Family grave
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Family grave |
| Original title | Family plot |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 115 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 14 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Hitchcock |
| script | Ernest Lehman |
| production | Alfred Hitchcock |
| music | John Williams |
| camera | Leonard J. South |
| cut | J. Terry Williams |
| occupation | |
| |
Familiengrab (Original Title: Family Plot) is an American thriller comedy directed by Alfred Hitchcock from 1976 . Hitchcock's last film was based on the novel On the Trail (The Rainbird Pattern) by Victor Canning .
action
George Lumley makes a living as a taxi driver and supports his friend Blanche Tyler, an alleged spiritualist , by providing her with information that she uses to convince her clients. The rich old widow Julia Rainbird promises 10,000 Blanche dollars when she finds her nephew, who for many years ago after a family scandal adoption had been released and is now to be used as the rightful heir.
At the same time, the jeweler Arthur Adamson and his girlfriend Fran commit a series of ingenious kidnappings for ransom made of high-quality diamonds that Adamson hides in the chandelier of his house.
George finds out that the boy was adopted by the childless Shoebridge couple, who were friends with the Rainbirds' chauffeur at the time. However, the family was killed in a fire in 1950. At the family grave, George notices that the tombstone of the then 17-year-old boy Edward is much less weathered. During his investigation, he finds out that the boy's body was never found and that the gas station attendant Joseph Maloney picked up the tombstone in 1965.
George poses as a lawyer and asks Maloney about Eddie Shoebridge, but is turned away. Maloney notes the license plate number and informs Adamson. It turns out that Adamson is the boy we're looking for. Maloney had set fire to the house on his behalf to murder the adoptive parents. Eddie then assumed a new identity.
Just as George is about to question the bishop, who at the time had baptized the boy as the village pastor, Arthur and Fran kidnap the boy from the service. Confused by George's presence, the jeweler assumes that the couple is after him because of the kidnappings, and orders his friend Maloney to kill them.
Maloney makes an appointment with George and Blanche in a rest house on a mountain road, but does not appear in the restaurant, but manipulates their car in the parking lot. On the return journey, the accelerator pedal jams and the brakes fall out. After a dramatic drive, George is able to bring the car to a stop. When they are on foot, Maloney drives by and claims to have been late. George doesn't believe him and sends him away. Maloney drives away, but turns again and tries to run the couple over. However, he has to avoid an oncoming car and falls into a ravine.
At the funeral, George learns from Maloney's widow that Eddie Shoebridge now calls himself Arthur Adamson. Blanche now rattles all "A. Adamson ”. When she found out in the jewelry store that the owner could be the heir she was looking for according to age, she went to see him at home. On the way there she leaves the address with a hotel porter friend. He should give the address to George, who is still on a long journey.
When Blanche arrives, the kidnappers have just stunned the bishop to hand over the ransom and stowed it in the car. Blanche explains why she's looking for Adamson. Then Fran sees a piece of the bishop's cassock stuck in the car door. When she carefully opens the door to bring the treacherous substance inside the car, the bishop falls out.
As an unwanted witness, Blanche is now drugged and taken to the hidden back room where the kidnapping victims were housed. While the kidnappers are gone, George arrives at the address, sees Blanche's car, but meets no one. Looking for an entrance, he climbs through the garage window. When the kidnappers return, he sneaks after Arthur and discovers the hiding place. Blanche has come to there in the meantime, but continues to pretend to be unconscious.
The jeweler prepares Blanche's alleged suicide through car exhaust. When the kidnappers want to get her, George and Blanche can lock her up in the hiding place. Then Blanche seems to walk clairvoyantly in a trance to the chandelier in which the diamonds are hidden - and then winks at the viewer. When the kidnappers brought the supposedly drugged woman to the hiding place, Adamson had mentioned that the diamonds were hidden there.
backgrounds
Hitchcock, who in his films always attached great importance to the fact that his actors strictly adhered to the wording of the script, gave the actors in this film the freedom to improvise and speak their own dialogues.
The Bates Ave street sign can be seen in the film . The Bates Motel was the location of the 1960 Hitchcock film Psycho .
Hitchcock was considered to be very careful with the script and camera angles. But some mistakes have crept into the family grave . In one scene, for example, George picks up a ketchup bottle and opens it. In the next picture the bottle is closed again on the table and is picked up and opened again by George.
Another mistake: After the dramatic drive with the manipulated brakes and the accelerator pedal, Blanche's car is forcibly brought to a standstill off the mountain road by George, ending up on its side and being badly damaged. A short time later, Blanche drives to Arthur Adamson in the same, but completely undamaged, car.
Cameo : Hitchcock's silhouette can be seen behind the registrar's door (births and deaths).
Reviews
Peter Buchka rated the film in the Süddeutsche Zeitung against the background that "Hitchcock's films [...] would mature with everyone watching". This also applies to the family grave , because this too “left a remnant of dissatisfaction”, so that even after seeing Hitchcock for a second time, “the optically disguised variety of meanings cannot be fully understood”. Buchka also points out that Hitchcock made clear references to his earlier films, although the director "once proclaimed as the top maxim that repetition and cliché were the end of all creative work". For the critic, the question arises, "whether such repetition can only be regarded as an ironic quotation or whether it must also be credited to the declining imagination of old age". Hitchcock also staged the film in an “almost provocatively classic way”: He used the cut-counter-cut process as if “there had been no more development” in the past 40 years.
For Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz , on the other hand , family grave is a "[i] ronically quoting their own virtuoso work from the old master of suspense (...)". (Rating: 3 stars = very good)
Michael Schwarze complains in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that "the thriller atmosphere [...] does not really set in": "The ironic-sarcastic undertone of the film is too obvious to expect the usual catharsis to end up" . For him, Familiengrab is “an old work in which Hitchcock once again lets his more private feelings of pleasure and displeasure run free” and a film that is “full of bizarre ideas and black humor”.
In the lexicon of the crime film , Meinolf Zurhorst first refers to the "ambiguity of the original 'Family Plot' (which means not only grave, but above all intrigue or conspiracy, i.e. double game)", which the German translation does not adequately reproduce. He judges: "With casual nonchalance, he once again demonstrated the masterful craftsmanship of his staging, played an ambiguous and above all humorous game with his characters and with the expectations of the audience".
For tz München , the film is a “cleverly constructed crime mystery parody whose ludicrous plot is just a loose framework on which the director packs his playful strychnine irony”.
Leonard Maltin gave Familiengrab 2½ out of 4 possible stars in his Movie & Video Guide and called the film “moderately entertaining, but never believable”.
Awards
1977: Edgar for the best film to Ernest Lehman (screenplay)
Nomination for Barbara Harris
literature
- Victor Canning : On the trail (OT: The Rainbird Pattern) . Günther, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-7746-0105-4
Web links
- Family grave in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Family grave atrotten tomatoes(English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for family grave . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2008 (PDF; test number: 48 443 DVD).
- ↑ Source: IMDb (see web links)
- ^ Peter Buchka: Games with quotations and chance . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , 11/12. September 1976, p. 12.
- ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier / Berndt Schulz : Lexicon "Films on TV" (expanded new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 219.
- ↑ Michael Schwarze : Hitchcock's "Family Grave": An old work full of black humor . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 14, 1976, p. 23.
- ^ Meinolf Zurhorst : Lexikon des Kriminalfilms , Munich 1985, p. 111.