The great Santini

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The great Santini
Original title The Great Santini
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1979
length 115 minutes
Rod
Director Lewis John Carlino
script Lewis John Carlino
production Charles A. Pratt
for Warner Bros. Pictures
music Elmer Bernstein ,
Henry Mancini ( Moon River )
camera Ralph Woolsey
cut Houseley Stevenson Junior
occupation

The great Santini (original title The Great Santini ) is an American melodrama by Lewis John Carlino from 1979 with Robert Duvall , Blythe Danner and Michael O'Keefe in the lead roles. The script, which Herman Raucher helped with, is based on a novel by the American writer Pat Conroy .

action

The focus of the story is the family of the professional soldier Lieutenant Colonel Wilbur "Bull" Meechum, who is also known as "The Great Santini". The family includes his severely tested wife Lillian and their four children. Because of Bull Meechum's job as an Air Force pilot, the family is often forced to move to another city, which leads to conflict. To make matters worse, the passionate fighter pilot is increasingly dissatisfied with his life, which carries over to the family situation. In particular, the situation between the father and his eldest son, Ben, came to a head when the Meechums settled in their new home in Beaufort, South Carolina in the years just before the Vietnam War .

When Meechum with eighteen-year-old Ben, who is a star basketball player in high school, plays basketball one-on-one and loses to his son, it's impossible for him to accept that. He's completely freaked out and impossibly acting towards Ben. He yells at his daughter Mary Anne, who praises him for having played a good game, to get out of the way before he knocks every single freckle off her face. He demands of Ben that you have to keep playing, because you can only win by two baskets, even though he had said one beforehand. He justifies this by saying that he has changed his mind. When his wife says not to cheat Ben out of his victory, he yells at her to get out of the house before he kicks her butt. When Ben turns away and goes into the house, he follows him and makes fun of his son by constantly throwing the ball at his head and teasing him to cry at last because he is a mummy's boy. His demeanor fits in with his behavior in the game, in which he repeatedly managed fouls, which in his eyes were not.

The intolerance that Bull Meechum shows towards his family, whom he treats like recruits, builds up tensions, which inevitably escalate at the boiling point. Meechum is a hard-boiled man who loves his family in his own way, but only lets his own will prevail and above all wants to shape his eldest son according to his wishes and ideas. He disapproves of Ben's friendship with the African-American Toomer Smalls, son of the housekeeper. He ignores the fact that Toomer, who stutters, is harassed by the racist youth Red Petus and other racists.

Ultimately, Bull Meechum becomes the hero he always wanted to be, he sacrifices his life to prevent his plane from crashing in a residential area by refusing to leave the burning machine and take it away from the city and into the sea directs to avoid civilian casualties. Ben admits that although he loved his father very much, he sometimes wished he would die. The funeral becomes a worthy farewell for a hero as the public perceives him, and a conciliatory act for his family.

production

Production notes

The film was produced by Bing Crosby Productions and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Home Video. In the book, the family name is Meecham. Despite the small change in the family name, most of the details of the novel have been preserved. The exception is the loss of a key figure, Sammy, Ben's Jewish friend. Pat Conroy said his father hated the book but liked that Robert Duvall played him in the film. Those in charge of Warner Bros., on the other hand, did not consider Robert Duvall or any of his co-stars to be attractive enough to sell the film, nor did they find the plot to be marketable. According to Pat Conroy, the character of Bull Meechum is based on his own father, Donald Conroy, a naval aviator who referred to himself as "The Great Santini". The name goes back to a wizard he saw in his childhood.

The meechum house in the film, located in Beaufort , South Carolina , was later reused in the 1983 film The Big Chill . The family who lived in the house at the time were supposed to stay in the house during the three months of filming in order to protect the production company from liability for existing damage to the almost 130-year-old building. After the main filming was completed, the company paid for a repaint of the house and renovation of the floors. The film was also shot at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and at Samuel Goldwyn Studios.

Blythe Danner, who played the mother Lillian Meechum, played the wife of Tom Wingo, played by Nick Nolte , in the 1991 film drama Lord of the Tides . The film is also based on a novel by Pat Conroy. Danner is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow .

Publication modalities

The film premiered in Beaufort, California, where it was shot, and played in almost empty cinemas. The studio felt that one of the problems was that the title sounded like a circus movie. Therefore, the film was tested at a screening in Indiana under the title Sons and Heroes , in Rockford , Illinois under the title Reaching Out and in Peora under the title The Ace . Since the latter title worked better, but still not good enough, the film was withdrawn from distribution and sold to the television network HBO to make up for the losses incurred so far.

