Arizona Junior

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Movie
German title Arizona Junior
Original title Raising Arizona
Arizona Junior Logo.png
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1987
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Joel Coen
script Ethan Coen ,
Joel Coen
production Ethan Coen
music Carter Burwell
camera Barry Sonnenfeld
cut Michael R. Miller
occupation
synchronization

Raising Arizona ( Raising Arizona ) is an American film comedy from Joel Coen from the year 1987 .

action

Herbert I. McDunnough, simply called "HI" after his initials , is a notorious thief and petty criminal who robbed small businesses over and over again after every release from prison in order to be caught and locked up again. During every arrest he gets to know the policewoman Edwina, or "Ed" for short, who takes mug shots of him. During his prison time, he can only think of Ed, so that he immediately proposes marriage to her after his release , which she accepts. Both marry and move into a trailer in the desert, where their common life begins. HI takes a repetitive job in a factory while Ed pursues her career in the police force. For their ultimate happiness, however, a joint child is still missing, which is also being worked on diligently until Ed is found to be sterile during a medical examination . Ed is horrified and loses her will to live after this shock.

It was only when she heard on television about the "Arizona quintuplets", born after artificial insemination by the wife of the local furniture king, Nathan Arizona, that she became envious. She cannot believe that good people like her are punished and others are rewarded in abundance. So she decides that the Arizonas will probably not notice one child less, which is why she urges her husband HI to kidnap one of the babies. After successfully kidnapping Nathan Junior, they welcome him to their home. But the family idyll in the home is soon disturbed by the Snoats brothers, because Gale and Evelle have broken out of prison and are first hiding with their friend HI. Ed doesn't just like that as a policewoman, but also as a new mother, because she wants to keep bad influence away from her baby. And so she gives HI the order that the Snoats brothers should disappear. However, they tend to make fun of him and wonder why he is suddenly under the thumb of his wife.

The next day, the McDunnoughs are visited by HI's foreman Glen and his family. While the children let off steam in the caravan, Dot says that she would like to have more children and Glen confesses to HI that he and his wife are swingers and that he would like to suggest a partner swap. But that only puts a flush of anger in HI's face, so that he knocks down Glen with full force and chases him off his property. Of course this has consequences. And so Glen comes back the next day to quit HI. He also found out who the baby is and blackmailed HI because Dot wanted another son. But again HI drives Glen off his property. The only stupid thing is that the Snoats brothers overheard the conversation, overwhelm HI in a wild fight in the trailer and kidnap the kidnapped baby again. When Ed comes home, she frees her husband, and they both take up chase.

A few nights before, after kidnapping the baby, HI dreamed that a hellhole would open up because of his terrible deed and that a spawn from hell would hunt and punish him relentlessly for his crimes. Until then, he has no idea that his nightly dream will come true more than he might wish. And this figment of hell is the rocker Leonard Smalls, who knows no mercy on his Honda Shadow . The bounty hunter has already tracked HI and Ed, but first he has to haggle with Nathan Arizona about the price to save his son. But Arizona thinks Smalls is more of the kidnapper because of his ransom demand and so Smalls threatens that he could sell Nathan Jr. on the black market.

Meanwhile, in the presence of Nathan Jr., Gale and Evelle raid a bank and make a bigger booty. In all the hustle and bustle, however, they do not notice how a bank employee puts a paint bomb into the money sack, which later explodes while driving and almost leads to the Snoats brothers having an accident. And it gets much worse, because the two of them also forgot Nathan Jr. in front of the bank. In the meantime, Ed and HI as well as Smalls have been found in front of the bank. Smalls manages to snatch the baby from under their noses. But Ed knows no mercy and runs straight to Smalls to steal the baby from him, and then flees with him through the bank. Smalls pursues them and gets into a fight with HI, in which he gives him a lot and is about to kill him. But he is just lucky and manages to pull the locking pin of one of Smalls hand grenades , so that it explodes on the street.

HI and Ed then bring Nathan Jr. back to his family. When they put him lovingly in the cradle, they are surprised by Nathan Arizona, who first thanks them for bringing his son back. And when both of them refuse his reward, he realizes that it was not Smalls who kidnapped his baby, but it was both of them. They explain their situation and assure that they take all responsibility for their actions. After all, her life is over. They could not have children and will have to split up now. But Nathan doesn't want to know anything about it. He experienced something similar with his wife, with whom he could not have children either, and therefore sees, not only because of his knowledge of human nature, that HI and Ed belong together. And so they both get together and go home again. At night HI dreams again, but this time about the future. About his son becoming a football star and his grandchildren who will visit him and Ed at their home.

