In the sights of the hawk
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | In the sights of the hawk |
| Original title | Figures in a Landscape |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1970 |
| length | 109 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Joseph Losey |
| script |
Robert Shaw based on the novel of the same name (1968) by Barry England |
| production | John Kohn |
| music | Richard Rodney Bennett |
| camera |
Henri Alekan Peter Suschitzky Guy Tabary John Cabrera |
| cut | Reginald Beck |
| occupation | |
and as soldiers: Andy Bradford , Warwick Sims , Roger Lloyd-Pack , Robert East , Tariq Yunus | |
In the sights of the falcon is a 1969 British escape drama directed by Joseph Losey with Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell in the leading roles.
action
In a country not named: two men walk along a deserted beach at dusk, their hands obviously tied behind their backs. You don't know who or what the two are fleeing from, all that is clear is that their pursuers, who fly over the endless landscape in a helicopter, are looking for them. The older of the two, MacConnachie, drives the other, Ansell, on and also constantly insults him. Obviously, the older man sets the tone. For a short time they can escape from the helicopter's field of vision and meet a goatherd. The unscrupulous MacConnachie kills the man in the hope of finding things in him that could help him escape. But nothing of the captured can be used. Ansell is very upset about this bloody act.
One night the two men approach a small town. They sneak into the place and get into a house where a widowed woman lives. Obviously, the lady, who is half asleep, does not notice the two intruders, because the men can search her house unnoticed. Some items, including a rifle, have value to MacConnachie and Ansell. When MacConnachie takes a piece of bread from the basket standing with the widow, the woman wakes up from her twilight, notices the thief and begins to scream. MacConnachie and Ansell flee and reach the city limits before the alarmed villagers can catch them. Ansell makes it clear to MacConnachie that he wants to stay by his side, while MacConnachie is more in favor of breaking up here and everyone looking for happiness on the run alone. However, both stay together and reach the mountains, where the search helicopter quickly tracks them down.
In order to get rid of the threatening helicopter once and for all, it is decided that Ansell should draw the pilot's attention to himself, while MacConnachie should shoot the fuel tank attached to the rods with the captured rifle. But MacConnachie does not stick to the agreement and first of all uses his rifle to kill the observer who is also sitting in the helicopter. When Ansell MacConnachie then again made violent accusations, he only said rather coolly that he wanted to show the pilot who is in control here. In addition, MacConnachie said, any explosion could have injured Ansell. When the observer's body falls from the helicopter, the two fugitives also steal a submachine gun. The murder of a crew member caused the helicopter pilot to call for reinforcements. Now ground troops are also assigned to the two fugitives.
MacConnachie and Ansell approach a military area where the helicopter landed to refuel. The two men have the boldness to sneak into the compound, possibly to steal the helicopter. However, in this attempt they are discovered. There is a fight with some men, but again the two fugitives are able to escape. You return to the mountains, this time to higher, snow-covered regions. At the top of a mountain, they seem to have reached the destination of their escape journey. There is a military post there - it is a border region. Several soldiers approach them and appear to greet MacConnachie and Ansell. The latter is so pleased that the constant chase now seems to have come to an end and runs towards the soldiers when MacConnachie hears a noise from behind. It's the throbbing sounds of a moving rotor - the helicopter soars right behind it. MacConnachie now wants the "decisive battle" with the humming monster, which, the leader is very clear, he can no longer escape. MacConnachie fired a whole volley of ammunition at the seemingly overwhelming machine, but without leaving any serious damage. When the shots from the helicopter are returned with backfire, MacConnachie collapses immediately, fatally hit. Ansell gives up and returns with the soldiers to the military base.
Production notes
In the sights of the falcon was created from June to October 1969 in Andalusia's Sierra Nevada (Spain) . The film premiered on November 11, 1970 in France, and the German premiere took place a day later. In London, the strip only started on November 21, 1970.
Originally, Peter O'Toole was supposed to star and Peter Medak to direct.
Reviews
“Two escaped prisoners, Mac and Ansell, are on the run. Initially tied up, later freely mobile and armed, they tower, followed by a helicopter constantly circling over them, mostly through karst no man's land to the next border. Director Joseph Losey has nothing more to offer in his 24th feature film - but it is not little. Because Losey, who in his last films (" Accident - Incident in Oxford ", " Surf ") displayed sublime anguish of soul in mansions, staged the escape movement with sudden firefights, bombing and comradely falling out like a psychological thriller. What his heroes think, hope and fear, Losey did not express with words but with camera shots for the first time: photos of shrubs, grasses and dust are just as important to him in terms of atmosphere as the scant desperate acts of the refugees resulting from their emergency situation. (...) Losey's film, in which so little happens, is always eerie without the viewer knowing why. The camera guidance is clear, almost simple. The two outliers are - apart from the fact that the director keeps silent about where they come from and where they are fleeing to - based on the cliché of popular action films. The indeterminability of place and time suggests existentialist symbolic effects. But above all, Losey's 24th feature film is incredibly exciting. "
Bucher's encyclopedia sums it up: “A generally underrated film is Figures in a Landscape (1970), which takes up the master-servant relationship in The Servant , but places it in a different social context. Figures is unusual for Losey in that he does not play in closed indoor spaces, but in the indefinable, impersonal outdoors. "
In the lexicon of international films it says: "Despite its length, the allegorical film impressively evokes the experience of totalitarian threat with formal consistency."
"... intoxicating landscape photography, spartan escape story ..."
The Movie & Video Guide wrote: “Skilled leading actors and some amazing helicopter stunts offer little compensation for a confused allegory of two fugitives in an unnamed country, pursued by an unnamed enemy. Hardly come out and still difficult to understand. Losey fans will certainly want to take a look. "
Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film as follows: “ominous, pinteresque parable, very lengthy and, although good to look at, mercilessly bleak. Everything is laden with symbols, nothing is specific, not even the country. "
Joseph Losey's “Figures in a Landscape” is one of the few interesting films that are still in our cinemas today. (…) To be fair, the low response this film will find here cannot be attributed solely to the desolate cinema situation in our country. It also has something to do with the idiosyncrasy of “In the sights of the falcon”. Although it is made clear, simple and intellectually undemanding, it stands at right angles to a film system that takes credit for its clear, simple and undemanding entertainment products. What distinguishes Losey's film from all the films that affect him and from which he is based is his claim to be their outermost essence: the root of action. Strictly speaking, nothing else is cinema: movement in images and as images; and if there is a title that is on par with the radical approach and execution of Losey's film, it would be very simple: film. Nothing but pure film. (...) The fact that “Im Visor des Falken” is also of an unnerving tension is what I consider an encore; one has to accept that he often becomes talkative; but where he is nothing but himself, his pictures, colors and movements - "figures in a landscape" - there he is big, speechless and beautiful. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 469.
- ↑ In the sights of the falcon. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 2, 2015 .
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 424
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 345
Web links
- In the sights of the falcon in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Constantly scary criticism on spiegel.de
- Figures in the landscape review on zeit.de