Avalanches over Tolzbad
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Avalanches over Tolzbad |
| Original title | Careful |
| Country of production | Canada |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1992 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Guy Maddin |
| script | Guy Maddin, George Toles |
| production |
Andre Bennett , Greg Klymkiw , Tracy Traeger |
| music | John McCulloch |
| camera | Guy Maddin |
| cut | Guy Maddin |
| occupation | |
| |
Avalanches over Tolzbad is the German title of the Canadian experimental film Careful by Guy Maddin from 1992. It does not seem to be reminiscent of the real town of Bad Tölz in Upper Bavaria. Maddin wrote the script with George Toles.
action
The English original title Careful is explained by the fact that in the remote alpine village of Tolzbad all residents move with extreme caution and nobody dares to speak a loud word, as they always live in fear of triggering a fatal avalanche. This atmosphere inevitably leads to repressed feelings that lead to incest, betrayal, suicide and duels. The brothers Grigorss and Johann become silent witnesses of this cryptic world when they begin their training in a servants' school, which is to prepare them for their job as a butler for Count Notker, the lord of the village ...
background
The location was Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Director Guy Maddin designed the set and also took care of photography and editing. It was his first color film. It cost him a budget of $ 1.1 million. The film, shot to 16 mm and enlarged to 35 mm for theatrical release , was a joint production at The Canada Council, The Canada Manitoba Cultural Industries Development Office (CIDO), The Greg & Tracy Film Ministry, The Manitoba Arts Council and the Téléfilm Canada were involved. The American company Zeitgeist Films took over the distribution for the cinemas .
Avalanches over Tolzbad was first shown at the New York Film Festival on October 7, 1992. The cinema premiere was on August 27, 1993 in New York City . The film ran on German television on March 10, 1994 under the German title "Lawinen über Tölzbad". It has also been performed in Belgium, France, Poland and Greece. On March 24, 2009 it was also released on DVD in stores.
reception
Avalanches over Tolzbad comes in the guise of an early German expressionist sound film, overflowing with subtitles, hand-colored color sequences, clumsy symbolism and a soundtrack rich in noise.
'Careful' a Carefree Pastiche of Early Cinema. "Guy Maddin, the child prodigy of Winnipeg, responsible for those weirdies" Tales From the Gimli Hospital "and" Archangel, "is back with" Careful "(at the Nuart). Another of his fanciful, absurdist celebrations of early cinema, it's set in the 19th Century in the Alpine village of Tolzbad, where silence is truly golden: The slightest sound can trigger a lethal avalanche. "(Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, November 5 , 1993)
The film was reviewed by Dag Tufte in: "Film Magasinet" (Norway), Aug / Sept 1995, page 21. A critical essay by Will Straw is the anthology Canada's Best Features: Critical Essays on 15 Canadian, edited by Eugene P. Walz in 2002 Films.
Jonathan Rosenbaum described Careful as "a partly ridiculous satire on Canadian fearfulness". Stephen Holden called the film "a long, amusing allusion to the visual worlds of German expressionist film, Freudian psychology and, at the same time, Wagnerian storytelling".
Andrew Rosinski found the film deceptively hilarious in July 2009 , although its story is well-written and provided with artifacts that lead viewers to believe they will not see a comedy.
“The retro style alone makes this“ Heimatfilm ”by the Canadian art filmmaker Guy Maddin worth seeing: the lighting and scenery cite the German film expressionism of the 1920s - in blotchy black and white to three-color images. Weird, as Maddin shows his quiet society as a sexual overpressure boiler without a right valve. "(© cinema.de)
“His idiosyncratic handling of the stylistic devices of the silent film, which he skilfully ironizes as a genre, his unusual work on the sound level reminiscent of the early sound film, as well as an unusual sense of humor distinguish Guy Maddin as a director who has found his own unique film language . "(Program announcement of the ARD)
“In“ Careful ”, his most complex work, the Canadian builds his own artificial world based on the wild and romantic canon of images of German mountain films of the 1920s and 1930s. A film in which the lust for tales, irrepressible imagination, but also parodistic jokes fuel each other, while at the same time a beautiful, melancholy forlornness puts lead on the protagonists' shoulders. " (B. Glombitza, TAZ November 2, 2009)
At the international film festival Sudbury Cinéfest in 1992 Careful was awarded as "Best Canadian Film".
The culture broadcaster Arte broadcast "this original and colorful film" on February 10, 2011 at 11:40 pm on German television in the original with German subtitles.
Tom Waits is the speaker for a one-hour documentary by Noam Gonick about Maddin entitled "Waiting for Twilight". It was made in 1997 and is included on the Zeitgeist DVD as an encore to the film Careful .
literature
- Moment. Marburg booklets on media studies. Publication of the department 09 Institute for Modern German Literature. Edited by Philipps University of Marburg, issues 24–27. Institute for Modern German Literature, Philipps University Marburg, 1996.
- William Beard: Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin. University of Toronto Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4426-9848-2 .
- David Church (Ed.): Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin. Univ. of Manitoba Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-88755-354-7 .
- Birgit Glombitza: The silence is the drama. Open heart surgery of early cinema. In: TAZ. November 2, 2006. (taz.de) .
- David Kleingers: Film artist Guy Maddin: Cinema, a winter fairy tale. In: Spiegel online. November 5, 2006. (spiegel.de)
- Dietmar Kreutzer: StarStrip: the naked man in the film. Querverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-89656-088-3 , p. 156.
- Andrew Rosinski: Careful (1992) by Guy Maddin. Film review. July 1, 2009. (dinca.org)
- South Tyrolean weekly newspaper. Verlag FF, the Südtiroler Illustrierte, 1999.
Web links
- Avalanches over Tolzbad in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- “Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight” (1997), posted on youtube
Individual evidence
- ↑ movie poster illustrated. at movieposter.com
- ↑ cf. Augen-Blick 1996, p. 78: "Careful [is] a highly stylized film in the 'look' of the mountain films of the twenties and thirties ... whose German title Avalanches over Tolzbad makes ironic reference to this tradition."
- ↑ DVD Maddin, Guy, dir .: The Quintessential Guy Maddin: 5 Films from the Heart of Winnipeg. Zeitgeist Films, 2010.
- ↑ "... in the manner of an early German Expressionistic talkie, replete with subtitles, hand-tinted color sequences, heavy-handed symbolism and a" popping "soundtrack." , Cf. Hal Erickson at allemovie.com
- ↑ latimes.com
- ↑ cf. Eugene P. Walz (Ed.): Canada's Best Features: Critical Essays on 15 Canadian Films. Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam 2002, ISBN 90-420-1598-5 .
- ↑ in part a hilarious satire upon canadian timidity , so in Chicago Reader , May 8, 2007.
- ↑ one long and amusing pun on German expressionistic film imagery, Freudian psychology and quasi-Wagnerian storytelling , so in The New York Times , May 20, 2003.
- ↑ The story is well written and filled with artifices that trick the viewer into believing no comedy will occur, but this is not the case - the film is deceptively hilarious. see. dinca.org
- ↑ at cinema.de
- ↑ at ard.de , here also a more detailed description of the content.
- ↑ cf. Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight (1997), IMDb