The fist on the neck
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The fist on the neck |
| Original title | On the waterfront |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1954 |
| length | 108 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Elia Kazan |
| script | Budd Schulberg |
| production | Sam Spiegel |
| music | Leonard Bernstein |
| camera | Boris Kaufman |
| cut | Gene Milford |
| occupation | |
| |
On the Waterfront (Original title: On the Waterfront ) is in black and white twisted American film drama by Elia Kazan in the year 1954 . The main roles are played by Marlon Brando , Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint (in their cinema debut). Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay based on a series of reports by Malcolm Johnson published in 1948 .
The fist on the neck is considered a milestone in a “new realism ” in American cinema and an outstanding representative of method acting in film. It has received numerous awards including eight Academy Awards , four Golden Globes, and two New York Film Critics Circle Awards . In 1998, the film was ranked 19th in the American Film Institute's “100 Best American Films of All Time” .
action
The port of Hoboken is ruled by a corrupt dockworkers union led by the ruthless Johnny Friendly. The dock workers have to join the union to get any work. Workers who rebel against this system must expect not to find a job or, in the worst case, death.
Terry Malloy, a failed boxer, is one of those workers, while his educated brother Charley is the union's lawyer. Terry enjoys various privileges through Charley's work, but also has to be compliant with the union. Ignorant, he leads the young worker Joey into a deadly trap set by Friendly's henchmen. After Joey's murder, Terry meets his sister Edie and falls in love with her. Edie and Father Berry want to hunt down those guilty of Joey's death. Terry's relationship with Edie suddenly puts him between the lines. On the one hand his conscience plagues him, on the other hand he is afraid of losing his standing in his social milieu if he works with the police.
Friendly learns of Terry's plan to testify against him in court. He asks his brother Charley to get Terry to give in or to kill him. During the discussion of the brothers, in which Terry Charley accuses his corruption, which also ruined his boxing career, Charley is unable to carry out Friendly's assignment. To set an example, Friendly has Charley killed and his body hung on a dock worker hook. When Terry finds his murdered brother, he swears revenge. However, Father Berry can convince him that his testimony in court is the more effective revenge.
According to his testimony, Terry feels like a traitor and is cut off by the dockworkers and residents of the neighborhood. When Terry shows up for work the next day, there is an argument with Friendly and his people. Terry is brutally beaten and his fight against the corrupt union seems lost. The port entrepreneur appears and asks the workers to go back to work, but they stop as if paralyzed. Father Berry and Edie motivate former boxer Terry, who is lying on the ground, to get back into the "ring". "Only one first round" is lost. Terry staggered, but got back on his feet and was the first to walk through the port gate to work, leading the workers; all dock workers now follow him. The union is robbed of its power and locked out. Friendly's power is broken. Father Berry promises to work with Terry to form a new union free of corruption.
background
Template and script
In 1948, the journalist Malcolm Johnson published a series of features in the New York Sun entitled Crime on the Water Front about the working conditions of New York dock workers, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the following year . Also in 1948 Schulberg wrote together with Robert Siodmak under the title "A Stone in the River Hudson" a first draft of the script on the same topic. In the course of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) investigations directed against actual or alleged communists , Schulberg was also accused and the project was put on hold.
At the same time, author Arthur Miller was writing a screenplay about New York dock workers with the working title "Hook". Miller and Elia Kazan suggested this to Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures in 1951 , but this project also fell apart after Cohn suggested turning the corrupt unionists into communists. Miller used motifs from "Hook" in his 1955 play A View From the Bridge . Whether Miller and Schulberg wrote their scripts independently and without the knowledge of each other's project or not was later portrayed differently. The Miller biographer Martin Gottfried also pointed out that although Schulberg had already cited Johnson's report as the basis for his first draft of the script, Johnson was only informed in writing by his agent in 1953 about the sale of the film rights to his book.
