Skidoo (film)

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Movie
Original title Skidoo
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1968
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Otto Preminger
script Doran William Cannon
production Otto Preminger for Paramount / Sigma
music Harry Nilsson
camera Leon Shamroy
cut George R. Rohrs
occupation

Skidoo is an American comedy film from 1968 directed by Otto Preminger . She satirically and parodistically addresses the phenomena of those years such as drug consumption and hippyism , free love and body painting .

action

The opening credits of the film begin with an animation sequence in which director Otto Preminger, a bald comic figure in striped prisoner clothing with a hippie flower, sails down and dances while the name "Skidoo" appears.

"Tough" Tony Banks, a retired mob killer, lives in a constant quarrel with his quarrelsome wife Flo, as can be seen in the first few sequences of the film. He is worried about his shapely and extremely attractive, blonde daughter Darlene, who met her new friend, the long-haired Stash, in the hippie environment and who is carefree about the day with him and his like-minded friends. One day Angie and Hechy burst in, two lackeys of the big gang boss, whom everyone just calls "God". “God” has one last assignment for Banks: to assassinate 'blue chip' Packard before he can testify against him before the US Senate Commission on Combating Crime. After an old friend of his, the professional thug Harry, was found dead with a hole in his head, Tony, who was initially not very enthusiastic, decides not to contradict the big boss and lets himself be booked into Alcatraz .

Packard is being held there under the highest security level. While Banks tries to get hold of Packard with the help of the tinkerer and opponent of the establishment, Fred, known as "the professor", Tony's wife has invited Flo Stash and his friends to move in with her during Tony's absence, as they have no permanent residence. Flo himself goes to “Gotts” yacht, which is anchored in international waters, because the gang boss no longer feels safe anywhere. She wants to persuade the mobster to take back the killing order, which is why her husband was brought to Alcatraz. But he doesn't even think about it, he prefers to hang out with Darlene, who is more than half a century younger and who followed her mother onto the yacht a little later. The stash accompanying them is also hit on - by “God's” black lover.

After Tony realizes that he cannot kill Packard, he writes a letter to his wife with the message that he will probably never get out of here again. Although Fred "the professor" warns him not to moisten the envelope with his tongue to close it, Banks does just that. The tape is coated with LSD and Banks will soon have the most extraordinary trip of his life. He's getting so high that he's hallucinating completely. A little later, all the other inmates also get into an LSD intoxication. Somewhat disillusioned again, Tony and Fred plan their escape from Alcatraz. They make a makeshift balloon out of freezer bags and garbage cans with which they can escape prison.

With her hippie friends behind her, Flo Banks storms the hiding place of “God”, and the “balloon” with Fred and Tony on board floats in. Under such pressure, he disguises himself as Groucho Marx with his typical insignia and first of all hides in a closet on the yacht. Flo and Tony sink into each other's arms and first test the bed in one of the various yacht cabins. Meanwhile, the skipper of “Gotts” yacht, Captain Garbaldo, trusts the small-headed Angie and “Gotts” black lover and holds the famous book “The Death of God” by Gabriel Vahanian in his hand.

production

The film is considered to be one of the most bizarre and bizarre but also extremely interesting cinema productions in Hollywood history and was strongly influenced by the social upheavals and student unrest in Western societies at the end of the 1960s. Thematically a mixture of Flower Power Happening, Singspiel and gangster comedy on speed, Otto Preminger's lively style exercise with legendary old stars in guest roles such as Peter Lawford , George Raft , Burgess Meredith , Cesar Romero and Groucho Marx awaited . For Marx, his underworld boss, called "God", was to be the last film appearance. Sources report that Preminger came up with the idea for this film material after he began experimenting with LSD thanks to Timothy Leary .

The film was shot in San Francisco (outdoor) and premiered on December 19, 1968. The German premiere was on July 11, 1969. Here the film was partly shown as Skidoo - A Happening in Love .

Three of the actors in the film - Romero, Meredith and Frank Gorshin - recently played Batman's antagonists - the Penguin , the Joker and the Riddler - in the television series of the same name .

