Sleepy Hollow (film)

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Movie
German title Sleepy Hollow
Original title Sleepy Hollow
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1999
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
FSK 12 (cut)
JMK 14
Rod
Director Tim Burton
script Kevin Yagher
Andrew Kevin Walker
production Scott Rudin
Adam Schroeder
music Danny Elfman
camera Emmanuel Lubezki
cut Chris Lebenzon
Joel Negron
occupation

Sleepy Hollow (partly with German subtitles: Heads will roll ) is a horror film by the American director Tim Burton . The film uses characters and an episode from Washington Irving's story The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) .

action

Ichabod Crane is a Police Constable in New York in 1799. However, his unusual investigative methods make him a thorn in the side of his superiors. Crane relies on new practices to solve crimes, such as the autopsy of corpses. After he expresses the opinion in a trial that a defendant should be given the opportunity to exonerate himself and that the torture still used is a medieval process, the judge unceremoniously transfers him to Sleepy Hollow , officially to investigate mysterious murders. Unofficially, his supervisor assumes that Crane will fail in this case, thereby breaking the young investigator's open arrogance.

Arriving in Sleepy Hollow, Crane hears a highly unusual story: A Hessian mercenary , who fought in the service of a German princess on the side of the British in the American War of Independence and was ultimately beheaded, is said to have come back to life and now as a headless rider the inhabitants of the Murder the place at random and take their severed heads with them. Crane, who does not believe in supernatural phenomena, initially believes that he will find a logical explanation using scientific methods. At first Crane only gets help with his investigations from Katrina van Tassel, the beautiful daughter of his wealthy host, and from the young Masbath, whose father was also a victim of the headless rider.

Even when he sees the unusual headless body of the dead Masbath, Crane is still convinced that the murders were committed by a flesh-and-blood perpetrator. That only changes when Mayor Philipse is beheaded by the rider before his eyes. Now Crane begins to understand that the underworld, which he did not believe in until now, does exist. Together with the young Masbath and Katrina van Tassel, he begins to look for the grave of Hesse. However, they only find his skeleton there , the skull is missing. Crane suggests that the person in possession of his skull also has power over him, and that the rider will keep killing until he finds his head. During Crane's investigation, the bodies pile up in Sleepy Hollow. Finally, he suspects that Baltus van Tassel, Katrina's father, is the only one who has power over the Hessians. This would also have a motive, since the fortune of the van Garretts - first victims of the rider and close relatives of the van Tassels - fell to him.

Katrina turns away from Crane over this suspicion. During the night, however, when all the residents seek refuge in the church, Baltus van Tassel is pierced by the headless rider with a pole from the church fence and then beheaded. Crane then decides to leave. He believes that Katrina was responsible for the murders, but does not want to speak out publicly out of love for her. On the journey, however, he realizes that Katrina tried to protect the villagers and himself with witchcraft, whereupon he decides to return immediately.

Katrina has since been kidnapped by the person who actually owns the skull and thus the power over the Hessians: Lady Mary van Tassel, Katrina's stepmother. When she was a child, her family was dropped by the landlords van Garrett and van Tassel and thus driven into poverty. Full of hatred, she now avenges herself by means of the headless rider on the landlords and villagers and at the same time tries to usurp the inheritance of the two rich families by wanting to have Katrina, the last heiress before her, murdered by the Hesse.

The young Masbath and Crane are able to free Katrina and flee from the rider, whereupon a wild chase through the forest begins. Finally, Crane succeeds in removing the decapitated man's skull from Lady van Tassel. He throws it to the Hessian who was just about to behead Katrina, who sits him back on his shoulders. Thereupon this lady snatches van Tassel and rides with her into the underworld.

Finally Ichabod leaves Sleepy Hollow and returns to New York with Katrina and the young Masbath.

Editing instructions from the rental company for the FSK 12 version

Background information on the film

  • Tim Burton took the story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a starting point in 1999 and filmed the material very freely with the participation of Johnny Depp , with whom he had already worked successfully on several occasions (including in Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood ).
  • The film was shot entirely in England (mostly in Surrey and Oxfordshire ), as Burton found better conditions there for an atmosphere suitable for the film. He also hired a large number of British actors .
  • For the German version with the FSK 12, the rental company issued a cutting instruction to the cinemas in the start week ; 209 individual images had to be removed from each 35 mm copy.
  • In contrast to all other versions, the DVD version is uncut and approved for ages 16 and up.

Ichabod Crane

In Washington Irving's novella The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from 1819–1820, the character of Ichabod Crane plays an entirely different role.

Ichabod is not a detective here from New York, but a wandering schoolmaster from Pennsylvania who temporarily takes a job wherever there is currently no village teacher. In Sleepy Hollow, he woos Katrina van Tassel, who may not be pretty, but who can expect a great legacy later, as she is the daughter of the wealthiest farmer in the area. His chances of success are pretty slim, however, because Brom Bones, a young farmer and leader of a gang of ruffians, also wants to win the girl over.

