The Man Who Wasn't There
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Man Who Wasn't There too: The inconspicuous Mr. Crane |
| Original title | The Man Who Wasn't There |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2001 |
| length | 116 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Joel Coen |
| script | Ethan and Joel Coen |
| production | Ethan Coen |
| music | Carter Burwell |
| camera | Roger Deakins |
| cut |
Tricia Cooke Roderick Jaynes |
| occupation | |
| |
The Man Who Wasn't There (also: The inconspicuous Mr. Crane) is a feature film by the Coen brothers . The American drama made in 2001 is a tribute to the film noir .
action
Late 1940s : Ed Crane works as a hairdresser in his brother-in-law's salon in the small town of Santa Rosa, California . One of his customers is Creighton Tolliver, who has tried in vain to win the department store owner Big Dave as a partner for the new business idea of dry cleaning . Big Dave is the employer of Crane's wife Doris, and Ed suspects - rightly - that Doris and Dave are having a secret affair.
Ed now sees the chance to finally break out of his monotonous everyday life and makes the momentous decision to extort the required start-up capital for Tolliver of 10,000 US dollars from Big Dave by writing him an anonymous letter threatening his relationship with Cranes Make his wife known to the public.
Dave turns to Ed in desperation but claims he is having an affair with another woman. However, a divorce would ruin him financially as his wife brought the money into the marriage. However, Big Dave goes into the extortion and deposits the money in a trash can used as a dead mailbox . Ed takes the money and gives it to Tolliver, despite his fears, a fraudster to sit up. But then Big Dave recognizes Ed as his blackmailer. There is a dispute over the money, in which Big Dave is stabbed and fatally injured by Ed in self-defense . The next day, Ed's wife is arrested and charged with murder on Big Dave accused . Law enforcement agencies have discovered that Doris did the coiffing of the company's books and suspect that Doris was threatened by Dave. Doris Crane faces the death penalty .
On the advice of local attorney Walter Abundas, Ed hires top attorney Freddy Riedenschneider from Sacramento to defend his wife . Ed can only raise his fee by pledging Doris' brother's hair salon to a bank. Riedenschneider is impressed by Heisenberg's theory of the uncertainty principle , and he decides to divert the jury's attention from Doris Crane. He is confident of winning the trial, but Doris hangs herself in her cell shortly before the trial ends. Ed learns a little later by the responsible medical examiner that she was pregnant - and that, although he had more with her for years not having sex. Big Dave's wife had previously confided in him that she had also not been intimate with her husband since he was briefly kidnapped by a UFO while on a camping trip .
In the meantime, Tolliver has apparently made off with the 10,000 US dollars. However, Crane reads about the success of the dry cleaning system in the newspaper.
Robbed of his wife and confronted with his even more dreary existence, Ed has made it his head to encourage the piano playing of the young Birdy, daughter of Walter Abundas. But this project also fails because, according to a piano teacher, Birdy has no talent. On the way back from the interview, the two are in a car accident after Birdy tries to sexually approach Ed. Ed is arrested while lying in bed: Tolliver's body was discovered in his car at the bottom of a lake and the contract signed by Ed was found on the corpse, so that Ed is now suspected of being a murderer. Ed realizes that Big Dave beat Tolliver to death.
Ed Riedenschneider hires again, but now has to mortgage his house. Riedenschneider tries to score again with his uncertainty relation defense. The court case drags on and Ed can no longer pay Riedenschneider. He has to find a cheaper and worse lawyer who pleads guilty. The result of the trial is the death penalty for Ed. On death row , he writes down his life story for a tabloid magazine. The night before his execution, a UFO appears to him in a dream, which pauses briefly above the prison yard. When he was led to the electric chair the next day, memories of his life and his wife rush through his head.
background
The film was shot in Los Angeles and other locations in California . Filming began on 26 July 2000 and ended on September 1, 2000. The budget of the film is approximately 20 million US dollars estimated. The film celebrated its world premiere on May 13, 2001 at the Cannes International Film Festival . This was followed by other screenings at film festivals, including on October 29, 2001 at the Viennale . From October 26, 2001, the film was in the United Kingdom and from November 2, 2001 in the United States. In Germany it started on November 8, 2001. The film was shown in cinemas in Austria from November 30, 2001. The cinema screening in Switzerland began on January 24, 2002. On the opening weekend, the film grossed a good 660,000 US dollars in the USA. Overall, he came in the United States on revenue of just under 7.5 million US dollars. Over 180,000 viewers were counted at the German box office.
Billy Bob Thornton accepted the film without first seeing the script.
The film title is influenced by William Hughes Mearn's poem Antigonish . According to the Coen brothers, the film features various film quotes as an homage to James M. Cain .