Schulberg and Kazan, who was also accused of communist sympathies, rehabilitated themselves in 1951 and 1952, respectively, by giving the names of former left-wing comrades to the HUAC committee . Kazan, who had not let go of the port workers' milieu as film material, turned to Schulberg as a screenwriter, Darryl F. Zanuck was to produce the film. Even after the failure of Viva Zapata! , did not imagine that the film could be a success and declined. Finally Schulberg and Kazan convinced the independent producer Sam Spiegel , who bought the film rights from Zanuck. From the beginning, Kazan planned to include Marlon Brando in the cast, who was already at the end of the line for Sehnsucht and Viva Zapata! had taken the lead role. Brando, disappointed with Kazan's behavior before the HUAC, initially canceled, and Frank Sinatra was offered the role of Terry Malloy . Finally, Brando, persuaded by the producer Spiegel, said yes.
Terry Malloy's positively presented testimony against Johnny Friendly and his gang before the investigative committee was later generally interpreted as a cinematic justification of Kazan and Schulberg for their testimony before the HUAC, which among other things led to Kazan's break with his former companion Arthur Miller. Kazan supported this view in part, Schulberg contradicted it.
Shooting and film launch
The Fist on the Neck was filmed on location in Hoboken , New Jersey , within 35 days . The budget was 800,000 US dollars , which was slightly below average for a film production at the time. The film premiered in New York on July 28, 1954 and grossed $ 9.5 million in the first exploitation. After the film was released, Robert Siodmak sued Spiegel for copyright infringement and failure to recognize his artistic achievement. Siodmak was awarded $ 100,000, but his name was still not mentioned in the opening credits .
On November 5, 1954, the film opened in German cinemas. It was first seen on German television on August 8, 1970 on ARD .
Film historical significance
Despite its "relatively simple crime and social drama storyline," Peter Lev highlighted Kazan's film in History of the American Cinema: The Fifties for its combination of Italian neorealism and method acting. From the former, Die Faust im Nacken takes on the topic of everyday working class life and filming on original locations, but instead of amateur actors uses method actors in the most important roles, among which Brando stands out as “his most brilliant representative”. "Of the three 1950s films most cited in connection with Method Acting - Fist on the Neck, Beyond Eden and ... Because They Don't Know What They're Doing " - the former "made the most extensive use of the Method -Technik ”and present“ a performance by Brando, which is regarded as an outstanding example of method acting in film ”. (Virginia Wright Wexman: Masculinity in Crisis: Method Acting in Hollywood )
German version
The German dubbing was created in 1954 in the studio of Ultra Film Synchron GmbH in Berlin . Alfred Vohrer directed the dialogue .
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Terry Malloy | Marlon Brando | Harald Juhnke |
| Father Berry | Karl Malden | Paul Klinger |
| Johnny Friendly | Lee J. Cobb | OE Hasse |
| Edie Doyle | Eva Marie Saint | Marion Degler |
| Charley "the Gent" Malloy | Rod Steiger | Curt Ackermann |
| Gillette | Martin Balsam | Klaus Miedel |
| hatch | Don Blackman | Alexander Welbat |
| Mosses | Rudy Bond | Paul Wagner |
| Glover | Leif Erickson | Hans Wiegner |
| Truck | Tony Galento | Franz Nicklisch |
| "Pop" Doyle | John Hamilton | Eduard Wandrey |
| Dugan | Pat Henning | Alfred Balthoff |
| Jimmy | Arthur Keegan | Ernst Jacobi |
| JP Morgan | Barry Macollum | Herbert Weissbach |
| Tullio | Tami Mauriello | Hans Emons |
| Big Mac | James Westerfield | Wolfgang Eichberger |
Reviews
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Contemporary critics have been almost consistently positive about Kazan's film. Variety praised the achievements of all leading actors, particularly Brando, who delivered "a spectacular performance and a fascinating, multi-faceted performance". Variety only made cautious criticism of the finale: "The climax when Brando, who was previously knocked out almost unconscious, gets up and leads the dock workers to their next job [...] there is a lack of persuasiveness." A. H. Weiler from the New York Times came to a similar résumé: “Despite its happy ending, its penchant for preaching and its somewhat lacquered depiction of some facets of the conflict and worry-filled life in the harbor district, Die Faust im Nacken is filmmaking of rare and special quality. [...] such a violent and indelible film document about man's inhumane behavior towards his neighbor like no other this year. "
On the other hand, John Howard Lawson , who, unlike Kazan and Schulberg, refused to work with the HUAC and was sentenced to jail for a long time, did not find a job in Hollywood, a damning verdict on the film . In the Hollywood Review, he criticized: “What we see on screen is not part of reality, but its total distortion [...] few Americans would agree that ordinary citizens and the working class in particular live and work in a climate of horror and violence . ”The film proves“ the influence of McCarthyism on American film ”and represents a piece of“ anti-democratic, anti-working class and inhuman propaganda ”.
