The major and the girl

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Movie
German title The major and the girl
Original title The major and the minor
Country of production United States
Publishing year 1942
length 100 minutes
Rod
Director Billy Wilder
script Billy Wilder,
Charles Brackett
production Arthur Hornblow Jr. for Paramount Pictures
music Robert Emmett Dolan
camera Leo Tover
cut Doane Harrison
occupation
synchronization

The Major and the Girl (in Austria: Susanne im Schlafkupee , original title The Major and the Minor ) was Billy Wilder's first directorial work in Hollywood and gave him considerable initial success as a director. The film is based on the play Connie Goes Home by Edward Childs Carpenter , which was based on a story by Fanny Kilbourne . The film tells the story of a young woman ( Ginger Rogers ) who dresses up as a girl in order to get a cheap train ticket. She runs into a major ( Ray Milland ) who thinks she is a minor, but still falls in love with her.

action

Susan Kathleen Applegate - called "Su-Su" - has been looking for her professional happiness in New York City for a year without success . After the beautiful lady is harassed by the client Mr. Osborne in her job as a masseuse, she decides to return to her small hometown in the province of Iowa . Unfortunately, the fare has meanwhile increased and Susan's money is no longer enough for the ticket. Without further ado, she dresses up as a child in order to travel with the cheaper children's ticket. The plan initially works, but when the suspicious inspectors catch her smoking during the trip, she has to hide. Finally she ends up in Major Philip Kirby's compartment , who takes on the role of child and quickly finds sympathy for her. When the train has to stop because of a flood, Kirby's fiancée Pamela Hill and her father - Colonel Hill, director of a cadet institution and Kirby's superior - unceremoniously drive to the train to pick up her fiancé. When the Hills find Susan in the Major's train compartment, they immediately suspect the worst and drive away angrily.

Now Kirby has to take Susan with him to his cadet school to clear up the misunderstanding at the Hills, which succeeds. The Hills now offer Susan accommodation for a few days until she can travel on to Iowa. There she turned the heads of all 300 cadets and finally the major. Only Lucy, Pamela's younger sister, immediately sees through Susan, but does not reveal her as she hopes for support from her: the sly Pamela tries to keep Philip at the cadet institution, even though he would like to go into active service. Behind Philips, Pamela sabotages his dream and uses her high-ranking connections to Washington . Lucy and Susan are now turning the tables. Susan can lure Wigton, the radio officer on duty, away from his workplace with her charm. Then, as Pamela, she calls a friend in Washington that she should work with her husband, who is responsible for admission, to ensure that Philip is absolutely on active service.

At a dance evening, Philip, to his delight - and to Pamela's horror - receives the news that he is allowed to go into active service. At the dance evening, Susan is swarmed by the many cadets, including the young cadet Clifford Osborne. His father, who is also present at the ball, was Susan's pushy masseur in New York. After some thought, Mr. Osborne recognizes the masseuse in childlike Susan and tells Pamela about the dizziness. Pamela then threatens Susan to reveal her true identity, to produce a public scandal and thus to destroy Philip's career - if Susan does not immediately go home without saying goodbye to the major. Susan finally obeys and drives back to Iowa, but can only think of her beloved major there. So her fiancé Will leaves her in frustration.

One evening Major Kirby drives through Susan's hometown of Stevenson, Iowa, en route to active duty on the West Coast . He stays in Stevenson for an hour and meets Susan again, but this time she disguises herself as Susan's middle-aged mother. Susan learns from Philip that Pamela has since left him for a wealthier man. Just as Philip is about to leave Stevenson, Susan steps onto the platform, this time in her real appearance. Both get on the train together to get married in Nevada at the next opportunity .

background

Pre-production

Billy Wilder had written numerous scripts with his writing partner Charles Brackett since his arrival in Hollywood and was often annoyed by the inadequate implementation of his works. Eventually, Wilder decided to direct his own scripts. The decision had come to him when Charles Boyer refused to have a conversation with a cockroach while filming The Golden Gate (Hold Back the Dawn) , as Wilder had intended in the script, and director Mitchell Leisen then rejected Wilder's protests. Wilder's switch to directing was made possible by the Paramount Pictures producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. , who had previously filmed several successful screenplays by Wilder and Brackett. Prior to that, Preston Sturges was the first screenwriter to switch to directing and to break the strict " box thinking " of old Hollywood. Wilder never wrote for other scripts again. He expressed himself rather disrespectfully about later adaptations of his works - for example Sabrina by Sydney Pollack .

The major and the girl goes back to the 1921 story Sunny Goes Home by Fanny Kilbourne (1890-1961) in the Saturday Evening Post , which Edward Childs Carpenter (1872-1950) had further processed in 1923 for the play Connie Goes Home . The play had to close after only 20 performances on Broadway and was almost forgotten in the 1940s when Paramount producer Joseph Sistrom found it in the archives and presented Wilder as promising film material. Wilder and Brackett made major changes to the plot compared to the works of Kilbournes and Carpenter. Small echoes of the Second World War , in which the USA entered shortly before filming began, can also be found in the film, in contrast to the templates from the 1920s.

Billy Wilder repeatedly took theater plays as the basis for his films because their structure already tells a story cinematically. He often processed supposedly "slippery" content in order to hold up a mirror to the audience. Paramount had previously been nervous because the plot was full of suggestive moments and possible echoes of pedophilia - it was feared that the Hays Office under Joseph Breen might censor the film. Wilder cleverly circumvents the piquant basis of action in that the somewhat inexperienced major simply does not notice that he has fallen in love with the supposedly minor Susan, until he finally learns that she is actually a young woman.

