The one, who dances with the wolf

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Movie
German title The one, who dances with the wolf
Original title Dances with Wolves
The one who dances with the wolf.svg
Country of production United States , United Kingdom
original language English , Lakota , Pawnee
Publishing year 1990
length Original theatrical version:
183 minutes;
Long version: 236 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Kevin Costner
script Michael Blake
production Kevin Costner
Jim Wilson
music John Barry
camera Dean Semler
cut Neil Travis
occupation
synchronization

The dance with the wolf (original title: Dances with Wolves , short for He who Dances with Wolves , German " Dances with wolves") is a US-American-British literary film adaptation from 1990 and at the same time the directorial debut of Kevin Costner , who on the western is also involved as a leading actor and co-producer. Michael Blake adapted his own novel of the same name for the script . The film tells of a Union officer who took up a post in the border region during the American Civil Warcan move where he friendship with Sioux - Indians closes, gets to know their life and culture, and is added to their people.

There are two cut versions of the film: a three-hour version that was intended for theatrical release in the United States, and an almost four-hour version that was to be distributed abroad.

Native American roles are exclusively cast with Native American performers; most of the dialogues are conducted in the Lakota language. These breaks with the customs of Hollywood cinema as well as the largely cliché-free and sympathetic representation of Indian life received special recognition from the critics. However, some critics complained that the film still does not go far enough in moving away from the old stereotypes.

The big Hollywood film studios did not see sufficient profit opportunities in the film project and refused to participate, whereupon Costner founded his own production company. Nonetheless, with gross revenues of over $ 400 million worldwide, the film became an immense commercial success. In Germany, Dances with the Wolf was the most-watched movie of 1991 with almost seven million viewers. The film helped revive the Western genre and received numerous awards, including seven Oscars and three Golden Globes , including in the categories Best film and best director .

action

Kevin Costner (2013), director and actor of John Dunbar
Mary McDonnell (2015), actress who played Stand with a Fist

This section summarizes the plot of the short version of the film. The following sections deal with the additional scenes contained in the long version.

The film is set in 1863 at the time of the Civil War . The action begins in a military hospital near a battlefield in Tennessee . The northern states -Lieutenant John Dunbar threatening injury, a leg amputation. Desperate, he uses a moment in which he is unobserved and rides out onto the battlefield to be shot. Unmatched, he survived and - unintentionally - helps the Unionists to win with this action, so that they celebrate Dunbar as heroes after the fight. With the help of an impressed officer's personal doctor, his leg can then be saved from amputation. The horse Cisco is given to him as a reward.

Dunbar can choose his next location. He chooses Fort Sedgwick, an outpost in the border and Indian country, to get to know the west better. Major Fambrough, who signed Dunbar's transfer, committed suicide shortly afterwards. After traveling for days, Dunbar found the fort in April of that year. Contrary to his expectations, it is abandoned and neglected. While he is waiting there for soldiers and new orders, he is repairing the post. Meanwhile, a group of Pawnee Indians kills the farmer on his way back from the fort with the intention of obtaining his scalp as a trophy.

Even a month after arriving at the fort, Dunbar is still disconnected from the outside world. Only a wolf watches him occasionally. Some Sioux Indians also notice his presence and try in vain to steal his horse. Dunbar then rides into their village to assure them that he is not a threat to them. On the way he finds an injured white woman in Indian clothing, which he brings to the village. The Sioux send him away, however.

To find out the reasons for Dunbar's presence, the Sioux medicine man "Kicking Bird" and some companions go to the fort. By gifts - Dunbar gives the Sioux some coffee and sugar and receives a buffalo skin from them - and after Dunbar the Sioux over them The arrival of a large herd of buffalo, confidence grows. The Sioux hunters are accompanied by Dunbar in tracking down the herd, but to their and Dunbar's dismay they discover several carcasses of buffalo that have obviously been skinned by white hunters. During the subsequent buffalo hunt, which the Sioux use to secure their food supplies, Dunbar also supports the Sioux with his rifle.

After Dunbar has tried in vain to shake off the wolf chasing him by gesturing awkwardly, the Sioux give Dunbar the name “Dances with the Wolf”. Dunbar deliberately leaves "Kicking Bird" in the dark about the question of how many white people will come. He gets his own tent in the Sioux village and spends more and more time with the Sioux, whose lives he finds very harmonious. He gets to know the white woman, who is called “Stands with a fist” and who serves her adoptive father “Kicking Bird” as a language mediator between his tribe and Dunbar, and to get to know the Sioux language better. "Stand Up With a Fist" grew up with the tribe after she escaped a fatal attack on her parents by Pawnee Indians as a settler child. Desperate over the recent death of her husband, a Sioux, she tried to take her own life. The attempt failed, but resulted in the injuries Dunbar found her with.

While many of the village's male Sioux have ridden out in battle, the Sioux village is attacked by Pawnee warriors who want to rob the Sioux of their food supplies. Since Dunbar had previously equipped the remaining Sioux with firearms from the fort, he successfully defended the village against the attackers with them. Then celebrated by the Sioux, he feels great pride. With the help of "Stands with a fist", with which he fell in love and which he marries according to the Sioux tradition, he has now mastered the Sioux language. Only after the wedding does he inform “Kicking Bird” that there will probably still be a large number of whites in the Sioux area.

When the Sioux move to their winter quarters, Dunbar rides back to Fort Sedgwick alone to get his diary and cover all traces with it. When he arrived, Union soldiers have now taken up positions in the fort. The soldiers shoot Dunbar's horse "Cisco" and give him the choice of either cooperating with them and helping track down Indians and possible white prisoners, or charge him with high treason . Dunbar, dressed in Indian costume, rejects a collaboration, whereupon he is brought out of the fort in chains. On the way soldiers from the convoy shoot the wolf down. When crossing a ford, the Sioux ambush the convoy and help Dunbar escape.

Arrived at the winter camp of the Sioux tribe, Dunbar expresses his intention to leave the Sioux. He wants to avert further dangers from the tribe because the soldiers will be looking for him. Shortly before Dunbar and his wife left, he received back his diary from a Sioux boy, which he found in the river. While the soldiers find traces of the Sioux in the wilderness, the two ride away. At the beginning of the credits the viewer learns that years later the free life of the Sioux ended with the further advance of the whites and that the Wild West became part of the story.

History of origin

Idea and funding

In the 1980s, the writer Michael Blake was initially largely unsuccessful as a screenwriter, several scripts written by him went unnoticed. Long interested in the history of American Indians , he was inspired by the non-fiction book Buried my heart at the bend of the river and a true story about a man who is sent to a US Army fort in the west for a supply. In 1986 his friend, actor Kevin Costner , recommended that he write a novel. The poor Blake wrote the novel within nine months. The film producer friend, Jim Wilson, helped him find a publisher. Even before Fawcett Books published the book in 1988 under the title Dances with Wolves and with a first edition of 30,000 copies, Costner secured the film rights and commissioned Blake to adapt the novel as a screenplay.

Costner and Wilson worked together with US $ 70,000 equity in their newly founded production company Tig Productions on the filming of the script. According to Costner's statement in a magazine interview, he initially did not want to act as a director himself. Because of the doubtful chances of success of his project, however, he could not find a director. Two large film studios initially rejected the project because a third of the dialogues were planned to be in Lakota and with English subtitles . The reason for the lack of chances of success was the fact that the western genre was considered unprofitable because of the great failure of Heaven's Gate (1980). Then French-Canadian film producer Jake Eberts and British producer Guy East joined the project by donating US $ 1 million to continue pre-production. They also acquired US $ 6.7 million from foreign investors. The distributor Island Pictures , originally intended for distribution in the United States, withdrew from the project and was then replaced by Orion Pictures Corporation , which brought in US $ 10.5 million into the budget after filming began. According to various sources, the film budget was between US $ 15 and 19 million, to which Costner contributed a large portion of his own fee of US $ 2.5 to 3 million, which was approximately US $ 3 million.

