“ Sandpit Generals ” ( The Sandpit Generals , also available at The Defiant , The Wild Pack ) is a feature film by American director Hall Bartlett ( 1971 ) based on the novel “ Captains of Sand ” ( 1937 ) by Georges Amadou .
| The Sandpit Generals | |
|---|---|
| The sandpit generals | |
 | |
| Genre | drama |
| Producer | Hall bartlett |
| Producer | Hall bartlett |
| Author script | Hall bartlett |
| In the main cast | Kent Lane Tisha Sterling John Rubinstein Bach Patrick Marc de Vries Doryval Kaimmi Alejandro Rey |
| Operator | Ricardo Aronovich |
| Composer | Doryval Kaimmi Louis Oliveira (arrangement, conductor) |
| Film company | American international pictures |
| Duration | 102 minutes |
| A country |  USA |
| Tongue | |
| Year | 1971 |
| IMDb | ID 0067705 |
In the USA, the film at the box office was not very successful.
In the USSR, the film was shown in the competitive program of the International Moscow Film Festival [1] . The film was released in wide distribution in 1973 and was watched by 43.2 million people, and according to the results of the year, Komsomolskaya Pravda named it the best foreign film.
The movie music , including Dorival Kaimmi ’s song “ March of the Fishermen ”, the Russian version of which became a hit in 1974, gained popularity in the USSR . The song was performed by the Accord quartet and VIA Argonauts and the Accident group in the film Old Songs about the Main 3 (this famous option, however, has little to do with the original plot and directly corresponds to the content of the film) [2] .
Content
Story
From the annotation to the film:
Thousands of abandoned street children roam the expanses of South America . In Brazil, they rummage through garbage, beg and steal. Their house is a street, they are embittered and lonely. In order not to disappear alone, they are knocked down in packs and terrorize the "prosperous" bourgeois. One such flock found refuge among the sand dunes, on the ocean. The people call them - "generals of sand pits." These guys are ready to fight for a piece of bread, and you won’t envy anyone who gets in their way - these boys are dangerous and cruel. However, they have hearts, there is a desire to love and be loved. Therefore, when street children get acquainted with the girl Dora and her brother, whom relatives kicked out into the street, the “sand captains” give new orphans shelter, food and protection. Kind, responsive and fearless Dora quickly joins the men's team, replacing single boys and sister and mother. Together they commit a lot of daring robberies, not suspecting that the days of their commune are numbered.
Cast
- Kent Lane - Bulit (in the novel Pedro Bullet)
- Tisha Sterling - Dora
- Doryval Kaimmi - John Adam (in the novel by Joan de Adam)
- Ademir da Silva - Big John
- Aloisyu De Oliveira - Chancellor
- Mark De Fries - Drew Turn
- Jimmy Fraser - Dora's Brother
- Freddy Gideon - Almiro
- William Hobson - The Rich Man
- Guillermi Lamunier - Cat
- Macio - Ezekiel
- Creusa Millet - Priestess of Voodoo
- Peter Nielsen - Lollipop
- Butch Patrick - Legless
- Eliana Pittman - Dalva
- Alejandro Rey - Jose Pedro
- John Rubinstein - Professor
- Marisa Urban - Rich
In the Soviet dubbing role voiced:
- Evgeny Zharikov - Bulit
- Rosa Makagonova - Dora
- Valentin Grachev
- Leo Prygunov
- Gennady Morozov
- Felix Jaworski - Jose Pedro
- Anatoly Golik
Camera crew
- Director - Hall Bartlett
- Producer - Hall Bartlett
- Operator - Ricardo Aronovich / Ricardo Aronovich
- Conductor - Louis Oliveira
Literary source
The film reproduces the main storylines of the novel by George Amadou “ Captains of Sand ” ( 1937 ), while the story of the presence of Dora’s girl in the gang is highlighted.
There are a number of differences between the film adaptation of the novel. So, the main characters in the film are clearly older than literary prototypes - they are not 13-15, but rather 17-19 years old (and the actors who played the roles of Dora and Bulit were 26 and 29 at the time of the film's release). The gang leader Pedro Bullet (in the film - Bulit) in the novel does not kill the leader of the rival gang Ezekiel. The priest Jose Pedro in the film renounces his dignity, while in the final of the book he is given a parish in another city. The final fate of the film does not show the further fate of the main characters.
In general, the ending of the film is more pessimistic: after Dora’s death, leader Pedro Pula organizes a huge demonstration of street children who flock to the governor’s palace with the demand: “Listen to us!” Police aim at street children; the first shot is heard. The finale of the novel is optimistic: Pedro Bullet realizes that his true calling is to fight “for the happiness of the people of the whole world”, and joins the Communist Party .
Influences
In recent years, Fernando Meirellis and Katie Lund 's City of God ( 2002 ), which tells about the confrontation of teenage gangs in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s, has often been compared with the film Generals of Sand Quarries. Mikhail Trofimenkov in Kommersant defined it as “Generals of the sand pits”, revised by Quentin Tarantino [3] .
See also
- Movie soundtrack
- “ Captains of Sand ”, 2011 film
Notes
- ↑ Moscow International Film Festival (1971)
- ↑ Old songs about the main 3 (1997) - GuideOnline unopened (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment August 6, 2016. Archived on August 21, 2016.
- ↑ City of God / (2002) // Arthouse.Ru Archived February 2, 2007 on the Wayback Machine