Fair (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Fair |
| Original title | Carny |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1980 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Kaylor |
| script |
Phoebe Kaylor , Robert Kaylor, Robbie Robertson , Thomas Baum |
| production | Robbie Robertson, Jonathan T. Taplin |
| music | Alex North |
| camera | Harry Stradling Jr. |
| cut | Stuart H. Pappé |
| occupation | |
| |
Carnival ( Carny ) is an American drama directed by Robert Kaylor from 1980 . The main roles were played by Gary Busey , Jodie Foster and Robbie Robertson .
action
Eighteen-year-old Donna works as a waitress in a diner and is getting increasingly dissatisfied in the wasteland of her homeland in the American provinces. With her boyfriend Mickey, with whom she is no longer happy, she visits the fair (a carnival ) in her hometown. Mickey is insulted by Frankie, one of the showmen at the Bozo booth, and reacts aggressively to the Bozo's sayings. Frankie “reads” Donna from her hand and tells her both her name and her zodiac sign. He later admits that he used psychological tricks to do this. Donna decides to run off with the carnival troupe.
The next day, she leaves her boyfriend, her parents and her workplace and joins the troupe, which is particularly incomprehensible to Frankie's best friend and colleague Patch. He subsequently met Donna with open hostility. Frankie manages to find Donna a job as a dancer. Reluctantly, she has to appear in lingerie. Patch plays a prank on Donna: he persuades Delno, the owner of the dance hall, to announce her as a stripper. When she refuses to undress in front of the hooting and drunk men, a tumult ensues in which she is harassed and easily injured.
After all, she works in the stringless booth of a lesbian member of the fair. Donna gets to know the individual characters and people at the fair and to some extent love them too. Furthermore, she will witness how the showmen have to lubricate the city leaders from place to place in order to get an attractive place for the hype.
The troupe's oldest showman, On-Your-Mark, is celebrating his 70th birthday and announcing that he will retire. In a conservative and morally strict small town in the southern states , the showmen have problems with the authorities because of their shows. The corrupt local businessman Marvin Dill offers to help in exchange for bribes.
With mock charm, Patch succeeds in seducing Donna. When Frankie catches them red-handed, Patch throws Donna cockily out of bed in order to humiliate her and Frankie. Frankie, who is in love with Donna, gets into an argument with thugs from town out of frustration, and part of the hype is destroyed. On-Your-Mark is killed in the escalating conflict, Frankie barely gets away with his life.
Marvin Dill raises the protection money demands and demands Donna for a night of love with his assistant Skeet, the leader of the thugs. To do the community a service, Donna agrees. But when Skeet handcuffed her to the bed and demands sadistic sex practices from her, she defends herself against the threat of rape. Patch and Frankie have made up in the meantime and, with the help of all the showmen, stage a horror show through which they manage to drive away their opponents. Donna proves to be an important member of the troupe and ultimately wins the respect of Frankies and Patchs.
In the end it turns out that Donna is indispensable in the stringless booth. She has cast off her initial inhibitions and takes hold of people by their inclinations to get them to play. The film ends with a scene in which Donna pretends to be about two lesbians' attempts to flirt, charmingly leads her to invest money in the tickets and Gerta, the shopkeeper, nods encouragingly. Donna has been accepted into the community of the fair.
Reviews
Roger Ebert criticized in the Chicago Sun-Times of July 22, 1980 that the plot of the film was "thin". He praised the performances by Gary Busey, Robbie Robertson and Jodie Foster.
Dave Kehr wrote in the Chicago Reader that the characters were "sentimental". He criticized the direction of Robert Kaylor, who previously made several documentaries, for the realism of the images as "banal".
For Robert Fischer, the fair is “a little film without big stars, without car hunts and special effects” and “free of stylistic and thematic concessions of any kind.” Fischer writes about the main actress: “In her tight jeans, tight T-shirts, tanned and long Hair bleached by the sun, Jodie Foster exudes great sensuality without ever looking cheap. "
The lexicon of international films writes that the film “captivates thanks to its sensitive, atmospherically coherent description of the environment, good actors and the serious approach to the topics of friendship and love, despite its length.”
background
Fun fair , the first feature film by the documentary filmmaker Robert Kaylor, is considered one of the last works of the late New Hollywood era with its realistic, socially critical films. Filming took place in April and May 1979 in Savannah, Georgia . For Jodie Foster, aged 16 at the time of shooting, it was the first “adult role” of her career. While they in their previous film Jeanie's Clique represented still a teenager, she plays in the fair an age young woman in various sexually explicit scenes, including bed scenes with two men, can be seen.
The world premiere was on May 23, 1980 in the USA. The fair was not shown in German cinemas, so there is no FSK rating. In the USA, the film received the approval Restricted (for children under 17 only if accompanied by an adult), in the UK and Australia there is an absolute ban on young people, in Sweden the film is free from 15, in Finland from 16. In the Canadian provinces the age ratings vary between 13 ( Québec ) and 18 ( Ontario ). The German television premiere was on January 19, 1985 on West 3 .
literature
- Louis Chunovic: Jodie Foster: A Portrait. VGS, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-8025-2416-0 , pp. 65-67.
- Robert Fischer: Jodie Foster. Hollywood's child prodigy. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-05975-1 , pp. 130-133.
Web links
- Fair in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Fair at rotten tomatoes (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert Fischer: Jodie Foster. Hollywood's child prodigy. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-05975-1 , p. 132.
- ^ Fair in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed December 27, 2010
- ↑ Robert Fischer: Jodie Foster. Hollywood's child prodigy. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-05975-1 , p. 130.
- ↑ Robert Fischer: Jodie Foster. Hollywood's child prodigy. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-05975-1 , p. 70.
- ↑ Robert Fischer: Jodie Foster. Hollywood's child prodigy. Heyne, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-05975-1 , p. 133.