The buildings for the film were designed by Robert Emmet Smith , the costumes by Rudi Gernreich . Head cameraman Leon Shamroy had previously photographed Preminger's large-scale productions Porgy and Bess and Der Kardinal . He was also responsible for the psychedelic color effects and technical camera ideas such as Groucho Marx's head rotating on a screw.

Composer Harry Nilsson sings all the names of those involved in the film in the credits.

The film scenes with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas appearing in Skidoo come from the Preminger production First Victory in 1964. Another Hollywood star was optically “present”. In a scene with the hippies in front of the mayor, the portrait of Ronald Reagan is emblazoned in the background . He had become Governor of California the year before (1967) .

criticism

The film, like Casino Royale, a completely over-the-top, typical product of the late 1960s, overwhelmed the majority of the critics and left them perplexed and even angry. The spectrum of criticism ranged from "Inexpressible" (Michael Billington of Illustrated London News) to "abysmal mess" (Leslie Halliwell in Halliwell's film guide). The lack of humor and spontaneity in Preminger's production was also widely criticized. Below is a small selection:

Roger Ebert stated in his review of December 27, 1968: "Otto Preminger's" Skidoo "fails mostly because it lacks spirit. It has everything else: An expensive production, a lot of good comedians, fetching music by Nilsson, even Groucho Marx. But the whole dead weight sits there; Preminger seems unable to invest his film with any lightness or spontaneity. "

The New York Times wrote in its March 6, 1969 issue: “The movie's almost complete lack of humor, its retarded contemporaneousness (much is made of hippies, pot and LSD), its sometimes beautiful and expensive-looking San Francisco locations, and its indomitable denial that disaster is at hand (apparent from almost the opening sequence) —all give the film an undeniable Preminger stamp. "

The lexicon of international films complained: "Insignificant attempt at a genre parody from Preminger's late period."

The Movie & Video Guide wrote: "Consequently, about one in a thousand will have the temperament to like this, everone else will sit there dumbstruck".

Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film as follows: “Abysmal mishmash wich top talent abused; clearly intendes as satirical farce, but in fact one of the most woebegone movies ever made ".

In epd , issue 6/1994, it was read: “1968, even Hollywood could no longer ignore the upheaval in lifestyles, Otto Preminger produced this bizarre hippie comedy himself - an amalgam of gangster story and family melodrama, with lots of music, of course. Once again a good citizen, the stout Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason), is overtaken by his not-so-bourgeois past - he is supposed to do one last service to his old friends from the Mafia: murder of a dropout. And daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) with smooth-ironed blond hair, previously more likely because of her boring hippie lover in her parents' sights, inevitably falls into the clutches of the gentlemen from the company. But then everything turns out completely different ... Hollywood goes on trip - and can't do anything with it. The film hippies are supposed to be real and Preminger exposed himself to a self-experiment with the drug in preparation for the film (under medical supervision of course!). But in vain: flower power, expansion of consciousness, free love - nothing more than fashionable set pieces in a moderately comical and gigantic comic strip that is not particularly successful as a whole; and for the more mature director - Preminger was 62 at the time - also a willingly perceived occasion to show a lot of shiny women's skin. "

In Films in Review it says: “Shamroy's work on SKIDOO is in character with the rest of the film's qualities - harsh, clumsy, humorless and off-putting. None of Preminger's past skill at creating deft and poetic camera movement is in evidence here. The scenes just sit in front of you and rot, like a wide-screen TV show, overlit and flaccid, with the exceptional decent shot every now and then. "

In Otto Preminger's entry, the film's large lexicon of people reminded us that "the sung gangster-hippie happening" Skidoo "" was a pretentious box office flop.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ^ Skidoo in rogerebert.suntimes.com
  3. ^ Review in the New York Times
  4. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Films Volume 7, p. 3484. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987.
  5. ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 1196
  6. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 925
  7. ↑ Skidoo in filmzentrale.com
  8. ↑ Skidoo in filmsinreview.com ( Memento from January 23, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  9. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6: N - R. Mary Nolan - Meg Ryan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 329.