Pre-production

In addition to Mexico, Canada and seven other countries were considered as possible locations . The decision was made only a little later in favor of South Dakota . The main reason for this was that there was a large herd of buffalo available for filming. This privately owned buffalo herd comprised approximately 3,500 animals and lived on L. Roy Houck's Triple U Buffalo Ranch . As a result of the decision to use South Dakota as the main location, the Indian tribe also changed: while the novel deals with the Comanches in western Texas , the film shows the Lakota - Sioux . The production headquarters were set up in Rapid City .

Many characters were created based on the models of real people, including that of Major Fambrough, who killed himself with a shot in the head at the beginning of the film. The model for the character Kicking Bird was the Kiowa -Häuptling Kicking Bird . The life of the character Stands with a Fist is based on the story of Cynthia Ann Parker , who was captured by the Comanches as a child and later became the wife of a Comanche chief and mother of Quanah Parker .

The Indian language teacher Doris Leader Charge , who plays the supporting role of the wife of Chief Ten Bears in the film , gave all actors who speak Lakota in the film a three-week language speed course before filming began . Together with Albert White Hat she translated the script in Lakota. According to production documents, Charge and White Hat simplified the Lakota dialogues because the language has different words to use for men and women. For example, Dunbar embodied by Costner used feminine Lakota words.

Great emphasis was placed on historical accuracy in making the approximately 200 costumes required for the film. One of the dedicated experts in Indian costumes was the native of the Black Hills, Cathy Smith, who acted as assistant to costume designer Elsa Zamparelli . Books and drawings by Karl Bodmer and George Catlin served as a guide for the design of Indian clothing . The raw materials required for the clothing of the Sioux and Pawnee included leather from 625 stags and deer, large quantities of buffalo hides and skins, as well as real feathers, pearls and jewelry. In the film, the Indian actors wore their own, inherited eagle feathers in order to protect species .

Jeffrey Beecroft was the production designer for the film . Much of the props , which included bows, bridles, and Native American household items, were made by experts from the Smithsonian Institution .

For the painting of the horses, which includes the symbol of a hand for a grieving warrior, old typefaces from teepee walls served as a template. The contemporary interior of Major Fambrough's office was completely transported from Los Angeles to South Dakota for the shoot .

occupation

actor Role name German
voice actor
Kevin Costner Lieutenant John J. Dunbar,
Dances with Wolves (Dances With Wolves) 		Frank Glaubrecht
Mary McDonnell Stands with a fist (prior With a Fist) Kornelia buoy
Graham Greene Kicking Bird (Kicking Bird) Thomas Rau
Rodney A. Grant Wind in His Hair (Wind in His Hair) Ulf-Jürgen Wagner
Floyd Westerman Ten Bears
Tantoo Cardinal Black Scarf (Black Shawl)
Jimmy Herman Stein calf (Calf Stone)
Nathan Lee chasing his horse Smiles a lot (Smiles a Lot)
Doris Leader Charge Beautiful plate (Pretty Shield)
Michael Spears otter
Robert Pastorelli Timmons Oliver Grimm
Charles Rocket Lieutenant Elgin
Larry Joshua Sergeant Bauer
Tom Everett Sergeant Pepper
Maury Chaykin Major Fambrough Michael Habeck
Tony Pierce Spivey
Wes Studi Pawnee warriors
Kirk Baltz Edwards
Annie Costner Christine

The roles of the Indians were exclusively cast with Native Americans to make the film look more authentic. The film team also hired around 150 Sioux from the Rosebud Indian reservation as extras . A total of 250 American-Indian actors were engaged, with the majority of the Indian actors appearing in speaking roles not belonging to the Sioux. Graham Greene, for example, is a Oneida ; Tantoo Cardinal, who embodies Kicking Vogel's wife Black Scarf , is half a Cree and half a Chippewa ; Rodney Grant, who played Wind in His Hair , is an Omaha tribe .

Critical to the occupation of the Stands With A Fist with Mary McDonnell was that they - at that time a stage actress in New York - in the movie theater world was largely unknown and that her face, so Costner, "is drawn from life."

Filming

According to a newspaper report, filming should start in March 1989 and remain limited to Mexico . In fact, they were only recorded on July 17th and then took place in a total of 27 different locations outside of Mexico.

The battle scenes at the beginning of the film take place in the southern state of Tennessee in autumn, but could not be filmed in the appropriate season or location for logistical reasons. In order to stage the vegetation of the battlefield according to the season, the foliage color of the trees and the appearance of the remaining vegetation were adapted through the extensive use of color. For the staging, amateur actors were also used, who often reenacted civil war scenes in organized clubs .

The buffalos from the Triple U Buffalo Ranch were used in several scenes, the shooting of which took eight days. The work was supported by a helicopter, ten vans, 24 Indians on bareback horses and 20 cowboys. The Canadian musician Neil Young provided two tamed buffaloes, which can mainly be seen in the hunting scenes. The hunted buffaloes shown in the film were wire-made dummies with fur.

The scene in the extended version, in which Dunbar rides through a forest soiled by white trappers with Kicking Bird , was filmed in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming , the scenes in the Sioux winter camp in a canyon near Rapid City.

According to a press release, the US director Kevin Reynolds , who is thanked in the credits of the film, shot footage for the second staff . Rumors surfaced that Reynolds had joined production to relieve the allegedly overwhelmed Costner. This was met by film editor Neil Travis and said that Reynolds did not instruct any actors or staged dialogue and that Costner designed all of Reynolds' second-unit scenes himself.

Filming ended between November 21 and 23, 1989. According to various sources, its total duration exceeded the original plan by 23 to 30 days. The budget was exceeded by approximately $ 1.8 million. In a report in the Los Angeles Times , the film was then referred to as "Kevin's Gate" - an allusion to the loss-making production of the film Heaven's Gate . To limit costs, staff members who were not unionized were also used. Nevertheless, Travis and the cameraman Dean Semler were also members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).

post processing

Among other things, in order to raise money for the post-production, which took about two months, props and costumes that had been used in the production of the film were sold.

Costner said the film didn't include any special effects other than a scene in which buffalos were seen grazing .

The score was composed and conducted by the British composer John Barry , who had previously created the music for several James Bond films, among others . The singer and songwriter John Coinman acted as advisor . He helped make Lakota music and dances as authentic as possible. He also worked with Native Americans such as Cyvert Young Bear , a member of the Porcupine Singers .

The German dubbed version was produced by Film- & Fernseh-Synchron GmbH in Munich , the dialog book author and director was Beate Klöckner . The names of the Indians were largely translated into German with the same meaning. On the other hand, the wolf that repeatedly approaches Dunbar is called Socke in the German dubbed version , even though it is called Two Socks in the original version .

publication

Trial demonstrations and marketing

In sneak previews , which took place in Seattle and Phoenix from May 1990 , a version was shown that was ten minutes shorter than the final, about 180 minutes long, theatrical version.

