Nora (1973, Losey)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Nora |
| Original title | A doll's house |
| Country of production |
United Kingdom of France |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1973 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Joseph Losey |
| script | David Mercer |
| production | Joseph Losey Richard F. Dalton |
| music | Michel Legrand |
| camera | Gerry Fisher |
| cut | Reginald Beck |
| occupation | |
| |
Nora is a 1972 British-French women's drama directed by Joseph Losey with Jane Fonda in the title role. In terms of content, the story is largely based on the literary model Nora or A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen from 1879.
action
Nora and Torvald Helmer, classic representatives of the upper, Scandinavian bourgeoisie of the late 19th century, have been married for eight years and have three children. Torvald is looking forward to a promotion to bank director, which means that the family will no longer have to limit themselves financially. Her husband, a man frozen in conventions, to whom appearance is paramount, immediately admonishes his wife not to want to change her lifestyle dramatically now. For Torvald, his wife is like a doll, he doesn't treat her like someone of his own equals, not like a grown woman of equal value. This continues an unfortunate development in Nora's life that began with her father. He also did not take Nora fully and treated her like a small child.
At Christmas time, Nora receives a visit from her former friend Kristine Linde, whom she has not seen for ten years. Kristine married a man eight years ago for his money in order to support her mother and her younger brothers financially. When this man died, however, he left her no money, so Kristine had to go back to work. Currently without income, Kristine asks Nora to ask Torvald for a position in the bank he will soon be heading. Nora confesses to Kristine that she once borrowed money from the lawyer Krogstad without telling Torvald about it. When her father was supposed to sign the promissory note as surety, a great misfortune happened. The father died, and so Nora forged her father's signature in order to have the borrower's note secured. It is precisely during these Christmas days, when Kristine is visiting, that Krogstad notices this fraudulent signature forgery. The lawyer without character then tries to blackmail Nora. Torvald intends to fire Krogstad, who works as a clerk in the bank, as soon as he takes up the post of director. Because Krogstad is also said to have forged a signature. Torvald is willing to hire Kristine to replace Krogstad. He sees his last chance in sending Torvald a letter in which he, Krogstad, denounces Nora and informs Torvald about Nora's signature forgery.
Long ago, Krogstad had solicited Kristine's affection. However, she rejected him because he was not making enough money at the time. Now, when she sees Krogstad again, who knew nothing of her motives for rejection at the time, she confesses her love for him. These re-awakened feelings lead Krogstad to reconsider his shoddy blackmail attempt on Nora. He intends to go to Torvald and request that the letter sent to him be returned unopened. But Kristine disagrees. She believes that this letter could and should trigger an overdue discussion between Nora and her husband in order to save this apparently broken marriage. Torvald reads the letter and reacts horrified and extremely angry. Is that the woman he married? Torvald wants to avoid a scandal at all costs and neither separate from nor divorce Nora. Nora should also preserve the facade on the outside.
A second letter from Krogstad to Torvald contains the promissory note with Nora's forged signature. Torvald throws the promissory note into the fire and forgives Nora. He thinks it is now possible to go back to the old life. But recent events have triggered something in Nora. She has matured in an emancipatory manner and has recognized that Torvald was only interested in status and public image in both marriages. She realizes that she was never an equal partner to her husband. Her house was a doll's house, and she had the decorative doll in the middle of it. Nora takes the consistent and leaves her husband with the children.
Production notes
- Nora was first presented to the public in May 1973 at the Cannes Film Festival , where the film was not shown in competition. In Germany, Nora started on October 26, 1973. On November 6, 1976, the German television first broadcast on ARD .
- According to Der Spiegel , the actors played without a fee, but with a profit share.
- Edith Head created the costumes, Michel Legrand conducted his own composition. Eileen Diss provided the film construction.
- Immediately beforehand, in the spring of 1973, another film version of the Ibsen story had been brought to the cinemas under the same title, although it had a less well-known director in Patrick Garland - and with Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins also had a far less spectacular cast. This film was not released in Germany and was only shown on GDR television in 1978 under the title Ein Puppenheim .
Reviews
“It is clearly the women - and basically only the women - who make Joseph Losey's 'Nora' film really worth seeing and exciting: Jane Fonda and Delphine Seyrig, who play the main female roles, but not just play them, but practical Life. (...) The sheer, brisk, headstrong acting work of these two very concrete women, their always clearly visible commitment and temperament without a trace of vanity ... save the film from falling into cinéastic arts and crafts and male pathos, both old-fashioned and strenuously staged sink in. (...) Jane Fonda as Nora is the epitome of a lucky bad cast. She repels, attracts, never completely convincing as Nora, but completely as Jane Fonda. (...) Jane Fonda climbs into Nora's initially unworthy femininity with an effort, and Losey stages this Nora in a perfidious cold way .... Instead, you wake up and live later when Nora discovers herself and moves towards her liberation, just as strongly and physically. It is an adventure, as Jane Fonda then shows herself as Nora, who is becoming more and more sovereign, clearer and more daring, as physically as consciously. Delphine Seyrig as her friend Kristine is almost too exaggerated a model specimen of a woman who has gained so much strength from disappointments and renunciation that she seems to be frighteningly strong and clear in every situation that matters and finally to be able to cope with it. "
“There has been a lot of excitement, a lot of verbal fuss about Joseph Losey's 'Nora' adaptation. I do not know why. Because Losey has softened an aggressive piece to a sluggish, only occasionally attractive mood. 'A kind of dark melancholy' should hover over his film, the director wanted - no wonder that in this rather defensive venture, Ibsen's evil, bright view of the bourgeoisie and trivial life did not interest him very much. As strange as it may sound like the misleading advance propaganda: Despite Ibsen and despite Jane Fonda, Losey's 'Nora' has become a film for men. Losey worked with passion on their beautification, and unfortunately only on it. Losey has made something very pure, almost nothing but tragic: a martyr of love from the angular advocate Kronstadt, a tragicomically screwed up figure. And to Helmer, Nora's husband, perhaps the most disgusting of all Ibsen citizens, he lets the actor David Warner walk along elegiacally - all Ibsen's attacks on the man ... are lost in Warner's melancholy, dull, melancholy drama. "
“Sensitive, poetic implementation of Ibsen's play, whereby Losey's staging conveys its own possibilities of interpretation without pathos. A masterful film adaptation. "
“At the time of the premiere, 'Nora' was severely reprimanded for allowing Ms. Fonda to impose her 'feminist dogma' on the role. In truth, what Losey and Fonda present to us is not the traditionally thoughtless 'greenhouse rose' that finally finds her mind again in the third act, but instead a woman who realizes that she is trapped in a stereotype but is ready to play the game as long as her husband loves her and trusts her. "
"Fairly successful film version of the Ibsen play, worth a look due to Fonda's controversial interpretation of a liberated woman of the 19th century."
"Open but less effective version of the above, with too much solemn seriousness and wrongly cast in the central part."
swell
- ↑ Der Spiegel, report from October 22, 1973, p. 195 f.
- ↑ A Nora called Jane Fonda review at spiegel.de .
- ↑ Ratio ex machina - criticism at zeit.de .
- ↑ Nora. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 3, 2015 .
- Jump up ↑ Nora (A Doll's House) - review on allemovie.com.
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 348.
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 118.
- Nora in the Internet Movie Database (English)