The King's Speech
The King's Speech is a2010British biography by director Tom Hooper in which Colin Firth portrays the British King George VI. represents. The film wonfour awardsat the 2011 Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay.
action
At the closing event of the British Empire Exhibition in 1925, Albert, Duke of York and the second eldest son of King George V , is to give a radio- broadcast address for the first time . But Albert's nervousness and stuttering turn the speech into a fiasco .
After numerous unsuccessful attempts to treat stuttering, Albert's wife Elisabeth finally found out about the very different Australian speech therapist and occasional actor Lionel Logue . His unconventional methods pose a great challenge for Albert at first: Logue insists on holding the sessions in his practice instead of going to Albert, he demonstratively renounces any courtly etiquette and addresses Albert with his nickname Bertie . In order to prove to the resigned Albert that stuttering can be healed, he has him read Hamlet's monologue Sein oder nicht sein aloud, while Albert listens to loud music through headphones. Lionel records Albert's lecture directly on a vinyl record . Albert breaks off in the middle of the lecture, convinced of the futility, and leaves the session, but takes the recording with him as a gift.
During King George V's Christmas address, Albert admires how confident his father is with the new medium of radio. Resigned, he puts on the record that Logue recorded and, in great astonishment, hears himself reciting the to be or not to be monologue without errors in Logue's practice . Therapy at Logue is resumed.
Since Logue is convinced that the stuttering results from emotional trauma and cannot be eliminated with pure speaking exercises, they also speak very personally about Albert's unhappy childhood - he was mentally abused by his nanny, got too little to eat and had to be left-handed laboriously adjust to using the “right” hand. Therapy is now making noticeable progress, while Albert and Lionel also develop a friendship.
When Albert's brother David succeeds his deceased father on the throne as Edward VIII , the conflict between the brothers over Edward's improper relationship with the divorced American Wallis Simpson intensifies . Eduard scornfully pushes Albert's objections aside and even accuses him of treason. Albert can't answer anything because he starts to stutter again under Edward's pressure.
After this incident, Albert is encouraged by Logue to express his anger by cursing loudly, whereby Albert does not stutter. When Logue, in view of the affair between Eduard and Simpson, suggests that Albert would be a much better king in his eyes, Albert gets angry, accuses him of high treason and leaves him.
After Edward VIII abdicated from the throne and Albert became king, he went back to Logue, convinced that he was now more dependent on his help than ever, and asked him for assistance in preparing for the coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey . This does not please Cosmo Lang , the Archbishop of Canterbury , who informs the king that Logue is not even a trained doctor. Logue refers to his therapeutic success and tells how he successfully treated war tremors after the First World War and thus expanded his autodidactic skills. Incidentally, he never claimed to be a doctor. Albert can be appeased. The coronation on May 12, 1937 went without any problems thanks to Logue's help.
When the United Kingdom declared war on the German Reich on September 3, 1939, after the German attack on Poland , the king was preparing for his most important radio address to date. Logue is invited to Buckingham Palace to rehearse the speech with the king under great time pressure. During the broadcast, Logue directs facial expressions and gestures. Thanks to this help, the initially hesitant king soon found a sensitive language. The pre-formulated speech, broadcast throughout the Kingdom and Dominions around the world, is ultimately not only largely error-free, but also impressively delivered. The film ends with applause from the people.
A faded-in text explains that Logue also assisted in all other war speeches by the king, which are considered an important factor in the British will to resist. In 1944 Logue was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the King (and thus elevated to the rank of personal nobility). Lionel and Bertie were friends all their lives.
Production and publication
Screenwriter David Seidler had the story of King George VI. and Lionel Logue already researched in the early 1980s, but then stopped the further work on a script at the request of Queen Mother Elisabeth - the widow of George VI. - back in her lifetime. In 2005, three years after her death, Seidler resumed work on The King's Speech , but reworked the material into a play. The piece was presented to producer Joan Lane in 2006. However, she saw the script as a film drama and ultimately realized a film version with colleagues at the time. Tom Hooper, who became known as a director of historical television films, was won over for the staging, who was made aware of the as yet unpublished play by his mother.
After funding for the independent film was secured by the UK Film Council , shooting began on November 13, 2009. It ended on January 17, 2010. Post-production was completed on August 31, 2010. The film had its world premiere on September 4th at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, United States. That same month, The King's Speech was enthusiastically received at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Audience Award.
