The First Year [1972]

 3^rd November 1970 was a momentous date as Salvador Allende became the first democratically elected Marxist head of state for Chile and overall Latin America. A then 31-year-old Patricio Guzmán, who’d just completed his diploma in filmmaking from the prestigious Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía in Madrid in 1970, returned to Chile and jumped into his feature-length directorial debut with the bustling enthusiasm and creative energy of a young man witnessing extraordinary social and political transformation unfold in front of his eyes. The First Year recorded the radical and jubilant first year of Allende’s presidency. He interacted with the country’s poor and working-class citizens – miners, farmers, fishermen, factory workers, and indigenous people who’d all been exploited and denied their fundamental and historical rights – and through that recounted the astonishing changes that were underway, from nationalization of resources and industries to land redistribution programmes that started liberating people from the abusive grip of neo-colonialist American corporations, predatory businessmen and entitled landowners. His reportage culminated with Fidel Castro’s visit that drew vast crowds. Alongside these ecstatic developments, he also captured – with sardonic undertones – deliberate reactionary attempts by the wealthy and the bourgeoisie; these foreboding undercurrents take grim and fatalistic meanings with the hindsight of what would transpire for Chileans and Allende two years later. This crackling work, made in grainy B/W and filled with dynamic music, formed a memorable prologue to his titanic The Battle of Chile trilogy that he made next, as well as a fine companion piece to both Salvador Allende and My Imaginary Country. Chris Marker, incidentally, saw an early cut while visiting Chile, became an immediate admirer, added a prologue in French and enabled its distribution in Europe.

Director: Patricio Guzman

Genre: Documentary/Reportage

Language: Spanish

Country: Chile

The Memory of Justice [1976]

 The Memory of Justice, Marcel Ophüls’s 2^nd meditation and inquiry into the Holocaust, following his masterful The Sorrow and the Pity which remains his best-known work, was a monumental work in every respect. At 4 hours and 40 minutes –albeit, consistently immersive through its mammoth runtime, complex layers and disquieting topics –, and containing interviews with around 50 individuals – Germans, Americans, English and French, representing a staggering breath of backgrounds and political views – that were interweaved with archival footage, the film’s sheer formal audacity was clearly discernible. Add to that the massive turmoil that Ophüls had to navigate in order to realize his uncompromising vision, a daring act of heist by two women from the film’s crew to unite him with his original edit, and its lengthy and painstaking restoration after it was lost for many years, and one even has sufficient material for a thrilling behind-the-scenes story. However, what ultimately made it such a powerful and unforgettable exercise lay in the great documentarian’s nuanced, morally courageous, multilayered, sharply intelligent and self-reflexive examination of individual and collective guilt, political memory, nature of justice, and the utmost necessity of universal doctrines for judging crimes against humanity. Ophüls employed a dialectical and digressive approach – at once absorbing and nuanced – while juxtaposing the Nuremberg trials – a momentous event despite some failings – with the “victors” going unpunished for Hiroshima, Dresden and other atrocities during WW2, and Vietnam (particularly My Lai) and Algeria thereafter, and interfaced with war criminals and victims, strident “patriots” and fearless dissenters, nationalists and universalists, statesmen and civilians, old and young, and even his wife, daughter and students, thus folding both historical interpretation and personal expression into this extraordinary document.

Director: Marcel Ophuls

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/War

Language: English/German/French

Country: Germany/UK/US

Juvenile Court [1973]

