Hammett (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Hammett |
| Original title | Hammett |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1982 |
| length | 97 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wim Wenders |
| script |
Dennis O'Flaherty , Thomas Pope, Ross Thomas |
| production |
Ronald Colby , Don Guest , Fred Roos , Francis Ford Coppola |
| music | John Barry |
| camera |
Joseph F. Biroc , Philip Lathrop |
| cut |
Janice Hampton , Marc Laub , Robert Q. Lovett , Randy Roberts |
| occupation | |
| |
Hammett is the first Hollywood film by German director Wim Wenders . It was written between 1978 and 1982 based on a novel by Joe Gores . The crime film tells a fictional story from the life of the writer Dashiell Hammett .
Francis Ford Coppola , who brought Wim Wenders to Hollywood because of the commercial success of his film The American Friend , was executive producer . At his insistence, Wenders changed the script several times and had to shoot around 80 percent of the film several times. Wim Wenders processed the experiences from this collaboration in Der Stand der Dinge .
action
At the end of the 1920s , the former private detective Samuel Dashiell Hammett lives as a writer in San Francisco . His mentor and former colleague at the Pinkerton Agency , Jimmy Ryan, asks him to find a missing Chinese woman named Crystal Ling. When searching in Chinatown , he loses his newly completed manuscript. He can't find Crystal Ling, but receives a photo of her from a journalist named Gary Salt. When he arrives at his apartment, the Crystal Ling he is looking for is waiting for him there. Hammett learns that she is a prostitute in the Fong Wei Tau brothel. He hides her in his apartment and visits Fong. With the help of an Asian girl, he can free Ryan, who was captured by Fong.
Hammett's apartment has since been ransacked and Crystal Ling is no longer there. Police show Hammett a body they believe to be Crystal Ling.
Through a ticket seller, Hammett and his girlfriend Kit find the apartment of Salt, who is actually a porn photographer. Crystal Ling is said to have stayed in this apartment several times. Kit finds six photos in the apartment of Crystal Ling and the richest men in town. Salt comes home with a stranger who demands the photos, and Salt shoots when he cannot find them.
Hammett visits Eddie Hagedorn, who is shown in one of the photos, and explains what is going on. As it turns out, the stranger is Hawthorn's bodyguard. When he wants to pounce on Hammett, Hawthorn kills him.
As Hammett learns a little later, the six businessmen are blackmailed with the photos. He is instructed to hand over the money. Crystal Ling is waiting for him at Fisherman's Wharf to give him the negatives for a million dollars. Ryan, who was her partner, threatens her with a gun and demands the money from her, but the Chinese shoots him.
production
planning
Because of the importance Dashiell Hammett has in the United States, Francis Ford Coppola wanted a foreigner to direct who could see Hammett from a different perspective. He initially offered the project to Nicolas Roeg and François Truffaut , and only after they had declined to Wim Wenders. He began researching for the film together with Joe Gores in 1978. He visited the original locations, lived for a while in Hammett's former apartment, and visited his widow Josephine Dolan and Lillian Hellman .
Wenders planned Hammett as an homage to film noir . Since Coppola had assured him full freedom, Wenders thought of shooting the film in black and white and using German employees such as the actor Rüdiger Vogler and the cameraman Robby Müller . Sam Shepard was to play the title role , Ry Cooder Wenders' preferred candidate for the musical design . But Coppola disagreed, as did the Orion Pictures Corporation , which financed the film, and wanted an action film with high audiences with actors already known in America. So Frederic Forrest was hired for the main role . This was Nicolas Roeg's dream cast, but the producers only became famous enough after the successes of Apocalypse Now and The Rose . John Barry , famous for his involvement in James Bond films , was hired for the film music , whose music supported the mood of the film well and was praised by the critics.
The script versions by Pope and O'Flaherty
In addition, Joe Gores' script has been extensively revised. After studying the subject for some time, Wenders wanted an action that was more closely based on the real Hammett. First, Thomas Pope was commissioned to do this. This was based on the revision of Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon and its film adaptation The Trace of the Falcon . Based on Pope's script, with the help of Sam Shepard and Gene Hackman, a complete audio track was made that worked as a radio play, which was then backed up on the computer with the drawings from the storyboard and played to Coppola. He was dissatisfied with it, threw the script out the window and replaced Pope with Dennis O'Flaherty .
On the basis of this still unfinished version, filming began in February 1980. Against Coppola's wishes, Wenders gave his wife Ronee Blakley an extensive role. At first he wanted to give her the female lead instead of Marilu Henner , but this was rejected by the producers. Then she got an originally small role, but it was expanded more and more, with Wenders getting further and further away from O'Flaherty's script. He thought he could develop the missing ending in the studio like this. Since Coppola did not agree with this way of working, he stopped shooting. Main actor Forrest, on the other hand, was very impressed by Blakley's performance and Wenders' way of working.
Coppola and Orion Pictures Corporation were in no way satisfied with the resulting material. Coppola is said to have called it the worst movie he has ever seen. Production costs were already several million dollars at this point.