However, producer Charles A. Pratt didn't give up that easily. He raised enough money to release the film in New York under the original title The Great Santini . There he not only ran successfully, but also received excellent reviews. When the film was broadcast on HBO two weeks later, it sealed his fate, the audience no longer came to the cinema.

The film was released on October 26, 1979 in the United States, 1980 in Japan, Sweden, Portugal, Denmark and Argentina, 1981 in Australia, the United Kingdom and Finland. It has also been published in Brazil, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, the Soviet Union and Spain. In the Federal Republic of Germany the film was released under the title The Great Santini ; its first performance took place on September 30, 1988 in the ARD program . In addition to The Great Santini and The Ace , one of the release titles was The Gift of Fury .

reception

criticism

Despite the poor start of the film, its reputation has not suffered, and to this day there are critics who admire it. Roger Ebert summarized his assessment as follows: “As with almost all of my favorite films, The Great Santini is about people and not a story. It is a study of various characters, the one of Great Santini himself, played by Robert Duvall, being particularly prominent. There are moments that are so unpredictable and at the same time so real that it feels as if they were wrested from the spontaneity of life. ”Ebert concluded:“ Sentimental without being cheesy, a teardrop with dignity. The Great Santini is a film to search for and treasure. "

In 1981, the critic Richard T. Jameson wrote that the film appeared to be unsaleable under the current Hollywood scheme. It is a small film without the kind of thematic hooks that the opportunistic urgency of distribution and advertising might be worthwhile. In addition, it also offers a hopeless mess. His central showpiece is Robert Duvall's tour-de-force characterization of the naval super fighter pilot “Bull” Meechum, an extension (whether intended or not) of his character of Colonel Kilgore in “ Apocalypse Now ”. Duvall and Danner in the role of his wife are excellent actors who are able to draw extensive characterizations. Carlino's script was criticized for lacking focus. Ralph Woolsey's camera work was, as always, confused, the flow of images disrupted, the recordings clichéd. Actually, one would like to warm up to the film because films with character drawings are an endangered species these days and Duvall / Meechum is undeniably a character.

Fredrik Gunerius Fevang rated the film for The FreshSite and stated that the character study had its greatest strength in a lively and passionate relationship between a controlling and experimental and his far more sensitive and insecure son. The young Michael O'Keefe does an excellent job in the most challenging role in the film, while Robert Duvall, the title character, portrays the lack of empathy and self-insight in a painful and believable way. Fevang also criticized Carlino's incomprehensible change of direction in the film.

The DVD-Movie page states that the film's situations and dialogues are absolutely believable and that the cast is excellent. Special mention should be made of Lisa Jane Persky, who plays Meechum's eldest daughter and gives an incredible speech to get her father's attention in every memorable way.

Jack Hunter believed Duvall's conception as the meechum was the real glamor of the film. It gives the character he plays a weight of meaning and depth. The really interesting thing about the film is that it deals more with military culture than war. Meechum cannot separate his military self from his family self. He never knows when to stop being a commanding officer and becoming a father.

Derek Winnert wrote that director Lewis John Carlino turned a decent Pat Conroy novel into a strong, good, liberal film about a strict, drunken army leader, Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meechum, and the problems he causes his family.

Variety found Robert Duvall was an excellent portrayal of a semi-psychotic man who also had a softer side. However, Duvall has to fight for every inch of film material against the overwhelming achievements of some of the others on the cast list - but that is precisely the strength of the film.

Cinema drew the conclusion: "Captivating character study".

"A touching father-son drama that borders on transfiguration, which questions the almost pathological manliness mania of authoritarian structures in the military and the family, but then turns it into a melodrama surrounded by tragic heroic halos."

- Lexicon of international film

Awards (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g The Great Santini (1979) see articles at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  2. ↑ Tidalholm: One of Beaufort's many larger-than-life historic homes see eatsleepplaybeaufort.com (English)
  3. ↑ Rober Ebert: The Great Santini see rogerebert.com (English). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  4. ^ Richard T. Jameson: Review: The Great Santini see parallax-view (English). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  5. ↑ Fredrik Gunerius Fevang: The Great Santini (1979) see thefeshfilms.com (Norwegian). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  6. ↑ The Great Santini see avrev.com (English). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  7. ↑ Jack Hunter: The Great Santini see chucksconnection.com (English). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  8. ↑ The Great Santini see derekwinnert.com (English). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  9. ↑ The Great Santini see Variety Staff at variety.com (English). Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  10. ↑ The great Santini review and film photos at cinema.de. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  11. ↑ The great Santini. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 24, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used