 Both formally and topically Juvenile Court continued Frederick Wiseman’s exceptional fly-on-the-wall portraits of American institutions that he began 6 years back. His 7^th film, however, marked a pivotal shift, as with this he started transitioning towards more long-form documentaries that he’s most strongly associated with. It also carried a notable personal connect, as he’d graduated in law from Yale and also briefly taught the subject at Boston University before his foray into filmmaking. In this magnificent 2-½-hour work, he brought in his consummate observational, reportage and editorial eyes, and fused deep social empathy for young offenders and victims from working-class and impoverished families with sharp underlying critiques on America’s carceral society, while covering a complex variety of cases that’re brought before the Shelby County’s juvenile court in Memphis, Tennessee. Presided over by the paternalistic Judge Kenneth Turner – a surprisingly even-tempered and ostensibly fair-minded man, who nevertheless lays considerable importance on conventional sociolegal structures, must frequently take prejudicial stances and wields life-changing powers – prosecution and defence lawyers, along with cops and social workers, debate on cases ranging from domestic abuse by parents and guardians to kids running away from foster homes, from accusations of sexual molestation to charges of prostitution, from consumption of drugs to their distribution on the streets, and from petty shoplifting to allegations of being an accomplice in armed burglaries. The piercing, absorbing and richly nuanced film, pieced together from grainy B/W footage shot over 2 months that Wiseman spent at the courtrooms and its adjoining halls, offices and detention centres, breaks your heart with its bleak accounts of broken homes, destroyed lives and how guilt gets assigned (or not) based on casual conversations behind locked chambers.

Director: Frederick Wiseman

Genre: Documentary/Legal Documentary

Language: English

Country: US

General Report on Certain Matters of Interest For a Public Screening [1977]

 Pere Portabella, a giant of Spanish political cinema and documentary filmmaking, fused formal experimentation with dissident activism through his films, and carried his progressive commitments into post-Franco Spain and Catalonia through active political participations and drafting the new Spanish Constitution. His involvements, as Spain begun its complex transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late-1970s, found a rich and sprawling manifestation in this hybrid documentary essay – made following the fascist Generalissimo’s death – that remains a landmark of radical cinema. Clocking at over 2 ½ hours, it began on a moody note as we’re given a sombre tour of the Valley of the Fallen memorial. It switched gears right after, and the next 10-odd minutes contained some of the most thrilling footage of protests by Spain’s antifascist brigade – public demonstrations, furious battles with the cops on the streets, and brutal reprisals – set to a pulsating score. The work, thereafter, drifted into deep political discourses, debates and conversations. While these were primarily between representatives from various left-wing parties – Communists, socialists, trade unionists, social democrats, independent Marxists, reformists, Catalan left intellectuals – Portabella included even a conservative and a monarchist into the mix, as they explored the routes that Spain must pursue as it prepares for democratic elections and electoral coalitions. In a fascinating formal choice, he alternated these pluralist viewpoints, and parallel meditations on the past – through collective memories, narrations and visuals – with performative elements. The latter facet was daringly expressed through a particularly unnerving sequence wherein violent interrogation and torture sequences by Franco’s extrajudicial security apparatus, enacted by actors and carrying the feel of a visceral political thriller, were juxtaposed with articles being read out from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Director: Pere Portabella

Genre: Documentary/Political Documentary/Essay Film/Experimental Film

Language: Spanish/Catalan

Country: Spain

Grands Soirs et Petits Matins [1978]

 May 68 remains a defining political, social and cultural touchstone in France; many French films and books, consequently, have sprung from and meditated upon this epochal moment. However, while they largely did that post facto, William Klein’s absorbing documentary recorded it in the present. He was smoking outside a ciné-club when, upon hearing students asking around if anyone’s interested in making “Cinema Sorbonne”, he jumped right in. As  intellectuals engaged in Marxist and dialectical discourses in the quintessential French spirit of debates, in between demonstration marches and inside the hallowed institution; militants verbally sparred with moderates; blue-collar workers argued with students, Klein’s roving hand-held camera observed the electrifying revolutionary fervour with the curiosity and empathy of a radical participant, and archived them in gorgeous B/W images with the consummate skills of a street photographer. These were often interspersed with protestors collectively singing Internazionale; regularly complemented with flareups, violent unrest and furious street battles with cops; and culminated into a short and energetic climactic montage. Klein assembled his visceral footage – charged with the immediacy of direct cinema and the reflexive qualities of an essay – ten years later, but avoided the ensuing disillusionment from seeping in. In French parlance, as he explained in an interview, a grand soir signifies “revolution” that lights up an evening, while petit matin implies the “hangover” of the following morning, and these complementary aspects suffused haunting undercurrents into this dazzling exercise that Joao Moreira Salles actively referenced in his blazing docu-essay In the Intense Now. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, with his cool charisma and sharp wit, featured prominently, along with blink-and-you-miss glimpses of Resnais, Rivette and Duras, though I was hoping to catch a view of Godard too.

