The Outsiders (film)

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Movie
German title The outsiders
Original title The Outsiders
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1983
length 87 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Francis Ford Coppola
script Kathleen Rowell
production Gray Frederickson ,
Fred Roos
music Carmine Coppola
camera Stephen H. Burum
cut Anne Goursaud
occupation

The Outsiders (AKA: The Outsider ) is an American film drama by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983. The plot is based on the eponymous novel The Outsiders by SE Hinton from the year 1967th

action

Tulsa , mid-1960s: 14-year-old pony boy Curtis lives with older brothers Darrel and Sodapop in a shabby house on the outskirts. Since the death of the parents, the responsibility rests on the eldest brother Darrel, who wants to keep the family together and is therefore very strict with Ponyboy. The brothers are members of the youth gang "The Greasers", who attract attention with their preference for skirt, leather clothes and longer hair and who come from socially disadvantaged families. They often get into quarrels with other gangs, in particular “The Socs” (pronounced: [soshus]) who come from more affluent backgrounds.

Dallas "Dally" Winston, a recently released greaser, speaks to two girls in a drive-in theater: Cherry and Marcia, who turn him away. Ponyboy Curtis and Johnny Cade, who are among the youngest greasers, talk to the two girls, who the two boys find likeable. Cherry and Marcia then meet their long-term friends, the Socs, who they bring home in a car and are angry about their acquaintance with the Greasers. At night, Ponyboy and Johnny are provoked by a group of drunk Socs in a park. Pony is almost drowned, and under these circumstances Johnny Bob stabs Sheldon, the leader of the Socs, to death.

On the advice of Dallas, Ponyboy and Johnny decide to flee to a church near Windrixville and hide there. Here they read Gone with the Wind together and talk intensively about what characterizes life for them and what they hope for from it. When they return from a short trip, Dallas, Johnny and Ponyboy see a fire burning in the ruined church where they previously smoked cigarettes. They save the children who are there on a school trip. Johnny is unfortunately hit by a falling wooden beam and only saved at the last second by Dallas Winston. Johnny is admitted to a hospital seriously injured, Ponyboy and Dallas get away with smoke inhalation and minor burns . Meanwhile, a fight breaks out between the gangs, which the "Greasers" win.

Dallas and Ponyboy immediately tell Johnny about this victory in the hospital, but he doesn't want to hear anything more about such fights and dies shortly afterwards. Dallas is desperate because Johnny was the only person he really took dear to his heart. He finally goes nuts, threatens the owner of a magazine shop with an unloaded pistol, flees and wants to meet Ponyboy and his brothers in the park, but is caught there by the police. The suicidal Dallas aims at police officers with his unloaded pistol, because he does not want to fall into the hands of the police alive, and is shot in front of his friends.

Ponyboy is brought to justice because of the death of Bob Sheldon, but - also thanks to the fair statements of the Socs - acquitted as innocent and is allowed to stay with his brothers. Some calm has returned between the warring groups, but the gap remains. While leafing through Johnny's edition of Gone With the Wind , Ponyboy notices a letter from him, in which he declares that the rescue of the children is the right decision, since they would have more chances in their lives than him anyway. Ponyboy pensively writes a school report about his experiences.

backgrounds

In 1967 the book The Outsiders was published by SE Hinton , who was only 19 years old at the time , and she also processed autobiographical elements in it. Hinton's book is still a long-seller, especially in the USA, and is a frequent part of school lessons. Francis Ford Coppola found the book through a letter from Jo Ellen Misakian, a school librarian in Fresno , California , in 1980. Since The Outsiders was often the only book that boys in particular were interested in at school, she wrote to Coppola on behalf of the seventh and eighth graders of her school that the book should be made into a film. She wrote to this director because he had just produced the successful film adaptation of a book for young people with The Black Stallion (1979). Coppola then read The Outsiders and was of the opinion that the plot had the potential to be a good movie.

The house used for the film is at 731 Curtis Brothers Lane in Tulsa. Today it houses a museum about The Outsiders

Filming took place between March and May 1982 in Tulsa, the setting of Hinton's novel. Production costs were estimated at 10 million US dollars . Although a good part of the cast would later become very well known, Matt Dillon was the only really famous name when the film was released. While filming, some of the young actors played many pranks on other people involved in the film.

Coppola himself described the film, which had a distinctly commercial character than some of his previous films, as " a" Gone with the Wind "for 14 year old girls” . The book Gone with the Wind occupies an important position in the film, and some scenes also refer to the classic film (the youngsters, like Scarlett and their father, stand in the golden to orange light of the evening sun several times). While filming, Coppola was working with SE Hinton on the script for Rumble Fish , also based on a book by Hintons. Rumble Fish started just a few weeks after the Outsiders finished shooting , sometimes with the same members of the film crew and cast. The expressionist and noir-like staged Rumble Fish is therefore often compared to The Outsiders as a “shadow twin” .

Different versions

The distributor of the film, Warner Brothers, had the film shortened to around 90 minutes against Coppola's request, because it was believed that otherwise it would be too long for the relatively young target group.