The filming locations for Albert's address at the British Empire Exhibition were Elland Road and Grattan Stadium near Bradford . The BBC's recording studio for his speech on the radio was the old control room of the Battersea Power Station , which was already used as a backdrop for the films The Dark Knight and The Cabinet of Doctor Parnassus . The residence of Albert and his wife in the film is a Robert Adam- designed house in the Marylebone district of London , which was built in 1776. The scenes that took place in Logue's practice were also produced here. The exterior of the Logue home was shot on Campton Street in the London Borough of Southwark . Albert and Logue's walk together was filmed in the Avenue Garden of Regent's Park . Knebworth House , which has already been used as a film set several times, including Wayne Manor in Batman, served as the location for the festival of Edward and Simpson . The street scenes during Albert's drive to his important speech at the beginning of World War II were filmed at the Old Royal Naval College . Englefield House and Lancaster House , which was used as a backdrop for the films Reds and Being Serious, were used for the interior shots of Buckingham Palace .
The film had its German premiere on February 16, 2011 at the Berlinale . The official German and Swiss theatrical release was on February 17, 2011, in Austria on February 18, 2011. In the United States, the film was released in December 2010 and in the United Kingdom in January 2011.
The free TV premiere of the film took place on July 15, 2013 at 8:15 pm on ORF eins and Das Erste . While the repetition was broadcast by the German broadcaster during the night, the film was shown again on ORF the next day at 10:10 a.m.
The German dubbed version was created under the dialogue direction by Harald Wolff at Taunus Film GmbH Synchron in Berlin.
The audio film version was made in 2011 by the German Hörfilm GGmbH. The image description spoken by Uta Maria Torp was nominated for the German Audio Film Award in 2012 .
Soundtrack
The soundtrack is by Alexandre Desplat and consists of fourteen pieces. The music was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra , which has already become famous for many world-famous soundtracks (e.g. for Star Wars ). The soundtrack mainly contains orchestral music inspired by classical music. Desplat conducted the orchestra himself and received, among other things, his fourth Oscar nomination, fifth Golden Globe nomination and his first BAFTA award for his work . Dave Arch plays the piano in the solo passages , and selected pieces by Beethoven and Mozart for which Terry Davies conducted the orchestra are also included.
- Lionel and Bertie
- The King's Speech
- My Kingdom, My Rules
- The King is Dead
- Memories of Childhood
- King George VI
- The Royal Household
- Queen Elizabeth
- Fear and Suspicion
- The Rehearsal
- The Threat of War
- Speaking Unto Nations ( Beethoven , 7th Symphony , 2nd movement)
- Epilogue (Beethoven, 5th piano concerto Emperor - 2nd movement)
- The Logue Method ( Mozart , Le nozze di Figaro , Overture / Clarinet Concerto , 1st movement)
reception
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Grossing results
In the United States , The King's Speech grossed $ 355,450 in just four theaters on its opening weekend, or $ 88,863 per theater. This gave the film the highest grossing figures per cinema in 2010. For this reason, the number of cinemas expanded quickly; the film ran in 700 theaters in the United States on Christmas weekend 2010. The King's Speech quickly became one of the ten most successful films in the United States and at the end of the second week of February 2011, after broadcasting to 2,584 theaters, reached number 1 in the box office and grossed over 86 million US dollars Dollars (around € 60 million). To date, box office income in the United States is approximately $ 131 million. (As of March 18, 2011)
The British production was very popular in Great Britain and Ireland , grossing around £ 3.52 million (around € 4 million) in 395 cinemas on its opening weekend . According to the British magazine The Guardian , The King's Speech had one of the most successful cinema releases in Great Britain ever. The film stayed at the top of the British box office for three weeks and was even called the most successful British film of all time after five weeks. The total box office income of Great Britain and Ireland is so far around 42.8 million pounds (approx. 69.5 million US dollars / 48 million €). (As of March 13, 2011)
In Germany , too , The King's Speech had a successful first weekend in cinemas with 214,000 visitors and box office earnings of just under 1.6 million euros (approx. 2.2 million US dollars), making it number 3 on the cinema charts. So far (as of November 9, 2011) the film has grossed around 23.5 million US dollars in German cinemas and was number 1 in the German cinema charts for two weeks. 2,426,794 visitors saw the film in Germany (as of September 9, 2012)
On an estimated 15 million US dollars in production costs (around 10.3 million €), around 427.4 million US dollars (around 325.5 million €) in box office profits have been made so far.
theatre
After the great success of the film, the play was performed several times. Performing stages of the German version of The King's Speech - The King's Speech were u. a. the Schauspielbühnen Stuttgart and the Berlin Schlosspark Theater . The play had its Austrian premiere on September 20, 2012 at the Wiener Kammerspiele .