Director: William Klein

Genre: Documentary/Political Reportage

Language: French

Country: France

Harlan County, USA [1976]

 Barbara Kopple’s debut feature Harlan County USA – a stunning potpourri of cinéma vérité, leftwing political advocacy, reportage, and newsreel – remains a cornerstone for protest films and working-class cinema. The cinematic equivalent of the immortal labour anthem “Which Side Are You On?” that was written by Florence Reece and popularized by Pete Seeger – the song served as a recurring motif throughout – Kopple took a steadfastly partisan stance (she was no neutral) while delivering a riveting account of the fierce and defiant 13-month-long strike by the coalminers from the titular Kentucky town, against Duke Powers Company, to secure the right to join organized labour union. When she arrived to document the miners’ struggle and resistance, she was initially viewed with suspicion and scepticism as a hippie New York filmmaker; however, she won their hearts, stayed at their homes, became part of their community, joined them in the charged picket lines, heard their stories of exploitation and suffering, and filmed their dogged fight for survival for over a year. What particularly emerged through her images, with unforgettable impact, was the role played by women – who were fearlessly at the forefront, going heads-on with violent company-paid strike-breakers, thugs and cops – thereby making this a great feminist exercise too. The film’s extraordinary soundtrack comprised of a string of rousing protest songs by bluegrass and folk artists – Reece, Hazel Dickens, Marle Travis, David Morris et al – while the chronicle of the bloody labour battle was interspersed with historical reference points, ugly manoeuverings by those hungry for power and profit, exposé on the abominable working conditions, and a heartbreaking death that finally turned the tide, thus making this a haunting mosaic of moments, actions and voices.

Director: Barbara Kopple

Genre: Documentary/Protest Film/Reportage

Language: English

Country: US

The Conversation [1974]

 Right from its bravura opening sequence – shot in grainy analogue and single-take using a telephoto lens which slowly zooms in from high-up, starting with a crowded scene bursting with activities and ending by focussing on Gene Hackman’s central protagonist – The Conversation announced itself as a thrilling work of its time. Much-sought-after surveillance expert and professional eavesdropper Harry Caul, ironically contrary to his vocation, is fiercely protective of his anonymity and privacy, while his drab and banal existence – he lives alone in a stripped-down apartment, spends his free time playing on the sax to jazz music, and never lets off his emotional guard – sharply contrasted his professional brilliance, adroitness with state-of-the-art technology and bespoke innovations. His latest assignment – employed by the Director of a shady organization and his sinister assistant (Harrison Ford) – involves snooping on a couple, through intricate planning and triangulations, while they amble around San Francisco’s Union Square. While extracting their conversation from the ambient noise, he becomes convinced that their lives are in danger, and his extreme anxieties, catalyzed by his severe guilt from a past job and repressed childhood memories, precipitate his devastating psychological meltdown. Made between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Francis Ford Coppola crafted this riveting, low-key, chilling and magnificent exploration of seething paranoia, personal demons, and moral conflicts – and an exercise in melancholy in a minor key – that remains a high watermark for political conspiracy thrillers. Hackman was electrifying in conveying Harry’s complex contradictions, obsessions and unravelling, while the surveillance trade fair that he attends – followed by vulgar one-upmanship by a jealous professional rival and a rare night of hedonism, intimacy and betrayal – amplified the film’s caustic commentaries and haunting prescience.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review can be found here.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller/Conspiracy Thriller

Language: English

Country: US

I… for Icarus [1979]

