The Big One - The Great Quake of San Francisco

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Movie
German title The Big One - The Great Quake of San Francisco
Original title Living the Quake
Country of production USA , Poland
original language English
Publishing year 2006
length 102 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Philip Smith
script Philip Smith
production Julian Ware
music Duncan Glasson
camera Lawrence Gardner ,
Jonathan Partridge
cut Jake Martin
occupation

The Big One is a documentary drama from 2005 that uses game scenes and archive material to reconstruct the 1906 San Francisco earthquake .

action

On the morning of April 18, 1906, the residents of the American city of San Francisco were woken up when shortly after five o'clock the earth shook violently. Based on selected fates of some citizens of the city, including the German-American Arnold Genthe or the then incumbent mayor Schmitz, an attempt is made to depict the human side of this event. Shortly before this event, Mayor Schmitz discovered that he was suspected of corruption. With the quake and his efforts to save the city, he tries to restore his reputation.

Later analyzes show that it must have been an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale . After the quake, fires broke out in many streets, completing the destructive work for four days. In the course of this disaster, around 30,000 buildings collapse and almost the entire population becomes homeless, more than 3,000 people lose their lives. In addition to four of the survivors, experts from the fire brigade and historians have their say in the documentation, commenting on the rescue efforts of that time and pointing out errors. Director Philip Smith reenacts the decisive scenes and moving moments in film scenes.

The film closes with the realization that an earthquake of similar or even worse proportions could hit San Francisco at any time in the future . With the latest knowledge and modern computer animation , the director managed to arouse tension and interest. Background material was also included in the story. The game scenes were filmed not only in the USA, but also in Poland.

background

On the morning of April 18, 1906, shortly after 5 a.m., the earth's crust broke up along a north-south seam zone in California over a length of around 1,280 km. The crack was partially up to 500 m wide. 3,000 to 4,000 people died in the quake and thousands were left homeless. On the hundredth anniversary of the catastrophe, geophysicists had reconstructed the tremors from 1906 in computer animations and warned in their studies of further devastating earthquakes that could hit California in the future. The cause of these quakes lies in the San Andreas Fault, which runs through California along its entire length and on which the North American and Pacific tectonic plates drift past each other, hooking up with each other and occasionally discharging accumulated pressure in sudden earthquakes. However, San Francisco is not only threatened by the 1906 fracture, but also, according to seismologists, by further fractures in the earth's crust, which they consider more dangerous for the region. One of these is the live Hayward moat, which runs through densely populated business and residential areas. The analyzes are based on the stress theory that was born while researching the San Francisco quake at the beginning of the 19th century.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Big One - The Great Quake of San Francisco. In: moviepilot.de. Retrieved August 27, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Waiting for "The Big One". In: Deutschlandfunk. October 13, 2005, accessed August 27, 2015 .
  3. ↑ The Big One - The Great Quake of San Francisco. CINEMA Online, accessed August 27, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Axel Bojanowski : Earthquake in San Francisco: In the fast lane to downfall. In: Spiegel Online. April 13, 2006, accessed August 27, 2015 .