Zazie (film)

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Movie
German title Zazie
Original title Zazie dans le métro
Country of production France , Italy
original language French
Publishing year 1960
length 89 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Louis Malle
script Louis Malle,
Jean-Paul Rappeneau
production Louis Malle
music Fiorenzo Carpi,
André Pontin
camera Henri Raichi
cut Kenout Peltier
occupation

Zazie (Original title: Zazie dans le métro ) is a comedy by Louis Malle from 1960 based on the 1959 novel Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau . The film was released in Germany on December 20, 1960. While the novel plays with words, the film is full of classic slapsticks .

action

The cheeky girl Zazie (around ten years old, with bob hairs) is visiting Paris with her mother from the provinces. So that the mother can visit her lover, she leaves Zazie with her uncle for two days. Zazie really wants to take the metro, but to her great disappointment, it is on strike. The next day she explores Paris on her own. When her uncle's friend, the bistro owner Turandot, who is supposed to take care of her, tries to catch her again, Zazie provokes a commotion by loudly accusing him of harassment. At the flea market, a mustached "nice uncle" named Pedro Surplus actually wants to approach her and promise to buy her blue jeans. Zazie snatches his pants and flees to her uncle, followed by the policeman Trouscaillon (very similar to Pedro). Then her uncle, who lets taxi driver Charles drive him (who then leaves them both annoyed by Zazie's prank), shows her the city of Paris, first the Eiffel Tower, where the two are separated by a swarm of tourists, in their “Cityrama” bus Gabriel lands. A wild chase ensues with the widow Mouaque, who chases Gabriel's bus in her open car, with Trouscaillon and Zazie. The climax is then a fight in a brasserie, which is broken up by police officers, led by Aroun Arachide (also very similar to Pedro). Finally, everyone is invited to the cabaret, where the uncle appears as a transvestite. Zazie is now so exhausted that she falls asleep. The next day the still sleeping zazie is handed back to her mother.

Others

When the film came out on October 28, 1960, it initially had no success with either the audience or the critics. However, immediately after the cinema premiere, François Truffaut, Eugène Ionesco and Charlie Chaplin expressed their enthusiasm.

Sacha Distel has a cameo .

For the most part, shot on the original locations, the film also provides a picture of Paris in 1960. In detail: the church Saint-Vincent-de-Paul , Place Franz-Liszt (10th arrondissement), the Ostbahnhof ( Gare de l'Est ), a bistro, the Saint-Ouen flea market, the Seine bridge Bir-Hakeim , the Galerie Vivienne and the Passage de Choiseul (2nd arrondissement), the Eiffel Tower, the quays of the Seine and a cabaret in Pigalle, where the uncle occurs.

The artistic advisor was the photographer William Klein .

censorship

The German version of Zazie had to be defused in its synchronization at the instigation of the FSK . With regard to the rough version of the dialogue text presented at the beginning of November 1960, the control committee saw itself “unable to make a final (approval) decision." The texts contained “an accumulation of grossly offensive expressions to such an extent that one would assume that the film was not approved had to refrain from public demonstration. ”It was recommended“ to revise the synchronization and to cleanse it of all formulations that must be regarded as appropriate, both the moral feeling and - in some details - the religious feeling of broader sections of the population [...] violate". Particular attention was drawn to those passages “which contain references to homosexual relationships”.

Thereupon the translator Hans F. Wilhelm tried to moderate the dialogue text "to the limit of the justifiable", whereby he saw the result "now almost as a falsification of the original". So the frequent “merde” of the original in German was toned down, since the literal translation could be expected of the German audience “only two to four times”. The syllable "Sau" in "Saukerl" was deleted, "Sittenstrolch" was changed to "Strolch". The insinuation to Uncle Gabriel, “You probably make a living by sending little girls to the streets”, has been reinterpreted as: “You probably make a living by sending little girls to steal?” In particular, homosexual allusions were largely removed. The interference not only affected the synchronization, an entire scene in which the widow Mouaque is shot was deleted. The umbrella organization of the film industry justified in a letter to the levels that the uncensored film "ordinary coarse-by, indecent expressions and turns downright swarming. […] Alluding to lesbian relationships was felt by the examiners to be intolerable. ”During the assessment, the FSK had preserved its general position on the“ violation of moral feelings ”.

criticism

  • film-dienst : “Just as the author deals with the apparent naivety of children's language, Malle also returns to the childhood days of cinematography: to the slapstick of the Mack Sennett films and to the original tricks of Meliès. Slow motion, fast motion, repetition and deformation, the abolition of space and time, playing with color alienations and deliberately wrong synchronization are at the same time intellectual corruptions of the convention that make the film an exemplary work of the French "Nouvelle Vague". "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The film also runs as a Zazie in the Metro in Germany
  2. ↑ a b c Censored child mouth . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 1961, p. 61 ( online ).
  3. ↑ ZAZIE . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1961, pp. 54 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Stephan Buchloh: "Perverse, harmful to young people, hostile to the state": Censorship in the Adenauer era as a mirror of the social climate . Campus, Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-593-37061-1 , p. 200.