La rivière du hibou
| Movie | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Original title | La rivière du hibou | ||
| Country of production | France | ||
| original language | English | ||
| Publishing year | 1962 | ||
| length | 28 minutes | ||
| Rod | |||
| Director | Robert Enrico | ||
| script | Robert Enrico | ||
| production |
Paul de Roubaix Marcel Ichac |
||
| music |
Kenny Clarke Henri Lanoë |
||
| camera | Jean Boffety | ||
| cut |
Denise de Casabianca Robert Enrico |
||
| occupation | |||
| |||
| chronology | |||
| |||
La rivière du hibou is a French short film directed by Robert Enrico in 1962. It is based on the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce .
action
A man is said to be hanged on a bridge during the Civil War . The preparations for the execution proceed in silence, only interrupted by a few orders. The noose is knotted and placed around the man's neck, his hands and legs are tied. He himself stands on a plank above the river, which is only kept in balance because there is a Union soldier at the other end. The man looks around, sees the numerous soldiers who are watching his execution, and sinks into memories of his wife, whose name he calls out in his mind. The pocket watch is taken from the man, the Union soldier climbs from the plank and the man falls into the depths.
The rope breaks and the man falls into the river. He manages to get rid of his shackles and swim away. He can escape the bullets of the Union soldiers and he also crosses the rapids of the river without major injuries. He finally saves himself on land, overjoyed to be alive. When shots sound again, he runs for his life, crosses forests and finally reaches his own property. His wife comes towards him, he rushes to her, arms outstretched.
When his wife reaches him and grabs his neck, the man collapses. In the same second the rope tightens on the bridge and the man dies - the escape only happened in his mind, seconds before death.
production
La rivière du hibou was the fourth film adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's work of the same name after The Bridge (1929, directed by Charles Vidor ), An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge (1959, directed by Robert Stevenson ) and Most (1960, directed by Janusz Majewski ) . After L'oiseau moqueur (1962) it is also the second part of Robert Enrico's civil war trilogy based on works by Bierce, which ended with Chickamauga (1962).
The film, shot in black and white, has no dialogues. Orders from the soldiers can be heard. After the man's successful escape, a blues song can also be heard in which sentences from Bierce's work (“A living man, I wanna be a living man…”) are sung. The film was shown at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1962 .
Awards
La rivière du hibou won in 1962 in Cannes, the Palme d'Or as best short film . It received a BAFTA for Best Short Film in 1963 and won the Oscar in 1964 for Best Short Film .
Web links
- La rivière du hibou in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ David Melbye: Landscape Allegory in Cinema: From Wilderness to Wasteland . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2010, p. 65.
- ↑ See La rivière du hibou on festival-cannes.fr