Mark Twain's adventures
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Mark Twain's adventures |
| Original title | The Adventures of Mark Twain |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1944 |
| length | 130 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Irving rapper |
| script |
Harold M. Sherman Alan Le May Harry Chandlee |
| production |
Jesse L. Lasky production company Warner Bros. |
| music | Max Steiner |
| camera |
Sol Polito Laurence Butler Edward Linden Don Siegel James Leicester |
| cut | Ralph Dawson |
| occupation | |
| |
The Adventures of Mark Twain (original title The Adventures of Mark Twain ) is an American feature film, the life and career of the "father" of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn illuminated. Fredric March plays the leading role, with Alexis Smith and Donald Crisp at his side .
action
On November 30, 1835, the night Halley's Comet appeared over the Mississippi , Samuel Clemens was born in the small town of Hannibal in the US state of Missouri . As a boy, Sam played on the banks of the Mississippi with his friends Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and the black slave boy Jim. Sam loves the river and the passing steamships . The boys come up with many a prank together. At the request of his mother, Sam worked as a setters apprentice as a teenager , but ran away after a while and hired on one of the riverboats, where after a few years he made it to the chief pilot on a Mississippi steamer. When a pickpocket tries to rob the aristocratic young Charles Langdon one night, Clemens helps him and the two become friends.
Charles carries with him a miniature picture of his sister Olivia, which Samuel is entranced by. He announces that he wants to marry this woman. To get closer to his goal, Sam ends his work on the ship and moves with his friend Steve Gillis to the west to try his luck in the gold mines. It will be an adventurous life for both of them. In a competition to find out which frog can jump the furthest, you believe you have reached the goal when your frog wins the competition. However, Sam has put all the money on the so far victorious frog, not realizing that Steve has secretly fed the "champion" with shot pellets, so that the frog hardly manages to jump.
A little later, Sam hired himself as a reporter for a small Wild West newspaper and wrote articles there that caused quite a stir. His first story is then about the competition between the frogs, here he uses the pseudonym Mark Twain for the first time, the call ("two threads"), with which safe waters are announced and which is indelibly burned into him on the Mississippi.
When the civil war breaks out, Clemens returns to the Mississippi. Here he is found by the New York JP Pond, who had been looking for him for a long time. Sam's story, which was also published in the newspapers of the East without Sam being aware of it, has meanwhile reached wider circles, so that a renowned publisher offers him a contract. Sam is now going on a lecture tour, which is extremely successful. At one of these lectures he discovers his friend Charles Langdon together with his sister Olivia, called Livy, in the audience. Although many famous and influential people want to speak to Sam after his lecture, he only has eyes for Livy. When the siblings invite Sam to their home, the young man is not welcomed in a friendly manner by their father, the banker Jervis Langdon. Sam does not give up, however, and he and Olivia become engaged. Jervis Langdon also gives up his resistance and even buys the young couple a house close to their own as a wedding gift.
In the following years Sam wrote several very successful humorous books that brought him not only fame but also financial independence. When the couple's little son dies, Sam is heartbroken and can no longer write. Only Olivia can get him to start writing again by telling him to just write the story of his beloved Mississippi for his son, as if he were telling it to him. This is how the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer comes into being . At a dinner in honor of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, Sam is on the verge of talking, but soon afterwards writes his story about Huckleberry Finn .
Sam dreams of writing a “serious book”, but because of his careless handling of money he has to write “humorous” stories over and over again, as he spends the money he has earned as quickly as he has made it. Eventually even his own publishing house went bankrupt when Sam published the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant and donated all the profits from the work to Grant's widow. In order to stand up for his debts, the now old man goes on a worldwide lecture tour. His three daughters and his sick wife stay behind. Sam can satisfy his creditors.
He sees his wife again in Florence . She made him promise to go to Oxford to receive the honorary doctorate , knowing that she could no longer be by his side. Shortly afterwards, Olivia dies. Sam keeps his promise.
On his 75th birthday in 1910, Sam closed his eyes forever. As with his birth, his death is accompanied by the rays of Halley's Comet.
background
The film was shot from July 7, 1942 through September 1942 in Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park in Los Angeles , USA, and at Warner Bros. -Burbank Studios in Burbank , California . Some scenes were shot on location in Sacramento .
The film premiered in the United States on May 3, 1944, and was shown in general theaters on July 22, 1944. In Germany it was on the big screen for the first time on June 1, 1947, and in Austria on June 13, 1947. In Germany, it was partly under the title Mark Twain's adventure .
Producer Jesse L. Lasky fought for more than a year after his film adaptation of Sergeant York to be able to film the biography of Mark Twain. Irving Rapper didn't agree until he learned that his friend Frederic March was the first choice for the lead role. It was Twain's only surviving daughter, Clara, who suggested March for this role. Only then did she want to help implement it. Still, March was full of doubts. Above all, the portrayal as an "older man" worried him. He spent a lot of time with the makeup artist developing make-up for the different ages. Since Twain's nose seemed to change over time, three different noses were created for three different ages for this alone. March also invested a lot of work in dealing with Twain's work, studying his gestures and facial expressions and his way of speaking. The studio had compiled a 72-page bibliography and collected over 2,000 photos, and submitted further documents to March for viewing.
