The Dead (film)

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Movie
German title The dead
Original title The Dead
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1987
length 83 minutes
Rod
Director John Huston
script Tony Huston
production Chris Sievernich
Wieland Schulz-Keil
music Alex North
camera Fred Murphy
cut Roberto Silvi
occupation

Die Toten , also The Dead , is an American film directed by John Huston from 1987. The Dead (original title) was the last feature film by the legendary director, whose daughter Anjelica Huston also starred in it. It is a film adaptation of the short story The Dead by Irish writer James Joyce .

action

Dublin on January 6th 1904 , a cold winter day full of snow. The older sisters Julia and Kate Morkan and their niece Mary Jane traditionally invite guests to an Epiphany celebration, as they have done for many years . On the stairs the sisters receive their very different guests, including: the alcoholic Freddy Malins and his domineering, strict Catholic mother; the elderly gentleman, Mr. Browne, the only Protestant guest at the party; Mr. Grace reciting a sad poem; Molly Ivers, who advocated independence for Ireland ; Bartell D'Arcy, a noted tenor singer who approaches ornithologist Miss O'Callaghan as the celebration progresses. All of them come from the upper middle class in Dublin. Many of the guests are enthusiastic about music and dance, which is why they discuss operas and various singers, some of whom have long since died. Aunt Julia, who was never married and who used to sing in a choir, starts the song Arrayed for the Bridal from her youth with a shaky, but touching voice .

Gabriel Conroy, the aunts' nephew, and his wife Gretta are also among the guests. Gabriel is a journalist for a pro-British newspaper and views Irish culture and way of life from a distance. In his celebratory speech, Gabriel praised his aunts, who would stand for the tradition of Irish hospitality, but also criticized the fact that instead of constantly reminiscing about the past, people should live in the present and perform their tasks there. Shortly before leaving the party, Gretta hears the song The Lass of Aughrim , sung by Bartell D'Arcy , which reminds her of her youth in rural Galway and her childhood sweetheart, Michael Furey. Overwhelmed by her memories, she tells her husband about her feelings: Michael died at the age of 17, a week after he - already seriously ill - sang the song full of love at Gretta's window on a cold winter night.

Gabriel becomes painfully aware that she has basically always only loved Michael and is just as dominated by memories as the other guests at the party. He also notes that he himself has never felt as intense and death-defying love as the late Michael. Gabriel imagines the future and the imminent death of old Aunt Julia and the end of the annual celebrations, the transience and insignificance of the individual before the world and finally, how the snow falls over all of Ireland, also over the grave of Michael Furey.

Compared to the original

The biggest difference to the story by James Joyce is the newly created character of Mr. Grace, who recites the Irish poem Donal Ó . Gabriel's story about his grandfather's horse, which he tells his wife in the carriage, is revealed by him in the original at the celebration. Huston's adaptation takes many lines of dialogue directly from the narrative and the famous final sentences of the novel are quoted directly in the last minutes of the film to images from the snowy Irish landscape, underlaid with Gabriel's voice.

production

John Huston , who was a great literary connoisseur and made many literary adaptations in the course of his long film career, dared to write the famous short story by James Joyce , although this was considered to be difficult to film because of its subtlety and little "obvious" plot. Huston had already read Joyce's Dubliner Cycle , in which The Dead is the last of the 15 short stories, in 1928 when the work was first published in the USA, and had been deeply impressed. He first came up with the idea of ​​filming the short story back in the 1950s, but only really picked it up again when he was making his film Unter dem Vulkan ( Under the Volcano , 1984). Chris Sievernich and Weiland Schulz-Keil, who had taken care of financing the production of Under the Volcano , became the producers of The Dead . Funding proved difficult as Huston's poor health and old age were considered a risk, but fortunately some of the donors were enthusiasts of Joyce's work. The budget for the film was around $ 5.5 million.

The statue to King William III. in Dublin can also be seen in the film

The filming began on January 19, 1987 and ended in April 1987, the location was mainly a film studio in the Californian town of Valencia . The Dead was originally supposed to be filmed at Ardmore Studios in Dublin , but John Huston's health did not allow the long journey to Ireland. During the shooting, the director sat in a wheelchair and was mostly under an oxygen tent in an adjoining room. He followed the action on a screen directly on the film set and gave instructions which his assistant director passed on to the film crew and the actors. The scenes were shot (unusual for Hollywood productions) strictly according to the order of the script so that the actors could better understand the roles. Only a few outdoor shots were taken on location in Ireland. Since John Huston was already too sick to travel, a second unit crew took over the filming on location in Ireland. The Dead was also a personal love letter from John Huston to Ireland, as he had many ancestors from this country and had his main residence there for decades.

The screenplay was written by John Huston's son Tony , while his daughter Anjelica played the female lead. The renowned Irish theater actor Donal McCann , who had previously played minor roles in two Huston films, was hired for the male lead . Otherwise, the film was not cast with Hollywood actors, but with Irish actors who, among other things, played at the famous Dublin Abbey Theater and were sometimes very well known for their theater work. Anjelica Huston was the only non-Irish actress, but grew up partly in Ireland as her father lived there for a long time. Not only for John Huston, but also for the three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Dorothy Jeakins , who Huston brought out of retirement especially for this film, The Dead was the last film work. With the predominantly gray and strict costumes, Jeakins wanted to emphasize the atmosphere of a narrow and oppressive social life. Stephen B. Grimes , with whom Hughes had worked regularly since the 1950s, was hired as chief production designer for the film .

Its premiere was The Dead in the September 3, 1987 Film Festival of Venice , a few weeks after John Huston died of lung failure at the age of 81 years. On September 16, 1987 it was released in cinemas in West Germany. In Ireland it started in November 1987, in the USA and the United Kingdom only in December 1987.

