Hands over the City [1963]

 Hands over the City, Rosi’s electrifying follow-up to his dazzling Salvatore Guiliano, firmly established him as one of the greatest practitioners of political cinema, whose left-wing defiance for unearthing murky governmental collusions, corruptions, criminality and cover-ups through investigative filmmaking made him a powerful comrade to Costa-Gavras. While Sicilian polity served as the canvas for his landmark previous feature, he trained his lens here on Naples. Through an arresting blend of social realism and baroque stylizations – thus both leveraging his apprenticeship in neorealism while also transcending it – Rosi delivered a blistering exposé on how real-estate speculations and constructions were making a mockery of due processes, and in turn violating the city’s architectural character and the interests of its working-class population, through rotten hand-in-glove complicity with the political establishment. His use of architecture as political and existential inquiries, therefore, drew interesting parallels to Antonioni’s Red Desert, Godard’s Alphaville, Tati’s Playtime, etc., despite their formal disparity. When an old residential building collapses with tragic consequences, the city council is eager to bury the incident – not least because Nottola (played with imposing heft by Rod Steiger), a wealthy real estate shark who’s part of the right-wing party that’s in power and with which he has a quid pro quo relationship, is potentially to blame for it. Communist party member De Vita (passionately enacted by real-life council member Carlo Fermariello) is the only person who raises his voice and even propels a futile departmental enquiry. Shot in stunning B/W and punctuated by a pulsating brassy score, it was filled with fury, ferocity, urgency, and bleak irony, as sealed by the riveting sequence where the politicians operatically call out in unison, “our hands are clean!”

Director: Francesco Rosi

Genre: Drama/Political Drama

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Salvatore Giuliano [1962]

 In the annals of landmark political filmmaking, Salvatore Guiliano – the scintillating film that established Marxist and post-neorealist filmmaker Francesco Rosi as one of the most electrifying voices of post-War Italian cinema – remains a work of piercing analytic brilliance, formal bravura and blazing ferocity. Having earlier assisted Visconti on La Terra Trema and Senso, he combined visceral realism, remarkably dialectical approach, and uncompromising diagnosis of historical artefacts into a thrilling piece of investigative journalism that provided a scalding examination of the rotten state of affairs perpetuated by the government, army, police, Mafiosi, feudal class and law – foregrounded in Sicily’s gritty sociopolitical landscape – that first led to the titular outlaw’s phenomenal rise in power and popularity, and thereafter the massive manhunts that eventually led to his death and posthumous trial. Instead of a classical approach, Rosi adopted a dazzling multi-perspective form – reminiscent of Citizen Kane, Rashomon and Peruvian writer Llosa’s magnificent novel The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta – for a powerful inquiry into corruption, complicity and expediency, and in turn deconstruction of the Sicilian bandit’s life, death and myth. Rosi crafted this complex, clinical and non-linear mosaic, and forensic diagnosis, with a mostly non-professional cast – as desperado, partisan, hired-hand, fugitive – and filmed in the same locations where Guiliano’s meteoric persona unfolded, through magnetic B/W palettes that evoked a striking sense of here-and-now. In a fascinating artistic choice, we hardly ever see Giuliano; yet, the enigmatic desperado’s shadowy presence pervaded every episode, including his enlisting for Sicily’s secessionist ambitions, his repute among the poor for his antagonistic persona vis-à-vis the oppressive carabiniere, his noxious participation in the massacre of Sicilian communists, and the power structure’s turbid, tangled and malleable links to him.

Director: Francesco Rosi

Genre: Drama/Historical Drama/Biopic/Docudrama

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Out 1: Noli Me Tangere [1971]

 Jacques Rivette eschewed time and narrative, and deconstructed the experience of making and watching movies, in Out 1, his grandest and boldest experiment. Often considered one of the "holy grails for cinephiles", it remains an audacious, enigmatic and baffling work, what with its staggering 13-hours’ length, wildly freewheeling structure, extraordinary exercises in improvisation, and unavailability for many years. It began with exacting and bemusing dives into the immersive workshops of two avant-garde theatre collectives rehearsing Aeschylus’ plays – a rigorously analytic troupe led by the avuncular Thomas (Michael Lonsdale) and an idiosyncratic one led by the spirited Lili (Michèle Moretti) – whose outré drills and heavy improvs metatextually mirrored the film itself. Two neurotic outsiders, meanwhile, provoke a parallel thread – one of paranoia, subterfuge and conspiracy reminiscent of Paris Belongs to Us – presented as a cackling anti-thriller. On one hand there’s Colin (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a shapeshifting, harmonica-playing drifter who becomes drawn into a quixotic investigation to uncover a sinister secret society linked to Balzac and Lewis Carroll; on the other there’s Frédérique (Juliet Berto), an alluring hustler and vagabond who too loiters into an analogous quest. Packed with extraordinary long takes – including a bravura one following an increasingly manic Léaud through the Parisian streets – the film also had Françoise Fabian as a crafty lawyer, Bulle Ogier as the proprietor of a shady joint, and the great Éric Rohmer as a deadpan Balzac scholar. Claustrophobic interiors were juxtaposed with radiant exteriors in this wry, dazzling and monumental opus often interpreted as an expression of post-May’68 disillusionment and malaise. Rivette, interestingly, cut a four-hour version which he called Spectre – or “ghost” – as opposed to this longer version’s subtitle which ironically means “touch me not”.

