Hawaii (1966)

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Movie
Original title Hawaii
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1966
length 189 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director George Roy Hill
script Dalton Trumbo
Daniel Taradash
production Walter Mirisch
music Elmer Bernstein
camera Russell Harlan
cut Stuart Gilmore
occupation

Hawaii is an American epic film of 1966 directed by George Roy Hill . It is the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by James A. Michener . The historical film with Max von Sydow as Reverend Abner Hale in the leading role shows the first part of the book, which covers the history of Hawaii from 1820 to 1841, and describes the decline of Hawaiian culture due to western immigration and conquest. Other important roles include Julie Andrews , Richard Harris , Gene Hackman , Carroll O'Connor and Jocelyne LaGarde . The film received seven Academy Award nominations and was released in both US and German theaters in 1966.

The second and final part of the book was continued in the 1970 sequel Ruler of the Island . The characters only have something to do with the people from the first part, for example the Hale children and the son of Dr. Whipple and also a Whipple Hoxworth back on.

action

Keoki Kanakoa, Prince of Ali'i Nui, attended Yale University in 1817 , where he spoke to scholars and students about the decline and disregard of its culture. Hawaii is haunted by sailors, traders and bandits who brutally take whatever they want. Kanakoa appeals to the Americans, who built a true civilization in Christianity, to help them. Reverend Abner Hale and his friend Dr. John Whipple were so excited about the speech that they asked Reverend Dr. Ask Thorn to be sent to Hawaii as missionaries to not only teach the locals about Christianity, but also to bring peace to them. However, the prerequisite is that the men are married. Whipple is so, but not Hale. Thorn gives Hale the opportunity to marry his niece Jerusha Bromley. However, she still hangs after her lovesickness for her missing lover Rafer Hoxworth and refuses to marry the clumsy, ailing clergyman. However, because Hale is frank and sincere, Jerusha's heart is softened and she agrees to marry and move to the Hawaiian island.

During the sea voyage, however, Abner Hale shows his true, missionary, even overzealous behavior to bring the Bible closer to seafarers. In everything he sees religious signs and he wants to convert everyone. When a storm breaks out in the Strait of Magellan , which destroys almost the entire ship, he sees it as a sign from God and says that this test can only be overcome through diligent prayer. Upon arrival, it is agreed that the Whipples will be on duty in Honolulu and the Hales will stay on Maui . The Reverend immediately distrusts the half-naked locals because he smells a pit of sin in their nakedness. He sees blasphemy in every tradition that is alien to him and inconsistent with Christianity. It disgusts him that the Hawaiians revere a stone from Bora Bora as a sacred temple and also regard their Queen Malama Kanakoa as sacred. But Malama doesn't care much for the scorn of the weak preacher. For the time being, he abandons him and asks Jerusha to teach her to write and read in order to be able to communicate better in the English language.

Jerusha and the Reverend save a baby with a huge mole from death. To the Hawaiians, a child with such a stigma is doomed to die anyway. After the Hales have moved into a poor hut, the Reverend begins to build his church on a piece of land , despite advising the Kahunas against and their concerns about the wind. Malama gave Hales the young Jeleki as a present, which Jerusha is supposed to give to hand in the house. Jerusha soon becomes pregnant. Malami, meanwhile, learned to read and write quickly, and wrote a petition to US President James Monroe to protect her small island kingdom from rowdy seafarers. However, nothing changes, on the contrary, more and more drunk and party-happy sailors end up in Lāhainā and have real orgies with the locals. Reverend Hale is a thorn in the side of what he wants to drive out preaching to seafarers. When Malama's daughter almost fell victim to a rape on the beach, he intervened courageously. Captain Rafer Hoxworth comes to his aid. When Jerusha arrives on the beach, however, Hoxworth's joy quickly turns into horror, for in recent years he has wished for nothing more than to be close to her, only to have to find out now that Jerusha is not only married to the preacher, but is also still pregnant by him. He turns away, disappointed. A later attempt to persuade Jerusha to leave her husband fails.

When their son Micah is born, Hale refuses any help from the locals, so that their suspicions that the Reverend hates and despises them and their way of life are confirmed. But still, Hale manages to proselytize the islanders over the years, so that the first convert, get baptized and Malama introduces laws on monogamy , the prohibition of premarital sex and incest . Against this, however, protest the sailors, who see their orgies in danger, which is why they plunder the island at night with burning torches and then burn down the church. But the islanders stick together, put out the fire and drive the sailors back to their ship. But there is always trouble, because even years later, after the civilization process has advanced and more and more modern facilities are being built in Hawaii, reports of fraudulent individual acts are still making the rounds. But there are also black sheep among missionaries. For example, Abraham Hewlett, who has enriched himself, is voted out of the committee because he casts a bad image of Christianity. But there are other reasons why the Hawaiians are falling more and more away from Christianity, because they fear a vengeful god, which is why most of them take their canoes to live out their old beliefs on a neighboring island. Prince Keoki, once an ardent advocate of the Christian faith, is among them.