Cast and dubbing

role actor German speaker
HI McDunnough Nicolas Cage Rolf Zacher
Dot Frances McDormand Marianne Lutz
Evelle Snoats William Forsythe Joachim Tennstedt
Gale Snoats John Goodman Klaus Sunshine
Glen Sam McMurray Ivar Combrinck
HIs work colleague M. Emmet Walsh Gerd Duwner
Leonard Smalls Randall 'Tex' Cobb Helmut Krauss
Nathan Arizona Sr. Trey Wilson Joachim Kerzel

In contrast to the debut film Blood Simple , emphasis was placed on making the characters of Arizona Junior appear likeable. The character of Edwina was specially written for Holly Hunter. Many of the babies designated for the shoot could not be used because they preferred to walk rather than crawl. For example, one of the mothers tried to get her baby to crawl by putting his shoes the wrong way round. Randal Cobb, who plays the character Leonard Smalls, presented the Coen brothers time and again with new challenges because, according to Joel Coen, he was "less an actor than a force of nature".

Arizona Junior is one of Steven Spielberg's favorite films , so he starred John Goodman and Holly Hunter in his fantasy film Always - The Angel of Fire from Montana .

production

concept

The Coen brothers began working on Arizona Junior with the intention of creating a completely opposite film to their debut Blood Simple . The basic idea of ​​the script started with the character HI, who has both a longing for a regular life and a tendency to criminal acts. To create the characters' idiosyncratic dialects, the local Arizona dialects were mixed with the way magazines and Bibles are read in church. It then took three and a half months to write the script.

The works of director Preston Sturges and the southern literature of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor had a great influence on the creative work. Then they put the screenplay Circle Films , which had already taken over the distribution of Blood Simple - A Murderous Night . They liked the script and they agreed to finance the film. The shooting began with a complete script and storyboard , so only a few scenes had to be adapted or changed during the shoot. Therefore, according to Joel Coen, it was possible "because of the good preparation to get the most out of the budget" of only 5 million US dollars.

Turn

Arizona Junior took 13 weeks to shoot . In particular, the collaboration between the Coen brothers and Nicolas Cage was turbulent, although it was characterized by mutual respect. So Cage appeared several times on the film set and offered the Coen brothers scene changes, which they all refused. Cage just said that the Coen brothers had a "very strong vision" of what they wanted to shoot. Therefore, for the first time in his young acting career, Cage had to learn to accept other artistic views, although he noted that it was not particularly easy for him because the Coen brothers had an "autocratic nature".

Many of the crew members who Joel and Ethan Coen worked with on Blood Simple were also on the shoot of Arizona Junior , including cameraman Barry Sonnenfeld , co-producer Mark Silverman, production designer Jane Musky, unit manager and assistant director Deborah Reinisch and the film composer Carter Burwell .

Production design

Production designer Jane Musky was hired for the film through producer Mark Silverman . The Coen brothers gave Musky a free hand in their work. She benefited from the fact that the Coen brothers' storyboards were designed more simply than usual and only depicted what was to be shown, and Musky accordingly had a free hand with the detailing. During pre-production, work was carried out on the storyboard as well as on the locations and sets so that ideas were collected together, which were then incorporated into the storyboard.

Arizona was chosen as the location because they wanted a place that looks "weird". To keep production costs down, they looked for a location that would support the filming and found Scottsdale . It served as the location for almost all of the outdoor shots, while almost all of the indoor shots were shot in the studio. There were three studio stages in Carefree , where The Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed.

Sound design

As fans of MAD magazine , the Coen brothers repeatedly wrote terms such as “Thwack” or “double spanky” in the script to describe noises so that the sound engineers could orientate themselves.

One of the most famous scenes in the film, the kidnapping scene with HI, the babies and the accompanying chaos, which was based on the maze scene from Shining , posed greater difficulties for the sound engineers, especially because of the baby noises. There were over 20 babies on the set, of which the sound engineer Allan Byer took four children and made four recordings of about 15 minutes each. This was then transferred to magnetic tape and edited several times by the dialog editor. It even happened that a sentence could emerge from it that sounded something like "I'm Larry". This phrase was then played when HI lifts a baby named Larry out of the crib.

For the dream sequence by Leonard Smalls, motorcycle noises were mixed with jet noises. Since the Coen brothers didn't like this for the most part, the rest of the scenes were based on the style of the Spaghetti Westerns, i.e. rather sparse and sparse. The scene in which Smalls suddenly disappears after talking to Nathan Arizona also posed some problems for the sound designers. The Coen brothers wanted something that sounded "wildie". As a result, there was a lot of experimentation with car noises, the sounds of vehicles passing by, and car horns. In the end, they perceived the sound of a passing motorcycle, which had a very high noise level.

Reviews

The film received positive to excellent reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes website counted 49 positive reviews of 54 professional reviews, which corresponds to a value of 91%. The film was also received with very positive reactions from the general public, because at the same time 85% of 89,075 users rated the film positively. This in turn is confirmed by the online film archive IMDb , another platform on which normal users can submit their film reviews, because there 120,897 users gave the film an average of very good 7.3 out of 10 possible points (as of March 30, 2020).