Filming

The St. John's Military Academy served as the filming location for the cadet school

Filming under Wilder's direction took place mainly in the Paramount film studios. At the same time, a second unit film crew, directed by Charles C. Coleman, was shooting outdoor scenes at St. John's Military Academy in Delafield , Wisconsin , which were used in the film for the cadet school. The budget for the film was $ 928,000, the average amount for an A-movie - although Wilder, although he also directed, received no more than $ 27,000 more than his writing partner Brackett. The film was shot in black and white and mono . The costumes were designed by Edith Head , the production design by Roland Anderson and Hans Dreier , Ernest Laszlo acted as camera operator.

Wilder had already directed the French film Mauvaise graine in 1934, but he had no experience with film technology in Hollywood and Mauvaise graine was just a small, cheap production. The day before he went nervously to Ernst Lubitsch and explained to him that he would "shit his pants" tomorrow morning - to which Lubitsch replied: "I'm making my 70th film and shitting my pants every day". The film editor friend Doane Harrison was a great help for Wilder's filming . Harrison and Wilder worked together on a regular basis for the next 25 years to The Lucky One . At first Harrison was only a film editor, later he also acted as a co-producer of Wilder's films from The Itchy 7th Year (1955).

The shooting went without any major turbulence and in the end the novice director Wilder exceeded the budget of the film only very slightly. Paramount was satisfied with the result, which enabled Wilder to shoot more films.

actor

Ginger Rogers, who shone in the role of the mock twelve-year-old, was already 31 when it was set and twice divorced. Her mother, the author Lela E. Rogers (1891–1977), can be seen as Susan's mother towards the end of the film. Rogers had recently for Miss Kitty the Oscar recovered and was at the height of her career, so it was not a given that she worked with a director novice like Wilder. Both had the same agent, Leland Hayward , who brokered the collaboration. Ginger Rogers, looking back, called The Major and the Girl one of her favorite films.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created in 1987 in Munich. There is a disagreement about the voice of Susan Applegate between the German synchronous index and the German synchronous database.

role actor German Dubbing voice
Susan Applegate Ginger Rogers Ursula Wolff or Heidi Treutler
Major Philip Kirby Ray Milland Sigmar Solbach
Pamela Hill Rita Johnson Elisabeth of Molo
Albert Osborne Robert Benchley Mogens von Gadow
Doorman Dell Henderson Walter Reichelt

Reviews

The Major and the Girl was popular with both critics and audiences when it was released, paving the way for Billy Wilder to continue his film career in Hollywood. To this day, the film has mostly received positive reviews. For example, on the Rotten Tomatoes review portal , all 15 film reviews for the comedy are positive.

Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times on September 17, 1942 that The Major and the Girl were "a charming comedy romance." He appreciatively called Wilder and Brackett “smart boys” because he wondered how some scenes like the one between Milland and Rogers were allowed in the sleeping car by the Hays office. Her script consists of "clever situations and clever lines", Crpwther names, for example, the scene in which Milland compares an attractive woman with a lamp and the moths buzzing around her. Crowther praised the acting by Rogers and Milland, they would appear with "spirit and taste" so that their potentially risky scenes would never seem strange but convincingly romantic. The supporting actors are also convincing with their “lively roles”.

The film service writes, The Major and the Girl is an "entertaining comedy that amusingly mocks mendacious social morals, hypocrisy and false honorific terms." Cinema noted the film as "the comedy master's pretty finger exercise" Wilder.

Remakes

There are two remakes of the story: In 1955, Norman Taurog directed the film Man is Never Too Young with Jerry Lewis and Diana Lynn - who played the girl in this film - in the leading roles; In 1999 another remake with Drew Barrymore and David Arquette in the leading roles was filmed, which ran under the German title Unkussst , but plays in a school instead of a military academy.

swell

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gene Phillips: Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder . University Press of Kentucky, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8131-7367-2 ( google.de [accessed February 16, 2019]).
  2. ^ Fanny Kilbourne at the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved February 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Edward Childs Carpenter. Retrieved February 16, 2019 .
  4. ^ Gene Phillips: Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder . University Press of Kentucky, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8131-7367-2 ( google.de [accessed February 16, 2019]).
  5. ^ Gene Phillips: Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder . University Press of Kentucky, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8131-7367-2 ( google.de [accessed February 16, 2019]).
  6. ↑ Documentation: Billy Wilder, how did you do it ?, minute 14/15
  7. ↑ Ed Sikov: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder . Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2017, ISBN 978-1-4968-1267-4 ( google.de [accessed February 16, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Lela E. Rogers at the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved February 16, 2019 .
  9. ↑ The Major and the Minor (article) at Turner Classic Movies
  10. ↑ Film title Casts Film Cast list Movie Cast Characters - synchrondatenbank.de. Retrieved January 14, 2019 .
  11. ↑ The major and the girl. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous file , accessed on February 16, 2019 .
  12. ^ The Major and the Minor (1942). Retrieved February 18, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Bosley Crowther: THE SCREEN; 'The Major and the Minor,' a Charming Comedy-Romance, With Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland, at the Paramount . In: The New York Times . September 17, 1942, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed February 18, 2019]).
  14. ↑ The major and the girl. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  15. ↑ Cinema online review , accessed April 27, 2017