Wes Craven

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Wes Craven (2010)

Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven (born August 2, 1939 in Cleveland , Ohio - † August 30, 2015 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American film director , screenwriter , producer and actor , who mainly made horror films such as Nightmare on Elm Street , Hill of Bloody Eyes and Scream became known.

Life

Wes Craven grew up in a family of devout Baptists in which, in addition to alcohol, cigarettes and card games, the cinema was frowned upon. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore with a degree in philosophy and writing . Prior to his career in the film business, he was a teacher at Clarkson University in Potsdam , NY. Craven was married three times, including a second marriage to the actress Mimi Craven and a third marriage to the producer Iya Labunka; the first marriage has two children. Craven died of a brain tumor in Los Angeles on August 30, 2015, at the age of 76 .

Create and work

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Wesley Craven was one of the most influential and famous directors to spawn the horror genre. His first film Together , he turned in 1971 with Sean S. Cunningham . Craven made his breakthrough with The Last House on the Left (The Last House on the Left) in the early seventies. The still controversial splatter film revolutionized the way in which horror films were made and, through its critical reference to the Vietnam War , gave the genre an almost political message in terms of the depiction of violence and torture .

He continued his straightforward and often disturbing style in 1977 in Hill of Bloody Eyes . The story of a family hunted and killed by a pack of mutant cannibals in the wilderness became an even bigger hit than Last House On The Left .

In the mid-eighties, Craven had his final breakthrough when he brought Nightmare to the screen with the nightmare killer Freddy Krueger. The film celebrated its world premiere in 1984 at the Hof International Film Festival in the city of Hof in Bavaria . In 1994 he tried with Freddy's New Nightmare to bring the story about the slayer Freddy, which has since been watered down by numerous sequels, to a worthy end - a request that was made by Freddy vs. Jason was put into perspective again in 2003. His satirical vampire horror Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) with Eddie Murphy drew both racial and horror stereotypes through the cocoa, but the film was only moderately successful at the box office.

Only in 1996 did Craven succeed with Scream - Schrei! to fill the slasher film genre believed dead with new life. The Munch- Masked Killer quickly became a pop icon , and the satirical story of a group of youngsters who, despite their knowledge of horror films, eventually perish the same way they are portrayed in those films, became a box office hit that dated financially Successor Scream 2 was even surpassed.

In addition to his work on Scream , Craven also made Music of the Heart , the true story of a Brooklyn music teacher with whom Craven ventured out of the familiar horror terrain. Meryl Streep was nominated for an Oscar for best actress. After Craven had finished the Scream trilogy with Scream 3 in 2000 , he first tried his hand at the werewolf genre, which marked a financial as well as artistic failure with Verflucht (2005). In the same year, however, Craven was able to find his way back to old form with Red Eye , a thriller with Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy . With this film, Craven relied on a less bloodthirsty, but more psychological horror and thus signaled a departure from the slasher genre. In 2014 he acted as the creator and producer of the television series implementation of Scream .

As a producer, Wes Craven was also responsible for the series Wes Craven Presents .

style

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Wes Craven's films and the violence they portray have shaped contemporary American horror cinema. In terms of content, Craven repeatedly treated the story of a group that - mostly innocent - fell into the clutches of brutal and sadistic murderers . The irrationality and brutality of violence can be found mainly in Craven's early works, which were shaped by his media experience with the handling of violence in the Vietnam War. It was only with Scream that Craven left the “real” world of horror in order to turn to a media-critical and conscious form of violence that dealt self-reflexively with horror classics such as Halloween and Prom Night - The Night of the Butcher . Craven's visualization of violence always remained realistic, he showed violence and torture as the ugliest form of the human soul without any stylization or glorification - a method that fundamentally differentiated Craven from directors like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez . Violence and horror were not aesthetic or a pure means to an end at Craven, they served to clearly distinguish between good and evil.

What is important in Craven's films is the moment of hope, which - mostly embodied by the female identification figure - carries the film and does not leave the viewer alone, even in the most brutal sequences. Overcoming fear becomes the most important aspect of the film for the main actress and viewer.

Award

Filmography (selection)

Director

actor

producer

Works

literature

  • John Wooley : Wes Craven: The Man and his Nightmares . 2011.

Web links

Commons : Wes Craven  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wes Craven. A master of horror . In: Focus from August 2, 2009.
  2. ↑ Report on latimesblogs.latimes.com
  3. ↑ Wes Craven, Horror Maestro, Dies at 76 . The Hollywood Reporter . August 30, 2015. Accessed August 31, 2015.
  4. ↑ 50 years Hof Film Festival: The good ones from yesterday by Wolfgang Höbel on the homepage of the news magazine Der Spiegel , www.spiegel.de, October 25, 2016, accessed on May 15, 2020
  5. ↑ Scream TV Series - Wes Craven Unveil's New Ghostface Mask
  6. ↑ Wes Craven Presents: Don't Look Down (1998) - Full Movie. Retrieved June 21, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Craven, Wes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Craven, Wesley Earl (full name); Craven, Wesley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleveland , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 2015
Place of death Los Angeles , California