Louisiana legend

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Movie
German title Louisiana legend
Original title Louisiana Story
Country of production United States
original language English , French
Publishing year 1948
length 78 (original), 90 (German version) minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Robert J. Flaherty
script Robert J. Flaherty,
Frances H. Flaherty
production Robert J. Flaherty
music Virgil Thomson
camera Richard Leacock
cut Helen Van Dongen
occupation

In the center of the Flaherty film: A Bayou landscape typical of Louisiana (here: the Bayou Corne)

Louisiana Legende , also known as the Louisiana Story in Germany , is the last work of the famous documentary film director Robert J. Flaherty , which was released in 1948 in US cinemas. The semi-documentary film, financed by the Standard Oil Company of Louisiana (now ExxonMobil ), received the highest ovations (see below), without taking into account today's widespread concerns about the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources and the dangers of environmental degradation .

action

At the center of the action are the little adventures of a teenage boy in Louisiana who belongs to the French-speaking ethnic group of the Cajun . The twelve-year-old's best friend is a raccoon named Jojo, with whom he roams the bayou , a water landscape that is typical of Louisiana . His family, the Latours, live from fishing in the swampy forests on the Mississippi - all of them are strongly connected to the idyllic and largely untouched nature of their homeland.

The hero's animal friend: a raccoon

One day the modern age breaks in with full force in the form of technology and oil rigs. An oil company has decided to examine the soil in the area for occurrences of the so-called "black gold" and to extract it if necessary. Monsieur Latour has given the company operators his okay, and this decision is presented here as the right step towards the modern age. In the event of an accident in which the drilling rig touches a gas lock and the escaping gas threatens an environmental catastrophe, the employees of the oil drilling company act very carefully. The oil prospectors finally leave the area again, take their huge drilling crane with them on a barge and leave behind, it is said, a clean environment and a wealthy Cajun family.

A subplot tells the raccoon's temporary disappearance. The boy must fear that a huge alligator, which makes the counter unsafe, has eaten the animal. The bayou residents then set out to hunt the giant lizard. At the end of the day, Jojo is back again.

Production notes

Louisiana Legend was created with a production budget of $ 258,000 in 1946/47 on location near Abbeville and on Avery Island in Louisiana and had its New York premiere on September 28, 1948. The film had already been presented to the public for the first time a month earlier at the Edinburgh International Film Festival . The film opened in Germany on February 24, 1950, and Flaherty's Schwanengesang celebrated its television premiere six years later on ARD .

Cinematographer Richard Leacock and film editor Helen Van Dongen also took over the production management.

Awards and nominations

useful information

Joseph Boudreaux, who played the twelve-year-old boy Alexander Napoleon Ulysses Latour, remained in Louisiana his entire life and allegedly went under the oil drill himself as an adult. There he lived a life not entirely dissimilar to that of the boy portrayed and hunted alligators at an advanced age. The Hurricane Rita destroyed his house in 2005 and made the 70-year-old homeless.

Reviews

The film received a lot of attention at home and abroad and was very well received in its time, even if the one-sided admiration of technical progress in its lack of criticism seems anachronistic by today's standards. Below are several examples:

Reclam's film guide wrote about “Louisiana Legend”: “Typical of Flaherty is the short storyline with everyday scenes from the lives of the people who are the focus of the film. The portrayal of nature is also typical, which clearly announces the director's love for untouched nature. What is new, however, is that Flaherty is also discovering the beauty and necessity of technology. "

As early as 1957, Georges Sadoul commented critically on Flaherty's production conditions - the client was an oil company -: “The order did not allow the real problems relating to petroleum to be dealt with. But the crystalline grace of the primeval marshland, the darkness of the almost virgin forests, the industrial symphony of a derrick, the freshness of a twelve-year-old hunter combine to create a captivating Arcadian idyll, even if this seems anachronistic in a torn world. "

Bucher's encyclopedia sums it up: “With rhythmic, lyrical recordings, the film shows the atmosphere in the swamps and explains the complicated technique of drilling for oil. The camera work by Richard Leacock, the editing by Helen van Dongens and the music by Virgil Thomson were essential for the success of the film. "

"'Louisiana-Legende', the semi-documentary, filmic report about the secluded existence of a family in the wetlands of Louisiana and the interference of the (oil) industry in their lives, once again showed Flaherty's abilities, his love for nature and people, who live in harmony with their surrounding ecological system. "

- Kay Less : Das Großes Personenlexikon des Films , Volume 3, p. 11. Berlin 2001

On rottentomatoes.com and allemovie.com the critical mélange documentation on the one hand and funding by the oil industry on the other hand is pointed out: “The last full-length film by the documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty is his most beautifully photographed work, but also his most controversial. The Standard Oil-sponsored film can be seen as a hymn of praise for the minimal impact an oil company can have on the wilderness it is trying to exploit. (…) Apart from the controversial message promoted by the sponsor of the film, Flaherty's film is a continuation of his lifelong exploration of the relationship between humans and their natural environment, in films such as Nanook of the North and Man of Aran . "

The Movie & Video Guide praised the film as “beautifully made” and described the Louisiana Story as a “classic, influential documentary”.

Halliwell's Film Guide called Flaherty's work "pretty beautiful but overstretched semi-documentation".

The lexicon of international films says: "A masterfully staged semi-documentary film, poetic and exciting, vivid and informative."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 470.
  2. ↑ Short portrait of Joseph C. Boudreaux and interview (2006) in Revisiting Flaherty's Louisiana Story .
  3. ↑ Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 393. Stuttgart 1973.
  4. ↑ Georges Sadoul: History of Film Art, Vienna 1957, p. 368 f.
  5. ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 470.
  6. ↑ Louisiana Story on rottentomatoes.com
  7. ↑ Louisiana Story on allemovie.com
  8. ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 783
  9. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 618
  10. ↑ Louisiana legend. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 10, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 

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