German-language reviews
In the German-language review, the acting was the most praised aspect of the film. In addition to the two male actors, Helena Bonham Carter was particularly highlighted. However, there were complaints that Churchill actor Timothy Spall was overshooting his role. The critics attested to the staging a lot of charm, wit and warmth, profound irony, they found it witty or moving. The dialogues received praise. If the script was excellent for Ray and kept the balance “between genre-related lightness and cleverly placed drama”, the taz declared the scriptwriter to be moderately talented. It was also controversial whether the film told a “historically correct” story or was “irrelevant to inadequate” as a historical analysis and presented Edward unfairly. The visual implementation of claustrophobia with wide-angle lenses was also rated differently.
In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Verena Lueken wrote that the film served the “constant curiosity” of royal families with “intelligent questions”. For Christoph Huber from the Austrian press it was a “feel-good cinema”, a “tea hour divertissement” related to the television sitcom. Barbara Schweizerhof from epd Film was touched in an unpathetic and seldom way . Hooper staged “smooth and conventional” and the script was more routine than inspired. As a result, however, the direction and the script offered the actors room to develop, which Firth used for the role of his life; Bonham Carter gets a lot out of her few moments.
Alexander von Schönburg said in Die Welt that the film deals virtuously with royalty: "It exposes the dilemma of modern royalty with surgical precision: the incompatibility of royal majesty with the obligation to ally with the mass media." These new media would have demystified the monarchy and weakened it. Even Ernst Kantorowicz's theory of the two bodies of a king is understandable. The film doesn't make anything out of this theory, complained Ekkehard Knörer in the daily newspaper . Political questions would be reduced to a private problem. "Reactionary as it is, the film simply assumes the meaningfulness of the British monarchy." It is not an exceptional work: "Only those who enjoy media-based historical film drama theater have to watch it."
Reviews from the English-speaking area
The English-language reviews were also benevolent towards the film. Well-known critic Roger Ebert praised the work of director Tom Hooper. The fact that the film is mostly set in long, narrow spaces is unusual for a period film, but interesting. In Ebert's opinion, Hooper wanted to create a tightness in the audience, similar to that which Albert felt in his throat while he was struggling for words. He also described his directorial work in what he believed to be the most important scene in the film, in which King George VI. announces the declaration of war on Germany on the radio as "masterful" and rated the film with the highest possible rating of four stars. James Berardinelli wrote on ReelViews that ' The King's Speech ' is a film “that has everything a good film should have.” “After the two hours of running time are over, many will wish there were a few more minutes to follow,” so Berardinelli. In conclusion, he described the film as "inspiring" and "heartbreaking" and gave it 3.5 stars out of 4.
Queen Elizabeth II , the daughter of the portrayed King George VI, commented positively on the film after a private screening and found it "moving".
Christopher Hitchens and Isaac Chotiner criticized the portrayal of Winston Churchill in the film during the abdication crisis. There is historical evidence that Churchill urged Edward VIII not to resign, while Churchill is portrayed in the film as a strong supporter of Prince Albert. Hitchens attributed this representation to the cult that is practiced around the person of Winston Churchill. According to Hitchens, the film also gives the impression that Prince Albert was an opponent of the idea of appeasement . King George VI stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with Neville Chamberlain when he returned from Munich after signing the Munich Agreement.
Other reviews
In the Internet Movie Database , after more than 584,000 votes, the film received a rating of 8.0 out of 10 possible stars (as of February 2, 2019).
On the Internet platform Rotten Tomatoes , the film achieved a rating of 94% based on 233 reviews. 93% of 103,112 users rated the film positively, with an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 possible points (as of April 5, 2013).
Awards
The film won numerous awards and, with twelve nominations, was also a favorite for the 83rd Academy Awards. The US film critics associations such as the National Society of Film Critics , the Los Angeles Film Critics Association , the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle gave Although David Fincher's film The Social Network , and his work as a director preference, The King's Speech could but prevail at the Oscars.
The main actor Colin Firth alone received 18 awards, including the Oscar, the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA Award. Most of the film critics' associations also saw Firth as the best leading actor of the year. Overall, the work was able to win more than 40 film awards from over 80 nominations, a selection of which is listed here.
British Independent Film Awards 2010
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British Academy Film Awards 2011
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literature
conversation
- With Colin Firth in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 12, 2011, p. Z6: Did you think of the Queen on the set, Mister Firth?
Review mirror
positive
- Cinema No. 2/2011, p. 42, by Ralf Blau: The King's Speech
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 16, 2011, p. 29, by Verena Lueken: Majesty is in charge
- Ray , No. 2/2011, p. 62, by Pamela Jahn: The King's Speech
- Der Tagesspiegel , February 15, 2011, p. 21, by Daniela Sannwald: The common life of words
- Die Welt , February 16, 2011, p. 39, by Alexander von Schönburg: BB-Bertie and Pandora's box
Rather positive
- epd Film No. 2/2011, p. 39, by Barbara Schweizerhof: The King's Speech
- film-dienst No. 4/2011, pp. 34–35, by Felicitas Kleiner : The King's Speech
- Die Presse , February 19, 2011, by Christoph Huber: An Oscar favorite: a royal soap opera for tea time
negative
- die tageszeitung , February 16, 2011, p. 26, by Ekkehard Knörer: Call me Bertie
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Official German website
- The King's Speech in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- The King's Speech at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- King George VI Addresses the Nation - Original recording of September 3, 1939 speech
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Certificate of Release for The King's Speech . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2011 (PDF; test number: 126 462 K).