Reviews

The dead was rated positively by most of the critics. Vincent Canby wrote for the New York Times that, despite his physical weakness, Huston's talent was “not only undamaged, but richer, safer and bolder than ever”: “No other American filmmaker has ever had a film career as long with such a triumph finished ”, Canby judged. Like Joyce's story, the “wonderful film” unfolds with “leisurely discretion in pieces of observed behavior and overheard conversations” that would initially appear irrelevant. Canby praised the cast, camera work, production design and costumes. After careful observation of the minor characters, the film ends up focusing on the couple. Above all, Canby highlighted the final sequence in which Gabriel, initially only observed by the camera, jumps into the first-person narrator perspective. This is "emotional, but not sentimental":

“With astonishing directness, the worries that were previously indirectly touched are revealed - the impermanence of all things, including love, the impossibility of escaping the past and especially the dead who do not want to be buried in their cemeteries, and the relationship between the animate and the inanimate in nature, which cannot be understood but only accepted. "

- Vincent Canby , The New York Times, December 17, 1987

Hellmuth Karasek wrote in Der Spiegel on December 21, 1987 that the terminally ill director Huston - "a living man in the realm of the dead" - looked at characters "with melancholy irony" who were dead in life. Karasek draws the conclusion: “Almost more decisively than the story of the young James Joyce, the film by the aged Huston says that life coagulates to death in memories, but that only in retrospect wins what one could call his poetry. Ireland was a piece of poetry for Huston. "

The film service writes that Huston's film pays homage to James Joyce and a declaration of love for Ireland and its people. "The metaphorically in-depth staging sums up a review of final truths and addresses the conditionality and inseparability of life and death."

Nick Laird of The Guardian felt Huston's film was "worthy of the masterpiece of Joyce, and not only by simply being true to the text." The skillful camera work indicated the themes of death and old age, for example the shots that looked at the unmarried old Miss Julia's bedroom filled with memories while she was singing a song about a wedding, were very successful. The Dead is a "slow, intimate film" that seems all the more poignant with the knowledge that John Huston was terminally ill while filming.

Roger Ebert took The Dead in 2005 in his Leaderboard "Great Movies" with its highest rating of four stars on. Joyce's short story, one of the largest and most nuanced in the English language, seemed impossible to film, but Hughes, as a perfectionist, was attentive to the smallest nuances during the filming. The film shows characters who have never really achieved their dreams and are aware of it. " The Dead ends in sadness, but it's one of the great romantic films, without fear in its contemplation of regret and tenderness."

German synchronization

The German dubbing of the film was based on a dubbing book by Harry Rowohlt . Erik Schumann spoke to actor Donal McCann in the role of Gabriel Conroy, while Gudrun Vaupel voiced Anjelica Huston as Gretta Conroy.

Film awards and nominations

Oscar nominations:

Further prices

Further nominations

  • 1988: Independent Spirit Awards (US Independent Film Awards) - Best Cinematography (Fred Murphy)
  • 1988: Independent Spirit Awards (US Independent Film Awards) - Best Screenplay (Tony Huston)

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

Home media publication

The Dead was released on DVD by Lionsgate on November 3rd, 2009, but this version came under fire because it shortened the film by around ten minutes. As a result, Lionsgate brought out a new edition that contained the film in full length. A Blu-Ray of the film has not yet been released as of 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Donal Óg" ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , tr. Augusta, Lady Gregory  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cs.rice.edu
  2. ↑ Nick Laird, "I think he died for me" The Guardian , December 2, 2006
  3. ↑ Bruce Jackson: Huston, John. Retrieved August 28, 2019 (American English).
  4. ↑ University of Buffalo film paper on the film , pp. 11–12
  5. ↑ Brendan Kilty SC says: Huston Meets Joyce. In: Irish America. June 13, 2014, Retrieved September 2, 2019 (American English).
  6. ^ Roger Ebert: The Dead Movie Review & Film Summary (1987) | Roger Ebert. Accessed August 28, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Brendan Kilty SC says: Huston Meets Joyce. In: Irish America. June 13, 2014, Retrieved September 2, 2019 (American English).
  8. ↑ Tony Tracy, Roddy Flynn: John Huston: Essays on a Restless Director . McFarland, 2014, ISBN 978-0-7864-5993-3 ( google.de [accessed on August 28, 2019]).
  9. ↑ Brendan Kilty SC says: Huston Meets Joyce. In: Irish America. June 13, 2014, Retrieved September 2, 2019 (American English).
  10. ↑ Dorothy Jeakins. Retrieved September 3, 2019 .
  11. ^ The Dead (1987) - IMDb. Retrieved September 1, 2019 .
  12. ↑ The Dead at Rotten Tomatoes
  13. ↑ Vincent Canby: Film: 'The Dead,' by Huston . In: The New York Times . December 17, 1987, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed September 3, 2019]).
  14. ^ Hellmuth Karasek: FILM: Graces hard of hearing . In: Spiegel Online . tape 39 , September 21, 1987 ( spiegel.de [accessed August 29, 2019]).
  15. ↑ The dead. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  16. ↑ Nick Laird: Nick Laird on John Huston's dramatisation of Joyce's masterful story 'The Dead' . In: The Guardian . December 2, 2006, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed September 1, 2019]).
  17. ^ Roger Ebert: The Dead Movie Review & Film Summary (1987) | Roger Ebert. Retrieved September 3, 2019 .
  18. ^ Südwest Presse Online -dienste GmbH: Harry Rowohlt - The Paganini of digressing. February 25, 2013. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
  19. ↑ German synchronous index | Movies | The Dead. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Becker, Tom: DVD Verdict Review: The Dead . In: DVDVerdict . November 2, 2009. Archived from the original on November 5, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 3, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dvdverdict.com