Purgatory of the Vanities (film)

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Movie
German title Purgatory of the vanities
Original title The Bonfire of the Vanities
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1990
length Cinema 125 minutes
DVD: 120 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Brian De Palma
script Michael Cristofer
production Brian De Palma
music Dave Grusin
camera Vilmos Zsigmond
cut David Ray ,
Bill Pankow
occupation

Purgatory of the Vanities (Original title: The Bonfire of the Vanities ) is a film satire from 1990 by the director Brian De Palma and the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe .

action

Sherman McCoy is a successful stockbroker and lives in New York with his wife Judy and daughter Campbell . He considers himself privileged and calls himself a master of the universe ( Master of the Universe ). With Maria Ruskin, a married woman from the southern states , he keeps a secret lover. Sherman's wife suspects his affair, because instead of dialing Maria's number, he dials his wife's number and asks her about Maria.

One evening he picks Maria up from the airport. On the way to their rented apartment they get lost in the car in the Bronx . When Sherman gets out of the car to clear an obstacle that has been placed in the road, two black men approach him. Sherman flees for fear of being mugged. Maria gets behind the wheel and drives away with Sherman in a panic. She runs into one of the two blacks.

The black man who was hit - an 18-year-old named Henry Lamb - is hospitalized for treatment for a broken wrist and then sent back home. The next day, however, he falls into a coma after apparently missing a concussion.

Reverend Bacon, a power-hungry and manipulative preacher from Harlem , makes the case public and a political issue. He enlists the help of Peter Fallow, an alcoholic and unsuccessful reporter who makes the story big in The City Light newspaper .

The Jewish district attorney Abe Weiss is currently campaigning for the office of mayor. He's desperate to try a white man in order to gain the sympathy of black voters, and so the Lamb case comes in handy.

Before going into a coma, Lamb was able to tell his mother the type of vehicle and the first two letters of the license plate. Since, according to the registration office in the district, there are fewer than 200 Mercedes with this combination, Weiss arranges for the police to visit and question all owners. When Sherman is visited by two police officers, he stutters, talks confusedly and finally asks for a lawyer. The police are then certain to have found the culprit.

A deliberate indiscretion made Sherman McCoy's name public, and he was immediately prejudiced by the sensational media. Loud demonstrations broke out in front of Sherman's posh apartment, prompting the other residents of the house to urge Sherman to move out.

When he and his lawyer drive to a demonstration in front of the magistrate, Sherman learns that Maria has left the country with the young artist Filippo Chirazzi. Sherman is arrested and, to his horror, detained at the Bronx Central Guard with common criminals, but released on bail by Judge White on $ 10,000.

Sherman's problems pile up over time: A business he has threaded with bonds worth $ 600 million goes wrong and becomes a total loss, whereupon he loses his job. In addition, his wife is leaving him.

The apartment for Sherman and Maria's lunatic hours is actually Caroline Heftshank's apartment, which Maria sublet expensively and only uses herself for occasional meetings. Caroline was Chirazzi's girlfriend before he ran away with Maria, and Caroline is an acquaintance of Peter Fallow. Out of anger that Chirazzi let her sit, Caroline tells Peter Fallow that Sherman was with Maria and that Maria also drove the car. The intercom in the apartment was bugged and all calls in the apartment were recorded on microcassette. Peter Fallow manages to get the cassette on which you can hear Maria admitting to have driven herself, and sends it to Sherman's lawyer. Fallow meets with Maria's husband Arthur Ruskin under the pretext of wanting to make a story about the successful businessman. After a short conversation and a few cocktails, he suddenly collapses dead.

With the tape, Sherman believes he has already been rehabilitated, but his lawyer explains to him that it is an illegal recording and that it cannot be used in court. However, he advises him to meet again with Maria and to persuade her to confess with a hidden microphone, since he is allowed to record his own conversation. When Sherman meets Maria at her husband's funeral, the plan fails because Maria discovers the hidden recording device.

