Lilith (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Lilith |
| Original title | Lilith |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1964 |
| length | 114 (original) 115 (German version) minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Rossen |
| script | Robert Rossen Robert Alan Aurthur based on the novel of the same name by JR Salamanca |
| production | Robert Rossen |
| music | Kenyon Hopkins |
| camera | Eugen Schüfftan |
| cut | Aram Avakian |
| occupation | |
| |
Lilith is an American feature film from 1964 . Jean Seberg played the title role alongside Warren Beatty and Peter Fonda under the direction of Robert Rossen in his last cinema production.
action
The setting is a famous mental hospital, Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. One day the young up-and-coming therapist Vincent Bruce arrives in the spacious area, whose castle-like sanatorium is an overwhelming eye-catcher. Vincent once served as a soldier and, as it later turns out, had personal reasons for his career choice: his mother suffered from a mental illness. Around him he sees terrifying figures on his arrival; People with empty faces, petrified in their looks, zombie-like in their movements, broken beings for whom Chestnut Lodge will be the end of their lives. The spectrum of patients ranges from manic depression to schizophrenia to madness.
Vincent is particularly fond of one patient: the young Lilith, a very moody and sometimes difficult to assess creature, emotionally fragile, saddened from cheering to death. Her language is very peculiar and she often answers questions in sphinx-like epigrams. It soon becomes clear that, given his own past, Bruce himself is not particularly stable emotionally. He falls into the clutches of the deeply fascinating woman who will reach destructive proportions. Lilith's enigmatic, siren-like personality takes over him more and more. Sometimes she appears as a friend, sometimes as a stranger, sometimes dismissive, then again very seductive.
His fascination for Lilith's creative and destructive power does not go unnoticed by another young patient, Stephen Evshevsky. Emotionally unstable, Lilith's playful flirtation with Vincent brings the serious and shy young man completely out of his already severely damaged emotional balance. His feeling of being rejected ultimately leads to a suicidal act of desperation, which also has a massive impact on Vincent's own self-image as a therapist. Finally Vincent's past seizes power over his here and now: the war time, his mother image and Lilith's art of taking possession of his personality turn the therapist into a murderer.
Production notes
Lilith was filmed in the US states of Maryland and Virginia and in Locust Valley on Long Island in the fall of 1963 . It premiered on September 27, 1964. In Austria the film opened on May 28, 1965, in Germany on December 19 of the same year.
Richard Sylbert designed the film structures, and Gene Callahan provided the equipment . The costumes were made by Ruth Morley .
The achievements of Jean Seberg , Peter Fonda and Gene Hackman were especially praised . Seberg received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in 1965 . "In Robert Rossen's subtle, carefully staged story about the love of a young asylum doctor for a psychotic patient, Fonda gave an empathetic portrait of the sensitive and unstable patient Stephen Evshevsky, who commits suicide as a result of unrequited feelings." Gene Hackman starred in this film with the husband of Warren Beatty's ex-girlfriend got his first major film role.
Reviews
“His last work Lilith flopped, both at the box office and with critics. Nevertheless, Lilith was an extremely carefully structured and narrated drama, carried by a talented young actor ensemble (led by Jean Seberg, Warren Beatty and Peter Fonda), a precisely observing study of highly neurotic patients in a mental hospital - a remarkable work that was much of Rossens He showed empathy as a director and his inner state of mind. "
"A remarkable attempt to dig a little deeper into an almost uncultivated field and shed some light on the relationship between madness and creative imagination."
Paimann's film lists summed up: "Despite borrowings from various psychiatric schools, this broad and dramatically brittle subject with a lot of knowledge of the milieu and painting of the soul gives the opportunity for Jean Seberg to interpret the title role as an actor."
"A piercing, if not entirely satisfactory, look at the facets of madness - and love."
"Strange, melancholy, poetic and rather tiresome character melodrama."
"Although it is hauntingly designed, the film is neither convincing in its psychological nor socially critical concerns and gets lost in the symbolistic and psychologizing pitfalls of its script."
Web links
- Lilith in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Lilith at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 3: F - H. Barry Fitzgerald - Ernst Hofbauer. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 39.
- ↑ Lilith. (No longer available online.) In: old.filmarchiv.at. Paimann's film lists , No. 2943_1, June 3, 1965, archived from the original on October 12, 2016 ; accessed on October 12, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Lilith. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 12, 2016 .