After O'Flaherty, Wenders, Coppola himself and his friend Dennis Jakob, who had already supported him with the work on Apocalypse Now , had tried to complete the script without satisfactory success, another screenwriter was hired with Ross Thomas . Meanwhile, Coppola and lead actor Forrest were busy working on One with a Heart . These should be completed in February 1981, but were delayed.
Completion of the shooting
Instead of just adding the missing scenes, Thomas rewrote almost the entire script. After this version, the film was shot almost completely from scratch from November 1981. Parts of the staff were also exchanged, so Brian Keith , who had no time due to other obligations, was replaced by Peter Boyle . Philip Lathrop was hired as the new cameraman in place of Joseph F. Biroc , who was much appreciated by Wenders . In his spare time, Wenders shot an alternative ending according to his own ideas, without Coppola's knowledge, in which the characters in the film merge in Hammett's fantasy with those from The Maltese Falcon . In contrast to the first film version, the revised film version was shot in the studio. In the final theatrical version, 30 percent of the material used comes from the original shooting and 70 producers from the subsequent shoots.
Director's Cut
The raw version of the film in the version that Wenders originally submitted to Coppola has not survived. The studio destroyed all negatives and copies that were not used in the published version. However, there is a video recording from the editing table . It shows technically poorly preserved a version in which about ten minutes are missing and has been replaced by the drawings on the storyboard. The Munich Film Museum has digitally restored a copy of this version and so far showed it once, in May 2015. The working copy is 136 minutes long.
Processing by Wenders
In the four years that Hammett was made, Wenders made two other films, Nick's Film and The State of Things . The latter is about a director who is let down by his producer and has clear parallels to the genesis of Hammett. For example - as with Hammett - the donors do not agree that the director wants to make a black and white film. The state of affairs was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice in 1983 .
Wenders' documentary short Reverse Angle also deals with the production of Hammett.
publication
The film premiered in 1982 at the Cannes Film Festival . The reviews were mixed, and Wenders himself was not satisfied with his work either. When the film was released in 1983, audience interest was also limited. The $ 15 million production was a financial failure.
Critics praised the set images by Dean Tavoularis and the camera work as well as the atmosphere of the film. Hammett enjoys cult status among fans to this day .
Reviews
“Stylishly photographed and staged, the atmospherically very dense film stimulates reflections on the writing and experiencing of stories as well as on the characteristics and fascination of the models of the 'Black Series'. These are ultimately not achieved, but the film is fascinating because of the inevitably employed artificiality of the studio decor, which in its sophisticated stylization offers elegant viewing pleasure with a slightly nostalgic touch. "
“Oh, he would have shot his 1978 version of 'Hammett', black and white and in the scruffiest corners of San Francisco. It couldn't have been any worse than the story that is now coming to German cinemas. "
In May 1982, Hans-Christoph Blumenberg initially described Hammett as a "rigged oldtimer" that is technically flawless, but cold and dead. He later changed his mind and wrote in October that the film looked much better on second glance. The main character Hammett is a typical Wenders character, but the viewer is distracted by the complex plot. Like Urs Jenny, Blumenberg also attributes the film's weaknesses to the Hollywood-style working method that is atypical for Wenders.
Jean-Luc Godard praised Hammett as Wenders' most beautiful film.
Awards
Wim Wenders was nominated for the Golden Palm in 1982 .
This and that
- The actors Frederic Forrest and Marilu Henner married during the shoot, but divorced in 1983.
literature
- Reinhold Rauh: Wim Wenders and his films . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1990
Web links
- Hammett in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Hammett at rotten tomatoes (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Stefan Kolditz: Hammett . In: Frieda Grafe et al .: Wim Wenders . Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1992. Page 219f
- ↑ Kolditz, page 223
- ↑ Kolditz, page 216
- ↑ Kolditz, page 221
- ↑ Peter Buchka: You can't buy eyes. Wim Wenders and his films . Fischer, Frankfurt 1985. page 27
- ↑ Michael Schumacher: Francis Ford Coppola: a Filmmaker's life . Bloomsbury, London 1999. Page 277ff
- ↑ Schumacher, page 277
- ↑ Kolditz, page 217f
- ↑ Buchka, page 27
- ↑ Film Dienst No. 13 2015, p. 32f.
- ^ Rainer Gansera: Fassbinder / Schroeter / Wenders . In: Filmmuseum Munich, Programs 2015
- ↑ Filmmuseum Munich: Program, May 30, 2015
- ↑ Film Dienst No. 13 2015, p. 33.
- ↑ Kolditz, page 224
- ↑ Hammett. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 1, 2017 .
- ↑ Elegant Ruin of Illusions , in: Der Spiegel, No. 2/1983 of January 10, 1983
- ↑ Hans-Christoph Blumenberg: Hammett only got to Hollywood , in: Die Zeit, No. 22 of May 28, 1982
- ↑ Hans-Christoph Blumenberg: Odysseus on detours , in: Die Zeit, No. 44 of October 29, 1982
- ↑ Short review from Cinema magazine