Walk the line

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Movie
German title Walk the line
Original title Walk the line
Country of production USA , Germany
original language English
Publishing year 2005
length Theatrical version: 136 minutes,
Extended Edition: 153 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 6
Rod
Director James Mangold
script Gill Dennis ,
James Mangold
production James Keach ,
Cathy Konrad
music T-bone Burnett
camera Phedon Papamichael
cut Michael McCusker
occupation

Walk the Line is a biopic from the year 2005 about the life of country singer Johnny Cash . Directed by James Mangold , who co-wrote the script with Gill Dennis, based on the biographies Man in Black and Cash: The Autobiography . The main roles are played by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon .

action

On the occasion of the theatrical release of Walk the Line , a limited edition of boxes was produced, each with a numbered plectrum with the imprint “Walk the line / No. …" contain.

The first scene opens the frame story: It's 1968 and you're waiting for Cash to appear in Folsom State Prison .

The flashback begins in 1944: JR Cash lives with parents and siblings in poor conditions on a leased cotton farm in the city of Dyess in Arkansas . JR listens to young country singer June Carter on the radio ; his father Ray loudly tells him to turn off the radio. JR talks to his older brother Jack about the fact that he can pick a lot more cotton than he knows and knows every story from the Bible . He replies that JR knows every song from mother's hymnbook for this. He sings in church and in the field with his mother Carrie.

One day Jack is sawing wood for a neighbor and sends JR, who is with him, to go fishing. Shortly afterwards, Jack is seriously injured in an accident with a circular saw and dies. The father's tense relationship with JR then worsens again, as he blames him for the death of his favorite son Jack.

In 1952, JR, who was now called John in the US Air Force , was stationed in Landsberg am Lech . His mother gave him her hymn book Heavenly Highway Hymns when he left . In Germany, he bought his first guitar, a Höfner , and writes his own songs, including the Folsom Prison Blues , to him, the film Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (German Movie Title: Mutiny at dawn ) had inspired that showed the soldiers has been. In the distance he follows the life of the singer June Carter and reads that she will now marry Carl Smith .

1955: Cash has now married his girlfriend Vivian Liberto and moved with her to Memphis , his daughter Rosanne was born and his wife is pregnant again. In his spare time he plays gospel music with auto mechanics Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant . As a representative of household appliances, he goes from house to house, but is not very successful. His wife complains that he seems to care more about his music than the family's upkeep. Since they are in arrears with the rent, they have now also received an eviction order for their apartment. One day, Cash passes a recording studio and meets its owner Sam Phillips , who is also the founder of the record label Sun Records . A little later he succeeds in auditioning for him with his two fellow musicians. However, Philips already waves it away while a gospel song is being performed. After a short discussion, he finally played his self-composed Folsom Prison Blues for him. Philips then offers Cash a record deal.

This is followed by tours of Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two with other musicians who are also under contract with Sun Records, including Jerry Lee Lewis , Carl Perkins , Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley . During a performance in Texarkana , he first met June Carter personally, who had since announced her divorce. Cash is now often on the road for weeks and his wife rarely sees him, and she is not enthusiastic about the lewd fan mail from young girls. In addition to consuming alcohol excessively, he also began taking pills and became addicted to drugs. Because of this dependency and his unreliability, June Carter refuses to go on tour with him. In 1958, Cash signed a new recording deal with Columbia Records . The drummer WS Holland becomes the third member of Johnny Cash's backing band, which is now called Tennessee Three .

In 1964, Cash and his family moved to Casitas Springs, California . At an award ceremony in the same year he appeared at the side of his wife Vivian, met June Carter for the first time in many years and was able to persuade her to go on tour with him again. After performing together in Las Vegas in 1965, the two end up in bed that evening, and Carter realizes the morning after that, contrary to his claims, he is still dependent on pills. At a later gig he was so drugged that he collapsed on stage and his tour was canceled. Before Carter leaves, she collects all the pills from Cash's room and throws them away.

Cash travels to Mexico to stock up on new pills, is arrested for drug smuggling on re-entry into El Paso and has to spend the night in a holding cell. The crisis in the marriage of Cash and Vivian Liberto intensifies, and after a violent argument, she leaves him with the children and files for divorce.

In 1966, Cash and Waylon Jennings move into an apartment in Nashville . One day he sets off on foot to see June Carter to persuade her to go on tour together again. On the way back he collapses at night. When he comes to in the morning, he sees a newly built house in Hendersonville that he buys spontaneously and that will be his new home. June Carters and his own parents are present for a Thanksgiving dinner. Johnny Cash, still visibly dependent on pills, speaks to his father about his brother's accident at the time. The father makes it clear that he still blames him and, despite concerns about his addiction problem, fundamentally despises him.

After an accident with a tractor, June comes to the aid of the resigned Johnny, driven by her mother. June and her parents Maybelle and Ezra often stay in his house in the following years to dissuade him from his addiction, which they finally manage. Letters from prison inmates gave Cash the idea of ​​giving a concert at Folsom State Prison.