There is a trial against Sherman. While Maria is interrogated by the deputy district attorney Jed Kramer - whom Maria has now wrapped around her finger - and assigns all blame for the accident to Sherman, the latter switches on his cassette player and plays the illegal recording from the apartment. When Judge White asks Sherman who took this picture and also points out that he is under oath, Sherman lies and asserts that he took the picture himself. Sherman is then acquitted.

Peter Fallow writes a book about the case that has won him numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize .

background

  • Sherman's daughter Campbell McCoy is played by Kirsten Dunst , then 8 years old .
  • The PR woman who accompanies Peter Fallow at the beginning of the film is played by Tom Hanks' wife Rita Wilson .
  • Geraldo Rivera makes a guest appearance as a TV reporter.
  • The opera that Sherman attended is Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart .
  • In the English original, the term WASP is used for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant , in the German version the term was synchronized with Spießer .
  • The cover design of Peter Fallow's book The Real McCoy and the Forgotten Lamb is similar to that of Tom Wolfe's original book The Bonfire of the Vanities from 1987.
  • In the original book, Peter Fallow is English, but American in the film. Judge White is a Jewish white man in the book but black in the film.
  • Filming began on April 16, 1990 and ended on July 27, 1990. The film was shot in New York City and Los Angeles County .
  • It was released in the US on December 21, 1990, in Germany on May 2, 1991. It was first shown on German television on March 7, 1994 on ZDF.

Reviews

“Brian De Palma didn't make the mistake of wanting to film Tom Wolfe's epic cosmos; a book is a painting, with innumerable details and innumerable small, precise lines, whereas a film is a poster with rough outlines, simplifications, bright colors and signals. The film looks at McCoy's fall from the perspective of journalist Fallow. He is the vulture of history who disembowels the victim and thus writes himself in the glory. And the film tries to translate Tom Wolfes epic speed into satirical sharpness. […] Sure, De Palma's means of tackling the American glare, with its eyes and ears painful contrasts and the resulting bad taste, are themselves glaring, loud, tasteless, 'American'. But the film risks something, risks itself; his satirical bite is reminiscent of Kubrick's derisive picture puzzles - how I learned to love the social bomb . A scene like the one in which an old Jewish aviation entrepreneur in a pub literally laughs to death at the stupid Arab Mecca tourists who earn him a golden nose has Swiftsche's format - it is big with malice, hatred, love and grief. Perhaps, so you think, while you see the pictures of an absolutely tasteless funeral while you hear how the dead man's favorite hits are sung in the coffin as a sweet hit medley, maybe the American audience wouldn't like to see themselves in this mirror "

- Hellmuth Karasek - The mirror

“Brian de Palma and his screenwriter Michael Christofer ... have succeeded in tightening the complex panorama of social and political relationships that Tom Wolfe unfolds in over eight hundred pages of a novel without major breaks. The action develops on the screen with the same dynamic that de Palma's camera displays in its long journeys. "

- epd film 5/1991

"Brian de Palma filmed Tom Wolfe's hit novel of the same name in 1990, a bitterly angry social satire on egoism, hypocrisy, vanity and unscrupulous behavior of the top ten thousand in New York in the 80s and the social injustices and prejudices of that time."

- ARD editorial team

“Raven black tragicomedy based on the hit novel by Tom Wolfe, which not only conveys general truths, but also deals with the change in values ​​in the 80s. The subtle entertainment value of the film, which is not convincing in all respects, is increased by two excellent actors. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

The film was nominated in five categories for the Golden Raspberry 1991 : Worst Actress (Melanie Griffith), Worst Director (Brian De Palma), Worst Film (Brian De Palma), Worst Screenplay (Michael Cristofer), and Worst Supporting Actress (Kim Cattrall) .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Film review Will purgatory go out in the cinema?
  2. ↑ Film review Purgatory of the Vanities
  3. ↑ Purgatory of the Vanities. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used