In 2005, a re-cut version, subtitled The Complete Novel , was released, co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola and Kim Aubry . A major reason for the release of the new version was for Coppola to adapt the film to the book by Susan Eloise Hinton and thus to complete the story, and also to capture the characters more precisely. At 113 minutes, the new version is 22 minutes longer than the theatrical version from 1983. The biggest addition is the opening scene, which is missing in the movie, in which Ponyboy comes out of a cinema and is followed and ambushed by a group of Socs, along with the following scenes the house of the Curtis brothers. Changes were also made to the soundtrack: It now also includes pieces by Elvis Presley that Coppola could not accommodate in the old version.

The new version was released in Germany in November 2011 (DVD and Blu-Ray, each as a 2-disc edition). Inserted or extended scenes are left in the English original language with German subtitles. On August 12, 2012, the Franco-German culture channel Arte showed the completely newly dubbed long version on TV for the first time. The old, shorter version was released on DVD in Spain under the title Rebeldes and includes both the Spanish and the English soundtrack.

Reviews

The lexicon of international film is: Unmistakably tied to the James Dean myth, the film conjures up memories of the past, with Coppola creating both routine and virtuoso lyrical scenes that occasionally deliberately seek proximity to nostalgic kitsch. The result is an unusual atmosphere of great intensity and density, which forces a distancing attitude and pleads for a reflective reason that overcomes opposites.

On the occasion of the presentation of the new version, Manohla Dargis wrote in the New York Times in 2005 that the film had received neutral and even negative reviews when it was released in 1983. For example, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby called The Outsider " a golden melodrama about acne and fear."

Roger Ebert criticized in the Chicago Sun-Times that the director was so fixated on his ideas of a certain film "look" of the 1950s ( "some sort of fixation on the contrived Hollywood sound stage look of the 1950s" ) that the characters appear on the canvas as if in framed paintings ( "seems so hung up with his notions of a particular movie" look ", with his perfectionistic lighting and framing and composition, that the characters wind up like pictures, framed and hanging on the screen" ) . For Matt Dillon, for example, who convincingly embodied a three-dimensional character in the film adaptation of the Hinton novel Tex , little more remains to be done than the usual ... because they do not know what they are doing ( "In" Tex "he played a three- dimensional character, complicated and convincing. In "The Outsiders", he's required to do little more than standard "Rebel Without a Cause" behavior. " ). Ebert describes the film as a style exercise that lacks life and spontaneity ( "There's not much life in this movie, or spontaneity. It's a stylistic exercise." ).

Even the mirror criticized: "If even the most persistent avant-garde Hollywood now set to what the industry has recognized as a self-goers: the teen movie? But Coppola wouldn't be who he is if he didn't try to exaggerate the genre, to create an epic where a novella would be more appropriate. Constantly on the lookout for American myths ” , all “ classics of youth nostalgia ”are cited here unrestrainedly , from ... because they don't know what they are doing and West Side Story , about American graffiti and The Last Picture Show , however, according to the reviewer, too "Pointless and ineffective" . Coppola staged the youth book bestseller from 1967 "as if in love with one's own lost youth, full of calculated sentimentality and regardless of the fact that unemployment now takes up more space in the lives of young people than gang romance." On the social dimension inherent in the story, Barbara von Jhering states that Coppola is not interested, he is interested in "mythologizing a topic that has long been treated better."

Awards

Francis Ford Coppola was nominated for a prize at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1983 . C. Thomas Howell won the 1984 Young Artist Award , Best Family Film and Diane Lane were nominated for the Young Artist Award.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susan King, Susan King: 'The Outsiders' Stays Gold at 35: Inside Coppola's Crafty Methods and Stars' Crazy Pranks. In: Variety. March 23, 2018, accessed July 31, 2020 .
  2. ↑ How The Outsiders Film Was Made. Retrieved July 31, 2020 (American English).
  3. ↑ 'The Outsiders': THR's 1983 Review. Accessed July 31, 2020 (English).
  4. ↑ Susan King, Susan King: 'The Outsiders' Stays Gold at 35: Inside Coppola's Crafty Methods and Stars' Crazy Pranks. In: Variety. March 23, 2018, accessed July 31, 2020 .
  5. ^ A b Coppola Pays a Return Visit to His "Gone with the Wind" for Teenagers , The New York Times , September 9, 2005
  6. ↑ Bryn Mawr Film Institute: New Illusion: THE OUTSIDERS, RUMBLE FISH, and Coppola in the early '80s. August 10, 2018, accessed on July 31, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Bryn Mawr Film Institute: New Illusion: THE OUTSIDERS, RUMBLE FISH, and Coppola in the early '80s. August 10, 2018, accessed on July 31, 2020 .
  8. ↑ The Outsiders. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed May 25, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  9. ↑ a b Death and Dreams , Der Spiegel 26/1983, June 27, 1983
  10. ^ The Outsiders , Chicago Sun-Times , March 25, 1983