The big orgy
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The big orgy |
| Original title | Vizi privati, public virtu |
| Country of production | Italy , Yugoslavia |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 104 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Miklós Jancsó |
| script | Giovanna Gagliardo |
| production |
Giancarlo Marchetti Monica Venturini |
| music | Francesco De Masi |
| camera | Tomislav Pinter |
| cut | Roberto Perpignani |
| occupation | |
| |
The feature film The Great Orgy (1976) by the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó was made as an Italian-Yugoslav co-production with a mixed cast and staff in Yugoslavia. In German, the original title Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù means something like "private vice, public virtue". Stylistically, the film is more conventional than Jancsó's main works. This can be seen in the editing, among other things, because the several minute long shots for which Jancsó was known are not included. The political dimension of the subject has also been pushed into the background. The plot is a very free interpretation of the unresolved Mayerling affair of 1889, in which Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary and his lover Mary von Vetsera were killed.
action
The Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, the young Crown Prince Rudolf, leads a frivolous life in a remote, sunny villa. He loves bourgeois Sofia improperly, lolls naked in the garden, rolls around in haystacks with the older servant Therese and surrounds himself with a bizarre entourage. His father, the Kaiser, has just had many of his like-minded colleagues arrested. He spared the son to avoid a scandal. Rudolf hatches a plan to overthrow his father from the throne.
He invites the daughters and sons of the most influential families in the empire to a party in the villa. He gives the guests plenty of champagne to drink, which is mixed with a disinhibiting powder. While a Hungarian folk music group is playing in the garden, the young people dance until they drop, largely taking off their clothes. The orgy continues at night inside the villa. Rudolf has the scenes photographed and tries to use the material to blackmail his father. The Emperor's answer is negative; he sends a commando devoted to him to the villa, which shoots the son and his lover. As an official explanation of the incident, you construct that, for amorous motives, Rudolf first killed Sofia and then himself.
background
The day after the premiere, an Italian public prosecutor inspected the film. Jancsó was sentenced to four months in prison, but was acquitted a few months later on appeal because experts had determined that the film was not pornography but art. The work made it to the cinemas again and made three times the cost in six months.
criticism
In 1977, the Catholic film service assumed Jancsó's intention to shed a critical light on early capitalism: “As a viewer, of course, it is very difficult to bring to light the critical core of the disagreeable matter; because with the same detail with which he once staged the ritual of being at the mercy, Janscó now lingers in inappropriately picturesque shots on the seemingly endless faunal dances of naked men and women. ”The film should be protected from the brazen synchronization of the German distribution who gave him dialogues like in a cheap sex movie. In his book on Hungarian film history, Burns (1996) said: “The audience success of this film is undoubtedly related to its elaborate, lustful, and varied display of sexual pleasure. And rightly so, because the film is a hymn of praise for sensual delights, photographed in splendid colors and warm tones, conjured up with a fresh spontaneity that is rarely matched in the cinema. ”In a similar publication, Jeancolas (1989) stated that Contrary to Jancsó's earlier works, nudity no longer has an allegorical meaning, it is “deliberately erotic, on the verge of soft porn”. Malcolm spoke of “a kind of bitter erotica” in an article on Jancsó (2003).
A German DVD was released in 2012. On this occasion, Cinema called the work a “thoroughly composed art cinema provocation”. Sascha Westphal from epd Film rejected the view that had been prevalent for decades as quasi-pornography. The “anarchist vision, created in“ grandiose pictures flooded with magical light ”, remains a thorn in the flesh of every authoritarian society.” Michael Kienzl from critic.de argued similarly: “Sex, but also the well-groomed lazing around as a refusal to participate in a war Participation is a revolutionary means here, a subversive attack on the hypocritical, puritanical generation of parents. ”In what is perhaps not the best of Jancsó's films,“ art cinema and soft porn are as close to one another ”as it rarely happens.
Web links
- The great orgy in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Jean-Pierre Jeancolas: Cinéma hongrois 1963–1988 . Editions du Center national de la recherche scientifique, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-222-04301-8 , 107
- ^ A b Bryan Burns: World cinema: Hungary. Flick Books, Wiltshire 1996, ISBN 0-948911-71-9 , p. 66
- ↑ Miklós Jancsó in conversation with András Gervai: “Making Films Is My Only Pleasure”. An interview with Miklós Jancsó. In: The Hungarian Quarterly, Fall 2001, p. 158
- ^ Film service No. 18/1977: The great orgy . Drawn by "BHR."
- ^ Derek Malcolm, Silent Witness . In: The Guardian , August 14, 2003
- ↑ Cinema No. 6/2012, p. 96, short DVD review
- ^ Sascha Westphal: Revolution in the boudoir . DVD review in epd film No. 9/2012, p. 65
- ↑ Michael Kienzl: The great orgy . Review on critic.de , March 21, 2012