Director: Jacques Rivette

Genre: Avant-Garde/Experimental/Social Satire/Black Comedy/Mystery/Mini-Series

Language: French

Country: France

Four Days in July [1984]

 Mike Leigh’s final television film and the middle chapter in his terrific trilogy on Thatcher’s harsh regime – sandwiched on either side by Meantime and High Hopes – Four Days in July remains a remarkable, albeit criminally underrated, work in his canon. Like the two other films, it too was a defiantly political film, filled with rousing left-wing solidarity and radical compassion. Its tone, however, wasn’t one of anger or disillusionment; rather, it was enveloped in understated warmth, fragility and melancholy, which made it even more touching and eloquent. Set in Belfast at the peak of “The Troubles”, the turbulent Northern Ireland conflict provided a politically-charged backdrop, informing the characters and their personal stories, but rarely overshadowing the intimate tale of two couples – at opposite ends of political and religious divides – expecting their first children during the 12^th July “Orange Marches”. The gregarious, warm-hearted Collette (Brid Brennan), and the withdrawn, soft-spoken Eugene (Des McAleer), who’s been crippled by bullets and shrapnel, are Catholics and republicans quietly hoping for a free Ireland. Leigh’s kinship, unsurprisingly, was steadfastly with this unassuming couple that was magnificently brought to life by the two actors. Their gentle banters with similarly humble and memorably portrayed neighbours – deadpan window-washer (Stephan Rea) and modest plumber (Shane Connaughton) – added nuanced undertones to their milieu. The other side of the spectrum was represented by the brash army officer Billy (Charles Lawson) and his unsettled wife Lorraine (Paula Hamilton), who’re Protestants and unionists. Two exceptionally stitched sequences especially stood out – Collette pensively singing the haunting IRA ballad “The Patriot Game”; and the two new mothers, in adjacent hospital beds, realizing their divides by the fundamentally contrasting names they’ve chosen for their babies.

Director: Mike Leigh

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Marriage Drama

Language: English

Country: UK

High Hopes [1988]

 The title of Leigh’s High Hopes – the third film in his so-called “Anti-Thatcher Trilogy”, which was preceded by Meantime and Four Days in July – wasn’t just ironic and sardonic, but quietly mournful too, and with a tinge of bitterness. It pointed to the vacuous, self-centred “high hopes” that the nouveau riche associates their class mobility and entitlements with. Conversely, it also underscored the despair and disenchantment that come for a progressive and conscientious person for harbouring high ideals, or “high hopes”, and the futility thereof. Made with a cheeky mix of parody, humour, pathos and anger, this seriocomic film had at its core one of the most delectably whimsical, lovable and infectious married couples in cinema – Cyril (Phil Davis), a Marxist working-class man who’s become profoundly disillusioned with Thatcher’s England and the glib upper-class around him who he observes with scorn and befuddlement, and Shirley (Ruth Sheen), an affable woman who shares her husband’s left-wing beliefs, bohemian outlook, love for the pot and disdain for the then British Prime Minister, while still retaining a streak of optimism – who live an unassuming life in their little flat in King’s Cross, North London. The philosophy with which they live their lives, unsurprisingly, is at complete odds with that of Cyril’s shallow, neurotic sister (Heather Tobias), who’s unhappily married to a wealthy, philandering clown. Meanwhile, Cyril’s taciturn widowed mother (Edna Doré), suffering from dementia, lives a distanced existence at one of the last council houses in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood, as sharply accentuated by her smug, upper class next-door neighbour (Lesley Manville). If some of Leigh’s caricatures were broad, that’s how he probably intended, in order to demonstrate which side he’s on.