- ↑ Age rating for The King's Speech . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ www.synchronkartei.de. Retrieved March 7, 2011 .
- ^ David Seidler: How the 'Naughty Word' cured the King's Stutter (and Mine). In: Mail on Sunday , December 19, 2010 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft )
- ^ Vanity Fair : The King's Speech Director Tom Hooper on the King's Stammer, Colin Firth, and the Royal Family , December 8, 2010.
- ↑ The Press : Toronto Film Festival: Award for " The King's Speech " , September 20 of 2010.
- ↑ Tony Reeves: The King's Speech film locations . In: web presence movie-locations.com. The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations , accessed February 5, 2014 .
- ↑ Raise the curtain for " The King's Speech ". (No longer available online.) ORF, archived from the original on February 20, 2014 ; Retrieved February 3, 2014 . 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.
- ↑ The King's Speech in the Hörfilm database of Hörfilm e. V.
- ↑ 10th German Audio Film Award 2012
- ↑ Oscar nomination for film music for " The King's Speech ". Retrieved February 28, 2011 .
- ↑ a b rottentomatoes.com at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on September 19, 2014
- ↑ a b metacritic.com at Metacritic , accessed on September 19, 2014
- ↑ The King's Speech in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ^ Arthouse Audit: 'King's Speech' Has Royal Debut. Box Office Mojo, accessed March 20, 2011 .
- ↑ Box Office Mojo: The King's Speech . Box Office Mojo , accessed March 20, 2011 .
- ↑ The King's Speech rouses Britain to the box office . The Guardian, accessed March 20, 2011 .
- ↑ Tangled's revamped princess tale dethrones The King's Speech . The Guardian , accessed March 20, 2011 .
- ↑ Never mind the Baftas… who will get The King's Speech riches? . The Guardian , accessed March 20, 2011 .
- ↑ a b Box Office Mojo: The King's Speech . Box Office Mojo , accessed March 20, 2011 .
- ↑ German cinema charts: The Schweiger Express. kino.de, accessed on March 20, 2011 .
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated February 22, 2014 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.
- ↑ So in the reviews of Cinema, epd Film, film-dienst, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Tagesspiegel and the press.
- ↑ a b c d e Pamela Jahn: The King's Speech . In: Ray , No. 2/2011, p. 62
- ↑ a b c Barbara Schweizerhof: The King's Speech . In: epd Film No. 2/2011, p. 39
- ↑ a b Christoph Huber: An Oscar favorite: Royal soap opera for tea time . In: Die Presse , February 19, 2011
- ↑ a b Felicitas Kleiner : The King's Speech . In: film-dienst No. 4/2011, pp. 34–35
- ↑ a b Ralf Blau: The King's Speech . In: Cinema No. 2/2011, p. 42
- ↑ a b Verena Lueken : Majesty is in charge . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 16, 2011, p. 29
- ↑ a b Ekkehard Knörer: Call me Bertie . In: the daily newspaper , February 16, 2011, p. 26
- ↑ According to film-dienst , the visual implementation is “subtle”, according to FAZ “a little exaggerated”.
- ↑ Alexander Von Schönburg: BB-Bertie and Pandora's box . In: Die Welt , February 16, 2011, p. 39
- ↑ Roger Ebert on " The King's Speech ". Retrieved February 28, 2011 .
- ↑ James Berardinelli - ReelViews . Retrieved February 28, 2011 .
- ^ Queen 'approves' of King's Speech . Retrieved March 2, 2011 .
- ↑ Chotiner, I. (January 6, 2011). " Royal Mess " . The New Republic . Retrieved January 9, 2011.
- ^ Zohn, Patricia: David Seidler Protects and Defends The King's Speech . Huffington Post . February 11, 2011. Retrieved August 4, 2011.
- ↑ Hitchens, Christopher: Churchill Didn't Say That , Slate . January 24, 2011. Accessed February 9, 2011.
- ↑ Unthinkable? Historically accurate films , The Guardian . January 29, 2011. Accessed July 23, 2011.
- ↑ The King's Speech in the IMDb. Retrieved February 17, 2019 .
- ↑ The King's Speech on Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 5, 2013 .