When Queen Malama Kanakoa was dying, Abner Hale baptized her with the name "Ruth" so that she could escape purgatory . As soon as she is dead, a great storm breaks out, destroying the church and making Keoki the new king. Reverend Hale is not only dismayed and angry that the Hawaiians are crowning keoki according to their ancient customs, but also that the ritual of the death of Malama has been traditionally performed again. Although Malama was first buried according to the Christian faith, in her last will she had stipulated that she wanted to find her dead rest in the traditional way. Only in this way would the gods be appeased. In his anger, the Reverend Hale asks God to punish the people for their apostasy. When Keoki's firstborn is born misshapen and therefore must be killed in the tradition of ancient Hawaiian beliefs, he does nothing to prevent it. Another misfortune struck the island when arriving sailors drag measles there and the locals fell ill. In the absence of supplies and medical treatment, the infected try to cool down in the ocean in a maddened fever. Many die, including King Keoki. Now Hale reacts sadly, maybe he would have had to save Keoki's child after all and baptize him before his death in order to escape hell. Jerusha cannot believe, however, that a Christian god would let a man as loving as Keoki burn in hell for lack of baptism. However, Hale is not deterred and is horrified that his wife is not as religious as he is.

A few years have passed when Rafer Hoxworth returns to Lāhainā to give Jerusha a generous gift. The fact that the woman he loved had to live in a poor wooden hut did not leave him in peace, which is why he bought a prefabricated stone house to build it for her in Hawaii. But when he meets Hale, who is in the process of rebuilding his church, and asks him about Jerusha, he only points to a tombstone and replies to Hoxworth's question that it is his fault that his wife died at the age of just 35 be. Angry, Rafner knocks Hale down and leaves. The poor conditions in which she had to live contributed decisively to Jerusha's death. Hale, meanwhile, is to be forcibly transferred from Hawaii to Connecticut so that the church and its businessmen can take possession of the Hawaiian land in order to generate more profit. But Hale refuses and gives the Reverend Quigley to understand that he will not abandon the Hawaiians. Nevertheless, he is recalled from his position and has to let his three children Micah, David and Lucie move to their grandparents, the Bromleys, in New England for a better education. He himself continues to live in his poor hut. After the tearful departure of his children, a young Hawaiian named Joanna Kimalu from Honolulu introduces himself, who owes his life to Hale and who now wants to assist him. Hale looks him in the face and doesn't recognize him. Only when he sees his birthmark does he remember that he once saved him as a baby together with his wife. He is proud and happy to see why he came to the island and calls to Jerusha to share his happiness with her. In his empty wooden hut, he realizes again that his wife is long dead.

Production and Background

The film is preceded by the following prologue: “As far as the people of our island can remember, Bora-Bora was the realm of the gods. The realm of Kanaloa, the king of the underworld and Pele, the little mother of Vulcanus. From Tangaroa, the god of the seas, winds and storms, from Mana , the shark who led his children to a secret sea path when they got lost, from Osimkane, the father of the universe, and all that lives in it so it remained - until the days of King Kanaloa, when the greatest calamity that can afflict the human soul came upon the people of this island. There came a time when the gods began to change. For in those days a new god arose, whose greed for human sacrifice heaped the dead on his altars: Horo, Horo, whose eyes were the eyes of death. So King Kanaloa called his people together and said, 'This new God is a God of anger and vengeance. Let us escape from it. ' The Bora-Bora State Canoe was the fastest boat on all oceans in the world. They loaded it with roots and seeds to plant in the soil of the new land, which legend says was to be far north. From his holy place they carried away the holy stone, the image of their benevolent god Kane. Led by Mana, the shark, they sailed into unknown seas into the unknown. Until they finally reached the shores of a land that had never been seen before. Hawaii lay before them in the glow of the setting sun . "

At the beginning of the film, Prince Keoki Kanaloa gave the following lecture to scholars and students at Yale University in 1819: “For over thirty generations they lived in this land, far from the rest of the world, contentedly worshiping Kanem, until you came and another time dawned for my people when the gods changed. You who prepared for your offices here at Yale College and got your diplomas just yesterday cannot imagine what that means to the human soul. Even Rev. Dr. Thorn finds it inconceivable that it was only 43 years ago, when the English Captain Cook arrived in Hawaii, that my brothers were confronted for the first time with a Christian world that they had not even dreamed of existence. We admired your weapons, your big ships, we saw you handling books and numbers, and we no longer had any doubts about the greatness of your Christian God. In hardly a generation we destroyed our temples, burned our pagan idols, and hoped like waiting children for the revelation you had promised us. But instead of sending us God's Word, you sent us adventurers who stole our lands, plagues that ravaged our islands, spicy drinks that devoured the manliness of our sons, and devils in the shape of whalers who abused our daughters and then them threw away like wounded little animals and who then died with the torments of this disease for which we had no name. Until you came, we hunger for the word of God. In the four years that I have lived with you, no one said to me, Keoki Kanaloa, I am going to Hawaii with you and lead the souls of your people to salvation. "

