Johnny goes to war

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Movie
German title Johnny goes to war
Original title Johnny Got His Gun
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1971
length 111 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Dalton Trumbo
script Dalton Trumbo
production Bruce Campbell
Tony Monaco
Christopher Vogt
Tom Tryon
music Jerry Fielding
camera Jules Brenner
cut Millie Moore
occupation

Johnny Goes to War is a 1971 American anti-war film directed by Dalton Trumbo , the filmed his own 1939 novel. Both the book and the film describe the fate of 21-year-old Joe (Johnny) Bonham, who volunteered for the USA in the First World War and was seriously wounded.

action

Johnny is born into a farming family. When news of the United States was intervening in the First World War reaches him, he volunteers for military service, even though his girlfriend Kareen tries to dissuade him from his plan. Her words, however, bounce off him ineffectively.

On the battlefield, his body is torn to pieces by an artillery shell in an attempt to rescue a fallen German in order to give his corpse the possibility of a dignified burial. He survived severely injured as a torso without speech, vision or hearing. But he is fully conscious and his sense of touch has been retained. Therefore he can z. B. Perceive touches and vibrations generated by steps.

The nurses and doctors entrusted with his care initially assume that Johnny has lost all of his cognitive abilities as a result of his wounding and that only the basic life-sustaining functions are available. His movements are interpreted as involuntary muscle contractions missing. You see in Johnny, therefore, as history progresses, above all an exceptional case for medical research. So Johnny gradually realizes that he is not kept alive out of charity, but for the sake of medical-psychological progress. His initial relief that he was still alive soon turned into despair. In the weeks and months that followed, Johnny gradually became aware of the physical condition he was in.

He conducts inner dialogues with Jesus , his girlfriend, his father and other people, although due to the sedatives he is often not aware of whether he is dreaming or awake. The film plot alternates several times between reality and fantasy. When he is awake, he tries to perceive and interpret every detail in his environment. In this way he finds z. B. a way to count the days by looking at the sunlight shining on your skin through the window.

After a long time in the hospital, he begins to try to find a way to get in touch with his environment. Since he worked as a radio operator on the battlefield, he still speaks the Morse code . He therefore has the idea of ​​communicating in this way. With a nod of his head, he shows the international symbol for SOS . This is recognized during a visit by the doctors and the doctors are amazed to find that his spirit is still intact despite the serious wounds. In the Morse dialogue, Johnny asks that he would like to lead a self-determined life and show the horrors of war as a circus attraction based on his existence and make them understandable. He is denied that. So he first asks the doctors and finally the nurse using Morse code to kill him. Before she can comply with his request, she is stopped by the Brigadier General. Discouraged, Johnny now realizes that he is being left to an uncertain future.

background

The sarcastic message of the film is particularly evident in the original title Johnny Got His Gun . According to the motto “That's what he's got from it”, the description of the consequences of his naive desire to “get his gun” (to carry a deadly weapon himself) is given. Because the basis for the title Johnny Got His Gun was the call “Johnny get your gun” (German: “Johnny, get your gun”), with which young US-Americans were tried at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century to get excited about military service.

The hospital scenes shot in black and white underline the documentary claim to show the effects of the war without pathos . Johnny's dream and memory sequences, which are kept in color, are carried more by the acting than by Trumbo's directorial ideas.

Trivia

  • The novel Johnny Got His Gun first appeared in the United States in 1939; the German first edition in 1962 under the title Süss and honorable by Rütten & Loening (Hamburg). The novel has been offered by Eichborn Verlag since 1985 under the title Johnny goes to war . In 2012 the publisher Onkel & Onkel published a new translation under the title And Johnny went to war .
  • The metal band Metallica was inspired by the film for the song " One " and used scenes from the film for the music video .

criticism

“Haunting, shocking anti-war film, the staging of which breaks the clichés of a conventional soldier's fate on a formal level. A harrowing meditation on life. "

- Lexicon of international film

In Kay Weniger's Das Großes Personenlexikon der Film , Dalton Trumbo's biography reads the following: “Impressed and shocked by the images of war from Vietnam,“ Johnny goes to war ”was probably the most unadorned, toughest and honest anti-war film in US history. "

Awards

The film was included in the official program of the Cannes Film Festival in 1971 , but only after the intervention of Jean Renoir , Luis Buñuel and Otto Preminger , where it received the second highest award after the Palme d'Or, namely the Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize of the international Movie review.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Certificate of Release for Johnny Goes to War . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2006 (PDF; test number: 46 900 V / DVD / UMD).
  2. ↑ Jens Hinrichsen: Johnny goes to war. Johnny got his gun. Filmzentrale, accessed October 23, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Johnny goes to war. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ^ The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 8, p. 67. Berlin 2001