At a party on the estate of Baltus van Tassel, numerous horror stories are told, including the terrible " Headless Horseman " who haunts the area. After the party and after Katrina has given him a basket, Ichabod rides sadly through the darkness. At a bridge he meets a creepy rider who keeps pace with him and chases him over the bridge next to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the village cemetery. The rider has no head and carries a large pumpkin under his arm, which he throws at Ichabod. Ichabod's hat and the broken pumpkin are discovered the following day, but Ichabod is lost. Brom marries Katrina and no one knows what happened to Ichabod. Some people claim that he lives elsewhere, in some distant place, but "the good old country women already know, he was conjured away - by the headless rider".

It is believed that Irving named the character Ichabod Crane after the US officer Ichabod B. Crane . Irving was in Sackets Harbor at the same time as Crane in 1814 and may have met him there; However, there is no evidence of a meeting between the two men.

In the Californian town of Sleepy Hollow near San Rafael there is a street called Ichabod Drive , the extension of which is called Crane Drive . There is also Van Tassel Street there - a family that also plays a role in the film - which is crossed by Irving Drive .

Hessian rider

During the American War of Independence, British troops recruited around 30,000 mercenaries from German states. This force was supported by several indigenous tribes loyal to England and the loyalists, settlers loyal to England. Since 20,000 of the German mercenaries came from Hessen-Kassel, this part of the troops is often summarized under the name of Hessians in English-language historiography . Hence the name "Hessian Rider".

See also: Soldiers' trade under Landgrave Friedrich II of Hessen-Kassel and The role of the "Hessen"

criticism

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
Metacritic
critic
audience
IMDb

“Tim Burton condenses the macabre fable into an intense mood in dark tones. A fairy tale and equipment film of extraordinary aesthetic homogeneity was created without any stylistic inconsistencies, which of course remains correspondingly reduced in its range of expression and is thus Burton's least independent and moving work to date. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

Oscar 2000

nominated for:

Sleepy Hollow was also in the preliminary round for the nomination in the category Best Visual Effects , but was not nominated.

BAFTA

nominated for:

Saturn Awards 2000

nominated for:

Satellite Awards

  • best production image
  • best camera
  • best costumes
  • best film score
  • best sound

further nominations

  • best cut
  • best leading actor in a musical or comedy
  • best visual effects

More movies

Since 1908, at least ten film adaptations of the Irving story have been published.

The best known version before Burton's film adaptation of Disney - Cartoons The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad ( The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad ) from 1949. The film was composed of two parts, in addition to the story of Sleepy Hollow includes nor The Wind in the Willows according to Kenneth Grahame . In the original version, the story of Ichabod Crane is told by Bing Crosby , otherwise no speaking roles appear in this part of the film.

The director Kyle Newman made a follow-up film in 2004 under the title The Hollow , which is more based on the Irving model. The main roles were played by Kevin Zegers , Backstreet Boy Nick Carter , Kaley Cuoco , Judge Reinhold and Stacy Keach . In contrast to Burton's film, The Hollow is set in the present.

literature

  • Peter Lerangis: Sleepy Hollow. The novel about the film. (OT: Sleepy Hollow ). Based on the story by Kevin Yagher and Andrew Kevin Walker . Based on the script by Andrew Kevin Walker. Based on the story of Washington Irving . (Also contains Irving's original story The Sage of the Sleepy Gorge ). Heyne, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-453-17460-7 .
  • Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard: La figure du stylet et autres figures de style dans Sleepy Hollow de Tim Burton. In: Anglophone. 9, 2001.
  • Susan M. Bernardo: The Bloody Battle of the Sexes in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. In: Literature / Film Quarterly. 31: 1, 2003.
  • Martin Kevorkian: "You must never move the body!": Burying Irving's text in Sleepy Hollow. In: Literature / Film Quarterly. 31: 3, 2001.
  • Stanley Orr: A Dark Episode of Bonanza: Genre, Adaptation, and Historiography in Sleepy Hollow. In: Literature / Film Quarterly. 31: 1, 2003.
  • Christian Heger: New ways to old myths. Tim Burton's adaptation of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". In: Ders .: In the shadow realm of fictions. Studies on the fantastic history of motifs and the inhospitable (media) modernity. AVM, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-86306-636-9 , pp. 125-149.

See also

Web links

Wikiquote: Sleepy Hollow  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age rating for Sleepy Hollow . Youth Media Commission .
  2. ↑ San Rafael on Google Maps .
  3. ↑ See Philipp Gassert et al. a .: Brief history of the USA , Reclam, Stuttgart 2007, p. 132.
  4. ↑ a b [1] at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on December 29, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b [2] at Metacritic , accessed on December 29, 2014.
  6. ↑ Sleepy Hollow in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  7. ↑ Sleepy Hollow. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 9, 2013 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. ↑ http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117760828
  9. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162661/awards