Wild blood
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Wild blood |
| Original title | Ruby Gentry |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1952 |
| length | 82 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | King Vidor |
| script |
Arthur Fitz-Richard , Silvia Richards |
| production |
Joseph Bernhard , King Vidor |
| music | Heinz Roemheld |
| camera | Russell Harlan |
| cut | Terry O. Morse |
| occupation | |
| |
Wild Blood (original title Ruby Gentry ) is an American melodrama directed by King Vidor from 1952.
action
The life story of the Ruby Gentry is told by the doctor Saul Manfred, who moved to the conservative town of Braddock in North Carolina ; he is amazed at the strong separation there between rich and poor, as well as the social narrowness. At a party he meets the attractive young woman Ruby, who comes from the working class Corey family. At the same party, Ruby meets her former admirer Boake Tackman for the first time, who had spent a few years abroad after graduating from school. The two soon get closer and wild rumors break out about it. The relationship between Ruby and Boake is not given a chance, as he comes from a family with a much higher social status, even though this has continuously lost ownership and influence since the end of the Civil War . Boake wants to restore his family Tackman to a new shine and has big plans for this. He eventually leaves Ruby for the wealthy Tracy McAuliffe, especially since he needs the money from Tracy's family for his business plans.
Ruby moves into the house of the wealthy businessman Jim Gentry, because his wife Letitia is dying and needs care. Ruby is very close to the couple, who are friends with her father, because as a teenager she lived with the childless gentry for a few years and got a feel for the life of a wealthy lady. Eventually, however, Ruby's parents had called her back because they needed help around the house, and Ruby had to get used to living in much poorer circumstances again. After Letitia succumbed to her illness, Jim Ruby makes a marriage proposal despite the difference in age and status, which she accepts for reasons of purpose.
Her marriage to Jim makes Ruby the talk of the town again. Her origins from a poor family and her previous relationship with Boake make her socially unacceptable to the strict urban elite; she is ignored or mocked. At a party in the country club , Ruby and Boake dance together, whereupon the angry Jim starts a fistfight with Boake and insults Ruby. On a sailing trip the next day, Jim apologizes to her for his behavior and explains that in the future he will not care if he was only her second choice. Ruby tells him that she loves him. Just then Jim is pushed into the sea by the torn sail tree and sinks, the desperate Ruby can only with difficulty bring the boat under control and can no longer save Jim.
Subsequently, speculation rages in the city that Ruby killed her husband in order to get his money. The local newspaper also hinted at this in its articles, and honking cars circled Ruby's property. She uses Jim's fortune to counterattack her numerous opponents in the city and buys factories and the local newspaper, and then closes them. The mood in the village, however, is directed all the more against them, as it makes many people unemployed. On the other hand, she offers her old lover Boake her support in his plans to cultivate his family's land again. She also wants to win him back privately, but Boake contemptuously declares that she cannot buy him and that she cannot free herself from her poor origins with money. Ruby then floods Boake's land, drowning his grain.
Ruby returns to her family for the annual duck hunt. Boake also takes part in the hunt, to which she finally apologizes for her behavior after further arguments. Suddenly Ruby's brother Jewel - a religious fanatic who has followed every step of his “sinful” sister with anger and contempt - shoots at them. Ruby and Boake hide from the madman who is preaching and shooting at the same time in the swamp, but they are tracked down by him when they kiss. Jewel shoots Boake and wants to kill Ruby too, but she gets ahead of him and can shoot him. Ruby kneels by Boake's body and regrets her choices. Finally, one sees Ruby as a middle-aged woman who now works as a skipper on a ferry boat.
background
After the lavish Western Duel in the Sun in 1946, director King Vidor and leading actress Jennifer Jones worked together again. Jennifer Jones' career has been on a downward trend since Duel in the Sun , as most of her subsequent films failed at the box office. There are some similarities between her characters in Duel in the Sun and Wildes Blut : A lively young woman from difficult family backgrounds who is sent to a much wealthier family and has to suffer from social prejudices because of her origins and also stands between two completely different men. Charlton Heston and Karl Malden , who play the men at Ruby's side, were just at the beginning of their successful film careers. Only a few outdoor shots were made in North Carolina, otherwise the film was shot entirely in California in the film studio. At the box office, Wild Blood eventually became a box office hit that was able to revive Jennifer Jones' career for at least a few years.
The film music composed by Heinz Roemheld became a great success under the title Ruby , so in 1953 alone six different cover versions of Roemheld's film music made the Billboard Charts . Well-known recordings of the film theme come from Richard Hayman , Les Baxter , Harry James , Victor Young and their orchestras, as well as from soul musician Ray Charles .
Country singer Bobbie Gentry , whose name is Roberta Lee Streeter by birth, chose her stage name after this film.
synchronization
In the German dubbed version, Marianne Kehlau speaks for Jennifer Jones as Ruby Gentry, Sebastian Fischer for Charlton Heston as Boake Tackman and Ernst Wilhelm Borchert for Karl Malden as Jim Gentry.
Reviews
The film service describes Ruby Gentry as a “melodrama that is too roughly outlined and unconvincing in its portrayal.” The All Movie Guide calls the film a “quite involving southern melodrama”, which, however, suffers from the miscast in the leading roles: Heston's portrayal misses “everything real charm ”and Jennifer Jones could only with difficulty embody such a lively character as Ruby Gentry in a believable way, since she was always the most convincing in her quieter roles. In addition, “a few too many clichés” made the film seem a bit “forced”. The work of director Vidor, who built some “very nice individual moments” into the film, as well as the solid supporting actors, with Karl Malden and Barney Phillips in particular Josephine Hutchinson, the dying woman in a subtle way convincing, can be booked on the positive side represent.
Web links
- Wild blood in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Ruby Gentry (1953) - Articles - TCM.com. Retrieved March 1, 2020 .
- ^ The Archive of Contemporary Music: Joel Whitburn's Pop memories, 1890-1954: the history of American popular music: compiled from America's popular music charts 1890-1954 . Menomonee Falls, Wis. : Record Research, 1986 ( archive.org [accessed March 1, 2020]).
- ↑ Eric Weisbard: Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music . Duke University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8223-4041-6 ( google.de [accessed March 1, 2020]).
- ↑ German synchronous index | Movies | Wild blood. Retrieved March 2, 2020 .
- ↑ Wildes Blut (film service). Retrieved March 1, 2020 .
- ^ Ruby Gentry (1952) - King Vidor | Review. Retrieved March 1, 2020 (American English).