The bear (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The bear |
| Original title | L'Ours |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1988 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean-Jacques Annaud |
| script | Gérard Brach |
| production | Claude Berri |
| music | Philippe Sarde |
| camera | Philippe Rousselot |
| cut | Noëlle Boisson |
| occupation | |
| |
The Bear (Original title: L'Ours ) is a French feature film from 1988. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud , the screenplay was written by Gérard Brach based on James Oliver Curwood's novel Tyrr, the Grisly Bear . Annaud won a César for the film .
The animal feature film combines elements of animal films , adventure films , westerns , film drama and family films . He manages almost without dialogue and focuses on two brown bears , a young grizzly and a full-grown Kodiak bear . In reality, these bear species do not share the same habitat . Towards the end of the film, people increasingly come to the fore, which is also reflected in the increased number of dialogues. Above all, the inner change of the younger hunter in the behavior towards the bears is increasingly taking up more space; in the end the film becomes didactic and develops characteristics of an educational film .
action
British Columbia , Canada , in 1885: A brown bear cub searches for food with its mother and loses its mother when she is killed by falling rocks. The she-bear was pulling honeycombs out of a beehive for herself and the boy . After a night the bear cub wanders around aimlessly next to the mother's corpse, mourning his mother, and meets a full-grown bear that has been shot in the left shoulder by two hunters . The hunters also skinned the dead mother and fried and ate her meat over the campfire. The adult bear, a male, is initially hostile to the young animal. The spell is broken, however, when the little bear licks the gunshot wound of the big one. From now on they are almost inseparable. The big bear introduces the little one to the common world, teaches him to catch salmon and takes him with him on the deer hunt . When they meet a she-bear, the big bear mates with her, while the little one looks on blankly from a rock.
After being shot, the adult bear attacked the hunters' camp and injured several horses, some fatally. This apparent act of revenge by the bear provoked a hate reaction - especially from the older hunter, which is why the two decide to resume the hunt after one of the hunters has called in a colleague with several dogs.
After the dogs arrive, they find the bear, but it escapes, killing several of the dogs. However, the hunters manage to capture the bear cub. The hunters do not kill the bear cub, but hold it as a kind of mascot with a collar. Especially the younger of the hunters, Tom, who recently lost his favorite dog to the bear attack, befriends the little bear, plays with him and gives him canned milk to drink.
When the hunter Tom, in a moment of inattentiveness, faces the big bear on a ledge, the bear spares the hunter pleading for his life despite clear threatening gestures. After the bear has moved away, the hunter grabs his rifle and wants to shoot the bear from behind, but then spares him and prevents his hunter friend Bill from killing the bear. Tom releases the bear cub. Amazingly, it does not want to be released back into the wild and follows the hunters until they scare it away. It wanders around alone again and is attacked by a puma to which the cub is inferior. However, at the last moment, the full-grown bear appears and chases the puma away. Then it starts to snow and the two bears look for a cave in the rock for winter quarters. The last shot shows the two animals snuggled close together in hibernation .
background
Jean-Jacques Annaud, who later made another animal film with Two Brothers , spent six years preparing for the film. It took four years to train the two bears. The shooting lasted 109 days and the production cost was around 140 million francs (20.3 million euros). The location was the Dolomites near Lienz . During a photo session for the press during filming, Annaud von Bart was badly injured in the back with a claw and had to wear a shunt on the wound for two months .
The film was shot in English. Most of the music was played by the London Symphony Orchestra . The dreams of the little bear cub, mostly nightmares , for example of the death of their mother or of an encounter with, for the inexperienced bear cub, eerie frogs , were represented by discoloration of the film and animation sequences . The hallucinations of the little bear after consuming toadstools were staged as a psychedelic trip with the help of trick elements and dolls from Jim Henson 's Creature Shop .
The French theatrical release was on October 19, 1988. By its theatrical release in the USA on October 25, 1989, the film grossed over 100 million US dollars worldwide and was a commercial success. In France, over nine million viewers saw the film in cinemas, and when it was first broadcast on French television in 1992 on TF1 , over 16 million viewers tuned in, which was a record. In the United States, the film grossed over $ 30 million.
Animal actor
beard
The adult bear in the film was the Kodiak bear known from several animal roles, Bart the Bear .
Youk
A total of twelve young animals were used. Among them was a young female bear who later came to the ZooParc de Beauval in France and lived there under the name “Gogol” until March 2018. She was anesthetized on March 27, 2018 for transport to a new enclosure, but did not survive this anesthesia due to her old age. More young bears were later taken to zoological institutions in Sainte-Montaine , Saint-Martin-la-Plaine , Linz and Limbourg .
Reviews
The American film critic Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that The Bear was not a cute fantasy film, but portrayed the life of a bear in the wild in a realistic and “impressive” manner.
According to the German film service, the film “relies entirely on its two main actors, the bears”. Annaud's directorial work is "entertaining, exciting and visually attractive, even if he ascribes too much human motivation to the animals". “Touching, dramatic and extremely good,” said Cinema .
Awards
At the Academy Awards in 1990 the film was nominated in the Best Editing category, but could not prevail against the war drama Born on July 4th . The film received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for best camera, but was beaten by Mississippi Burning . In 1990 , Der Bär was nominated for the Young Artist Award for Best Feature Film - Adventure or Cartoon.
The most important French film award, the César , was won by Jean-Jacques Annaud in the Best Director category and was able to assert himself against Luc Besson , who was nominated for In Rush of the Deep , among others . Noëlle Boisson was awarded for the best cut . The film was also nominated in the categories of Best Film , Best Cinematography , Best Sound and Best Movie Poster. Furthermore, given the bear the Prix de l'Académie nationale du cinéma Best Picture.
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Web links
- The bear in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Trip in the high mountains . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1989 ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Robert Schickel: The Bear Review and The Bear Facts . In: Time , October 1989, p. 97.
- ↑ lejdd.fr ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Message on the Beauval Zoo homepage, accessed on March 29, 2018
- ^ Roger Ebert: The Bear . In: Chicago Sun-Times , October 27, 1989.
- ↑ The bear. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ cinema.de
