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John Cranko

After his homosexuality became known, John Cranko was literally chased off the stage. Now the choreographer is meant to revive an opera house in Stuttgart in the early 1960s.

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The name alone sounds cumbersome. Cranko, it scratches the throat. But he is even more uncomfortable, the star choreographer warns the general director Walter Erich Schäfer, who has just appointed him director of the Stuttgart Ballet. John Cranko can’t believe his luck. After his homosexuality became known, he was literally chased off the stage in London. Now he is meant to revive the opera house in the capital of Baden-Württemberg in the early 1960s. Him, of all people, the broken genius, with the deep sadness in his blood.

After his Goebbels film FÜHRER UND VERFÜHRER, Joachim A. Lang made a ballet film. No biopic, the director emphasizes, instead, CRANKO is about “art and reality.“ Such big words requires a fitting amount of pathos, ambition, and elegance. Lang finds all of that in Sam Riley, who seems to have internalized the highs and lows in Cranko’s life up to his surprising death in June 1973 as well as his boundary-breaking choreography. His ballet master is a visionary, a diva, a child. Behind the chain smoking eccentric lies a driven man, filterless and free, who cannot find peace as long as he is lonely and is never enough for himself.

Unlike Cranko’s nuanced, dramatic movements on stage, the story in the film is rather linear and predictable. The trained dancer, born in South Africa in 1927, faces every personal setback in his work with even more attitude and innovative ideas. The radicalness and beauty of his modern stagings bring him and his Stuttgart company to the top. A triumphant season at the Metropolitan Opera in 1969 was followed by tours all over the world, including to Israel, Paris and the Soviet Union.

But what counts is that Lang touches on a sore spot in the film: “many people can do steps, but only a few can dance,” says Cranko at the beginning to his new ensemble. And in his flowing production, the director repeatedly succeeds in creating brief moments that give you goosebumps, in which the air seems charged with the universal emotional power that lies behind the precise movements.

Pamela Jahn (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy

Credits

Original title: John Cranko
Deutschland 2024, 133 min
Genre: Biography
Director: Joachim A. Lang
Author: Joachim A. Lang
DOP: Philipp Sichler
Montage: Jan Pusch
Music: Walter Mair
Distributor: Port-Au-Prince Pictures
Cast: Sam Riley, Lucas Gregorowicz, Hanns Zischler, Friedemann Vogel, Elisa Badenes
Release: 03.10.2024

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Screenings

  • OV Original version
  • OmU Original with German subtitles
  • OmeU Original with English subtitles
English/with English subtitles
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  • OV Original version
  • OmU Original with German subtitles
  • OmeU Original with English subtitles
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Cranko

(John Cranko) | Deutschland 2024 | Biography | R: Joachim A. Lang

After his homosexuality became known, John Cranko was literally chased off the stage. Now the choreographer is meant to revive an opera house in Stuttgart in the early 1960s.

Screenings

Kreuzberg

Sputnik Kino am Südstern

Wednesday 13.11.

TicketsBuy Tickets OmeU17:00

Mitte

Central Hackescher Markt

TODAY

OmeU17:15

Tuesday 12.11.

TicketsReservation: https://www.kino-central.de/ OmeU17:15

Wednesday 13.11.

TicketsReservation: https://www.kino-central.de/ OmeU17:15

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