Traffic jam (1979)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Traffic jam (FRG) The traffic jam (GDR) |
| Original title | L'ingorgo |
| Country of production | Italy , France , Spain , Federal Republic of Germany |
| original language | Italian |
| Publishing year | 1979 |
| length | 113 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Luigi Comencini |
| script | Luigi Comenciniy Ruggero Maccari Bernadino Zapponi |
| production |
Silvio Clementelli Anna Maria Clementelli Michael Fengler |
| music | Fiorenzo Carpi |
| camera | Ennio Guarnieri |
| cut | Nino Baragli |
| occupation | |
| |
Stau , also the big traffic jam or the traffic jam in the GDR ( L'ingorgo , also L'ingorgo - Una storia impossibile ), is a feature film by the Italian director Luigi Comencini from 1979 . In the Italian-French-Spanish-German ensemble film , which is part of the Commedia all'italiana , numerous well-known actors appear, such as the Italians Alberto Sordi , Marcello Mastroianni , Stefania Sandrelli and Ugo Tognazzi , the French Annie Girardot , Patrick Dewaere , Miou- Miou and Gérard Depardieu , the Spaniards Ángela Molina and Fernando Rey and the German Harry Baer . The evil satire on consumer society paints a pessimistic view of man and was shown at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival .
action
On a section of the motorway not far from Rome , the flow of traffic comes to a complete standstill. The motorists drive each other crazy with curses and horns under the blazing sun. De Benedetti, a jaguar- driving, heavily rich businessman who is connected to the socialists and assigns all low-level tasks to his assistant, does not escape the traffic jam . Among the vehicles is an ambulance that transports a seriously injured person who has been hit. The minor Germana does not want to tell her family who was responsible for her pregnancy. Because her father finds an illegitimate child in the family shameful, the whole clan with Germana is on her way to an abortion clinic against her will. In the elderly couple Irene and Carlo, a bickering brings Carlos to light that they are tired of their marriage. A young man in love passes with longing for his lover. In another car, four crooks are sweating and fooling around with their pistols. More and more people are getting out of their cars, and many are relieving themselves in the car junkyard next to the motorway. Martina, a young woman with a guitar, rejects a group of pushy thugs from a rich family and prefers to talk to the sensitive truck driver Mario, who has loaded baby food. When the film star Montefoschi is discovered in one of the cars, a horde of curious people surrounds it until he can escape to the poor little house on the roadside, where a simple caterpillar driver and his wife Teresa offer him shelter. Angela is sitting in the car with her husband Franco and the professor, a friend of the two. Little does Franco know that his wife is having an affair with the professor.
De Benedetti fails to call for a helicopter on his car phone to rescue him from the situation. During the night the youngsters brutally beat Mario down and rape Martina. The crooks, who witness the incident immediately, pretend to be asleep. After a while, Mario finds the youngsters dozing in their car and prepares to set it on fire, but tries to renounce violence. Meanwhile, Franco overhears the affair between his wife and his boyfriend, but doesn’t show anything. Montefoschi, who has his eye on the sensual but pregnant Teresa, sneaks around in the night. She gets into bed with him, but he falls asleep. Before he can leave the house the next day, Teresa's husband blackmails him to find him a better job in the cinecittà . Meanwhile, two men stole baby food jars from Mario's truck and hawked them to the hungry travelers. The patient in the ambulance has died; Martina and Mario don't see a future together; and Germana, who has been told that a career as a singer is open to her, is now considering breaking off her pregnancy. From a helicopter comes the request to get ready for the onward journey. Everyone gets into their cars, but the motorcade doesn't move.
Reviews
For JM Thie from the Evangelical Film Observer , the film was a worthy Cannes participant. Comencini succeeded in a "subtle, malicious study". This is "for a long time not just a mere lesson about a chaotic Italy shaken by political and criminal terror", but an attack on every technological consumer society. This attack is done “with satirical and ironic wit, but the laughter that is generated is laughter in the face of one's own hopelessness. Because the film offers no cause for hope at any point ”. One attraction of the work lies in the excellent cast of stars; Marcello Mastroianni in particular plays “with an almost exhibitionistic urgency”.
The film service found the main idea of the traffic jam as a symbol for the state of society overused. Because of too many characters and stories, the film turned out to be too superficial and not illuminating enough; that modern society is broken has been portrayed many times and Comencini's sweeping statement is therefore superfluous.
To the movie
The traffic jam was filmed in the summer of 1978 on a road specially built for the shooting on the grounds of the Cinecittà near Rome. The budget for the film was the equivalent of 12 million euros. The West German theatrical release of the film was on August 29, 1980 in the youth film distribution with a West German dubbing, which is now considered lost.
Theatrical release in the GDR was on March 6, 1981 with a DEFA synchronization produced by Progress-Filmverleih and the original length of the film of 3,092 meters, which corresponds to a game length of 113 minutes for cinema projection or 108 minutes for PAL standard. Numerous well-known GDR actors such as B. Otto Mellies , Ezard Haußmann , Jessy Rameik , Helmut Schellhardt and Manfred Richter committed. The license expiry of the performance rights for the GDR was on December 31, 1985.
In the mid-1980s, the film was released under the title Stau by the Mike Hunter Video company with a running length of 90 minutes as a purchase video on VHS. For this purpose, the film was copied from the GDR theatrical version with the DEFA synchronization and approx. 18 minutes were cut out of the uncut 108-minute version. The first broadcast on ZDF took place on June 27, 1986 under the title “The big traffic jam” with precisely this shortened 90-minute video version. There was no broadcast on GDR television.
On February 25, 2011, the film was released in its original length of 108 minutes and with DEFA synchronization by the JAM company on DVD. However, the sound was used from the abridged VHS release from the mid-1980s. Thus the scenes cut on the VHS but now contained on the DVD remained in the original and were provided with German subtitles.
On July 14th, 2014 “The big traffic jam” was shown with DEFA synchronization on ARTE. For this purpose, the Italian scenes of the DVD version were provided with a new synchronization, even though the complete DEFA synchronization of the film exists in the Bundesfilmarchiv Berlin.
Web links
- Congestion in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ JM Thie in the Evangelisches Filmbeobachter , printed in: Lothar R. Just (Ed.): Das Filmjahr '80 / 81. Filmland Presse , Munich 1981, ISBN 3-88690-021-5 , pp. 230-231
- ^ Peter Hasenberg : traffic jam . In: film-dienst , No. 19/1980
- ↑ Michael Fengler, German co-producer of the film, in the audio commentary on the JAM-DVD (2011)
- ↑ https://www.synchronkartei.de/?action=show&type=film&id=23682
- ↑ Federal Archives