The 1990 film production company Orion's advertising campaign also included radio advertising in the Lakota language, broadcast by Indian radio stations, and cross-promotion in cooperation with the Discovery Channel . The documentary The Making of Dances with Wolves was also made , which several television stations showed until the end of 1990.

Premieres and box office earnings

Theatrical release dates
country short version Long version
United States Nov 9, 1990 no cinema release
Germany Feb 14, 1991
or
Feb 20, 1991
or
Feb 21, 1991		 May 7, 1992
Austria Feb 22, 1991 ?
Switzerland (German part) Feb 22, 1991 5th June 1992
Switzerland (French part) March 6, 1991 3rd June 1992

The world premiere took place on October 19, 1990 in Washington, DC . The premiere was attended by many Sioux Indians who were involved in the making of the film as actors, extras or consultants. Compared to earlier films, the film was very well received by the Indians paired with melancholy about the quality of life of the originally near-natural Indian life that was long past. In gratitude and as a gesture of solidarity, Kevin Costner, Jim Wilson and Mary McDonnell were each adopted by a Sioux family.

It was released in theaters in the United States on November 9, 1990, initially in only nine major cities. With the nationwide launch on November 21, 1990, the film was then shown in at least 750 cinemas. The film was released in cinemas in many European countries from the beginning of 1991, in Germany according to different sources on February 14th and February 21st. In Austria it started on February 22nd, in other countries until mid-1991.

Total box office income was $ 184.2 million in the US and $ 240 million in all other countries, making the film a multiple of its production costs. In Germany, the film reached 6.7 million admissions, making it the most-viewed film of 1991.

Long version

In addition to the three-hour version, which initially started in the cinemas, a four-hour version was released. For the sake of distinction, both versions are called short and long versions here, depending on the publication medium and distributor or broadcaster, other, sometimes ambiguous terms are also used.

Costner and Wilson originally created the long version for distribution outside the United States. It contains all the scenes from the short version and included some of the material that had to be cut out when that version was completed. Some of the footage is in a different order in the long version than in the short version. The first documented performance of the long version was on December 20, 1991 in a London cinema. From May 7, 1992, it was also shown in German cinemas, the title had the addition of "Special Edition". About 140,000 people saw the long version in German cinemas. The long version had its US premiere on November 7th and 10th, 1993, when the television station ABC aired it as a mini-series in the evening program. There are no records of the extended version being shown in US cinemas.

The scenes that are missing in the short version include, in addition to an intermission of several minutes, the ride of Dunbar and the Kicking Bird into the white-polluted forest, the killing of buffalos by white hunters, which influences Dunbar's decision to return to white society, and scenes between Dunbar and Stand with a Fist , emphasizing their cultural difference.

Home video and television

The film was dubbed German in both versions on video cassette and LaserDisc in the early 1990s on the label VCL and Constantin Video , which marketed the long version under the title "4 Hours Special Edition". Also Kinowelt and United Video sold both versions on VHS, the long version was distinguished here by the name of "long version". Short and long versions were later published by Kinowelt - sometimes together as a Special Steel Edition , Anniversary Edition or Special Edition - on DVD and Blu-ray . In these editions they were referred to as the “Director's Cut” in the case of the short version and as the “cinema long version” in the case of the long version. In 2019 the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by the Austrian distributor Winkler Film , the versions are called "Theatrical Version" (short version) and "Extended Edition" (long version).

In the case of television broadcasts, particularly on ProSiebenSat.1 Group channels , the long version was called “Director's Cut”.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for the film was released in at least four different compilations, always on CD and sometimes also on other media such as music cassette , record and audio-on-demand . The first release coincided with the beginning of the showing of the film in US cinemas, was made by the label Epic Records and contains 18 pieces of music by John Barry included in the film . The Recording Industry Association of America awarded this edition a gold record in June 1991 and then a platinum record in November 1993 for one million units sold. In 1995 and 2004 an edition followed with additional pieces of music advertised as bonus tracks; these editions contain 21 and 24 titles respectively. With the subtitle 25th Anniversary Expanded Edition , another edition of the soundtrack was released in December 2015 on the La-La Land Records label . It is limited to 5000 copies and contains 60 different pieces with a total running time of over two hours.

Criticism and controversy

Based on reviews in English, the rating aggregators Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic calculated approval rates for the film of 83 and 72 percent, respectively.

General

Some of the critics were sympathetic to Costner's role as a director. Hal Hinson classified the film in the Washington Post not only as authentic, but also as masterfully staged; Costner has the innate instinct of a storyteller who entertains his audience very well. For an epic, the film is surprisingly nuanced and atmospheric. In Rolling Stone , Peter Travers said that Costner seldom indulged in the "look-here tricks of most directorial debutants". For Roger Ebert , film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times , it was clear that the film did not follow a tried and tested recipe, but was a considerate and carefully observed story of getting to know each other.

The staging of the landscape was particularly popular. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times, for example, praised the film as "poignantly beautiful" and "authentic like a photo by Edward Curtis , lyrical like an oil painting by George Catlin or a landscape by Karl Bodmer ". Hinson compared Costner's ability to make landscape an integral part of the drama to that of John Ford and David Lean . The performance of the actors was also highlighted positively by some of the critics. Costner managed to motivate all actors to perform at their best. McDonnell's acting, for example, was "powerful" and "thrilling," continued Hinson. No other film from 1990 achieved the depth and diversity of Who Dances with Wolves .

Other critics, however, saw the film as a rather average work. According to Vincent Canby of the New York Times , the script and direction are - apart from a few sequences - only "ordinary": Although full of details striving for an exciting effect, including the Sioux's mourning for their dead, these are "superficial generalized explanations presented in travel guides ”. The Sioux village appears “not very much alive” and is more like an amusement park “without unpleasant smells”. The greatest strength of the film is "that it is never really boring". At the same time, however, he does not get beyond a certain “blandness”. It is "a film that could have been made much better." The film critic Pauline Kael expressed herself in the magazine The New Yorker in the magazine The New Yorker . It is a "nature boy film, a boy's daydream of being an Indian". Referring to Dunbar's diary entry, knowing for the first time who he really was after joining the Sioux tribe, Kael said that Costner not only had feathers in his hair, but "in his head" as well. After the opening scene, the film contained “nothing that is really camp or shamelessly overloaded”, and also “nothing with narrative power or bite”. Despite the director's noticeable competence, the film was made by a "staid megalomaniac".

Caryn James complained in the New York Times that Dunbar expresses himself in the film from the perspective of the 20th century, for example when he writes in a diary entry of the whites as a people without values ​​and without a soul, who ignore Sioux rights . This is out of place in the Old West.

Indian life

With regard to the representation of the Indians, a number of critics appreciatively emphasized a departure from the clichés that were widespread about them among whites and cinema-goers - also and precisely because of many earlier westerns. An example of this is the opinion of Franz Everschor in the magazine Film-Dienst , from which the lexicon of international film feeds. In the film there are neither the "brightly painted white batches tucked into costumes and greeting the hero who rides past with laconic ' how '", nor the "hordes of uncivilized barbarians who madly attack women and children". The film is “not a romantically idealizing Indian portrait” and no “sentimental whitewashing”, but - so much praised Everschor - “the long overdue correction of a primitive cinema cliché permeated with old colonial mentality, which for many decades the cinema goers imagined of of the degenerate Indian race ”. Cinema magazine talked about Dances With Wolves from a "piece of cinematic reparation to Native Americans."

