Farewell looks

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Movie
German title Farewell looks
Original title Parting glances
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1986
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 15
Rod
Director Bill Sherwood
script Bill Sherwood
production Yoram Mandel
Arthur Silverman
Nancy Greenstein
Paul L. Kaplan
music Mike Nolan
camera Jacek Laskus
cut Bill Sherwood
occupation

Farewell Glances ( Parting Glances ) is an American feature film by director and screenwriter Bill Sherwood from 1986. Set within the New York gay scene, the film was one of the first to deal with AIDS and achieved cult status.

action

It tells about 24 hours in the life of the gay couple Robert and Michael, who share an apartment in New York City . The two in their late twenties have been together for six years, but now their relationship is being put to the test: Robert works for a health agency and plans to leave for Africa the next day to work there for two years. Michael will stay in New York and take care of his ex-boyfriend Nick, a rock musician who has AIDS, among other things.

In the evening, Robert and Michael first attend a farewell dinner given by Robert's employer Cecil and his wife Betty - the two lead a rather unconventional marriage, because Cecil is obviously homosexual and Betty knows that. Michael learns that Robert was not forced to move abroad but he has voluntarily agreed to it, which makes him angry and puzzled. Later in the evening there is a bigger and more colorful surprise party organized by their mutual friend Joan. The young and self-confident student Peter joins the usual guests and expresses his interest in Michael. Nick also manages to attend the party despite his illness. Michael is unsettled in his feelings and confesses to Joan that he loves Nick more than his friend Robert, although their relationship is the more stable. At the end of the night, the Freundeskreis visits a gay disco.

The next morning there is an open argument between Robert and Michael. Michael accuses his friend of only going to Africa so that he doesn't have to be there when Nick dies. Robert denies this, but admits that he feels increasingly in the way, as Michael has to spend more and more time and thoughts on Nick. Finally, the two say goodbye at the airport. Back at the apartment, Michael receives a call from Nick who is on Fire Island and who appears to be killing himself. Michael panics and rents a seaplane over the phone to fly to Fire Island immediately. Michael and Nick once had a great time on this island, in a dream-like sequence they joke about the property of the wealthy and nasty homosexual Douglas attacked.

When Michael is about to leave, Robert shows up in the shared apartment because he has decided not to go to Africa. But in the excitement he is hardly noticed by his friend. Once on Fire Iceland, finds Michael Nick, not suicide wanted to commit. He suggests Michael visit Robert in Africa, not knowing that Robert has never started his trip.

Production background

Farewell Glances was one of the first films to deal openly and realistically with the topic of AIDS and its impact on the gay community. At the time of filming, which took place mainly in 1984, the disease was still characterized by much speculation in 2018, according to lead actor Richard Ganoung, and it was only just beginning to become increasingly popular. The budget for the independent film, directed by debutant Bill Sherwood , was around $ 300,000. It was so tight that the completion of the film took almost a year, partly because there was no money for the scenes with the seaplane for a long time. As Steve Buscemi recalled, Sherwood shot a few scenes every few weeks, then used those freshly filmed scenes to raise more money from financiers and continue filming in stages.

Sherwood's film was shot out of the homosexual scene and portrays the homosexuality of its characters as given and largely without any problems within their milieu, which in comparison to other film productions of the 1980s was not a given. When the film was released in 1986, AIDS was meanwhile in the public eye, but Parting Glances - which also contains many humorous elements - was deliberately not advertised as a “problem film” about AIDS. Some of the personalities involved in the film later died of AIDS, including director Sherwood, for whom Parting Glances would remain his only film.

The cast consisted exclusively of actors who were largely unknown at the time. The character of Nick became the first major film role for Steve Buscemi , who gave up his secure job as a firefighter for Parting Glances , for which his colleagues declared him crazy. The risk paid off, however, and his good reviews for Parting Glances gave him initial recognition as an actor. Buscemi said he was able to identify strongly with the figure because, like the latter, he lived as an artist in New York with a small circle of friends, hoping for a breakthrough. For the other two leading actors Richard Ganoung and John Bolger as well as Kathy Kinney , a friend of director Sherwood, it was even her film debut.

The British group Bronski Beat is famous for their songs Love and Money , Smalltown Boy and Why? Part of the soundtrack. In addition, the film by Sherwood, a classically trained musician, also contains compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Giacomo Puccini and Johannes Brahms .

synchronization

The dubbed version of the film Abschiedsblicke was created in 1987 at Berliner Synchron based on the dialogue script and direction by Florian Hopf.

role actor German Dubbing voice
Michael Richard Ganoung Tobias Master
Richard John Bolger Reinhard Kuhnert
Nick Steve Buscemi Joachim Tennstedt
Peter Adam Nathan Andreas Fröhlich
Joan Kathy Kinney Marianne Gross
Cecil Patrick Tull Wolfgang Völz
Betty Yolande Bavan Renate Danz
Douglas Richard Wall Norbert Gescher
Sarah Kristin Moneagle Anita Lochner
Klaus, German artist Theodor Ganger Mathias Einert

