He was called Hombre
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | He was called Hombre |
| Original title | Hombre |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1967 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Martin Ritt |
| script |
Irving Ravetch Harriet Frank Jr. based on a novel by Elmore Leonard |
| production | Irving Ravetch Martin Ritt |
| music | David Rose |
| camera | James Wong Howe |
| cut | Frank Bracht |
| occupation | |
| |
It was called Hombre and is a 1967 American film directed by Martin Ritt based on a novel by Elmore Leonard . In this western , Paul Newman plays the white man John Russell, known as Hombre, who grew up with the Indians and to whom white society remains alien even in the extreme situation when the tour company with whom he is traveling in a carriage is attacked by bandits. Because of the content-related breaks with the genre conventions, the film can be assigned to the group of late wisters or, more generally, to the anti-western group.
action
John Russell (Newman) is a white male who was raised by Apaches . While he is in the process of capturing a herd of wild horses, the young Billy Lee Blake (Peter Lazar) visits him, who asks him to visit his friend Mendez (Martin Balsam) in an urgent matter. He tells him that his father, the owner of a guest house in the small town of Sweetmary, has died and that he has now inherited it. Russell travels to Sweetmary and assures the tenant "Jessie" Brown (Diane Cilento) that he will not lead a civilized life among whites, but will sell the pension for a herd of horses, and that he now wants to perfect this deal in the next larger town. The railroad has not yet reached Sweetmary, but the stagecoach line that Mendez and Blake worked for has already ceased operations. Only at the financially backed insistence of Audra Favor (Barbara Rush), the wife of a government commissioner for Indian affairs, is a final party put together for the only remaining carriage: Russell; the now unemployed "Jessie" who has dumped her lover, Sheriff Braden (Cameron Mitchell); Billy Lee Blake with his bored young wife Doris (Margaret Blye); Dr. Favor (Fredric March) with his wife and the sinister Cicero Grimes (Richard Boone) - who previously stole a cavalryman's ticket (Larry Ward) - leave with Mendez as the coachman.
Audra feels disturbed by the Indian Russell, who is politely asked by Mendez during a stopover in the Delgado station (Val Avery) to leave the passenger compartment and ride on the driver's seat. In addition, one learns there that suspicious riders hang around in the vicinity. Therefore, an alternative route is chosen that takes them to an abandoned mine, where they set up camp again. During this rest, further cracks in the travel company show up: Grimes acts threateningly towards the fellow travelers and almost rapes Doris, who had approached him out of curiosity. Russell meanwhile separates himself from the others - probably in the knowledge of coming adversity. As the group travels on, they are attacked a little later by bandits whose accomplice and leader is Grimes; to the horror of "Jessie", Braden is also among the scoundrels. They steal a sum of $ 12,000 that Favor cheated out of the Apaches on a reservation he was responsible for. Grimes escapes with some of the bandits and Audra as a hostage. Meanwhile, two other villains who wanted to destroy the water tanks are shot by Russell with a gun hidden on the roof of the coach. The tour group, now again in possession of the money stowed on a horse, flees on foot into the mountains, with Russell reluctantly taking the lead. Grimes and a Mexican accomplice (Frank Silvera) pursue them and get into an ambush from which Russell and Mendez, who is inexperienced in it, fire, which saves them some time. Favor wants to seize control of the money and the last water, but he is overpowered by Russell and sent off into the desert without a weapon and without supplies.
The rest of them - Russell, Mendez, "Jessie", Billy Lee and Doris - arrive back at the mine, where they hide and entrench themselves in anticipation of another attack by the Grimes gang, who are still after the dollar loot. At the end of his tether, Favor simply turned around and made it there. Against Russell's will, "Jessie" draws the thirsty Indian agent's attention to her, but through this the bandits who have just arrived discover the hiding place. Grimes is shot by Russell as he tries to trade the hostage for the money. Eventually the bandits tie Audra in the blazing sun to force a decision. Nobody is willing to carry out the trade with the criminals until finally "Jessie" takes heart and wants to tackle the numerous steps down to the bandits with the saddlebags full of dollars. Russell, who believes that this courageous gesture was just a last, ultimate invitation to himself as the only "man" of the trapped, resigned himself in the end to the bandits, but not without first exchanging the money for dirty laundry and the To give young Billy clear instructions on the killing of the guaranteed ambush Mexican. It comes to a showdown in which Russell kills Grimes, but is hit by the Mexican because Billy cannot fire because Audra is in the field of fire. Russell dies while Mendez and "Jessie" stand with him.
