The state of affairs
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The state of affairs |
| Original title | The State of Things |
| Country of production |
Portugal Germany USA |
| original language |
English French |
| Publishing year | 1982 |
| length | 124 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wim Wenders |
| script |
Robert Kramer Wim Wenders |
| production | Chris Sievernich |
| music | Jürgen Knieper |
| camera |
Henri Alekan Fred Murphy Martin Schäfer (no mention) |
| cut | Barbara von Weitershausen |
| occupation | |
| |
The State of Affairs is a black and white film by Wim Wenders from 1982 .
The film tells of a film team who have to interrupt their shooting in Portugal due to a lack of payments and a lack of film material . The director decides to find the producer in Los Angeles .
action
A film team led by the director Friedrich Munro is shooting the science fiction film The Survivors in Portugal . When payments fail and there is no footage to continue filming, the group begins to fall apart. Cinematographer Corby flies back to Los Angeles, the screenwriter hides in the rented villa of the missing producer Gordon. Munro decides to look for Gordon in Los Angeles. There he learns from Gordon's agent that he is in trouble and had to go into hiding. Finally, Munro is able to track down Gordon, who is constantly out and about in a friend's mobile home because he borrowed money from loan sharks to finance the film , and they are now demanding their money back. When they say goodbye to each other in a parking lot, they are shot from an ambush.
background
Production and film launch
The state of affairs came about in the spring of 1981, when the producer Francis Ford Coppola had interrupted work on his and Wenders' film project Hammett to have the script rewritten by Ross Thomas a third time. Wenders: “My experience with the Hammett studio production was not over yet, it was only interrupted for a few months. Basically, I was deeply depressed and the whole filmmaking seemed to be in question. [...] And it became a film that dealt with great pessimism about the situation in the cinema at the beginning of the 80s. "
During this break, Wenders stayed in Europe , where he initially researched a film adaptation of Max Frisch's novel Stiller , which did not materialize. The idea for Der Stand der Dinge came to him while on his way back to the USA to visit director Raúl Ruiz in Portugal to help him out with his film O Território with black and white 35mm film material . Wenders hired Robert Kramer as a screenwriter and took over a large part of Ruiz's team.
The film shows parallels to both the work on Hammett and that of O Território . Wenders initially assumed that he would be able to shoot Hammett in black and white and with European actors, but could not establish himself. The same problem is faced by the filmmakers in The State of the Art. Wenders stressed, however, that his film should not be revenge on Coppola, but rather a criticism of Hollywood in general.
In addition to the original music by Jürgen Knieper , Wenders used songs from various punk and no wave bands, including " X " and "The Del-Byzanteens". In the latter, director Jim Jarmusch was a member, which in later years repeatedly led to Jarmusch being named as a composer of the film music alongside Knieper. After the filming was finished, Wenders gave Jarmusch unexposed film material for his film Stranger than Paradise - but Jarmusch had to pay for this after the looming success of his film, Chris Sievernich, Wenders' partner in the production company "Road Movies".
In the German cinemas where Der Stand der Dinge started on October 29, 1982, the film was not very successful despite positive reviews and major awards. Wenders later blamed the German distributor , the film publishing house of the authors , which he himself had co-founded in 1971, responsible for it. The differences between Wenders and the distributor increased in a legal dispute over the theatrical release of Wenders' next film Paris, Texas , which delayed the theatrical release by several months.
analysis
As is often the case with Wenders, the state of affairs contains numerous allusions to other films and filmmakers. Munro's car license plate reads "Sam Sp8" - Sam Spade is a character in a fictional novel by Dashiell Hammett , himself the title character of Wenders' film Hammett, which was unfinished at the time . The name of the main character Friedrich Munro refers to the silent film director Friedrich Murnau , and the name of the cameraman Joe Corby is an anagram of Joe Biroc . Munro lends one of his actresses Alan Le May's novel The Searchers , which was the model for John Ford's film The Black Hawk . Later, a movie can be seen in a recording that has Ford's film in its program. On the Hollywood Walk of Fame Munro passes the star of Fritz Lang , and alongside director Sam Fuller , who can be seen in a larger supporting role as cameraman Corby, Roger Corman makes a brief appearance as a lawyer. In addition, there are, among other things, allusions to the films Night On the Move , Wanted Poster 7-73 (Original: He Ran All the Way ) and Danger in Frisco (Original: Thieves' Highway ).
With a few exceptions such as The Black Falcon , the films cited are black and white films, and in many of them a journey, a hunt or an escape play a central role. Hans-Christoph Blumenberg on the motif of movement in Der Stand der Dinge : “Friedrich [Munro] says goodbye to his American friend with a quote: 'I am nowhere at home, in no house, in no country.' Words of a modern Odysseus . They could also be formulated by the melancholy travelers of earlier Wenders films, who, in search of an idea of themselves, traveled long distances [...] They found each other alone in movement, in an indefinite search. "
Although the post-apocalyptic science fiction film The Survivors, filmed at the beginning of Der Stand der Dinge , does not make any reference to a specific cinematic model, it has repeatedly been referred to in reviews and encyclopedias as the remake of The Last Seven or Most Dangerous Man Alive . A scene in The Survivors , in which a girl who has transformed into a “superman” looks openly into the glaring sun, reminiscent of a scene in danger from outer space , in which a man looks up at the desert sun without blinking gives the first indication that he is actually an alien who has assumed human form.
Aftermath
Wenders' 1994 film Lisbon Story is a loose sequel to The State of Things . The main role was played again by Patrick Bauchau.
Reviews
“The less the external tension has to be maintained, the more intense the inner drama of the characters becomes. The state of affairs does not live from an action, but from its excess: from the moments of emptiness registered with extreme sensitivity. By Hollywood standards, this must be a boring film: because - almost - nothing happens. But from a little look from Isabelle Weingarten you can learn more about the dying of a relationship than from the tricky deals between Kramer and Kramer . "
"A multi-layered film about the importance of cinema stories as an experience of reality - shaped by Wim Wenders into a convincing cinematic representation of human behavior."
Awards
The state of affairs was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice in 1982 . In the following year he won the German Film Prize in gold for camera work and in silver in the category of best full-length feature film .
literature
- Reinhold Rauh: Wim Wenders and his films. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-453-04125-9 .
- Veronika Vieler: Film directing as a process of understanding portrayed in Wim Wenders' Der Stand der Dinge. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-826-04025-2 .
Web links
- The state of affairs in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The state of affairs at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Horst Fleig: Article on The Status of Things (detailed, but partly speculative analysis)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Wim Wenders on the 2005 Arthaus DVD of Der Stand der Dinge .
- ↑ Rolf Aurich: Between two continents - The early Jim Jarmusch in New York and Europe. In: Rolf Aurich, Stefan Reinecke (eds.): Jim Jarmusch. Bertz and Fischer, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-929-47080-2 .
- ↑ a b The state of affairs in the lexicon of international film
- ↑ Im Palmenrausch , article in Der Spiegel No. 33/1984.
- ↑ a b Odysseus on a detour , review in Die Zeit No. 44 of October 29, 1982, accessed on May 18, 2012.
- ^ Leonard Maltin's 2008 Movie Guide, Signet / New American Library, New York 2007.
- ^ The State of Affairs in the Internet Movie Database .