The jury of the Wiesbaden Film Evaluation Office gave the film the highest rating “Particularly valuable”, spoke in its justification of the rare “stroke of luck of a cinematic highlight without restrictions” and particularly praised the representation of the Indians: “No film has ever been pictorial in such a sensitive way warm language and thoughts of the Indians shown. Detached from the usual Indian cliché in the American West, Costner's film deserves exceptional ethnological merit. A new image of the Indians emerged. The turn to nature, the reverence for every life, is conveyed to the viewer in a memorable way. ” Gunar Ortlepp's opinion in Der Spiegel is similar : in no western before had“ the Indian culture and way of life of bygone times been so deeply expressed ”as in this.

There was also support from Native Americans themselves for the representation of the Indians in the film. Filmmaker Phil Lucas, who belongs to the Choctaw, praised the work in an interview with Bernhard Springer as a very important film, as it shows the clichés about Indians among whites by identifying the audience with the protagonist and adapting them to the Indian culture as well as address and change - in contrast to many other films.

In an essay that first appeared in the US film magazine Film Quarterly in 1991, the Cahuilla Edward D. Castillo analyzed and criticized the film. He praised the film and found the sensitive exploration of indigenous culture to be the film's most important value. The script generates understanding and sympathy for the Lakota culture without preaching. With just one short scene showing the humanity of an Indian family, Costner, as a director, achieved his goal of demonstrating that the most important aspect of the film is not politics, but feeling or humanity. The Indian figures are both engaging and diverse enough.

Above all, some US critics disagreed on the characterization of the Indians in the film. Rejection came from Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly magazine : The film was unsuccessful in portraying the Indians as fully-fledged human beings. With incomprehension, he asked why there were no Indians with character complications in the film, no self-serving, fearful characters or characters in need of recognition. The US anthropologist Michael Dorris said in the New York Times that the Indians in the film were "wooden characters" and "uniformly stoic, courageous, mean to their enemies, nice to their friends". Pauline J. Alama replied to him in the same newspaper that the film portrayed the Sioux well, also because the tribal members in a meeting hold different positions on how to proceed. Hinson also found that each of the Indians received a clear personality from the director and that the Indians were "anything but faceless pagans ".

Some critics were dissatisfied with the Pawnee's portrayal. Like Castillo, they are portrayed too one-dimensionally and negatively. The film makes it “too easy to dismiss these much maligned Indians as stereotypically 'bad Indians'”.

Depiction of whites

Some US critics rejected the portrayal of whites in the film. Amy Dawes from Variety magazine, for example, called the portrayal of Union soldiers "as a boorish and brutal mob" the "weakest and most manipulative passage of the film". Richard Grenier said in the Chicago Tribune that the film "passionate, dishonest, even illogical anti- white " was, and - compared to whites derogatory slang -expression Whitey benutzend - continued: For Costner, the Sioux "are posh, Whitey fatal. Whitey murders wolves, horses, buffalo, and Indians. Whitey is destroying the environment. Whitey is naughty. Whitey smells bad. ”Costner is hostile to white America. Indian representatives in the same newspaper reacted indignantly to Grenier's contribution. For example, Ardeth Buckholtz from the Chippewa tribe judged his attitude in the article to be characterized by white supremacy and “below contempt”. Grenier's problem is not the sensitive portrayal of the Sioux in the film, but rather the truthful portrayal of the "Whitey".

Long version

The majority of the opinions on the long version, especially in comparison to the short version, were positive; They also showed negative criticism of the short version. The journalist Karl Wegmann, for example, said in the TAZ in 1992 that she corrected most of the weaknesses that could not be overlooked in the short version. The suicide of Major Fambrough and the story of Fort Sedgwick before Dunbar's arrival are now easier to understand. The end of the film makes more sense because the long version is much more skeptical as to whether Dunbar can even become an Indian. The Sioux would “no longer appear so much as New Age hippies ”, but more realistic and brutal. David Gritten also highlighted the latter aspect in the Los Angeles Times . The additional scenes would help clarify the themes of the film. They would also sharpen the forging of the relationship between Dunbar and Stand with a Fist and their marriage. In the British weekly The Observer , film critic Philip French said the film was now deeper and, from the viewer's point of view, its length contributed to appreciating Dunbar's isolation from the old world and its absorption into a new culture. Geoff Brown expressed himself negatively in the Times , speaking of an unnecessary revival.

Interpretation and analysis

In a companion volume to the genesis of the film, Kevin Costner wrote of Blake's novel as "a story that took on a culture that has traditionally been misrepresented, both historically and cinematically." However, Costner continued, the film was not made to "adjust history", but was "a romantic look at a terrible time in our history when expansion in the name of progress brought us very little and cost us a lot" .

Form and staging

The film was also assigned to the late -western and anti-western subgenres of westerns .

In the film, Dunbar acts as the first-person narrator , whose voice can be heard off- screen. As such, he also reflects on his thoughts to the viewer, which he usually notes in his diary. A comment by Dunbar, often quoted by recipients, shows how he gained knowledge of the Indians, who were previously unknown to him: “Nothing I have been told about these people is correct. They are not beggars and thieves. They are not the monsters they are portrayed as. On the contrary, they are polite visitors and have a sense of humor that I really like. An exchange of ideas develops very slowly. The calm is just as disappointed as I am and yet sometimes misunderstandings lead to a better understanding. "

At that time , Norbert Grob characterized the staging of the film as "very broad and deliberate, almost slow". The images gave the audience enough time to understand Dunbar's curiosity for Indian culture. Characteristic for the camera work are recordings from an elevated position, which show the people moving in the landscape, not as an enemy, but as part of nature, and opening glances either by going back to the long shot or by shifting the action into one half of the picture, while the other offers a view of the landscape. Costner contrasts panoramic images by “extreme narrowing of the view when the harmonious relationship between man and nature is in danger”. For example, the buffalo hunt is "choreographed like a ballet - in a syncopated rhythm of different settings ". The director formulates the situations through "the rapid change of size, rhythm and atmosphere of his pictures".

The art historian Henry Weidemann emphasized the rhetorical figure of the antithesis as an essential characteristic of the staging of the long version. Examples of their use are the contrast between the beauty and vastness of the prairie one hand and the narrowness and gloom in Fort Sedgwick other hand, but also of a sad minor - topic shaded images of rotting animal carcasses and waste which to images and background music of the landscape followed, suggesting the splendor. The white garbage left behind in the landscape runs through the film like a red thread. The indigenous population is virtually equated with nature, the depiction of the landscape as an Indian country in the film repeatedly provides "visual evidence of the negative actions of the colonial powers towards the indigenous people".

The film music was understood as elegiac, the central theme, the John Dunbar theme , as thoughtful and tragic and as similar to John Barry's music for the films A Deadly Dream (1980) and The Wrong Sherlock Holmes (1971). Some of the music, however, has similarities to Barry's music for the James Bond films of the 1960s; the opening music with its “dense, powerful string passages in connection with trumpet signals” is exemplary.

Deviations from the novel and reality

In contrast to the novel, which focuses on the Comanches in Texas - part of the southern Great Plains - the film is about the Lakota-Sioux in South Dakota, which is located in the northern Great Plains. Another essential difference is the end of the story: While Dunbar is persuaded by Chief Ten Bears in the novel to stay with his wife in the Indian village, in the film the couple leaves the tribe to save him from looking for Dunbar US Army to be discovered.

Mainly because of the production-related change in the location and the Indian tribe, there are some elements in the film that violate historical reality. Castillo pointed out that about Ten Bears was actually not a Lakota chief but a Comanche leader. Furthermore, it is geographically unrealistic that Ten Bears , while showing an old Spanish morion - an iron helmet - Dunbar explains that those men who were southern colonists came during his grandparents' lifetime, and later Mexican.