English language review

For Richard Corliss of the renowned Time magazine, Arizona Junior was a “terrific comedy” in which the Coen brothers showed their craftsmanship and in comparison to their “debut film Blood Simple - A murderous night looks like a five-finger exercise” . And although the story had minor gaps, he liked both the shortness of the staging and the comic-like characters.

In the New York Times , Vincent Canby praised both the actors and the amusing "script that had lots of fun and unconventional ideas". However, he also criticized the direction of the Coen brothers, because what Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut used to be praised for, looks to them because it is technically overloaded, as if it had no life of its own. He also didn't like the fact that the film looked like it was partly shot by Jonathan Demme and that despite the great scenes, the actors couldn't carry the film on their own.

Because the renowned film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times found it ridiculous that a small crook who committed stupid robberies could speak so cleverly, he criticized the exaggerated eloquence of the character of Nicolas Cage in particular. This would raise the dialogues to a level that "should seem funny, [...] but are perceived as disturbing and not convincing". And although the basic idea is good and the film has some “enchanting moments”, it becomes a victim of its own “forced” and “mannered” style.

Rita Kempley said in the Washington Post that the Coen brothers are like “two big kids who got a camera for Christmas. They are full of raw comic power and are just as silly as they are demanding ”. She also praised the cameraman, the two actors Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter and the funny scenes.

German language criticism

In Spiegel magazine 23/1987, Arnd Schirmer said that the Coen brothers "pull out all the stops". "Refined, sophisticated camera movements, rapid montages with imaginative abbreviations and the virtuoso handling of music and noises ennoble" Arizona Junior "into a brilliant American satire."

The film-dienst saw “an impressive external unity and perfection” in the film, which was due to the fact that the film team around the cameraman and composer had not changed compared to the previous film. The film is a satire in which everything, "both the comical and the sentimental parts", is over the top. However, the Coen brothers did not succeed in presenting a good black comedy, because everything was "only half-heartedly realized: too hard, too playful and too in love with film history they soon lost sight of the subject."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung found that Arizona Junior did not come close to Coen's "promising debut". The “cross between comedy and action” has to be “surrealistic exaggerated” in such a way that nothing remains but banalities. However, Sonnenfeld's "highly mobile camera" was praised as "masterful".

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

publication

The film was released on March 13, 1987 in US theaters and grossed a total of $ 22.8 million at a $ 5 million production cost. The film grossed a further 6.3 million US dollars abroad. After the film opened in the Federal Republic of Germany on May 28, 1987, 196,246 viewers saw it in cinemas, making it number 70 of the 100 most successful films of the German cinema year 1987.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 32.
  2. ↑ a b Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, page 21.
  3. ↑ a b Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, page 19
  4. ↑ a b Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 29
  5. ↑ Friedman, Lester D./Notbohm, Brent: Steven Spielberg: interviews , University Press of Mississippi (1 April, 2000), page 142nd
  6. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 17.
  7. ^ A b Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, page 18.
  8. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 27.
  9. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 30
  10. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 23.
  11. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 24.
  12. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 26.
  13. ↑ a b Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, page 33
  14. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 34.
  15. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 28.
  16. ^ Coen, Coen, Allen 2006, p. 20.
  17. ^ Russell 2001, p. 27
  18. ↑ LoBrutto 1992, p. 216.
  19. ↑ LoBrutto 1992, p. 217.
  20. ↑ LoBrutto 1992, p. 218.
  21. ↑ a b LoBrutto 1992, p. 219.
  22. ↑ LoBrutto 1994, p. 259.
  23. ↑ a b review in film-dienst 12/1987, accessed via Munzinger Online .
  24. ↑ a b LoBrutto 1994, p. 258.
  25. ^ Raising Arizona. rottentomatoes.com, accessed July 24, 2011 .
  26. ↑ Richard Corliss: Cinema: Rootless People RAISING ARIZONA on time.com from March 23, 1987 (English), accessed on August 13, 2011
  27. ↑ Vincent Canby : Raising Arizona (1987) - FILM: 'RAISING ARIZONA,' COEN BROTHERS COMEDY on nytimes.com, March 11, 1987 (English), accessed August 13, 2011
  28. ↑ Roger Ebert: Raising Arizona (PG-13) on suntimes.com of March 20, 1987 (English), accessed on August 13, 2011
  29. ↑ Rita Kempley: 'Raising Arizona' (PG-13) on washingtonpost.com of March 20, 1987 (English), accessed August 13, 2011
  30. ↑ Arnd Schirmer: In Windelseile on Spiegel Online from June 1, 1987, accessed on August 13, 2011
  31. ^ Arizona Junior In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 30, 1987, p. 41
  32. ^ Arizona Junior at boxofficemojo.com , accessed August 13, 2011
  33. ↑ TOP 100 DEUTSCHLAND 1987 on insidekino.de , accessed on August 13, 2011