Night on Earth

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Night on Earth
Original title Night on Earth
Country of production United States
original language multilingual
Publishing year 1991
length 123 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Jim Jarmusch
script Jim Jarmusch
production Jim Stark
Masahiro Inbe
Noboru Takayama
music Tom Waits (music, songs)
Kathleen Brennan (songs)
camera Frederick Elmes
cut Jay Rabinowitz
occupation

Los Angeles :

New York :

Paris :

Rome :

Helsinki :

Night on Earth is an American episode film directed by Jim Jarmusch in which five stories are told. All episodes take place in a taxi, simultaneously on the same night, but in five different cities: Los Angeles , New York , Paris , Rome and Helsinki . The taxi driver in question intervenes in the fate of the passengers or the customers influence the fate of the driver. The episodes were shot in the respective national languages and last about 25 minutes. Night On Earth was also not dubbed, but subtitled to better reflect the country-specific moods.

Overview of the episodes

episode place Start (local time) taxi driver Taxi model
1 los Angeles 19:07 Winona Ryder 1985 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Wagon
2 new York 22:07 Armin Mueller-Stahl 1983 Ford LTD Crown Victoria
3 Paris 4:07 Isaach De Bankolé 1980 Peugeot 504
4th Rome 4:07 Roberto Benigni 1976 Fiat 128
5 Helsinki 5:07 Matti Pellonpää 1973 Volvo 144

action

los Angeles

Two different people happened to meet at the airport in the early evening. Casting agent and career woman Victoria lets young, gum-chewing and smoking Corky drive her to her house in Beverly Hills in a shabby taxi . After Victoria has discussed business with superiors and partners on the mobile phone, she starts talking to her taxi driver. It turns out that both of them have problems in their respective jobs that are caused by others. Victoria offers Corky a film role. However, Corky rejects this on the grounds that her goal is to become a car mechanic.

new York

Late in the evening, New York's streets are considered so unsafe that African American Yoyo can't find a taxi to take him to Brooklyn . When one thing finally stopped, Yoyo made the acquaintance of Helmut Grokenberger, who had come from East Germany. Helmut hardly speaks a word of English and cannot cope with the automatic transmission in his taxi. So Yoyo just got behind the wheel, switched on the taximeter and drove to Brooklyn himself. On the way, the two make fun of each other's names and hats - until Yoyo discovers his sister-in-law Angela. She wants to go out, but Yoyo pulls her into the taxi against her will to prevent her from walking through Brooklyn on her own. They yell at each other and insult each other. They continue their heated argument after they have left the taxi.

Paris

After midnight, the Ivory Coast taxi driver throws two black Africans who made fun of him out of his car. A short time later he takes a blind woman with him who seems more harmless to him than his previous customers. But despite her disability, the woman surprises with additional skills, unlike the two Africans, recognizes his origins precisely from her voice and responds extremely astutely to his questions about her life as a blind person. When the woman leaves the taxi, the sighted taxi driver causes an accident. When she hears the noise of the accident and angry voices accusing one another of blindness, she just smiles and slowly walks away from the scene of the accident.

Rome

At the same time, a taxi driver with sunglasses rushes through the streets of Rome. To pass the time, he verbally flirts with the employee who sits on the radio in the taxi control room without turning on the microphone; he drives on one-way streets against the direction of travel and messes with other motorists. When he picks up an older priest as a passenger, the whole thing culminates in absurdities. He continually calls him “bishop”, stops by the roadside with prostituting transvestites, confesses to the priest his sexual experiences with pumpkins, sheep and his sister-in-law. The seriously ill priest suffers a heart attack in the back seat of the driver unnoticed and dies a slow death from shortness of breath.

Helsinki

Shortly before dawn, the taxi driver Mika picks up three drunks and drives them home. Two of the guests tell of the third party, who has completely stepped away, that he had suffered a difficult fate. He lost his job in one day, his new car was demolished and he learned of the pregnancy of his underage daughter and the collapse of his marriage. Mika countered that there could be worse, meaning his marriage, the premature birth of his daughter and her death after three weeks. The two guests are so touched that they try to comfort Mika and are annoyed with their buddy because of his "feigned" suffering.

covers

The episodes pay homage to directors valued by Jarmusch: Los Angeles to John Cassavetes , New York to Spike Lee and Helsinki (where two passengers are Mika and Aki) to Aki and Mika Kaurismäki .

The name of the New York driver is a tribute to Jarmusch's first producer Otto Grokenberger .

A pool ball comes into the picture several times as the gear stick of the Roman driver - the black eight. Roberto Benigni , who played the taxi driver, had already killed a pursuer in the Jarmusch film Down By Law with one of these .

dramaturgy

“All episodes have one thing in common in dramaturgical terms, the dramaturgy of the tangent . Through the choice of the recurring location 'taxi', epic coincidence reigns in the meeting of characters. They touch each other for a short time without any common premise and part with practically no consequence. No dramatic conflict can develop from the situation that this creates. (....) The processes between them are developed exclusively from the considerable difference in characters in all stories, their situation, their previous history, their temperament. The characters' actions do not serve to create a collision, but rather to reveal the different characters. "

Awards

  • 1993: Frederick Elmes - Film Independent Spirit Awards, Best Cinematography

Reviews

The lexicon of international films found: “Jim Jarmusch creates snapshots far removed from Hollywood glamor in a consistently laconic tone; a relaxed, entertaining finger exercise, as 'humble' as it is personable. ” Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that by the end of the film he had not learned a great lesson or drawn any exciting conclusions. But he shared the community of the night when people were unbuttoned and vulnerable and more willing to talk about what really moves them.

literature

  • Reinhard Barrabas: Core areas of psychology. An introduction to film examples. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8252-3850-6 , pp. 65–68.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Night on Earth . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2014 (PDF; test number: 67 071-c K).
  2. ^ Yvonne Tasker: Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. Routledge, London and New York 2002, p. 180 ( digitized in the Google book search)
  3. ^ Rabenalt, Peter: Film dramaturgy. Berlin / Cologne 2011, p. 159
  4. ↑ Night on Earth. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ Roger Ebert on Night on Earth