 JFK’s assassination has formed a recurring thread within political conspiracy thrillers, while among French left-wing political cinema in particular, films starring Yves Montand represented a sub-genre in itself. Directed by Henri Verneuil, best known internationally for the stylistic crime movie The Sicilian Clan, I… for Icarus ticked both boxes. Beginning with the cheekily framed disclaimer, “this story is entirely true since I’ve imagined it from start to finish”, this captivating, fatalist and irony-laden interpretation of the intrigue behind the American President’s death provided a delectably cynical expression of how, in modern nation-states, “truth” is diffused under convenient falsehoods, and that curiosity can have fatal consequences. Set in an unnamed country, a fearless, non-conformist President keen on challenging the status quo is shot dead, and the commission investigating into it returns with the verdict that it was the act of a lone assassin. Senior prosecutor Henri Volney (Montand), however, dissents the commission’s finding, and as a result is given the responsibility for leading a fresh inquiry. As he starts digging along with his team, he finds a continuously repeating pattern of ignoring, suppressing, bending and tampering with evidences, the disturbing discovery that multiple witnesses have been liquidated, and the growing realization that shadowy forces and senior state operatives are behind the conspiracy. Montand brought in his customary blend of charisma, intelligence and weariness in this film laced with distinctive French sensibilities and accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s riveting, self-reflexively used score. In an unsettling aside, the “Milgram obedience experience” is recreated, underscoring how, as Volney summarizes, “even in a country that’s civilized, democratic and liberal, two-thirds of the population are capable of carrying out any order coming from a higher authority.”

Director: Henri Verneuil

Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller/Conspiracy Thriller

Language: French

Country: France

The Long Farewell [1971]

 Iconoclastic feminist filmmaker Kira Muratova’s second solo directorial endeavour, The Long Farewell, was a daring, dazzling, hypnotic and radically experimental work that was informed as much by the Soviet montage theory of Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov as Godard’s love for playfully shattering the conventional inter-relationships between audio and visual grammars. Thus, while her previous film Brief Encounters – the two often considered as companion pieces – earned the displeasure of the censors, this was treated by them as a downright expression of mutiny; consequently, not only was it shelved and released only with the advent of ‘Perestroika’ in 1987, Muratova’s directorial career too was impacted for years, forcing her to shift from Odessa to Leningrad and work outside the industry until her rehabilitation; the parallels with between her and avant-garde Czech filmmaker Věra Chytilová are unavoidable. Yevgenia (played by renowned theatre actress Zinaida Sharko) is a well-off, vivacious middle-aged woman admired by her colleagues and friends. She’s also a domineering single-mom who dotes on her teenage son Sasha (Oleg Vladimirsky) to the point of extreme emotional dependence and exasperation. Hence, when he decides to move in with his dad in Novosibirsk upon experiencing a growing sense of estrangement with his mother, she begins to unravel. Her discontentment and Sasha’s disconnectedness were portrayed through splendid impressionistic bursts, interspersed with moments of quiet candour, and made particularly haunting by Muratova’s use of off-kilter formal choices – elliptical editing, repetitions, syncopated dialogues – along with stunning camerawork, moody B/W photography and a jangling, brilliant piano-based score. Yevgenia’s escalating inability to communicate with her son, ironically, stood at odds with her vocation as a successful translator, while the film’s freeform style underlined the duo’s unnerving push-pull relationship.

Director: Kira Muratova

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Family Drama

Language: Russian

Country: Ukraine (erstwhile USSR)

The Getaway [1972]

 Sam Peckinpah delivered a gripping genre exercise with The Getaway – arguably the most straight-up actioner in his incendiary career – and an archetypal, albeit lesser-known, early entry in the pantheon of gritty 1970s American crime cinema. It was a substantial hit too, despite stretching mainstream sensibilities with its nihilism, violence and cynical amorality, facing considerable behind-the-scenes turbulence, and receiving negative critical reviews (which has fortunately reversed with time). The credit for its appeal goes as much to Peckinpah’s high-throttle direction and leading man Steve McQueen’s “King of Cool” on-screen persona, as the enormously cinematic source novel by Jim Thompson – with its blend of heist gone awry, sociopathic outlaws, on-the-road thrills and brooding violence – and the crackerjack script by Walter Hill, who rewrote the original adaptation by Thompson, including completely doing away with the novel’s final third and its pungently surreal finale. The film’s rakish stylistic flourishes were evident at the outset during the ingenious opening montage – capturing overlapping moments in times while introducing incarcerated career criminal “Doc” McCoy (McQueen) who’s up for parole – which was accompanied by flamboyant freeze frames and terrific sound design by Quincy Jones. Upon securing his release, he’s arm-twisted into immediately planning a bank robbery, which starts unravelling from the get-go thanks to a sleazy, rotten partner (Al Lettieri) who intends to double cross Doc at the first opportunity, and an alarming escalation in unplanned body counts. He’s consequently forced to go on the lam along with his wife (Ali MacGraw) – who doubles as a driver with fine get-away skills, thereby potentially serving as a prototype for Hill’s protagonist in The Driver – and partake in spectacular shoot-outs that stretch plausibility, while planning an escape to Mexico.