History of origin
The film was in the Coronado National Forest and in an abandoned copper mine in Helvetia in Pima County ( Arizona turned). Filming turned out to be extremely difficult due to the persistent rain.
reception
It was called Hombre and Ritt's most commercially successful film. The critics assessed both his directorial work and the performance of his actors positively. Roger Ebert saw the film in the tradition of the great social criticism, saying Western Riding best director performance in such since The Professionals by Richard Brooks to. The performance of the actors is “without exception excellent”, the director acts “with a sure hand”, the dialogues are worth listening to; they are "intelligent", but also have a "certain elegance".
Variety stated that the characters sometimes use “empty phrases that are overused platitudes” . Newman plays “excellent”, Fredric March scores in a “strong, unsympathetic, occasionally pathetic role”, Richard Boone's play is “powerful and yet admirably restrained”.
The lexicon of international films states that the film is an "exciting, psychologically well-structured and superbly photographed tragic western" that places "more emphasis on the inner tension of characters and dialogues (...) than on external effects". He condenses the events "while avoiding the usual idylization (...) into an unsentimental, startlingly realistic study of human behavior".
The Protestant film observer is also full of praise : "The startlingly realistic study of human behavior in a hopeless situation makes this Western, which is brilliantly designed in terms of direction, representation and camera performance, an outsider of the current US tradition."
Film analysis
Sociopolitical motivation
During his entire career, Ritt repeatedly made social grievances the subject of his films, such as racism in The Great White Hope and The Year Without a Father or the position of the trade unions in the USA in Norma Rae - A woman is her husband . The social ostracism of the indigenous population of the USA, which forms the background for Man called him Hombre , was "a terrible tragedy" for Ritt . The Indians are an "excluded group from society" and are "really neglected" . He continues: "If I could find a film on this topic that would be first class, I would jump in the air for joy to be able to make it." However , it was not possible for him to cast an Indian actor in the main role , because the topic, which may have been perceived as sensitive, needed a box-office film star like Newman in order to be realized as a film project.
Loy notes that the film had to end with the death of the main character, as at the time it was made, the white community was still unsure "to what extent racial minorities should be accepted by white society" . She was not yet ready for "a multiracial white (...) Apache to live on an equal footing with them".
Demythologizing the Western
The initial situation of Man named in Hombre is reminiscent of the classic Western Ringo by John Ford from 1939. As there, a motley group of travelers has to fight off attacks from outside. While Stagecoach , according to Miller, is a "song of praise to the human community" , the individuals become a conspiratorial group in recognizing their mutual dependency and there is also a happy ending for the outsiders - the prostitute Dallas, the unjustly imprisoned Ringo , the tour company in Hombre is a collection of disaffected characters who fail to work together successfully. The figure disposition, especially of women, reflects the zeitgeist of the 1960s: Jessie, marked by life, no longer indulges in romantic dreams of being able to lead a protected and cared for life as a wife, but takes her fate into her own hands; Audra, the wife of the impostor Favor, is bored and sexually frustrated with her marriage.
The city of Sweetmary, from which they all escape, is no longer a hopeful pioneer city, but also doomed to die in the staged implementation: Apart from the protagonists, it is only animated by a few extras, everyday life seems to have come to a standstill.
The hero as an alienated character
The main character John Russell is described by Miller as "perhaps the most alienated character in western history". His background in Indian life experience and culture does not allow him to develop a sense of responsibility for the group of whites that is foreign to him; his motivation to act is not to support the others altruistically, but only to bring the Indians back their money. According to Lenihan, he “refuses to make concessions about his dignity by not conforming to the society by which the Indians are oppressed.” He does not forgive weaknesses in others: he sends the treacherous without hesitation Favor without water in the desert.
Hembus states that Russell's “Indian quality” is increased by the fact that he is actually a white man, “a pure product of Indian upbringing and Indian milieus”. In his “serene logic” and his “untouchability” he is the “actually civilized” of history and thus a cinematic ancestor of Jack Crabb, the hero of Arthur Penn's Little Big Man .