The frame story resumes when Cash and his band and June Carter perform in jail on January 13, 1968 and record a new album . On the way home on the bus, June Carter refuses to become Cash's wife again and again. During a concert in Ontario on February 22, 1968, Johnny proposed to her again on stage during the song Jackson , which she finally accepted.

The final scene takes place on Cash's estate and shows a happily married couple surrounded by their parents and children. It seems that even the always tense relationship with his father has improved a little.

background

  • The film title is based on Johnny Cash's music title I Walk the Line . The line of text " Because you're mine, I walk the line " (for example: Because you belong to me, I behave / I follow the rules) Cash referred to his wife Vivian Liberto. The term comes up once in the film when Cash is sitting drunk on a stage with his musician colleagues and June is throwing bottles at him. In the scene she says “ Y'all are gonna blow this tour. You can't walk no line ”(for example: You will all screw up the tour. You cannot follow any rules.) In the German dubbing it says“ You don't know when the measure is full ”.
  • The Cash / Carter couple died before filming began: June Carter on May 15, 2003 and Johnny Cash on September 12, 2003. However, both were involved in the preparation of the script and production of the film in advance.
  • Johnny Cash personally agreed to the choice of Joaquin Phoenix as the leading actor, he already admired him for his portrayal in the film Gladiator . June Carter Cash also agreed to Reese Witherspoon's choice for her own role.
  • Phoenix and Witherspoon sang all of the pieces in the film themselves.
  • Filming began on June 28, 2004 and ended on September 3, 2004. The film was shot entirely in the United States.
  • The cinema release in the USA was on November 18, 2005, in Germany on February 2, 2006. Walk the Line was first seen on German free TV on August 24, 2008 on RTL .
  • Production costs are estimated at around $ 28 million. The film grossed around 186 million US dollars in cinemas worldwide, including around 119 million US dollars in the USA and around 12.9 million US dollars in Germany.

Reviews

This section consists only of a cunning collection of quotes from movie reviews. Instead, a summary of the reception of the film should be provided as continuous text, which can also include striking quotations, see also the explanations in the film format .

“An oppressively beautiful film about the black side of happiness. Phoenix is ​​most beautiful when he listens, when he listens to others - and you don't know whether he is actually lost in himself. Once he wants to audition for Sam Phillips, the boss of Sun Records, and he explains what he wants from him. 'Imagine a truck hit you and you lie dying in the gutter. And you just have the time to sing a song. A song to let God know how you feel about the time you've been on earth ... That's the kind of song that really saves people. ' The last few minutes in the gutter are classic American film noir . The great cinema of the lost, the loser. "

- Fritz Göttler, Süddeutsche Zeitung

“So that as much truth as possible ends up in the film, Johnny and June willingly chatted with director Mangold about old times until their death in 2003, corrected several script versions, and their son John Jr. served the film team as a consultant. So 'Walk The Line' is cash checked, even though Johnny once wrote a poem called 'Don't Make A Movie Out Of Me'. He would surely have liked the film. Someone who worships Jesus and succumbs to the devil to be redeemed through love - the story not only sounds like a damn good country song, it also had to be told straightforward, simple and down to earth. In any case, the heart of every cash fan should last 136 minutes - boom-chicka-boom! - beat faster. Or lower? "

- Olaf Schneekloth, Spiegel Online

“Walk the Line ticks off the key moments in Cash's early life, and if Joaquin Phoenix Cash wasn't playing so restlessly manic, the film would hardly be remarkable. [...] What 'Walk the Line' ultimately fails is the conveyance of myth and artist life. Mangold cannot explain what the continuing fascination with Johnny Cash actually consists of. Phoenix 'Cash is basically nothing more than a big baby with a father complex and unprocessed guilt about his brother's untimely death. The film does suggest a vague connection between Cash's family relationships and his growing spirituality and his weakness for death and damnation. But what is specifically interesting about him [...] gets lost somewhere in the cinematic translation. This may also be due to the fact that Mangold fades out of Cash's life too early. It's hard to get a real picture of Cash without considering his career in the 1970s - with the late Nixon, the rise of country rock, and the commercialization of the Nashville sound. At the end of 'Walk the Line', Johnny Cash seems strangely unfinished, as if not fully developed. "

- Andreas Busche, the daily newspaper

“Cash wears black, but has a moral white vest until the end. From a dramatic point of view, one can almost be grateful that Cash was taking the stimulant pill from Elvis at the time. The following drug swamp becomes the dramatic key event for the second half of the film, without which the chain of events would not have been much. But even here Cash remains the ultimately pious lamb who unwillingly becomes a victim of pill addiction and actually just wanted to please his wife at home, but, as is now happening, falls madly in love with a well-known singer. And in the end, the benefactor rocks in jail in front of alleged perpetrators who, like him, are also victims - those of society. "

- Flemming Schock, filmspiegel.de

Awards

  • Golden Globe Awards 2006
    • won:
    • Best film - musical or comedy
    • Best Actor - Musical or Comedy (Joaquin Phoenix)
    • Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Reese Witherspoon)

Film music / soundtrack

For the soundtrack to the film (see also Walk the Line (Soundtrack) ), Cash actor Joaquin Phoenix sang nine pieces himself, and Carter actress Reese Witherspoon also contributed four tracks. Both actors took singing lessons for months, Phoenix learned to play the guitar and Witherspoon to play autoharp . The album was produced by T-Bone Burnett . Almost no original recordings by Johnny Cash or June Carter were used. The duet Long-Legged Guitar Pickin 'Man (written by Marshall Grant) from 1967 can only be heard in the credits . The other actors like Waylon Payne and Tyler Hilton also sang themselves.