At the end of the 1950s, Walter Mirisch acquired the filming rights to Michener's best-selling novel for $ 600,000 and 10% of the income after recording the costs. In 1960 he hired Fred Zinnemann as a director and Daniel Taradash as a screenwriter. Since the 1000-page novel was still not converted into a usable structure after over a year of script work, Taradash was replaced by Dalton Trumbo . After two more years, a four-hour story was set that Zinnemann wanted to present as a two-part film. But United Artists vetoed it, whereupon Zinnemann left the project. After Mirisch hired George Roy Hill as a director, he made the decision that the film should focus on the years between 1820 and 1841. The film was shot in Norway , New England , Tahiti and Hawaii, with the budgeted cost of 10 million US dollars being exceeded by 4 million US dollars due to the weather conditions on site and the slow working methods of the director.

The figure of Queen Malama is modeled on the real Hawaiian Queen Ka'ahumanu , who lived at the time and Christianized her people and passed laws against seafarers. For Jocelyne LaGarde , who had been cast for the role of Malama, it was her only appearance in a film. To this day, she is considered the only actress in the history of the Oscars who has been nominated for the trophy in just one film appearance.

The film served the then relatively unknown actress Bette Midler as a springboard for her career. She had a speaking role as a missionary's wife in the film, but this was cut out for the final version. Mirisch tried many of the smaller roles by Hawaiians, such as Midler from Honolulu to fill.

Max von Sydow's sons Henrik and Clas S played the roles of seven-year-old and twelve-year-old Micah, the eldest son of Reverend Hale and his wife Jerusha, respectively.

The film features the song My Wishing Doll, text: Mack David , music: Elmer Bernstein.

publication

After the film opened in US theaters on October 10, 1966, it grossed over $ 19 million at the box office on a production budget of over $ 15 million. In West Germany , the film opened in cinemas on December 15, 1966 and, despite a few TV broadcasts, such as on August 18, 2005 on Einsfestival and on October 6, 2005 on Premiere - MGM , in German-speaking countries it was only on DVD on February 29, 2016 released. The cut scenes are also included in the bonus material.

criticism

“Although the story of the extinction of one culture due to the invasion of another is sad and ironic, you come out of the cinema less touched than numb. […] Although the scriptwriters wrote a story that resembles a romantic drama in terms of its episodic form and colorful surface, they chose their main character not the conventional daring hero, but a rigid, narrow-minded, sometimes ridiculous man of God. "

- Vincent Canby : New York Times

“Julie Andrews really touches the Reverend Hale's tired, lovely, radiant assistant, and von Sydow is perfect as a clergyman - tall, lean, long-chinned and driven by sinful arrogance. The picture of him in a black frock coat, with a stovepipe hat, trampling over the golden beaches and through the lush green of the tropics is absolutely unforgettable. "

- Richard Schickel : Life Magazine

“The demanding production, acting and directing give the personal tragedy a depth and credibility that takes place when two cultures collide. [...] Sydow's outstanding performance makes his figure understandable, even if it is never entirely personable. "

- Variety (1966)

"A sprawling (partial) film adaptation of Michener's novel, staged with great technical effort as a perfect movie , but without deepening the problem."

- Lexicon of international film

“Elaborate but naive faithfulness to the original leads in parts to boring pseudo-documentation. Friends of monumental film events get their money's worth. "

- Protestant film observer

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hawaii  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from variety.com, December 31, 1965. Retrieved January 9, 2012.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.variety.com  
  2. ↑ a b c cf. Tino Ballo: United Artists: the company that changed the film industry , p. 181.
  3. ↑ Peter Hanson: Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood rebel: a critical survey and filmography , p. 175.
  4. ↑ a b Hawaii (1966) Articles at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English)
  5. ^ Walter Mirisch: I thought we were making movies, not history , p. 223.
  6. ↑ a b Hawaii (1966) at film-gold.de
  7. ↑ Vincent Canby : Hawaii (1966) on nytimes.com of October 11, 1966 (English) accessed January 9, 2012.
  8. ↑ Hawaii. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 27, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  9. ↑ Hawaii , Review No. 2/1967