In the discourse with Jessie, whose motivation to act is her pity for her fellow human beings, Russell is touched by her attitude, but his alienation makes it impossible for him to respond. It is only Jessie's self-sacrifice when she tries to save Audra that motivates Russell to make his heroic gesture to stand up for the good of the community for the first time. Whether it is a noble act due to a development in his personality or just a trick to keep in possession of the money, Ritt leaves open; The film is thus, according to Miller, "saved from a sentimental and grossly simplistic ending". Lenihan evaluates the fact that Russell ultimately sacrifices his life in such a way that he does so not “out of some sense of social responsibility”, but “out of respect for the decency of another passenger” - meaning the compassionate Jessie. Russell's death is staged coldly, fatalistically and without undertones that would suggest a martyrdom of Russell. Russell's journey into civilized society has failed; for him it is a journey into death, which he accepts indifferently.
Miller sums up: "At the time of its publication, Man called him Hombre, along with The Wildest Among a Thousand, was the most hopeless of modern westerns."
Russell's death as a Christian symbol of salvation?
In his book Invisible Natives, Armando Jose Prats examines the question of whether Russell's sacrificial death “as a new insight into a superior humanity of the Indian” or as “an Indian being that only thinly conceals an original [...], pure idea of Christianity ” be valued. He sees Russell as a hombre , as a man or the man who, in the manner of a Redeemer, sacrifices his life for the salvation of the community like Christ . Prat's conclusion is that Russell, through his foreign, but not necessarily Native American background, is "the other", a person outside of sinful white society and only thereby able to purify and redeem that society from its sins through his self-sacrificing death.
Cinematic means
In the opening credits of the film, old or old- fashioned , sepia- colored photos of native Americans in the style of Edward Curtis can be seen for the theme music . A white boy can also be discovered among the Indians. The cut on Russell's face in close-up in the first shot of the film should indicate that this is the white boy who grew up with the Indians; a means of historicizing the plot, according to Prats, and giving it a certain plausibility.
This close-up of Russell's face - with long Indian hairstyle - is unusual for the opening sequence of a western, which traditionally begins with a landscape shot. As Ritt cuts this close-up in quick succession against the image of the black stallion that Russell wants to catch, Russell's connection to nature and Indian traditions is established. Ritt, who usually prefers long long- shot or American sequences in his films with only a sparse use of close-ups, makes it clear from the start that the film's point of view is that of Russell; a change of perspective compared to the original book, in which a character named Carl Allen tells Russell's story from the position of an outsider.
literature
Novel
Elmore Leonard: It was called Hombre. Heyne Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3453206169 .
Secondary literature
- Joe Hembus: Western Lexicon - 1272 films from 1894-1975. Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna, 2nd edition 1977, ISBN 3-446-12189-7 .
- R. Philip Loy: Westerns in a Changing America, 1955-2000. McFarland & Company. Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina & London 2004, ISBN 0-7864-1871-0 .
- Gabriel Miller (Ed.): Martin Ritt - Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2002, ISBN 1-57806-434-1 .
- Gabriel Miller: The Films of Martin Ritt - Fanfare for the Common Man. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2000, ISBN 1-57806-277-2 .
- Armando Jose Prats: Invisible Natives - Myth & Identity in the American Western. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London 2002, ISBN 0-8014-8754-4 .
Web links
- Hombre in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- He was called Hombre in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Miller 2002, p. 174f
- ^ Review by Roger Ebert
- ↑ Critique of Variety ( Memento of the original from November 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) 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.
- ↑ He was called Hombre. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Evangelical Press Association Munich, Review No. 157/1967
- ↑ Miller 2002: p. 115
- ↑ Miller 2002, p. 30
- ^ Loy, p. 252
- ↑ Miller 2000: p. 61
- ↑ Miller 2000, p. 60
- ^ A b John H. Lenihan: Showdown - Confronting Modern America in the Western Film. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1980, ISBN 0-252-01254-2 , p. 182.
- ↑ Hembus, pp. 375f
- ↑ Miller 2000: p. 65
- ↑ Miller 2000, p. 66
- ^ Prats, p. 207
- ↑ Prats, pp. 207-220
- ^ Prats, p. 208
- ^ Miller, 2000: p. 61