According to Castillo, the greatest historical inaccuracy was the march that the US military carried out at the end of the film in the winter of 1864 in search of Dunbar and the tribe of Ten Bears . In fact, the US Army did not march that winter, as their first winter march in the Great Plains did not take place until November 1868.

Cultural transformation

Indigenous scientist Edward D. Castillo characterized Dunbar's transformation into a native as gradual and incremental. Gradually, Dunbar gave up his beard, jacket and hat and instead wore a Lakota breastplate, a knife and long hair adorned with feathers. The central turning point for Dunbar's transformation is the sight of dead, skinned buffalo that have shot white hunters just for their skins and are now rotting on the prairie - an event through which Dunbar comes to the insight that the people of whites are one without values ​​and soul be. Rhythmic drum beats, which can be heard after his return to the fort and during his dance around the fire there, signaled his deeper transformation, his connection with the rhythm of the earth and his return to his own Neolithic ancestors.

Some critics interpreted Dunbar's story as “ going native ”, that is, as a process of becoming indigenous to the Indians combined with the abandonment of their previous culture. For example, David Ansen said that Dunbar found his true identity in shedding his culture and that it was a classic romantic trope of the 19th century, namely the worship of the natural, "primitive" human being, drawn from the elegiac political consciousness of the 20th century. The American scientist Randall A. Lake spoke out against such characterizations because they misinterpreted the film substantially and Dunbar's transformation was not as radical or complete as they assumed. Even the term “transformation” is incorrect, as Dunbar's identity does not change so much as it finds new expression in a new environment. More accurately than to speak of “becoming a local” is to say that Dunbar goes to the natives, where he acts and develops in a certain way that would not have been possible in his previous environment. Contrary to the “going native” interpretation, Dunbar's change remains ambiguous despite a number of outward signs such as his marriage, because he never completely gives up his Euro-American identity in favor of a Lakota identity; a certain distance to the Indians always remains. According to Lake, the “going native” interpretation draws the wrong conclusion that the search for an “authentic” identity or a pure tradition must be a noble search with the hegemonic desire to subjugate the other. Dunbar's journey of self-discovery is neither transformation nor conquest, but instead - quoting the author of a criticism of the film in the Cahiers du cinéma - "an irreducible otherness that is unmasked against itself", a "process of contamination".

In the Journal of Film and Video Armando José Prats expressed the interpretation that the long version did not compromise the completeness of Dunbar's cultural transformation, as it is contained in the short version. However, the long version reveals all too obviously the obliteration of Dunbar's former self, while the short version leaves no trace of it. The long version thus undermines the ideological claims of the short version.

Dunbar as "White savior"

Some critics assigned the film to the genre White Savior (German: "White Savior") and put the character John Dunbar in a row with white film protagonists who independently rescued colored people from their plight, so that the viewer is advised that colored people are " helpless weaklings ”and unable to save themselves. An example of this is the Indian rights activist and Lakota-Sioux Russell Means , who compared the film with the British film Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because of its "White Savior" story and named it Lawrence of the Plains in the process . Means said in this context that Costner used every known stereotype in Who Dances with Wolves, with the exception of the drunken Indian ; the Indians are only "cardboard comrades" and are not sufficiently developed as characters.

In his essay Lawrence of South Dakota , published in his book Fantasies of the Master Race , Ward Churchill , an activist in the American Indian movement , also compared the film to Lawrence of Arabia . Much like the British film through the ultimately tragic endeavors of Lt. Lawrence had made the ambitions of the British Empire appear more humane and acceptable, he said in Who Dances with Wolves "that artificial sense of sad inevitability" when Dunbar rides his wife into the sunset and his Lakota friends ride the United States to "slaughter." and submission ”. Churchill received approval from Prats for his position on including the film in his "Fantasies of the Master Race ": The Indian character of Dunbar as a white hero does not evoke the figure and the fantasy of the human and humane Indian, but of the "American Adam", of the European colonist with the idea of ​​America as paradise.

Film historical classification

The film follows the tradition of filmic and literary works in which a hero discovers Indians. These include The Broken Arrow (1950), The Black Falcon (1956), Little Big Man (1970) and The Man They Called Horse (1970). In particular, The Broken Arrow is named as an important precursor of Dances with Wolves , because it is considered one of the first western films, if not the first, in which the Indians are sympathetic and their historical roles are portrayed authentically. Similar to Costner's film, it is about a white man who turns from an enemy of the Indians into a friend and marries an Indian woman. Dances with the Wolf is not the first Indian film in which the Indians speak in their tribal language; this was previously the case in the film Windwalker (1980).

Revisionist perspective

Based on its efforts to correct the clichéd image of the Indians known from many earlier films and to reverse the traditional roles of cowboys and Indians in western films, the film was understood by some recipients as revisionist in a positive sense . An example of this is the commentary by Newsweek film critic David Ansen , who spoke of the film of an "ambitious revisionist reading" of the "frontier" and "Hollywood making amends for a century of bias."

However, some, especially American recipients, opposed the opinion that the film was revisionist in this regard. James Berardinelli, for example, said that while it is true that the Sioux tribe is portrayed in films with a balance and sensitivity that is rare for Native Americans. However, the Pawnee would be portrayed in the same way as Indians in the 1950s and 1960s and the American soldiers not as thoughtless, vicious monsters, but as authentic, imperfect human beings. Although the film consciously tries to straighten out the historical events, the reversal of the roles is not complete. The film did not overturn the whole genre, but only twisted a few conventions.

According to Pauline Kael , the film is “not really revisionist” and “old stuff, toned down and sensitized”. The writer Louis Owens , who was partly descended from the Choctaw and Cherokee , took the position that the film "disguised as a revisionist, politically correct Western" comes along without actually being it. This makes him the "most insidious means" of his message of repeating colonialism in America. As a justification he said, among other things, that “Costner's 'love letter to the past' is exactly that”: “a cinematic powerful, soulful, emotionally touching love letter to an absolutely fake American past, the Euro-Americans as an adjusted, romantic version of the ugly reality from colonization and genocide . Costner's film takes it all in, repackages it, and makes the age-old clichés and steadfast metanarratives tastier. ”The scientist Joy Porter relied on Owens' opinion in American Studies (2008) for her assertion that Dances With Wolves is no more revisionist Western is.

Author Jacqueline Kilpatrick, who also has Choctaw ancestors, said in her book Celluloid Indians (1999) that the film is revisionist in that it portrays the Lakota as both a unified culture with one of its own, that of the "white intruder." "Independent, national identity , as well as" fully realized human beings ".

In a book about classic films (2006), Volker Pruss and Jürgen Wiemers countered the praising view of recipients that the film was a “courageous examination of US history repressions” by stating that the film was basically “a repetition of black and white drawings classic Western epic [...] with the opposite sign “, because apart from Dunbar, the white man now represents evil - in contrast to the Indians. The film critic Alexandra Seitz, on the other hand, said that the film was "not just talking about the lost paradise under the opposite sign", but rather an effort to "juxtapose the traditionally messed up cinematic representations of Native Americans with a pictorial design characterized by understanding and an effort for authenticity" .

