The raft of the Medusa (film)

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Movie
German title The raft of the Medusa
Original title Le Radeau de la Méduse
JEAN LOUIS THÉODORE GÉRICAULT - La Balsa de la Medusa (Museo del Louvre, 1818-19) .jpg
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1994/1998
length 130 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Iradj Azimi
script Iradj Azimi
production Iradj Azimi
music Carl Davis
camera Ricardo Aronovich
occupation

The raft of the Medusa (original title: Le Radeau de la Méduse ) is a French feature film by Iradj Azimi that tells the story behind the picture of the same name by the French painter Théodore Géricault . The leading roles are cast with Jean Yanne , Daniel Mesguich , Claude Jade , Philippe Laudenbach and Rufus .

The film was made between 1987 and 1991, but due to various incidents, it was only shown in an art house cinema in 1994 and only in general in French cinemas in 1998, after France 2 had already broadcast a three-part version of 90 minutes each on television in 1995.

action

The film depicts the shipwreck of the frigate Méduse in 1816. The governor-designate of Senegal is on his way to his new territory in Saint-Louis with the flagship of Rochefort . The stubborn captain Chaumareys, a royalist who has not sailed for 25 years and was the captain of a transport ship during his last assignment before the French Revolution , smugly disregards all warnings about the ship's operation. Chaumareys was given this post after the Bourbons had regained control of the country, out of gratitude for his loyalty to the crown. Even the governor's wife Reine Schmaltz , who is ignorant of shipping, doubts his strategy and realizes that his only concern is to save face and to be right. Chaumareys dispels Madame Schmaltz's concerns by pointing out that islands on the map do not exist at all.

Captain Chaumareys, who trusts the advice of the arrogant fellow traveler Antoine Richefort more than his trained officers, ultimately, together with Richefort, is responsible for the shipwreck on a sandbank near the Banc d'Arguin off the coast of Mauritania , where the ship runs aground. The concerns of some officers, for whom Chaumarey has nothing but ridicule, repeatedly voiced loudly, cannot change that.

The privileged passengers, including the governor Julien Schmaltz and his family, save themselves in sloops, 147 people are loaded onto a raft that is to be towed by the lifeboats. When Chaumareys asked for the ropes to be cut after a short time and Richefort complied with this request with an ax, the raft with the people on it drifted out to sea.

Hunger and thirst follow. The men first kill one of the women on board and claim that a woman on board brings bad luck. Another woman who is blind falls into the water and drowns. What now follows is cannibalism : first the flesh of women is eaten, later that of young men, and in the end the flesh of all men who are not up to the ordeal at sea and die. Team master Corréard also gives the physician Savigny, the later chronicler of these events, human flesh. He accepts this, albeit hesitantly.

Only after twelve days are the survivors discovered and rescued from the ship “Parnajon”. Of the 15 rescued, only five men survived the martyrdom - among them officer Coudein, team master Corréard and the doctor Savigny.

The painter Théodore Géricault was impressed by the reports of the castaways and made contact with the survivors. Inspired by their stories, he subsequently created his famous painting “The Raft of Medusa”.

production

Production notes and background

The shooting took place in Guadeloupe Départements d'Outre-Mer . Azimi shot the film between 1987 and 1991 - Hurricane Hugo destroyed the replica of the ship off Guadeloupe in September 1989, so that filming was delayed - but legal problems delayed a theatrical release.

Azimi was unwilling to give the film to the channel Antenne 2 for television broadcasting. At a demonstration in 1997 in the Ministry of Culture where the director u. a. was supported by Claude Jade , Laurent Terzieff and Marcel Marceau , he cut his wrists, but was saved. The then Minister of Culture Catherine Trautmann promised help so that the film was finally able to celebrate its big cinema premiere in the summer of 1998, almost eleven years after its creation.

Azimi had been carrying around the idea of ​​a film for a long time. When he saw Géricault's painting La Radeau de la Méduse while visiting the Louvre in 1969 as an art student , he was so impressed that he wanted to capture the ship's wasteland on film. First and foremost, he wanted to show the cruel differences that existed at the time between the upper class and ordinary people. In order to finance the project he is looking for donors, but the topic does not meet with the approval he had hoped for. When he raised 40 million francs, he began filming on July 10, 1987 in Guadeloupe.

History: The royalist Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys (1763–1841) was the captain responsible for the ship disaster of the French frigate Méduse . Chaumarey's career was partly due to an older relative. After leaving France in 1790 and allegedly involved in an attempt at a royalist invasion, he avoided execution by twisting the facts and was only imprisoned. However, he managed to escape to England. After the Bourbons regained power, he was thanked for his allegiance, as were other royalists, by providing them with demanding posts. For the drama of the Méduse, for which he was responsible, he was sentenced to just three years in prison, in which case the death penalty would have been possible.

publication

In 1994, on the initiative of Claude Lelouch and other colleagues, Azimis had the preview in a art house cinema in the Latin Quarter . France 2 also showed a three-part television version of 90 minutes each in 1995.

The film had its big cinema premiere in France on July 15, 1998. On December 18, 1999, it was presented at the French Cinepanorma Film Festival in Hong Kong. On October 21, 2004 it was released as a single film on French television. It was also published in Italy under the title Zattera della Medusa and in the Federal Republic of Germany under the title Das Raft der Medusa . The international title is: The Raft of the Medusa .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Le Radeau de La Méduse at claudejade.com, accessed on May 20, 2017.