An enemy of the people
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | An enemy of the people |
| Original title | To Enemy of the People |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1977 or 1978 |
| length | 103 (German version), 90 (US version) minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | George Schaefer |
| script | Alexander Jacobs |
| production | George Schaefer |
| music | Leonard Rosenman |
| camera | Paul Lohmann |
| cut | Sheldon Kahn |
| occupation | |
| |
An Enemy of the People is an American film adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's 1882 play An Enemy of the People , edited by Arthur Miller , which was made in 1976 and released somewhat late in 1978 in the United States . Hollywood star Steve McQueen , who specializes in action fabrics, played the leading role . Directed by George Schaefer .
action
The film largely sticks to Miller's adaptation of Ibsen's original.
Dr. med. Thomas Stockmann is a doctor with his own practice in a small Norwegian town. He is married to Catherine and has a daughter who has just come of age with Petra and two adolescent sons with Morton and Ejlif. Thomas' ambitious brother Peter, who, as the town's mayor, determines the town's economic fortunes, wants to make the town big as a health resort. But Thomas examines the so-called "healing spring" and finds out that the water is contaminated due to the sewage that has been fed in. Thanks to the healing spring, however, the place has only become wealthy. Nobody is on Dr. Stockmann's findings are interested, as they pose a great threat to prosperity. The decision-makers and investors, like Peter Stockmann, are now opposing the doctor. There is a lot of money at stake, and Thomas Stockmann soon begins to be called an enemy of the people.
The hostility to which the honest and incorruptible medical professional is exposed is escalating. Thomas wants to do educational work and begins to inform everyone about the dangers of the polluted water. But the vast majority of the place doesn't want to know about it; The fear that profitable benefices might be lost is far too great. Finally, the doctor gives up, and so Dr. Stockmann made the decision to return with his family to his former place of work in the other city from which he came. The minister responsible intervenes and takes Stockmann's side. As a result, the “enemy of the people” that was seen in him has been fully rehabilitated. Suddenly you're back behind him in town. Stockmann's reform proposals are implemented.
Production notes and trivia
The cast of McQueen in the title role met with great astonishment both nationally and internationally. After his mega-success Flammendes Inferno (1974) with film partner Paul Newman , McQueen was tired of the eternal action films and was looking for an acting demanding and more intellectual material. Over the next two years, the actor, who was considered Hollywood's biggest box office guarantor in the mid-1970s, turned down one role after another. There were usually two reasons for this: McQueen made absurdly high fee demands in some cases, and he also wanted to see his wife Ali MacGraw, who is regarded as less talented, also cast in his future films .
After all, one day the classic, literary theater material Ein Volksfeind was up for discussion. McQueen promised his participation for a remuneration that was almost symbolic for his fee and also provided the financing as a production manager (so-called executive producer). As motivation for the film adaptation of Ibsen material the star on the record were: "The main reason why I made the film was not to earn dollars, but also to make some times something I could believe." An Enemy of the Volkes was created very cheaply from August 30, 1976 and was ready for the premiere in the spring of 1977. Nevertheless, it did not come to that, because the distribution of Warner Bros. should have been at a loss as to how to promote such a word-heavy McQueen film in which the star was barely recognizable due to his beard and hairstyle.
The German premiere was scheduled for October 28, 1977, which, if it had happened, would probably have been the world premiere. The first secured German presentation of Ein Feind des Volkes was the television broadcast on September 13, 1999 on RTL 2 . In the United States, there was a limited performance on March 17, 1978 in a few select college cities. The US version was shortened by almost a quarter of an hour compared to the German TV premiere in 1999. However, this streamlined version was not well received either, whereupon the October 1978 mass start in the United States was canceled.
Eugène Lourié designed the film structures , Noel Taylor designed the costumes. Philip L. Parslow took over the production management.
Reviews
The reviews were consistently negative; expectations corresponded too little with the very unusual cast of the male lead. Accordingly, the fans of McQueen's action film successes consistently stayed away from the few cinemas in which An Enemy of the People were shown.
"In 1976 McQueen joined the central part of Dr. Stockmann in front of the camera again in a film adaptation of Ibsen's 'Ein Volksfeind', which was as ambitious as it was unsuccessful. The attempt to gain recognition from the trade press and the public as a serious, versatile character interpreter failed completely. "
In the lexicon of international film it says: "Disappointing (television) film adaptation [sic!] Of the play Der Volksfeind" by Henrik Ibsen, which mainly suffers from the complete miscast of the main character. "
Leonard Maltin found that the film was on the one hand a "sincere, cumbersome effort of love service", on the other hand it was one of McQueen's "better films of his final period".
Web links
- An enemy of the people in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 5, p. 208
- ↑ a b Cinema , Issue 1, September 1977, p. 51
- ↑ cit. n. Halliwell's Film Guide, p. 316. In the original: "The main thing I was shooting for was not to make some bucks but to have something I could believe in."
- ↑ IMDb is about two and a half million dollars, but the final costs are said to have increased to over $ 3 million
- ↑ McQueen to Star in 'An Enemy' Kilday, Gregg. Article in The Los Angeles Times , Aug. 2, 1976
- ↑ Aljean Harmetz: Steve McQueen Goes for Ibsen - But Does not Hollywood. Article in The New York Times, April 15, 1979
- ↑ An enemy of the people. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 1, 2019 .
- ^ Leonard Maltin: Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 388