Der Seewolf

The Sea-Wolf is a novel written in 1904 by American author Jack London. An immediate bestseller, the first printing of forty thousand copies was sold out before publication. Of it, Ambrose Bierce wrote "The great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen... the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime." The Sea Wolf tells the story of a soft, domesticated protagonist, in this novel's case an intellectual man named Humphrey van Weyden, forced to become tough and self-reliant by exposure to cruelty and brutality. The story starts with him onboard a San Francisco ferry, called Martinez, which collides with another ship in the fog and sinks. He is set adrift in the sea, eventually being picked up ("rescued" is not the right word) by Wolf Larsen. Larsen is the captain of the seal-hunting schooner Ghost. Brutal and cynical, yet also highly intelligent and intellectual (though highly biased in his opinions as he was self-taught), he rules over his ship and terrorizes the crew with the aid of his exceptionally great physical strength. Van Weyden adequately describes him as an individualist, a hedonist, and a materialist. As Larsen does not believe in the immortality of the soul, he finds no meaning in his life save survival and pleasure and has come to despise all human life and deny its value. Being interested in someone capable of intellectual disputes, he somewhat takes care of "Hump" while forcing him to become a cabin boy, do menial work, and learn to fight to protect himself from a brutal crew.

Thomas Kretschmann gave one of his best performances of his career. Love it!!!!

After viewing this, two things immediately came to my mind. Firstly, that this is by no means as good as the original ZDF four-parter and secondly, that it is far from the mess that the Pro 7 Treasure Island remake was.

The positive that can be said so far (after watching the first part) is that it did not try to be something else than Jack London's story (They completely crippled last year's Treasure island). It is even closer to the novel than the ZDF production, since they (back in 1971) mixed up different Jack London stories and themes. But somehow it worked back then.

What did not work in this production and in my opinion the weak point is the acting. You can say what you want about Raimunf Harmsdorf as an actor, but he absolutely nailed the part of Wolf Larson in the original. Thomas Kretschmann certainly looks the part, face-wise. He is not as muscular and bulked up as Harmsdorf was. He may be a good actor as well, but the lines he is given are absolutely bad. The whole script is bad and the direction as well. Krtschmann might come out of this alive, but all the other actors were absolutely not able to compensate the writing with their acting skills, especially Florian Setter (Weyden) and Alexander Hörbe (the sea-cook.

The others, for example the actors of Leach and Johnson were agreeable. The high points of this was the production design and the music.

I don't know where Pro 7 finds those actors, writers and directors.

The only silverlining is the up-coming ZDF production of the Sea Wolf starring Sebastian Koch in the title role. He is one of my favorite actors and if he is not able to pull it off, I do not know who can.