The critic and later filmmaker Lindsay Anderson described the finale of the film in British Sight & Sound as "subliminally (or subconsciously) fascist". The intoxicated dockworkers, according to Anderson, would turn from one oppressor (Friendly) to the potential next oppressor (Terry Malloy) without having experienced anything “like a liberation”. The ending allows only two interpretations, as "hopeless and brutally ironic" or "all along the line contemptible", since it "pretends idealism but in reality offers no dignity, joy or love". The film does not provide an explanation for the oppressive conditions.
The German Spiegel , on the other hand, expressed itself positively about the film: “For the first time a film director succeeded in creating a realistic and therefore brutal picture of the practices of the dockers' union [...] The film avoids the usual simplifications and [...] convinces in a more subtle way that Faith and decency can sometimes overcome poverty and ignorance. ” Die Zeit praised Brando's performance and Kazan's direction, who“ turned the sensational story into hard social criticism ”and created a“ harbor film with no wrong tone and no usual pathetic ”. Catholic film critics called Kazan a “master director” and his film “artistically and ethically valuable”.
Over the years, the judgment of the film critics solidified. Roger Ebert noted in 1999: “The story doesn't seem so fresh today, the fight against corruption and the love story correspond to traditional film conventions. But the acting and the most prominent dialogue passages have a force that has lost nothing. ”Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader criticized the film as“ pretentious in places ”and“ high-handed ”in view of Kazan's and Schulberg's HUAC collaboration, but are Brando, Eva Marie Saint , Malden and Cobb "as good as ever". The London Time Out Film Guide criticized the religious symbolism and the "shameful" plea for informers, but found the film to be "powerful" and "electrifying".
The film also enjoys classic status in Germany. The lexicon of international film sums it up: “The dramatic film, showered with Oscars [...] set a school in the cinema of realism. Kazan paid great attention to milieu and atmosphere, led his actors to gripping performances and did not shy away from strong social pathos. "The lexicon" Films on TV "wrote that Kazan told his story" in hard black and white, saturated with milieu, as a socio thriller of the most exciting Kind; with an unforgettable brando ”.
Awards (selection)
- Oscar 1955
Prize winners:
- Best movie
- Best Actor: Marlon Brando
- Best Supporting Actress: Eva Marie Saint
- Best director: Elia Kazan
- Best script: Budd Schulberg
- Best production design (black and white): Richard Day
- Best camera (black and white): Boris Kaufman
- Best editing: Gene Milford
Nominations:
- Best Supporting Actor: Lee J. Cobb , Karl Malden , Rod Steiger
- Best score: Leonard Bernstein
- Golden Globe Awards 1955
- Best movie
- Best director
- Best Actor: Marlon Brando
- Best camera
- Best movie
- Best director
- Best Actor: Marlon Brando
- Silver lion
In 1989, The Fist on the Neck was listed as "Culturally, Historically, or Aesthetically Significant" in the National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress .
The film received the following awards in surveys conducted by the American Film Institute:
- 1998: 8th place of the "100 Movies - The 100 best American films of all time" (2007: 19th place)
- 2003: Terry Malloy, portrayed by Marlon Brando, made it to number 23 among the "100 Heroes & Villains - The 100 greatest heroes and villains of American film"
- 2005: The line spoken by Brando “You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. ”(“ You don't understand! I could have become something, at least a great boxer. And what have I become? A mean rascal. ”) 3rd place in the "100 Movie Quotes - The 100 best movie quotes from US films of all time"
- Predicate "valuable"
In 1954, the Wiesbaden film evaluation agency refused the film a rating. The distributor Columbia successfully appealed the decision, and the film received a "valuable" rating in the second instance.
literature
- Malcolm Johnson: Crime on the Labor Front. McGraw-Hill, New York 1950 (book first edition of the article series Crime on the Water Front ).
- Malcolm Johnson: On the Waterfront. Chamberlain Bros., New York 2005.
- Budd Schulberg: The fist on the neck. Roman (Original title: On the Waterfront ). German by Werner Balusch. Full paperback edition. Droemer Knaur, Munich approx. 1986, ISBN 3-426-01341-X .
- Hans-Jürgen Kubiak: The Oscar Films. The best films from 1927/28 to 2004. The best non-English language films from 1947 to 2004. The best animated films from 2001 to 2004 . Schüren, Marburg 2005, ISBN 3-89472-386-6 .
Web links
- On the Waterfront in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Review on Filmzentrale.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Die Faust im Nacken . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 8106 / V).
- ^ A b Peter Lev: History of the American Cinema: The Fifties. Transforming the Screen 1950-1959. University of California Press, 2006, pp. 241-242.
- ↑ a b Virginia Wright Wexman: Masculinity in Crisis: method acting in Hollywood. In: Pamela Robertson Wojcik: Movie Acting. The Film Reader. Routledge, New York & London 2004, p. 132.
- ↑ a b Robert Siodmak, Hans C. Blumenberg (Ed.): Between Berlin and Hollywood. Memories of a great film director. Herbig, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-8004-0892-9 , pp. 171-174.
- ^ A b Joseph Greco: The File on Robert Siodmak in Hollywood, 1941–1951. Dissertation.com, 1999, ISBN 1-58112-081-8 , pp. 162-163.
- ↑ Kate Taylor: Death of a Friendship, Birth of a Play , The New York Times, January 5, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013.
- ↑ a b Lyn Gardner: Two views on snitching: from the bridge and the waterfront , The Guardian , online February 16, 2009, accessed January 8, 2013.
- ↑ Martin Gottfried: Arthur Miller: His Life And Work. Da Capo Press, Cambridge (MA) 2004, pp. 230-231.
- ^ A b c d Brian Neve: Film and Politics in America. A social tradition. Routledge, Oxon, 1992, pp. 192-195.
- ↑ a b Patricia Bosworth : Marlon Brando. Open Road Integrated Media, New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4532-4502-6 , Chapter 9 (no pagination).
- ^ Victor S. Navasky: Naming Names. Hill and Wang / Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, New York 2003, p. 209.
- ^ Anthony Giardina: Karl Malden and Budd Schulberg: Naming Names , The New York Times, December 23, 2009, accessed January 8, 2013.
- ↑ In 1950 the average budget for a Hollywood production was around 1 million dollars, cf. Joel W. Finler: The Hollywood Story. 3. Edition. Wallflower, London / New York, 2003.
- ^ Sarah Casey Benyahia, Freddie Gaffney, John White: AS Film Studies: The Essential Introduction. Routledge, Oxon / New York 2006, p. 127.
- ↑ a b The fist in the neck in the Internet Movie Database .
- ↑ a b The fist in the neck in the lexicon of international films .
- ^ Filmlexikon.de and Spiegel.de .
- ↑ Thomas Bräutigam: Lexicon of film and television synchronization. More than 2000 films and series with their German voice actors etc. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-289-X , p. 136.
- ↑ The fist in the neck in Arne Kaul's synchronous database ( Memento of the original from December 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 2, 2007.
