Entire rows of identical houses. On lawns, docile dogs bask pill. Before them, bikes kids roam the aisles. Their parents, driving their break colorful, return to their home sweet home, smiling ear to ear. The sun is shining. Life is sweet in every Californian suburbs, in summer 1982. Two events will nevertheless disturb the tranquility room. Here, a friendly extraterrestrial forgotten by his peers moved within a home, there is a little girl swallowed by a television set.
& gt; & gt; Poltergeist Poltergeist against the remake: the same scenes before and after
Here the children hiding in the closet of their room the creature not to alert adults there, the parents of the little Carol Anne desperately trying to make contact with the spirits of the TV to bring their children on the right side of the screen. Behind these two phenomena, one single man: Steven Spielberg, 35 then and already star of the film industry. It was he who supervised and imagined these fantastic stories. The first film is called ET, the extraterrestrial, the second, Poltergeist. And they are ready, one like the other, cartoning at the box office.
It is an established fact today Spielberg is not a product of entertainment: it is the entertainment! At each of his appearances in the media, it sports the colors of its past and future creations. A cap with the logo of Raiders of the Lost Ark, adventure movie with her boyfriend thought that George Lucas has all accounting Hollywood knees; a tee flanked by a moon, on which cutting a bike (ET) later a polo with a scrambled TV screen and the silhouette of a little girl (Poltergeist) … since the delirious success of Star Wars Lucas, or its own Jaws knows a movie is much more a piece of film. It is also a trademark. In industry, these films now have a name: blockbusters.
Man Chainsaw Massacre
During the summer of 1982, magazines put in a man cap with its big geek glasses: Steve’s Summer Magic as Newsweek. Steven Spielberg says with studied modesty and lets in pieces of a private life which is reflected in its scenarios. ET, the extraterrestrial and Poltergeist have the bucket of their author. One is “a caress” the other “a cry,” says Spielberg to the magazine. One is a mainstream product for young and old, the other a horror film for young adults. The filmmaker can not contractually perform two films simultaneously, told Poltergeist a master of the genre: Tobe Hooper, the man of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Question weird stuff, the guy knows a lot. And yet … An article in the LA Times that task. “Who really directed Poltergeist ?” examines a journalist in the columns of the famous daily. The gossips tell, in fact, that Hooper was on set for make up the numbers and that Spielberg would have made every box. Just see the making-of to get an idea. Hooper, always behind, struggling to appear on the photo, while Spielberg hands to face level, dictates his vision.
The aesthetics Poltergeist either does not deceive. With light blue or orange rays that suggest a supernatural presence, it is the author’s film Encounter of the Third Kind. For the press, Spielberg denies, but not convinced. Hooper, he is silent. Meanwhile, the little Carol Anne is still a prisoner of the spirits of the TV.
“They’re here!”
Poltergeist is a German name that means supernatural events. In the sixteenth century, Luther saw the incarnation of the devil. The Evil One, we know, can take various forms. In 1982, Beelzebub and his minions are stashed in the most common object of the show. The Freeling family never saw it coming, almost. The chairs are stacked on their own, while a steak improvised a dance on the kitchen worktop. Nothing too serious. Carol Anne had however warned: “They’re here!”
The sordid minds decided that the girl was theirs!
Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM)
We never listen enough children. But one night, while Mom and Dad smoke a joint while watching an old movie with Spencer Tracy ( A man named Joe, Victor Fleming, one of the favorite movies of Spielberg which will realize a remake titled Always ) children see their upstairs bedroom turn into ghost train. All hands to battle. While the household panics and tries to retrieve the little Steven (!) Caught by a tree that threatens to engulf him, Carol Anne happening on the other side of the cathodic mirror.
Only his mother, Diane, can hear his complaints. It will dwarf with a medium, straight out of a David Lynch film, so to speak, to organize the repatriation of the blonde. “There is a presence at his side, she warns. She lies to him. She said things that only a child can understand. For us it is a beast, but for the small, it’s just another child! ”
To understand what is at stake here, it should regain some of his lost innocence. The choice of a dwarf character to ensure the connection between the spirit world and the living is a bit rude, but expresses quite well the idea that an individual must change perspective to understand this alternate world. “Remember when you were young and you had broadminded”, had rightly said Diane to her husband before everything begins to degenerate. At Spielberg, adults are capable of the worst, forcing the children to fend for themselves. This philosophy is one of the creed of feature films produced by its newly created company: Amblin Entertainment (Gremlins, The Goonies, Back to the Future, The secret of the pyramid …)
Duvet covers, pajamas & amp; sabers laser
After many adventures, the sweet home of Freeling finally collapsed like a house of cards manhandled under wild eyes of a developer guilty of those nice houses built on a ancient cemetery. The pretty peaceful and smiling suburb was obviously an illusion. No doubt that Tobe Hooper has recognized this critical vision of American trompe-l’oeil. Less perhaps in tone reconciler Spielberg, singer of happy ending.
The rest of the Freeling family, faces an unimaginable horror.
Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM)
You can still have fun to spot in the interstices of the film, the tab Dad Leatherface. Starting with this purely gratuitous scene where one of the men came to lend a hand to Freeling assists before the mirror in his metamorphosis into a monster. Amusing detail, hands coming out of the mirror to stop this waking nightmare are those of Spielberg himself! Who placed with the father a biography of Ronald Reagan, otherwise the Hooper mischievous little known for his conservative ideas?
Finally, like the hero Texas Chainsaw Massacre, those Poltergeist are passive victims who suffer and act very little. No wonder none of the actors has really caught on. In 2000, on the occasion of a film emerged in video, Tobe Hooper has finally made its voice heard, “When Spielberg met me, I told him about my desire to make a film based on Ghost The Haunting, Robert Wise … I do not understand why we still wonder if I made Poltergeist. I completely staged and have designed half the storyboard [...] I had the chance to work with a good producer, who was also a great showman. We shared the same aesthetic vision. ” Duly noted.
The latest special effects cries (then) Poltergeist must be signed by the Industrial Light & amp; Magic, the friend George Lucas. We are surprised and amazed, reviewing the film today, by their nature both artisanal and incredibly effective. Moreover, Lucas and his Star Wars are thanked directly on the screen: in the room Freeling children, duvet covers, pajamas, toys and posters on the walls are all the effigy of Star Wars heroes.
Poltergeist comes out in the US on June 4, 1982, a week before ET, the extraterrestrial. The two films in competition will end a few months later at the Oscars in technical categories. Poltergeist will be wearing each time the post by his blood brother. While Tobe Hooper’s career is gradually sinking into a moonless night, Steven Spielberg, he is about to change hats as film. “Do not turn around!” are the last words we hear in Poltergeist. The suburb collapses, the Freeling family took refuge in a motel. Parents, this time careful to banish the TV on the landing. May the force be with them.
This year … 1982
1 February: first International Festival Short Film of Clermont-Ferrand.
February 27: The War of the fire, by Jean-Jacques Annaud, won the César Award for Best Film and Best Director.
March 29: Chariots of Fire, Hugh Hudson, gets the Oscar for best film.
26 May: gold palm tied for Yol, permission, Yilmaz Guney, and Missing Costa-Gravas.
May 29: death of actress Romy Schneider.
September 14: Grace Kelly died in a car accident.
1 December: Release ET, the extraterrestrial, in French cinemas. The film will total 8,938,428 entries.
Poltergeist , Tobe Hooper, Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke Zelda Rubinstein … Released October 20, 1982
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