Harry beside himself
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Harry beside himself |
| Original title | Deconstructing Harry |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language |
English Hebrew |
| Publishing year | 1997 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Woody Allen |
| script | Woody Allen |
| production |
Jean Doumanian Richard Brick |
| camera | Carlo Di Palma |
| cut | Susan E. Morse |
| occupation | |
| |
Harry beyond himself (Deconstructing Harry) is a 1997 American comedy film directed by Woody Allen .
action
Harry Block is a Manhattan based writer . His books and stories are based on his own intimate experiences or those of people close to him, which he always processes in slightly modified form. This also repeatedly leads to confrontations with those concerned who easily recognize themselves in it. One day Harry is set to be honored by his former university . In the company of his old friend Richard with heart disease, a prostitute and his nine-year-old son from a previous marriage, whom he more or less kidnapped, he goes to the location of the award ceremony.
A stream of episodes from his life and passages from his books accompany the journey, with Harry increasingly blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination. Soon he is persecuted by the people who suffered from his airs and antics and the fictional characters created after them, and he begins to question the value of his life. He ends up in hell, among other places, where he meets his father and the devil confronts him in the form of his friend Larry. Although Richard dies of his heart failure en route, Harry finally arrives at the venue. Numerous people from his previous life and characters from his books sit in the audience. While leaving the building, Harry is arrested for kidnapping.
background
Harry beside himself premiered on August 26, 1997 at the Venice International Film Festival . It was released on December 12, 1997 in American and on May 21, 1998 in German cinemas.
Reviews
" Harry beside himself is gruff, complex, mangling, and self-revealing. But he's also very funny, most of the time anyway. Woody Allen's latest, shown at the Venice International Film Festival, is one of his most provocative and challenging films. The numerous, brilliant actors, who are mostly limited to smaller roles, all shine under Allen's self-confident direction. "
“Woody Allen has never been better - more relaxed, cheerful and radical. His joke never misses an opportunity and is as uninhibitedly puerile as in What You Always Wanted to Know About Sex ... , as silly as in Boris Gruschenko's Last Night , as bitter as in Zelig . His story is clever and a cunning close-up of his hero and his milieu. There is no longer a hinge in his poetics. It's the most ruthless Woody Allen you've ever seen: the film about the frog that kisses itself. "
“Even in Harry beside himself , Allen varies various forms of expression of neurotic compulsive behavior, and this clairvoyant, sarcastic comedy also contains the well-known Allen ingredients: psychiatrists and paranoia, Jewish complexes and Hitler jokes, hypochondriacs, fantasies of power and powerlessness, quotations from Ingmar-Bergman -Films and of course the Manhattan skyline. "
Awards
The film received a Bogey Award in 1998 and was nominated for an Oscar that same year for Best Original Screenplay.
Web links
- Deconstructing Harry in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Harry beside himself in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ Harry beside himself in the Lexicon of International Films .
- ↑ David Strattom: Deconstructing Harry ( Memento March 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) on Variety.com.
- ↑ Elke Schmitter: Woody Allen's new masterpiece: "Harry besides himself" . In: Die Zeit , No. 22/1998
- ↑ Annette Kilzer: Harry besides himself on Cinema.de, accessed on October 4, 2018