Contemporary mood

Some recipients believed that the story told parallels to the contemporary mood in the population. Georg Seeßlen, for example, expressed himself about Dunbar as "the cult figure for those contemporaries tired of civilization, a New Age hero in whom every little thing actually matched the longings of the generation that longed for a reunification with nature and earth". Seeßlen interpreted the film as "the global eco-fairy tale" for the time when one wanted to say goodbye to "the icons of the Reagan era, the tough, successful people, the callous muscle-fighting machine, [...] the yuppie and gambler ". Castillo took a similar opinion: trying to explain the popularity of the film, he said that Dunbar was a man of the 1990s for the audience and thus the disaffected soldier for the baby boomer generation who seeks personal salvation in the wilderness. Dunbar's childlike desire to see the border to the Wild West before it disappears touches an unspoken longing of many Americans. And the scene in which the Lakota Indians attack the military and liberate Dunbar is a very satisfying one for the viewers of the 1990s: "The Indians who are morally right from an ecological point of view become a kind of SWAT team for the future Americans."

The Indians' closeness to nature

There were different opinions regarding the love of nature of the Indians in the film. Franz Everschor said at the same time, criticizing negatively, that the short version lacks the “fundamental spiritual bond of the Indians with nature” and the natural mythology developed from it. Georg Seeßlen, on the other hand, was convinced that the Indians in the short version appear as completely "children who are close to nature and are no longer wild or foreign". Nevertheless, this picture would be a bit complicated in the long version due to the "bloody settlement of the Sioux with the buffalo hunters". Book author Angela Aleiss compared the Sioux portrayed in The Dance with the Wolf with Rousseau's ideal image of the noble savage , the unspoiled natural man from the vice and corruption of civilization, also because the Lakota in the film appeared meek, wise and childlike and thus in contrast to their decadent, white counterparts.

Death and rebirth

Castillo interpreted the film as a " shamanistic allegory of symbolic death and rebirth". In this sense, Dunbar actually dies attempting suicide at the beginning of the film and all subsequent events are part of a journey into the realm of the dead , as it is common in many tribal societies, accompanied by some dangerous tests on the way there. In the early stages of the film, Medicine Man Kicking Bird speaks to his tribe members about Dunbar of a man who does not bring danger but perhaps medicine. Castillo understood medicine here as possibly spiritual knowledge or power. The wolf sock can be understood as Dunbar's spiritual partner who helps him in his transformation from a normal man into a man with superhuman abilities; Dunbar's success in buffalo hunting can be attributed to these very skills.

Awards

At the Academy Awards in 1991 , the film received seven awards. This included the Oscars for the best film and the best director as well as for camera, music, editing, sound and adapted script. In the actor categories (leading actor, supporting actor and supporting actress) there were nominations for Costner, Greene and McDonnell, as well as in the categories for costume design and production design. There was also a Golden Globe Award each for the best film, the script and the director . The unions of the screenwriters , producers and directors as well as the association of cameramen also recognized the film. In addition to an Oscar, John Barry received a BMI Film & TV Award and a Grammy Award for his music composition . There were also awards from the film critics' associations in Chicago , Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles .

In 2007 the Library of Congress included the work in the National Film Registry as a film that is particularly worth preserving . The film is also featured in some of the American Film Institute's best lists , including 75th on the 100 Years… 100 Movies list (1998) and 59th on the 100 Years… 100 Cheers list (2006).

The film and the individuals involved have also received awards outside of the United States. In Germany, at the 1991 Berlinale, there was a silver bear for Costner in the category of best individual performance and a nomination for the Golden Bear . The film was also awarded two golden screens , four Jupiter film prizes and a guild film prize . In addition to the honors in Germany, he has mainly received prizes in Japan , including the Japanese Academy Award . In Great Britain there were nine nominations for the British Academy Film Award .

Adaptations and other aftermath

Illustration of images from the film

The film on which the film was based, which had already appeared in 1988, only became a bestseller after the film was released. Michael Blake published the sequel Der Tanz des Kriegers in 2001 , the filming of which was considered but never realized.

In the years after the film was released, other films were made in the United States that attempted to paint a sympathetic image of Indians. These include the films The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Halbblut (1992), Geronimo - Eine Legende (1993) and Pocahontas (1995) as well as the documentaries The Native Americans and the film 500 Nations (both 1994) co-created and co-produced by Costner .

Dances with Wolves served as inspiration and role model for other successful films, including Last Samurai (2003) and the second most commercially successful film of all time, Avatar - Aufbruch nach Pandora (2009). Its director and screenwriter James Cameron admitted that Dances With Wolves contained some beautiful things that Cameron had simply collected. In this context, critics jokingly called Avatar Dances with Wolves in Space (German for example: "The man dances with the wolf in space") or Dances With Smurfs (German for example: "The man dances with the Smurf "). The latter nickname is also the title of an episode (2009) of the US animated series South Park .

literature

To the history of origin:

Reception, scientific publications:

  • Robert Baird: “Going Indian”. Dances With Wolves (1990). In: Peter C. Rollins, John E. O'Connor (Eds.): Hollywood's Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. The University Press of Kentucky , Lexington 1998, ISBN 0-8131-9077-0 , pp. 153-169
  • Edward D. Castillo: Dances With Wolves. In: Ella Shohat, Robert Stam (Eds.): Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media. Rutgers University Press, Piscataway , New Jersey 2003, ISBN 0-8135-3235-3 , pp. 63–76 (Article originally published in: Film Quarterly No. 4/1991 (vol. 44), pp. 14–23)
  • Randall A. Lake: Argumentation and Self: The Enactment of Identity in Dances with Wolves , in: Argumentation and Advocacy No. 2/1997 (34th vol.), Pp. 66-89 ( PDF at Researchgate ) - also contains a highly concentrated , comprehensive summary of reviews
  • Michael T. Marsden: Dances with Wolves. Romantic Reconstruction, Historical Reality, or Both? In: Andrew Patrick Nelson (ed.): Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television since 1990 , The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-9257-6 , pp. 3-14
  • Louis Owens: Apocalypse at the Two-Socks Hop: Dancing with the Vanishing American. In: Louis Owens: Mixedblood Messages. Literature, film, family, place. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1998, ISBN 0-8061-3381-3 , p. 113 ff. (Article originally published as D'une disparition a l'autre In: Revue d'études Palestiniennes No. 3/1995 (55. Jg.))
  • Armando José Prats: The Image of the Other and the Other - Dances With Wolves : The Refigured Indian and the Textual Supplement. In: Journal of Film and Video No. 1/1998 (50th year), pp. 3-19
  • Henry Weidemann: Into the Wild. Rhetoric of landscape representation in Hollywood cinema using the example of the long version by Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves" , Shaker Verlag , Aachen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8440-6332-5 (dissertation, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel 2018)

Further information (in French):