- ↑ Die Faust im Nacken in the German synchronous index , accessed on December 2, 2007.
- ↑ a b rottentomatoes.com at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on September 20, 2014.
- ↑ a b metacritic.com at Metacritic , accessed on September 20, 2014.
- ^ "Under Elia Kazan's direction, Marlon Brando puts on a spectacular show, giving a fascinating, multi-faceted performance [...] A part of" Waterfront "looks designed for grandstand cheers. This is the climax where Brando, although beaten almost to unconsciousness, manages to rise and lead the longshoremen to a pier job that means the end of Cobb's cutthroat reign. This is lacking in conviction. ”- Review in Variety from 1954 (without specifying the date), accessed on January 9, 2013.
- ↑ "A small but obviously dedicated group of realists has forged artistry, anger and some horrible truths into" On the Waterfront, "as violent and indelible a film record of man's inhumanity to man as has come to light this year. [...] Despite its happy ending; its preachments and a somewhat slick approach to some of the facets of dockside strife and tribulations, "On the Waterfront" is moviemaking of a rare and high order. "- Review by AH Weiler in The New York Times, July 29, 1954, accessed on January 9, 2013.
- ^ "What we see on the screen is not a segment of reality; it is a total distortion. [...] Few Americans would agree that ordinary citizens and especially the working class live and work in a climate of terror and brutality [...] On the Waterfront should serve as a warning that it is unwise to underestimate the influences of McCarthyism in American film production or to effectively discount the effectiveness of skillfully contrived anti-democratic, anti-labor, anti-human propaganda. ”- John Howard Lawson: Film Critique in Hollywood Review, November – December 1954.
- ↑ "An exasperated Lindsay Anderson blasted the film's final scene as" implicitly (if unconsciously) Fascist. "[...] He was most disturbed that the ignorant and befuddled longshoremen transferred loyalties so easily from one oppressor (Johnny Friendly) to another potential oppressor ( Terry Malloy) without experiencing some "sense of liberation." [...] Aroused and confused over the ambivalent message, Anderson insisted that the final scene could be taken in only "two ways: as hopelessly, savagely ironic; or as fundamentally contemptuous, pretending to idealism but in reality without either grace, or joy, or love. "Anderson noticed correctly that the actual conditions which created the oppressive" system "were missing [...]" - Kenneth Hey: Ambivalence as a Theme in "On the Waterfront" (1954): An Interdisciplinary Approach to Film Study , in American Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 5 (Winter 1979), special issue: Film and American Studies, The Johns Hopkins University Press 1979, p. 666 –696, with excerpts from: Lindsay Anderson: The Last Sequence of "On the Waterfront" in Sight & Sound No. 24, January – March 1955, pp. 127–130.
- ↑ Review in Der Spiegel No. 35/1955 from August 25, 1955, accessed on January 9, 2013.
- ↑ Review in Die Zeit No. 52/1954 of December 30, 1954, accessed on January 9, 2013.
- ↑ 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958 . Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism. 3. Edition. Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 110.
- ↑ "Today the story no longer seems as fresh; Both the fight against corruption and the romance fall well within ancient movie conventions. But the acting and the best dialogue passages have an impact that has not dimmed […] ”- Review by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times of March 21, 1999, accessed on January 9, 2013.
- ↑ Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum in Chicago Reader on February 17, 2007, accessed January 9, 2013.
- ↑ "[...] powerful stuff. It is undermined, however, by both the religious symbolism […] and the embarrassing special pleading on behalf of informers […] Politics apart, though, it's pretty electrifying. ”- Review ( Memento of the original from November 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Geoff Andrew in the Time Out Film Guide, Seventh Edition 1999. Penguin, London 1998, accessed January 9, 2013.
- ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier, Berndt Schulz: Lexicon "Films on Television" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 221.
- ↑ Communication in Der Spiegel No. 1/1955 of January 1, 1955, accessed on January 8, 2013.
