From Hell (film)
From Hell (dt. "From Hell") is a thriller with Johnny Depp in the year 2001 . Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes . The script is based on the comic novel of the same name, From Hell , which is named after a letter that appeared in the context of the Jack the Ripper murders .
action
Police inspector Frederick Abberline worked in Victorian London at the end of the 19th century . He lost his wife and son when he was born and consumed opium (also in the form of laudanum ) in order to get visions of the cases he was working on while intoxicated.
In the summer of 1888, Abberline investigates the murders of several prostitutes in the London borough of Whitechapel , committed by Jack the Ripper , who was named in the course of the film . He meets the prostitute Mary Kelly , who knew the murder victims well because they were friends of hers. Kelly and Abberline get closer.
Various clues show that the murderer must be wealthy and equipped with extensive anatomical knowledge. A Freemason conspiracy , of which Abberline's superior Sir Charles Warren is a member, hinders the investigation. Nevertheless, Abberline finds out that the noble Sir William Gull is behind the murders . He is the personal physician of the royal family and also a member of the Masonic Lodge. Gull wanted to cover up the existence of the legitimate daughter Alice of the heir to the throne Albert Victor with Ann Crook, a woman of lower class, as their children would have been entitled to the English throne. All six of the murdered women were present at the ceremony and therefore could have known Alice's true identity. As an accomplice and punishment for the murders, the Freemasons end up subjecting Gull to a primitive form of lobotomy .
However, instead of the suspected Mary Kelly, a friend from Belgium - Ada - was murdered without the Gull being noticed. To protect Mary from the Masons, Abberline, who realizes Gull's mistake but keeps it under wraps, decides to put an end to his life by overdosing on opium. Mary Kelly, on the other hand, fled to her Irish homeland to raise Alice. In his last vision, Abberline sees Mary Kelly, who lives with the older Alice in a house by the sea. After waking up from the vision, he dies in an opium den . His partner Godley finds him and puts two coins for the ferryman on his eyes, just as Abberline had previously done with the corpse of Annie Chapman .
Reviews
Roger Ebert described the film in the Chicago Sun-Times as a somber cross-section of Victorian society. The film is not aimed at any specific target group and cannot be assigned to a specific genre. The Prisma editorial team missed the "density" and the "meticulous attention to detail" of the comics.
Others
In From Hell , various films, historical figures and facts are quoted. In addition to the victims of Jack the Rippers, whose names and manner of murder (except for the last Ripper murder in the film) correspond to the actual facts, there was also Sir William Gull, who was then personal physician to the royal family.
- Abberline's death in the end, however, is a film drama: the real inspector Abberline died in December 1929.
- In addition, the character of John Merrick , also known as "The Elephant Man", is introduced. Merrick is shown in a corresponding scene of a closed meeting which the inspector also attends. This is an indirect quote from David Lynch's The Elephant Man . In addition, the representation of the elephant man is almost identical to the cinematic model.
- In addition, the elephant man appears in a dream sequence of the inspector in which he walks down an alley in a short fade; the next sequence shows one of the murdered prostitutes. This points out the suspicion that that John Merrick was Jack the Ripper. This was actually suspected at the time, but was not treated as a serious accusation by the police, as Merrick's illness was too limiting for him to bring about such murders. Although Johnny Depp's character experiences this hint in a dream, he does not pursue it and does not deal with it any further.
- In a cut scene, which is included in the DVD from From Hell , the prostitutes and later ripper victims speak of the efforts they make to make ends meet in the poor district; then you can see some of the prostitutes having intercourse in flashbacks. The background music brought in comes from the Stanley Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket .
Awards
- Johnny Depp, Kym Barrett for the costumes and the film as Best Horror Film were nominated for the Saturn Award in 2002.
- Albert and Allen Hughes were nominated for the Black Reel Award in 2002.
- The script was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in 2002.
- Kym Barrett was nominated for the Golden Satellite Award in 2002.
- The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.
background
The thriller was shot in the Czech Republic and England . The production of the film cost about 35 million US dollars . It grossed $ 31.6 million in US theaters. The international box office is nearly $ 43 million, so that $ 74.6 million in sales could be booked.
Web links
- From Hell in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- From Hell at Metacritic (English)
- From Hell at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ From Hell. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Chicago Sun-Times (Eng.)
- ↑ Prisma-online.de
- ↑ Boxofficemojo.com gross profit (engl.)