rough German translation of the dialogues, only the Danish original script and an English translation, which is why the German version contains some translation errors.

Egon and Kjeld were voiced by their well-known DEFA dubbing voices Karl Heinz Oppel and Erhard Köster . As a replacement for the Benny standard spokesman Peter Dommisch , who died in 1991, Roland Hemmo was signed without prior casting , which met with incomprehension among many fans. Bert Franzke dubbed Commissioner Jensen as a replacement for Dietmar Richter-Reinick , who died in 1997, and Matthias Hummitzsch spoke for detective assistant Holm.

The German version of the film was shortened by around nine minutes compared to the Danish version, presumably in order to bring it to the more television-compatible format of around 93 minutes.

The release of the film in Germany was delayed because initially no distributor was ready to show it in German cinemas. The previous German distributor of the Olsen Gang, Progress , rejected the film. Eventually it was taken over by the Tübingen distributor Arsenal , which brought it to the cinema on November 18, 1999. He could be seen almost exclusively in East Germany.

Remarks

  • The house that served as the outside backdrop for Børges Villa in Portugal was actually in the Copenhagen suburb of Charlottenlund .
  • Several of the people involved in the film have cameo appearances :
    • The “spiritual fathers” of the Olsen Gang, Erik Balling and Henning Bahs, can be seen in a back room of the television studio working on their typewriters.
    • Costume designer Lotte Dandanell and makeup artist Elisabeth Bukkehave have a guest appearance as nurses at the Institute for Theoretical Crime.
    • The German radio journalist Frank Eberlein , who owns a large collection of Olsen bands, wrote two books about the films and accompanied the work on this film, can be seen briefly as a coma patient at the institute.
  • One of the two policemen who try to steal the Wandenberg documents at the beginning of the film is played by Ove Sprogøe's son Henning .
  • Benny Hansen , briefly seen as a nurse, died on August 27, 1998.
  • Bjørn Watt-Boolsen died just ten days after the film premiered on December 28, 1998.
  • With the film Olsenbandens siste stikk , a remake based on the original was produced in Norway in the summer of 1998, which had its premiere two months later on February 19, 1999.

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Frank Eberlein / Frank-Burkhard Habel: The Olsen Gang. The big book for fans , expanded new edition, p. 278
  2. ↑ Frank Eberlein / Frank-Burkhard Habel: The Olsen Gang. The big book for fans. Extended new edition, Berlin 2000, p. 282
  3. ↑ Frank Eberlein / Frank-Burkhard Habel: The Olsen Gang. The big book for fans. Extended new edition, Berlin 2000, p. 283