Death silence

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Movie
German title Death silence
Original title Dead Calm
Country of production Australia , USA
original language English
Publishing year 1989
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Phillip Noyce
script Terry Hayes
production Terry Hayes,
George Miller ,
Doug Mitchell
music Graeme Revell ,
Tim O'Connor
camera Dean Semler ,
Geoff Burton
cut Richard Francis-Bruce
occupation

Todesstille (original title: Dead Calm ) is an Australian film from the year 1989 , the after completion of Warner Bros. was purchased and extended by an additional end. The plot of the chamber thriller is based on the novel Deadly Calm by Charles Williams from 1963. The filming took place between the Whitsunday Islands of the Great Barrier Reef . Directed by Phillip Noyce .

action

The son of the Australian naval officer John Ingram and his wife Rae are killed in a car accident in which Rae was behind the wheel and was seriously injured himself. To come to terms with the death of their son, the couple embarks on an extensive sailing trip with their yacht on the Pacific .

After a few days, they sight a schooner , which is obviously damaged , and take the only survivor, Hughie Warriner, on board. He tells of food poisoning , from which the team died, and that the schooner will soon sink. But the experienced officer distrusts the young man's story, and when he falls asleep, exhausted, John leaves the yacht in the dinghy to check the story on board the schooner. There he has a horrible picture, as part of the ship is already under water, which Warriner's story initially confirms. But as John penetrates deeper into the ship, he discovers the bodies of the crew, who were apparently murdered.

John quickly makes his way back to his wife, who has stayed on the sailing yacht and is already driving towards him. The shipwrecked man , who has now woken up and locked up in his cabin by John, comes out of a deck window and overpowers Rae, so that she does not manage to turn around and take in her husband. John has to stay behind in the dinghy and watch as the yacht, under engine, moves away from the schooner at full speed.

John is now trying to stabilize the situation on the schooner. He manages to start the ship's engine and take up the chase. Using the schooner's defective radio, he can establish contact with his wife, whom he can hear, but he can only make himself noticeable with clicks. When John can finally make her understand that the schooner is going to sink, Rae realizes that only she can save her husband. After a failed attempt at sabotage on the ship's engine, she tries to win the trust of Warriner, which goes so far that she even sleeps with him. Eventually she can numb him with a sedative and lock him in a cubicle.

But Warriner can break free again. Rae armed himself with a harpoon and after a fierce battle he was able to incapacitate him and throw him overboard into an abandoned life raft .

John has meanwhile been trapped below deck of the schooner by unfortunate circumstances. The water rises higher and higher, and so he tries to buy time and operate the manual bilge pump as best he can. When the rising water takes the last room to breathe, he has no choice and he goes underground to look for the leak through which the water penetrates. He succeeds in finding the leak, enlarging it and thereby leaving the ship.

Searching the horizon, Rae sails towards her husband, meanwhile in stormy weather. With the advancing dusk and the fact that the schooner will soon go under, John sees no other option than to start a fire to attract attention. Rae can make out the glow of the burning schooner and she can finally rescue her husband from his makeshift raft.

You search and find the life raft, but without a warriner. Rae sinks the life raft. Warriner, however, managed to get on board unnoticed. The next morning he surprises Rae and tries to overpower her. When John notices this, he fires a flare at the intruder, which means its end.

reception

The tension arises from the claustrophobic setting and the limited movement of the characters as well as the question of whether Rae will be able to free himself or someone from outside.

John uses a flare to banish Hughie, although he could also have used a harpoon: "He doesn't blow the enemy off the board with great caliber, but rather coughs him off the planks with a certain reluctance."

Reviews

  • The lexicon of the international film praised: "The sophisticated staging of a traumatic experience is extremely exciting, offered in perfect design and presentation."
  • The Große Filmlexikon considers the film to be a “hair-raising, nerve-wracking thriller”, which is “very predictable”, but the tension remains throughout the length of the film.
  • Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times on April 7, 1989 that the thriller would create a lot of tension thanks to the simple story and the achievements of the actors. The division of the film into two storylines, in which John Ingram fights for his survival on the abandoned ship while his wife defends herself against the murderer, he described as "effective".

Awards

  • 1989: AFI Awards from the Australian Film Institute in the categories of Best Camera , Best Editing , Best Sound , Best Music . In addition, nominations in four other categories (including best film )
  • 1990 : Motion Picture Sound Editors Award for the best sound editor
  • 1991 : Nominated for the Saturn Award in the category Best Actress (Kidman)

Unfinished first film adaptation

Orson Welles attempted to film the novella back in 1967 . He had chosen the coast off Yugoslavia as the filming location . The main characters in this film would have been Jeanne Moreau , Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar . The film was privately funded by Welles and his partner Kodar. However, they could not raise enough funds to complete the project. When lead actor Harvey died in 1973, the project was officially ended.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Holger Wacker (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the crime film. Corian-Verlag, Meitingen, 8th edition 1997, ISBN 3-89048-250-3 . Review by Klaus-Peter Walter
  2. ↑ a b Dirk Manthey, Jörg Altendorf, Willy Loderhose (eds.): The large film lexicon. All top films from A-Z . Second edition, revised and expanded new edition. tape V . Verlagsgruppe Milchstraße, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-89324-126-4 , p. 2772 .
  3. ↑ The silence of death in the Lexicon of International Films Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used
  4. ^ Film review by Roger Ebert