Reviews

Vito Russo wrote in 1987 in his book The Celluloid Closet that Parting Glances had received high praise when it was published in the general press and that Bill Sherwood had brought comparisons with Woody Allen, among other things . According to Russo, the characters move in the "most realistic recreation" of the New York gay scene that has been filmed to date. The “genius” of the film is “that it is not about being gay or even about the gay lifestyle. He showed that films can explore gay life without being about gay life. The film is about how people get along; in this case most of them happen to be gay. "

Janet Maslin in the New York Times on February 19, 1986 praised the film's "lively style and good looks", which is noteworthy given the low budget. However, the characters are often only depicted superficially, which is particularly noticeable when the film uses dream-like sequences to indicate their inner workings. One exception is Steve Buscemi, who has a "powerful anarchic presence" and embodies the most interesting figure. The most successful part of the film is the house party. The film shows AIDS as part of a “larger social fabric, understandable in context and never in a sentimental light,” says Maslin.

Sid Smith named Parting Glances in the Chicago Tribune on March 14, 1986 one of the best English-language films to date about homosexuals. The film is fresh and charming, often harshly funny and, for example, appears very natural in its dialogues. The film is immersed in "several three-dimensional characters with tender intimacy". Parting Glances offers the “smartest insights” so far into how the AIDS crisis is affecting the lives of gays. At the same time, AIDS is just one of several topics, so that the film does not look like a report from a news magazine. The “captivating film” is not without minor weaknesses, but manages to portray its gay characters as realistic, individual characters and at the same time to depict their subculture in an exciting way.

The Catholic Film Service writes that Parting Glances develops “not without self-irony and with unpretentious, participatory images” a differentiated representation of the relationships between the three main characters and their circle of friends - the film is “without pathos and exaltation, but also somewhat noncommittal.” Cinema describes the film as “self-deprecating and unsentimental”, it is a “haunting portrait of completely normal gay men”.

The American film critic and film professor Emanuel Levy judged in 2006 that Parting Glances was one of the first and most significant films on the subject of AIDS. The film was groundbreaking at the time, in which it presented the homosexual characters as "normal people who work like heterosexuals, argue and make up". Again and again the film takes up stereotypes about homosexuals and heterosexuals and turns them around. The topic of AIDS is not approached “hysterically or sentimentally”, the end is more “elegiac” and mourns a past, more free-spirited time. The US critic Dennis Schwartz wrote in 2007 that despite its location in contemporary history as one of the first films with AIDS, the film did not seem out of date, which says a lot about the "delightful, sincere film".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Benjamin Lee: 'There was a lot of panic' - behind the first movies to tackle the Aids crisis . In: The Guardian . June 21, 2018, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed July 27, 2020]).
  2. ^ 'There was a lot of panic' - behind the first movies to tackle the Aids crisis. June 21, 2018, accessed on July 27, 2020 .
  3. ^ John Pierson: Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour across a Decade of American Independent Cinema . University of Texas Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-292-76101-8 ( google.com [accessed July 27, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Kenneth M. Walsh: Catching Up With Richard Wall. Retrieved July 27, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Peter M. Nichols: HOME VIDEO; An 80's Story Of Gay Life . In: The New York Times . April 21, 2000, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 28, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Kenneth MacKinnon, The Politics of Popular Representation: Reagan, Thatcher, AIDS, and the Movies . Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-8386-3474-5 ( google.com [accessed July 27, 2020]).
  7. ^ 'There was a lot of panic' - behind the first movies to tackle the Aids crisis. June 21, 2018, accessed on July 27, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Steve Buscemi. Retrieved July 27, 2020 (English).
  9. ↑ Peter M. Nichols: HOME VIDEO; An 80's Story Of Gay Life . In: The New York Times . April 21, 2000, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 28, 2020]).
  10. ^ Parting Glances (1986) - IMDb. Retrieved July 27, 2020 .
  11. ↑ synchrondatenbank.de. Retrieved July 29, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Vito Russo: The gay dream factory: Homosexuality in film . Gmünder, Berlin 1990, pp. 242-243.
  13. ↑ Janet Maslin: Screen: A Couple's 'Parting Glances' . In: The New York Times . February 19, 1986, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 28, 2020]).
  14. ↑ Sid Smith, entertainment writer: `PARTING GLANCES` TAKES SOPHISTICATED LOOK AT AIDS CRISIS. Retrieved July 28, 2020 (American English).
  15. ↑ Farewell glances at the film service. Retrieved July 28, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Farewell glances at Cinema
  17. ↑ EmanuelLevy: Parting Glances (1986) | Emanuel Levy. Retrieved July 28, 2020 (American English).
  18. ^ Parting Glances (1986). Retrieved July 28, 2020 (English).