Director: Sam Peckinpah

Genre: Action/Crime Thriller/Road Movie

Language: English

Country: US

World on a Wire [1973]

 Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 2-part 206-minutes-long television miniseries World On A Wire – the German wunderkind’s sole foray into science-fiction, adapted from Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3, and recently restored after years of obscurity – was a gloriously trippy, luscious, paranoid and prescient work where the dystopian future is here and now. Flamboyantly blending the sci-fi genre with noir, melodrama, conspiracy, philosophical meditations, existential anxieties, and distinctive Euro-arthouse sensibilities, and with cold, sleek, metallic and modernist décor complemented with disco-tinged sensuality, it recalled Godard’s magnificent Alphaville in its evocation of one non-compliant individual’s battle against a supra-national techno-totalitarian society, and presaged the Wachowskis’ The Matrix in positing that we might be trapped inside a simulated, hyper-real, virtual reality environment. The film’s protagonist, cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), succeeds as the technical director of a powerful government-corporate mainframe program called Simulacron which has created an artificial world with thousands of “identity units” and has the ability to predict industry trends well into the future, when his boss, Professor Vollmer, dies under mysterious circumstances. He goes on to sense and uncover a massive corporate conspiracy with monomaniac zeal, and before long becomes a hunted fugitive as he gets into loggerheads with the institute’s malicious CEO Siskins (Karl-Heinz Vosgerau). Along the way he gets close to two duplicitous women – Stiller’s personal assistant Gloria (Barbara Valentin) who’s essentially been plugged in to spy on him, and the deceased super-scientist’s sultry daughter Eva (Mascha Rabben) who Stiller becomes enamoured with. Co-written by Fassbinder, this deliciously ominous and tantalizingly foxy film – photographed in lush, grainy 16-mm by Michael Ballhaus, and featuring a rich soundtrack, including Fleetwood Mac’s hypnotic ‘Albatross’ – was populated with RWF’s regular gang of actors.

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller/Mystery/Romance

Language: German

Country: Germany

Aranyer Din Ratri [1970]

 Aranyer Din Ratri marked a pivotal shift for Satyajit Ray. While he’d already made a terrific transition to contemporary Calcutta settings earlier, and had tackled defiant topics already – from religious dogmatism and quackery to tyranny and war hysteria to crumbling feudalism and gender roles – he embarked on a more overtly political cinema with its cutting critiques on class entitlements, fragile masculinity, sexual tensions, exploitative attitudes, urban privileges, and brewing social conflicts. It, consequently, served as a fascinating segue to his radical masterpiece Pratidwandi that he immediately followed this with; both films, incidentally, were adaptations of feral novels by Sunil Ganguly. The tale’s premise – viz. the weekend getaway of four close friends and the women they meet there – was indicative of a light-hearted comedy; however, despite its loose-limbed structure, it was anything but one. The four friends – the haughty, fast-rising corporate executive Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee); erudite, reserved labour welfare officer Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee); brash, petulant cricketer Hari (Samit Bhanja) fresh of a heartbreak; self-effacing, unemployed Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh) who’s the group’s unintentional comedian – find their shallow, self-centred and vulgar self-confidences shattered by the intelligent, self-assured Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) who Sanjoy becomes besotted with, her widowed sister-in-law (Kaberi Bose) who challenges Sanjoy’s “bhadralok” sensibilities, and impoverished Santhal woman Duli (Simi Garewal) who the egotistic Hari seduces leading to a violent comeuppance. Ray underscored the jaunty tone with sharp undercurrents of cynicism and irony, while Soumendu Roy’s terrific B/W cinematography – along with ingenuous inter-cutting that, accompanied with shots of Santhal dance, took the narrative to an edgy crescendo – gave the film a compelling audio-visual language. Ghosh’s turn was arguably the best of the lot in this funny, provocative, tense and cynical work.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Satyajit Ray

