Windjammer (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Tall ship |
| Original title | Tall ship |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1958 |
| length | 127 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bill Colleran , Louis De Rochemont III |
| script | James L. Shute |
| production | Louis De Rochemont |
| music | Morton Gould , Richard Dehr , Terry Gilkyson , Frank Miller (= The Easy Riders ); Cinemiracle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jack Shaindlin |
| camera | Joseph C. Brun , Gayne Rescher |
| cut | Peter Ratkevich |
| occupation | |
| |
The film Windjammer is a documentary from 1958 in the rare Cinemiracle recording format . In English the film is also called Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich to differentiate it from other films with the same title. Directed by Bill Colleran and Louis De Rochemont III . It premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater , Hollywood , on April 8, 1958, and ran there for 36 weeks.
The narrator in the German version was Hans Clarin , known at the time as the spokesman for Kookie in the crime series " 77 Sunset Strip ".
content
The film describes the journey with the Norwegian sailing training ship S / S Christian Radich from Oslo across the Atlantic , through the Caribbean , to New York and back to Norway . The crew of 16 officers and 42 cadets, under the command of Captain Yngvar Kjelstrup , experienced fascinating encounters with the country and its people on the 17,000 nautical miles long journey. They experience a traditional basket sleigh ride on the island of Madeira , meet the famous cellist Pablo Casals , who is giving a concert especially for them in his garden, and they encounter the German sailing ship Pamir , which sank in a storm while filming in 1957. The film thus contains the last moving images of the Pamirs.
Shortly before the Christian Radich makes the return trip to Norway, cadet Sven Erik Libaek is allowed to give a live concert with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra in the port of Portsmouth , New Hampshire ( Edvard Grieg's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A minor, Op . 16 ).
Cinemiracle
The classification of the film in a certain category is not that easy. It is actually a documentary film because it captures the voyage and the events of the sailing ship's crew. At the same time, however, it is also a music film , because many of the songs known today that belong to the standard repertoire of shanty choirs are performed in it, and it is also an experimental film for the complicated film format Cinemiracle .
When recording the film, three Mitchell cameras for 35 mm film were permanently installed in a camera block. The camera block was so large that an entire wall had to be removed when taking pictures from the wheelhouse of the sailing ship. The film cameras could record a viewing angle of 146 degrees horizontally and 55 degrees vertically. The two exterior photos were taken the wrong way round. The left camera took the right picture, the right camera the left. During the projection, the images had to be projected onto the screen via three electrically coupled projectors . The external images were projected onto the middle image by means of mirrors and thus resulted in an undistorted widescreen image (in contrast to the widescreen format Cinemascope , which is easier to record with only one camera, but the image is compressed during recording and this is therefore rectified again during projection got to).
For the German premiere on May 22, 1959 in the Grugahalle in Essen , a screen 32 meters wide and 17 meters high was installed there, at the time the largest screen in the world. The film was shown in the Grugahalle in 1959 and then in 1962 and 1965 and was seen by a total of around 650,000 viewers.
Few movie theaters in the world have been able to show Cinemiracle films. The film "Windjammer" was therefore later copied into the popular Cinemascope. The left and right images were then separated from the central image by clearly visible lighter lines. In rare TV broadcasts, not even a Cinemascope version was broadcast, but only a 4: 3 version with only the middle picture. So 60 percent of the overall picture could not be seen at all.
To mark the 60th anniversary of Cinerama , the restored film was released in the USA in September 2012 in a region-free DVD / Blu-Ray box with over an hour of bonus material.
In 2017 the film was restored again, this time from original film negatives and not from backup copies. Therefore it has a good picture quality.
Film music
The film was provided with a 7-channel stereo sound that could reproduce frequencies from 20 Hz to 18 kHz and which was known as high fidelity at the time . The soundtrack was composed by the American composer Morton Gould (1913-1996). This music was recorded instrumentally in stereo . In addition, there are many songs in the film that were composed by the folk trio The Easy Riders and recorded in mono . The songs were sung by members of the crew.
"The Easy Riders" consisted of Terry Gilkyson , Richard Dehr and Frank Miller . Terry Gilkyson is e.g. B. composer of the song "Try it out with comfort" from Disney's jungle book . The songs from the film Windjammer known today include a. "Kari Waits For Me", "Marianne", "Sugar Cane", "Memories Are Made of This", "Saturday Night", "Don't You Worry" and "Village of New York". The cellist Pablo Casals contributed the piece "Catalan Melody" to the film. The film music was released on LP and EP singles at the time .
Reviews
“A documentary in technical perfection. The impressive effects of the "Cinemiracle" process, which simulates three-dimensional image effects and guarantees flawless image sharpness even on oversized formats, can only be seen on the big cinema screen. The film was the first to be made using this process and had enthusiastic viewers at the time. "
More windjammer films
literature
- James W. Hardiman, Elmer C. Rhoden, Russell H. McCullough, Sven Erik Libaek, and others. a .: Louis de Rochemont's WINDJAMMER , Random House 1958 (no ISBN)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Camera block ( Memento from March 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Projection ( memento of March 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Michael Köster: 50 years Grugahalle , Klartext-Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-8375-0049-3 , p. 49
- ↑ English DVD page
- ↑ in70mm: The Reconstruction of WINDJAMMER from original elements. June 29, 2017. Retrieved November 23, 2017 .
- ↑ Windjammer. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 18, 2016 .
Web links
- Windjammer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Production pictures from the film "Windjammer"
- About the film Windjammer and Cinemiracle
- About the film "Windjammer"
- Sound carrier with the film music
- Homepage of "Christian Radich" (English, German + Norwegian)
- Film excerpt on YouTube (before restoration)
- Restoration and trailer