Director: Mike Leigh

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Political Satire

Language: English

Country: UK

Meantime [1983]

 Often considered the pinnacle of Mike Leigh’s acclaimed work in television, and the first chapter in his searing trilogy foregrounded on Thatcher’s Britain – it was followed by Four Days in July and High Hopes – Meantime presented a blistering portrayal of the economic degradation and existential disillusionment of the working-class during her cruel premiership. Crafted using a combustible mix of anger, despair, irony and cutting humour, the filmmaker’s profound empathy for the disenfranchised and the marginalized shone through above all. An impoverished and dysfunctional blue-collar family of four – middle-aged couple Frank (Jeffrey Robert) and Mavis (Pam Frier), and their two adult sons Mark (Phil Daniels) and Colin (Tim Roth) – who’re living a grubby existence in a shabby, cramped flat in London’s working-class East End, has been hit hard, like numerous others, by recession and widespread unemployment. Consequently, all three men in the family are unemployed, and therefore compelled to depend on the meagre dole distributed by the council office and Mavis’ menial job in order to meet ends. The film’s primary focus was on the two diametrically opposite brothers having a complex love-hate relationship – Mark is cynical, bitter and alienated, while Colin is naïve, gauche and vulnerable – which made it an interesting precursor to Life Is Sweet, which too had featured a similarly complicated relationship between two contrasting sisters. Leigh loved dealing in pointed class juxtapositions, and that manifested through Mavis’s sister Barbara (Marion Bailey) who’s unhappily married to a well-off man (Alfred Molina) and lives in suburban comfort. The marvellously enacted film, which also featured a bare-knuckled turn by Gary Oldman as an unstable skinhead, was filled with gritty locales that brilliantly counterpointed its bleak mood and sardonic tone.

Director: Mike Leigh

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Social Drama/Black Comedy/Social Satire

Language: English

Country: UK

Teorema [1968]

 Teorema – a work of stunning bravado, intellect and force – remains amongst the most politically and formally radical films in Pasolini’s oeuvre. It posited, with smouldering fury and elliptic allegory, such an inflammable discourse on the existential barrenness of the bourgeoisie – a class for which he had profound disdain – that it evoked a sharp furore upon its release. While its cutting Marxist dialectics troubled conservative audience, its subversive religious subtexts enraged the Vatican to no end. And, in what can only be called unintentionally ironic, advertisements in the American market exploited its unsettling minimalism by promoting it as having only “923 spoken words.” The eerily magnetic parable was hinged around a strikingly enigmatic “visitor” (Terence Stamp) – a god or a devil or a mix of both – who comes to stay for a few days with a Milanese bourgeois family, in their decadent mansion, comprising of wealthy industrialist and paterfamilias (Massimo Girotti), his wife (Silvana Mangano), their daughter (Anne Wiazemsky, who was nudged by her then boyfriend Godard to work with Pasolini), son, and middle-aged maid (Laura Betti). All five get seduced by him – which he gladly partakes in – before departing as mysteriously as he’d arrived. Their sexual union with him take their lives towards breathtaking repercussions. While the impact is positive for the maid as she gets bestowed with miraculous abilities, it's one of devastating desolation for the family – the son becomes a manic artist (presaging, interestingly, Warhol’s “piss art” by a decade), the daughter becomes catatonic, the mother starts picking up younger men, and the father abandons literally everything. The film’s desaturated visuals and idiosyncratic soundtrack – which segued from Morricone to Mozart – complemented its feral tone and modernist palette.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Mystery

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

The Gospel According to St. Matthew [1964]

 The Gospel According to St. Matthew was a great conundrum as much for the inherently contradictory context surrounding it, as it was for the fierce work that it was. The towering Italian poet, filmmaker and intellectual Pasolini was an avowed Marxist and steadfast atheist; he’d received a suspended prison sentence for his short La Ricotta from the previous year – part of the omnibus Ro.Go.Pa.G. – as it was deemed “blasphemous”; and, one would be hard placed to find something more outrageously ribald, sacrilegious and subversive than his extraordinary Trilogy of Life. It’s therefore astonishing that he made such a faithful, and almost reverential, adaptation of a religious text and unironic inquiry into Jesus’ life and myth. Furthermore, the film’s unflinching neorealism, visceral force, bleak austerity and spare minimalism – and the political readings into Jesus’ radical humanism – placed it at singular odds to the bombastic genuflection in conventional cinematic representations of the Bible, thus drawing parallels to Caravaggio’s blazing, unsettling and violent Biblical paintings. Heading its non-professional cast was Enrique Irazoqui – 19-year-old Economics student and Communist activist from Spain who’d go on to become a computer chess expert – whose searingly intense enactment of Jesus reminds one of El Greco’s paintings, while such intellectuals like Natalia Ginzburg, Enzo Siciliano, Alfonso Gatto, etc. played various supporting roles. Made with the rigorous touch of cinéma verité, shot in grainy and unsparing monochromes, filmed in gritty Southern Italian towns to mimic Palestine and Galilee, comprising of an incredibly eclectic soundtrack that ranged from Western Classical to African-American gospel blues and Congolese hymns, and evoking Renaissance-era paintings, it covered the preacher’s life – right from his birth, through meteoric rise, till death – with cutting and desolate ferocity.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Drama/Religious Drama/Historical Epic

Language: Italian

Country: Italy