The eagle's flight
The flight of the eagle (original title: Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd ; English title: Flight of the Eagle ) is a Swedish-Norwegian-German film drama by the director Jan Troell from 1982 . Based on the semi-documentary novel Ingenieur Andrées Luftfahrt (1967) by the author Per Olof Sundman , he traces the historical events surrounding Andrée's polar expedition of 1897 . The main role of expedition leader Salomon August Andrée embodies Max von Sydow . In 1983 the film was nominated for an Oscar in the category of best foreign language film .
action
After Andrée had to break off a first attempt to reach the North Pole with the hydrogen balloon Örnen (in German eagle ) in August 1896 , he returned from Spitzbergen to Stockholm in order to prepare a new attempt the following year. In the course of this failure, he is exposed to criticism from social and scientific circles, which the expedition member Nils Ekholm openly expresses. Andrée knows how to dispel all doubts and tirelessly pushes ahead with the planning for another attempt. Ekholm is replaced by Knut Frænkel . In Paris , the balloon is inspected in Henri Lachambre's workshop , while the third expedition member Nils Strindberg becomes engaged to his girlfriend Anna Charlier .
In the summer of 1897, the polar explorers set out again for Spitzbergen, where, after waiting for a while for favorable winds, the start succeeds. But problems soon arise and the trip does not go as planned. After a while, the balloon can hardly be held in the air, so that you have to land on the pack ice . The three men are forced to take an arduous hike back across the ice in heavy sleds, which increasingly pushes them to their physical and mental limits. When they finally reach the uninhabited and inhospitable island of Kvitøya , they are almost at the end of their tether. After the exhausted Strindberg died and was buried, Frænkel was also killed in an attack by a polar bear . The disaffected Andrée is left alone in the barren ice desert.
Historical background and literary template
The basic plot of the film is largely based on real events, which can also be understood from the recordings of the expedition participants. These were only discovered in 1930 with the corpses of the three men (Andrée's death is not shown in the film) in their last camp on Kvitøya, until then the researchers were believed to have been lost for 33 years. Some of Strindberg's original photos of the course of the trip are also used in short intercuts, and at the beginning of the film, pictures of the mortal remains of the men are faded in.
Since the diaries could not answer all of the open questions, and in particular the circumstances in which Andrée, Frænkel and Strindberg died, the film also contains fictional passages. Of course, this also applies to the majority of dialogues that have not been handed down verbatim. Therefore, the film is not only based on the literary model by Sundman, it also takes over the interpretations of the novel in many places, which above all depicts Andrée as a complex character: the daring plans of the intelligent scientist stand in ever stronger contrast to the Overestimating himself and bad planning into which he allows himself to be driven further and further, not least because of the public pressure he has sparked.
There are also some differences from the first-person book written from Knut Frænkel's perspective. In the novel, Andrée dies before Frænkel, who ends up lying down in the cold in the open tent after taking an overdose of opium .
Different versions, performances and publications
The Flight of the Eagle celebrated its world premiere in the 140-minute film version on August 26, 1982 in Gränna , the hometown of Salomon August Andrée. This could not be seen in German cinemas, but ARD broadcast a 180-minute TV version in the form of a three-part mini - series of 60 minutes between May 16 and 23, 1982 . The Polyphon Film- und Fernsehgesellschaft was involved in the production on behalf of the WDR on the German side. 1983 ran the series in Austria and 1984 also in Switzerland on television. It has not been repeated since the 1980s.
The film version was released as a VHS cassette in some countries , including Sweden and Canada , but is now a rarity. The film has not yet been released on DVD or Blu-ray . In Germany it is occasionally shown at film festivals, for example at the Nordic Film Days Lübeck in November 2001 in its original English subtitled version.
Jan Troell used various scenes from the film for his 60-minute documentary Ballonfahrt in den Tod (original title: En frusen dröm ; English title: A Frozen Dream ), which was published in 1997 for the 100th anniversary of the Andrée expedition.
Awards and nominations
Even before the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1983, The Eagle's Flight was included in the program of the Venice International Film Festival in 1982. Director Jan Troell was nominated for the Golden Lion , leading actor Max von Sydow won the Pasinetti Award .
Reviews
“Panorama shots of the eternal ice, which are probably far more fascinating on the screen than on the screen, alternate with close-up and close-up shots of the men and the objects they have left, the sledges, the boat, the measuring devices. The close-ups not only show how the exertions become apparent on the men's faces, they sometimes also reveal their feelings. Because in this desperate situation it remains unspoken for a long time how the men assess their situation. "
"Toward the end of the expedition, the personal drama of the three men, as they are overtaken by fate, is detailed with an intensity that is as moving as the earlier sequences are spectacular."
Web links
- The flight of the eagle in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The eagle's flight. In: Zelluloid.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on September 7, 2018 .
- ↑ The flight of the eagle wunschliste.de
- ↑ 43rd Nordic Film Days Lübeck 2001
- ^ Epic at the Pole Die Zeit, May 14, 1982.
- ^ Movie Review Flight of the Eagle, The New York Times, April 8, 1983.