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dances with wolves. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 8, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Release certificate for Who Dances With Wolves [Theatrical Version] . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 65289 / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  3. ↑ Release certificate for Who Dances With Wolves [Extended Edition] . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 65289-a / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Dances With Wolves - History , AFI Catalog of Feature Films, American Film Institute website , accessed January 10, 2019
  5. ↑ Sassan Niasseri: The wild, but romantic west: "Dances with wolves" , in: Rolling Stone of December 26, 2017, accessed on September 8, 2019
  6. ↑ Geraldine Baum: MOVIES: Kevin Costner's Dance With the Sioux: How the director and star achieved authenticity in his unusual film tribute to the Sioux, 'Dances With Wolves' , in: Los Angeles Times, October 28, 1990, accessed on 1. September 2019
  7. ↑ March 26, 1991 - Seven Oscars for “Dances with the Wolf” , in: WDR website on March 26, 2016, accessed on September 8, 2019
  8. ↑ a b c Production report on Michael Blake's website , September 8, 2019
  9. ↑ a b c Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, preface by Jim Wilson (page unnumbered)
  10. ↑ a b Marsden 2013, p. 5
  11. ↑ a b c d Angela Aleiss: Dances With Wolves (PDF), website of the National Film Registry , 2016, accessed on January 10, 2019
  12. ↑ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 112
  13. ↑ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 82 f.
  14. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 101
  15. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 105
  16. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 38
  17. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 13
  18. ↑ a b Who dances with wolves. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on September 8, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, pp. 53, 108 f.
  20. ↑ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 44
  21. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 6
  22. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 60
  23. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 131
  24. ^ Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, p. 69
  25. ↑ a b c d Cinema release dates for Der mit dem Wolf tanzt , in: Web presence of the Association of Film Distributors , accessed on January 10, 2019
  26. ↑ Dances with wolves , in: Website of the film distributor Constantin Film , accessed on January 11, 2019
  27. ↑ a b c d Dances with the Wolf (1990) - Release Info , in: IMDb , accessed on September 8, 2019
  28. ↑ a b Entry for the short version in the database of filmdistribution schweiz (Association of Swiss Film Distributors), accessed on January 11, 2019
  29. ↑ a b for the long version in the database of filmdistribution schweiz (Association of Swiss Film Distributors), accessed on January 11, 2019
  30. ↑ Dances with the Wolf (1990) Release Info , in: IMDb , accessed on Jan. 10, 2019
  31. ↑ a b c Franz Everschor : He dances with wolves. In: Film-Dienst No. 3/1991, accessed online in the Munzinger Archive , accessed via Dresden City Libraries on August 5, 2018
  32. ↑ Susan King: McDonnell Learns Another Way of Life Making 'Dances With Wolves' , in: Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1990, accessed September 8, 2019
  33. ↑ Dances with Wolves , in: Box Office Mojo , accessed September 8, 2019
  34. ↑ a b Visitor numbers for Germany cf. InsideKino:
    • Number of visitors for the short and long version together: 6,863,688, cf. The most successful films in Germany 1991 , in: InsideKino, accessed on September 8, 2019
    • Number of visitors only for the long version: 140,543, cf. TOP 100 DEUTSCHLAND 1992 , in: InsideKino, accessed on September 8, 2019
    • From the two figures mentioned above, the difference is 6,723,145 as the number of visitors for the short version.
  35. ↑ Baird 2003, p. 163
  36. ↑ Prats 1998, p. 7
  37. ^ A b Karl Wegmann: Stretched monsters. In: TAZ No. 3706 of May 15, 1992, p. 16
  38. ↑ Dances with Wolves - Special Edition. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  39. ↑ Prats 1998, p. 4
  40. ↑ Theatrical Version and Extended Edition from Winkler Film , accessed on August 27, 2019
  41. ↑ Dances with wolves , in: OFDb , accessed on September 8, 2019
  42. ↑ DANCES WITH WOLVES (SOUNDTRACK) , in: Recording Industry Association of America website , accessed September 8, 2019
  43. ↑ Dances with Wolves [1995 Bonustracks], in: Allmusic , accessed on September 8, 2019
  44. ↑ Dances with Wolves [2004 Bonustracks], in: Allmusic , accessed on September 8, 2019
  45. ↑ Dances With Wolves (25th Anniversary Expanded Edition) , in: Discogs , accessed September 8, 2019
  46. ↑ Dances with Wolves at Rotten Tomatoes (English), accessed on June 25, 2020
  47. ↑ Dances with Wolves at Metacritic , accessed on June 25, 2020
  48. ↑ a b c d Hal Hinson : 'Dances With Wolves' , in: The Washington Post, November 9, 1990, accessed on September 8, 2019, original quotation: “anything but faceless heathens”
  49. ↑ Peter Travers : Dances with Wolves , in: Rolling Stone, November 21, 1990, accessed September 8, 2019
  50. ^ Roger Ebert : Dances with Wolves , originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times on November 9, 1990, accessed from Eberts' website on September 8, 2019
  51. ↑ Sheila Benson: Costner's Magic With 'Wolves' , in: Los Angeles Times of November 9, 1990, accessed on September 8, 2019,
    original language quotations in the same order:
    1. "Stirringly fine"
    2. "Authentic as an Edward Curtis photograph, lyrical as a George Catlin oil or a Karl Bodmer landscape"
  52. ↑ Vincent Canby : A Soldier at One With the Sioux , in: The New York Times of November 9, 1990, accessed online on September 8, 2019
    Original language quotations in the same order:
    1. "Commonplace"
    2. “Presented in the perfunctory way of generalized statements in guidebooks”
    3. "Without rude odors"
    4. “That it is never exactly boring, only dulled. It's a movie in acute need of sharpening. "
  53. ^ Pauline Kael : Dances With Wolves. In: The New Yorker of December 17, 1990, accessed online from the website Scraps From the Loft on September 8, 2019, last updated on November 28, 2017
    Original quotes in the same order:
    1. "A nature-boy movie, a kid's daydream of being an Indian."
    2. "Nothing really campy or shamelessly flamboyant"
    3. "[There] isn't even anything with narrative power or bite to it."
    4. "Bland megalomaniac"
  54. ↑ Caryn James : Frugging With Wolves , in: The New York Times, January 13, 1991, accessed September 7, 2019
  55. ↑ No old hats: Western classics (signature of Film 22), in: Cinema website , accessed on September 8, 2019
  56. ↑ Dances with Wolves , Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden , accessed on September 8, 2019
  57. ↑ Gunar Ortlepp : Before the Fall , in: Der Spiegel No. 8/1991, accessed online on September 8, 2019
  58. ↑ Matthias Peipp, Bernhard Springer : noble savage - Red Devils. Indians in the film. Heyne Filmbibliothek, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-10862-0 , p. 275
  59. ↑ Castillo 2003, p. 63.
  60. ↑ a b Castillo 2003, p. 64.
  61. ↑ Owen Gleiberman: Dances With Wolves , in: Entertainment Weekly, November 16, 1990, accessed September 8, 2019
  62. ↑ Michael Dorris : Indians in Aspic , in: The New York Times of February 24, 1991, accessed online on September 15, 2018
    Original language quotations in the same order:
    1. “Woodenly characterized”
    2. "Uniformly stoic, brave, nasty to their enemies, nice to their friends"
  63. ↑ Pauline J. Alama, 'Dances With Wolves' Depicts Sioux Well , in: The New York Times, March 15, 1991, accessed online September 15, 2018
  64. ↑ Amy Dawes: Film Review: 'Dances With Wolves' , in: Variety from November 11, 1990, accessed on September 8, 2019,