First Olivia de Havilland was supposed to play the role of Olivia, but was then used in the film The Pilot and the Princess and replaced by Alexis Smith.
Peter Lawford , who is not mentioned in the credits, has a minor role in the film.
Historical reference
Samuel Clemens was born on November 30, 1835. As in the film, Halley's Comet was indeed visible, and as shown in the film, it also died in 1910 almost to the day after it was re-sighted. However, he was not born in Hannibal, but in Florida . He did not move to Hannibal until he was four years old and stayed there until he was 18. His father died when he was eleven years old, after which he began training as a typesetter with the Missouri Courier newspaper . In fact, he was the helmsman on the Mississippi for a long time. 1865 his story was Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog ( The famous Spring Frog of Calaveras published), a first major success. In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon (1845–1904). The young woman had been partially paralyzed from a fall on the ice since she was 16, but slowly recovered with the strength of her will and Twain's care. The first child of the two, the son Clemens, was born prematurely and died two years later. In 1872 the daughter Susy was born. Three of his four children, as well as his wife Olivia, died before him. Only his daughter Clara (1874–1962) survived him. Mark Twain actually had his greatest economic success with the biography of the civil war heroes Ulysses S. Grant. In 1894 his participation in the printing and publishing house Charles L. Webster & Co. was his financial undoing. When they invested in a faulty typesetting machine, they went bankrupt. To get his finances back in order, he went on a worldwide tour to read from his works. In 1901, Mark Twain received an honorary doctorate from Yale University . His work has influenced American literature and influenced many writers. "All modern US literature," boasted Ernest Hemingway, "goes back to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn."
synchronization
The film was dubbed in 1949 by the Motion Picture Export Association under the dubbing direction of Josef Wolf , based on a dialogue book by Bertha Gunderloh, Ton Hans Grimm.
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain |
Fredric March | Adolf Gondrell |
| Olivia Langdon-Clemens | Alexis Smith | Angela Salloker |
| JP Pond | Donald Crisp | Anton Reimer |
| Steve Gillis | Alan Hale | Bum Kruger |
| Bret Harte | John Carradine | Ulrich Folkmar |
| Charles Langdon | William Henry | John Pauls-Harding |
| Jervis Langdon | Walter Hampden | Otto Wernicke |
| Billings | Percy Kildbride | Bruno Huebner |
Reviews
The lexicon of international films said that “the adventurous life story of the great American narrator, described in detail and without dramatic climaxes, but carried by a good leading actor.” The television magazine prisma judged that “the great Hollywood biography is primarily an actor film, tailored to Frederic March [sei]. The facts should not always be taken at face value, but the emphasis is on pleasant entertainment anyway. After all, the film [was] nominated for three Academy Awards in 1945. ”Classic Film Guide said it was an above-average fictional biography of the famous author and humorist from his humble beginnings in Hannibal, Missouri to his last, worldwide Lecture tour. The story plays in four segments, each segment of which tells an important part of the life of Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, and contains many of his numerous famous bon mots . Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said that instead of showing the life of the great American humorist, the film shows a sketchy and often imprecise chronicle of certain events. The film is a series of episodic scraps that show how a genius wrote speeches and books without touching on the lasting significance of his work. [...] Above all, they deliberately avoid showing the really deep and moving aspects of his life.
Awards
At the Academy Awards in 1945 the film was nominated in three categories:
- "Best production design in a black and white film" . The nominees were John Hughes and Fred M. MacLean . It won Cedric Gibbons , William Ferrari , Edwin B. Willis and Paul Huldschinsky with the film Gaslight ( Gaslight ).
- "Best visual effects" . Were nominated Paul Detlefsen , John Crouse and Nathan Levinson . It won A. Arnold Gillespie , Donald Year in , Warren Newcombe and Douglas Shearer with the film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo ( Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo ).
- "Best Score in a Drama or Comedy" . Was nominated Max Steiner , who won the Oscar as well, but not for The Adventures of Mark Twain , but the film drama as you leave tookest ( Since You Went Away ).
Web links
- The Adventures of Mark Twain in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The Adventures of Mark Twain. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved October 28, 2018 .
- ↑ Topic Mark Twain at Spiegel Online . Retrieved January 19, 2013.
- ^ The adventures of Mark Twain Synchrondatenbank.de. and Filmbühne No. 5. Accessed January 19, 2013.
- ^ The Adventures of Mark Twain in the Lexicon of International Films . Retrieved January 19, 2013.
- ↑ The adventures of Mark Twain at prisma.de. Retrieved January 19, 2013.
- ↑ The Adventures of Mark Twain at classicfilmguide. Retrieved January 19, 2013.
- ↑ The Adventures of Mark Twain Bosley Crowther of The New York Times , published May 4, 1944. Retrieved January 19, 2013.