The alphabetical list of the pieces of music used can be found below. The title Cry! Cry! Cry! was not used in the official version of the film, but can be found in the Phoenix version on the soundtrack CD.

  1. Ain't That Right (Snow) - Eddie Snow
  2. Bob Bob Baby (Penner / Moore) - Wade and Dick
  3. Boogie Blues (Peterson) - Earl Peterson
  4. Candy Man Blues (Hurt) - Joaquin Phoenix, Johnny Holliday, Waylon Malloy Payne and Dan John Miller
  5. Cartoon World (Sherwood) - ----
  6. Cocaine Blues (Arnall) - Joaquin Phoenix
  7. Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground (Johnson) - Blind Willie Johnson
  8. Defrost Your Heart (Claude / Cantrell) - Charlie Feathers
  9. Didn't It Rain (Knight) - Sister Rosetta Tharpe
  10. Easy Does It (Lay / Duntap / Nicholey) - Lewis LaMedica
  11. Engine 143 ( Carter ) - The Carter Family
  12. Feelin 'Good (Parker) - Little Junior's Blue Flames
  13. Folsom Prison Blues (Cash) - Joaquin Phoenix
  14. Fujiyama Mama (Burrows) - Wanda Jackson
  15. Get Rhythm (Cash) - Joaquin Phoenix
  16. Ghost Town / Poem For Eva (Frisell) - Bill Frisell
  17. Hey, Porter (Cash) - Joaquin Phoenix
  18. Highway '61 Revisited (Dylan) - Bob Dylan
  19. Home of the Blues (Cash / Douglas / McAlpin) - Joaquin Phoenix
  20. I Got Stripes (Cash / Williams) - Joaquin Phoenix
  21. I Miss You Already ( Young / Rainwater ) - Faron Young
  22. I Walk the Line (Cash) - Joaquin Phoenix
  23. I'm a Long Way From Home (Cochran) - Shooter Jennings
  24. In the Sweet By and By ( Trad. ) Church
  25. I Was There When It Happened (Jones) - The Blackwood Brothers / Joaquin Phoenix, Dan John Miller and Larry Bagby
  26. It Ain't Me, Babe (Dylan) - Joaquin Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon
  27. Jackson (Wheeler / Leiber ) - Joaquin Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon
  28. Juke Box Blues (Carter / Carter ) - Reese Witherspoon
  29. Lewis Boogie ( Lewis ) - Waylon Malloy Payne
  30. Light of the Night (Tautz) - Werner Tautz
  31. Long Legged Guitar Pickin 'Man (Grant) - Johnny Cash / June Carter
  32. Milkcow Blues Boogie (Arnold) - Tyler Hilton
  33. Ring of Fire (Carter / Kilgore ) - Joaquin Phoenix
  34. Rock and Roll Ruby (Cash) - Joaquin Phoenix
  35. Rock With Me Baby (Riley / Wallace) - Billy Lee Riley
  36. She Wears Red Feathers (Merrill) - Guy Mitchell
  37. That's All Right ( Crudup ) - Tyler Hilton
  38. The Sea of ​​Galilee (Carter) - The Carter Family
  39. Times A-Wastin '( Bryant ) - Carl Smith & June Carter / Joaquín Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon
  40. Try Me One More Time ( Tubb ) - Willie Nix
  41. Folk Music Medley (Famira) - Hans Glisha Orchestra
  42. Wildwood Flower (Carter) - Reese Witherspoon
  43. You Get To Me (Stuart) - Minnie and the Minuettes
  44. You're My Baby (Cash) - Jonathan Rice

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for Walk the Line . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2005 (PDF; test number: 104 471 K).
  2. Age rating for Walk the Line . Youth Media Commission .
  3. http://www.dict.cc/?s=i+walk+the+line
  4. ^ Olaf Schneekloth: Cash film "Walk the Line": Black eyes, pure heart. In: Spiegel Online . February 1, 2006, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  5. Bonus material of the 3-disc edition - Interview with John Carter Cash: “ My father ... approved Joaquin Phoenix for the performance. My mother also approved Reese Witherspoon. "
  6. Financial data on boxofficemojo
  7. ^ Film review in Süddeutsche Zeitung
  8. ^ Film review on Spiegel Online
  9. ^ Film review in Die Tageszeitung
  10. Film review on filmspiegel.de

Web links