    original quotes in the same order:
    1. "Loutish and brutal mob"
    2. "Pic's weakest and most manipulative passage"
  65. ↑ Richard Grenier : Hype In Wolves' Clothing: The Deification Of Costner's' Dances' , in: Chicago Tribune of March 29, 1991, accessed on September 9, 2018
    Original language quotations in the same order:
    1. "Vehemently, dishonestly, even illogically anti-white."
    2. “Gentle, Whitey lethal. Whitey murders wolves, horses, buffalo, Indians. Whitey ruins the environment. Whitey is unmannerly. Whitey smells bad. "
  66. ↑ Ardeth Buckholtz: Truth From Film , in: Chicago Tribune of April 18, 1991, accessed on September 9, 2018, original quote: “beneath contempt”
  67. ↑ a b c David Gritten: 'Dances With Wolves' - the Really Long Version , in: Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1991, accessed September 8, 2019
  68. ↑ a b Costner, Blake and Wilson 1991, foreword by Kevin Costner (page unnumbered)
  69. ↑ a b Norbert Grob : At the border , In: Die Zeit No. 9 of February 22, 1991, accessed online on September 8, 2019
  70. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek : Back to the Wild Western , in: Der Spiegel No. 14/1993, accessed on September 8, 2019
  71. ^ Quote from the German dubbed version
  72. ^ Henry Weidemann: Into the Wild. Aachen 2018, pp. 154, 160
  73. ^ Henry Weidemann: Into the Wild. Aachen 2018, p. 161
  74. ^ Henry Weidemann: Into the Wild. Aachen 2018, p. 164 f., Quoted from p. 164
  75. ↑ Bruce Eder: Dances With Wolves [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] - AllMusic Review by Bruce Eder , in: Allmusic , accessed on September 8, 2019, original quote: “dense, heavy string passages adjacent to trumpet calls”
  76. ↑ a b Castillo 2003, p. 67
  77. ↑ Castillo 2003, p. 69 f.
  78. ↑ Lake 1997, pp. 82 f.
  79. ↑ Lake 1997, p. 84
  80. ↑ Lake 1997, p. 86, original quotations from Thierry Jousse, quoted from RA Lake: “an irreducible otherness facing itself unmasked”, “process of contamination”
  81. ↑ Prats 1998, p. 18
  82. ↑ Prats 1998, p. 7
  83. ↑ David Sirota: Oscar loves a white savior , in: Salon.com from February 22, 2013, accessed on August 24, 2019, original quotes in the same order: “helpless weaklings”, “modern era's emblematic example”
  84. ↑ Elaine Dutka: The Angriest Actor: Native American activist Russell Means focused his fierce will at Wounded Knee. Can a revolutionary co-exist with 'Pocahontas'? , in: Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1995, accessed August 24, 2019
  85. ↑ Russell Means : Acting against racism , in: Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1992, accessed on August 24, 2019, original quote: “cardboard figures”
  86. ↑ Ward Churchill : Lawrence of South Dakota , accessed from the TV Multiversity blog website on August 24, 2019; Original quotes in the same order:
    1. "This contrived sense of sad inevitability"
    2. “Slaughtered by and subordinated”
      (Essay originally published under the title Lawrence of South Dakota: Dances With Wolves and the Maintenance of the American Empire , in Ward Churchill: Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians , City Light Books 1998)
  87. ↑ Prats 1998, p. 8
  88. ↑ Michael Dorris : Indians in Aspic , in: The New York Times, February 24, 1991, accessed September 15, 1991
  89. ↑ Baird 1998, p. 155
  90. ↑ Castillo 1991, p. 73. Note: The year 1973 for the film Windwalker on p. 73 is obviously wrong. Other sources suggest 1980 as the film's release date, cf. in addition Windwalker. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  91. ↑ cf. also Henry Weidemann: Into the Wild. Aachen 2018, pp. 11, 95, 164
  92. ↑ David Ansen : How The West Was Lost , in: Newsweek of November 18, 1990, accessed on September 8, 2019,
    original quotes in the same order:
    1. "Ambitious revisionist reading of the frontier"
    2. "Redressing a century of Hollywood historical bias"
  93. ↑ James Berardinelli : Dances with Wolves (United States, 1990) , in: ReelViews, after 1997, accessed September 8, 2019
  94. ^ Pauline Kael : Dances With Wolves. In: The New Yorker of December 17, 1990, accessed online from the website Scraps From the Loft on September 8, 2019, last updated on November 28, 2017
    Original quotes in the same order:
    1. "Isn't really revisionist"
    2. "Old stuff toned down and sensitized."
  95. ↑ Owens 1999, p. 114, original quotations in the same order:
    1. "Disguised as its opposite: a revisionist, politically correct western"
    2. "Most insidious vehicle"
  96. ^ Joy Porter: "Primitive" Discourse: Aspects of Contemporary North American Indian Representations of the Irish and of Contemporary Irish Representations of North American Indians. In: American Studies No. 3 and 4/2008 (vol. 49), pp. 63–85 ( accessed online from the University of Kansas website on September 14, 2019), here: p. 72, original quotation by Louis Owens : “Costner's 'love letter to the past' [is] precisely that: a cinematically powerful, lyrically moving, heart-string pulling love letter to an absolutely fake American past that Euro-Americans invented as a sanitized, romantic version of the ugly realities of colonization and genocide. Costner's film buys it all, repackages it, and makes more palatable the age-old clichés and unwavering metanarrative. ”
  97. ↑ Jacqueline Kilpatrick: Celluloid Indians. Native Americans and Film. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1999, ISBN 0-8032-7790-3 , p. 130
    Original     citations in the same order:
    1. "White intruder"
    2. "Wholly realized human beings"
    3. "A successful revisionist film"
  98. ↑ Volker Pruss, Jürgen Wiemers: The one who dances with the wolf. In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Classic films. Volume 4: 1978-1992 , 5th edition, Philipp Reclam jun. , Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-15-030033-6 , pp. 500-503, here: p. 502
  99. ↑ Alexandra Seitz: Time for Westerns . epd film No. 8/2019, p. 30
  100. ↑ Georg Seeßlen : History and Mythology of Western Films. From the Fundamentals of Popular Film series. Schüren Verlag , Marburg 1995, ISBN 3-89472-421-8 , pp. 206-208
  101. ↑ Castillo 2003, p. 69.
  102. ↑ Castillo 2003, p. 71: "The Indians on an ecologically moral high ground become a kind of environmental SWAT team for the future Americans."
  103. ↑ Georg Seeßlen : History and Mythology of Western Films. From the Fundamentals of Popular Film series. Schüren Verlag , Marburg 1995, ISBN 3-89472-421-8 , p. 208
  104. ↑ Angela Aleiss: Making the White Man's Indian. Native Americans and Hollywood Movies. Praeger Publishers, Westport 2005, ISBN 0-275-98396-X , p. 142
  105. ↑ Castillo 2003, p. 74 f., Original quotation from p. 74: “shamanistic allegory of symbolic death and rebirth”
  106. ↑ National Film Registry 2007 , in: Library of Congress website , 2008, accessed September 8, 2019
  107. ↑ Michael Blake dies; writer won Oscar for 'Dances With Wolves' , In: The Washington Post on May 5, 2015, accessed September 8, 2019
  108. ↑ Meredith Berkman, “Dances With Wolves”: From novel to film , in: Entertainment Weekly, March 8, 1991, accessed September 8, 2019
  109. ^ Howard Rosenberg : '500 Nations' Sets the Record Straight , in: Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1995, accessed September 8, 2019
  110. ↑ Victor Grech: Avatar Dances with Wolves , in: The New York Review of Science Fiction , December 2016, pp. 19-24, accessed online as PDF from the website of the University of Malta on January 10, 2019
  111. ^ Dana Goodyear: Man of Extremes , in: The New Yorker, October 26, 2009, accessed online September 8, 2019
  112. ↑ Chris Tookey: Avatar: It's Dances With Smurfs , in: Daily Mail of December 28, 2009, accessed on September 8, 2019
  113. ↑ Susanna Loza: Speculative Imperialisms: Monstrosity and Masquerade in Postracial Times , Lexington Books, Lanham 2018, ISBN 978-1-4985-0797-4 , p. 37, footnote 8
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on September 28, 2019 in this version .