Film noir
The Man Who Wasn't There fulfills many of the characteristics of this fuzzy film genre . The main character fails to take her fate in hand. Added to this are the chronological settlement of the plot and stylistic means, especially the design as a black and white film .
music
The film features slow movements from Ludwig van Beethoven's piano sonatas - played directly by Birdy or heard in the background - namely the middle movement of Sonata No. 8 op. 13 (“Pathétique”) and excerpts from Sonata No. 15 op 28 (“Pastorale”) and Sonata No. 23 op. 57 (“Appassionata”). The French piano teacher playing the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Franz Liszt on.
On November 12, 2001, the soundtrack was released by Decca Records . It contains 14 music tracks.
Black and white and color versions
Although this film was shot in color, it was released in black and white. However, there are French, Belgian, Dutch and Swedish DVD versions that contain the color version as "bonus material". Curiously, the film was mostly available in color in Dutch video stores.
criticism
The lexicon of international film criticized the “ end in itself ” style of staging as “ artificial ”. He nullifies the " intended irony ". The plot “ ripples along ” and, like the “ puppet-like actors ”, “ does not allow any emotional identification ”.
Der Spiegel writes: "" The Man Who Wasn't There "is an ingenious improvisation on the form of the 1940s thriller from Hollywood."
Jan Distelmeyer from the Evangelical Press Service judges that the film is “kept in largely expressionistic lighting conditions” and contains “a number of clever theoretical and critical considerations” . "Above all rests the dry, uninvolved tone of the narrator, a wordless report that is about as sparse as the constricting black and white aesthetics and the calm editing rhythm." The film touches on "related genres" , including the " gangster film , but also contemporary history from the forties and transitions [...] to the US science fiction film of the fifties ” . Distelmeyer highlights the female lead Frances McDormand as femme fatale alongside Billy Bob Thornton as "the perfect noir hero" . “Macabre” is “not just the story (and especially its surprising finale), but the whole project. Whatever you like to call it, be it a quote , irony or postmodern pastiche ” .
Michael Denks from Zelluloid.de is of the opinion that the “film art experts Joel and Ethan Coen probably created their most difficult film to date” with The Man Who Wasn't There . “Overall, the criticism was very divided, on the one hand too artificial and laborious, on the other hand very demanding. The audience did not leave any commercial thanks, the box office results lagged far behind their predecessors. ” The cast of the film was successful and included an “ impressive group of familiar and new Coen actors. As always, the director gets the best out of every role, no matter how small, no scene seems banal or boring, they are like a sequence of black and white paintings, the art of which they owe to a visually creative camera. Nevertheless, the spark of enthusiasm does not want to skip, the monotony of the first-person narrator Ed Crane puts the film into a silky half-sleep, whose only lively climax star lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub) clears the fog a little. " Denk's conclusion is: " Overall Above-average film certainly belongs on every shelf of a Coen lover, as an art film it works perfectly, but it is by no means suitable for the masses. "
Awards
The film ran in 2001 in the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival , Joel Coen was awarded the Director's Prize. He also received the David di Donatello in 2002 for the best foreign film and an award at the Las Palmas Film Festival.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins received an Oscar nomination for his work and won the British Academy Film Award , the Australian Film Institute Award , the American Society of Cinematographers Award , the Golden Satellite at the Satellite Awards , the Boston Society of Film Critics Award, an award from Los Angeles Film Critics Association , the San Diego Film Critics Society Award, an award at the Online Film Critics Society Awards, and the Florida Film Critics Circle Award. At the last two awards, Billy Bob Thornton also received the award for Best Actor in 2002. He was honored in the same category at the Chlotrudis Awards in the same year in which he was honored in 2001 by the National Board of Review and the Southeastern Film Critics Association. The Russian Guild of Film Critics gave him the award for best foreign actor. Billy Bob Thornton was named Actor of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards in 2002, while the Coen brothers were recognized for writing the film.
In addition, the film and the film crew received various nominations at other film festivals.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The Man Who Wasn't There in the Lexicon of International Films . Retrieved July 15, 2011
- ↑ Internet Movie Database : Filming Locations
- ↑ a b c d e Internet Movie Database : Budget and Box Office Results
- ↑ a b c d e f Internet Movie Database : Start Dates
- ↑ a b c Internet Movie Database : Background information
- ^ A b Film review , Evangelischer Pressedienst , Jan Distelmeyer, November 2001
- ↑ Daniel Haas: The brilliant farce of the colorless hairdresser . In: Spiegel Online - Kultur , November 8, 2001, accessed September 16, 2011
- ↑ Michael Denks: The Man Who Wasn't There. In: Zelluloid.de. August 26, 2008, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on September 28, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g Internet Movie Database : Nominations and Awards
Web links
- The man who was not there in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The man who was not there atRotten Tomatoes(English)