Genre: Drama/Road Movie/Buddy Film/Romantic Drama/Ensemble Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Man of Marble [1977]

 Man of Marble – the first chapter in Andrzej Wajda’s electrifying diptych of ‘Solidarity Films’ along with Man of Iron – was a dazzling assemblage of political critique, formal audacity, and deconstructive meta-narration, making it both a vivid historical document and thrilling investigative reportage. Both films recalled Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Francesco Rosi’s Mattei Affair in that they constructed their eponymous individuals’ lives through subjective memories and objective evidences. The individual in question here is Birkut (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), a simple bricklayer who shot to stardom as a Stakhanovite symbol upon accomplishing a superlative feat of labour during the Stalinist era, but over the years fell out of political favour, became a persona non grata, and slipped into obscurity. Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda), a brash young film school student, has defiantly selected this enigmatic man for her graduation project, and goes about making that by interviewing people who knew him in the past – a festival-hopping director who’d once made state propaganda films on Birkut; a former state security agent who tailed Birkut when he became increasingly outspoken and disillusioned; his oldest comrade (Michał Tarkowski) who was arrested during the purges and has become a dodgy bureaucrat post his rehabilitation; and Birkut’s estranged, self-hating wife – as well as archival news and film footage to piece together the jigsaw puzzle about this now forgotten socialist hero of unknown whereabouts. Flamboyantly shot through a mix of wide-angles, low-angles, close-ups, dynamic hand-held cameras and vivid colours, which complemented the wan backdrops and flat B/W reels, and accompanied by a pulsating, idiosyncratic score interspersed with old socialist songs, the film – aside from its stylistic bravura and edgy political commentaries – remains a fascinating depiction of subversive, guerilla filmmaking.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Film a Clef

Language: Polish

Country: Poland

Ludwig [1973]

 Luchino Visconti’s ambitious opus Ludwig – butchered by distributers during its release and restored to its mammoth original runtime of 4 hours four years after the director’s demise – was a sprawling and operatic study on doomed idealism, extravagant folly, and obsessions bordering on madness. The final chapter in the Italian maestro’s formally dazzling and thematically complex ‘German Trilogy’ – following the unhinged brilliance of The Damned and the smouldering melancholy of Death in Venice, with all three ending with images of death – reminds one of his towering masterpiece The Leopard for its elegy to lavish opulence and Senso for its paean to self-destructive passions. Ludwig II, the “Mad King” of Bavaria, was an inveterate romantic, aesthete and nonconformist who was besotted with Richard Wagner (Trevor Howard), splurged extravagantly to appease the temperamental and opportunistic composer’s egotistic whims, hosted ostentatious operas, and constructed spectacular castles and palaces; he was heartbroken by his unrequited love for his vivacious older cousin sister Elisabeth (whose enigmatic beauty was gloriously evoked by Romy Schneider, having portrayed “Sissi” thrice in the past), pursued his repressed homosexuality as he grew older, and refused to either marry or partake in politics or fight wars. Covering his tormented life from his coronation in 1864 until his mysterious death shortly after his deposition in 1886, the film – in a fascinating narrative choice – was set mostly indoors, largely avoiding any explicit historical depictions and resorting to verbal citations instead, and the proceedings were interspersed with sombre talking-head witnesses by his ministers and inner coterie at a tribunal to judge his mental fitness. Ludwig’s androgynous grace, tormented loneliness, conflicted sexuality, and descent into lunacy was magnetically portrayed by Visconti’s then lover Helmut Berger.

Director: Luchino Visconti

Genre: Drama/Biopic/Historical Biopic

Language: German/Italian

Country: Italy

Death in Venice [1971]

 Luchino Visconti adapted Death in Venice from Thomas Mann’s novella – the vaunted central chapter in his ‘German Trilogy’, sandwiched between The Damned’s pungent provocations and Ludwig’s sprawling ambitions – with meticulous rigour and controlled audacity. He both accentuated the book’s sensual and disconcerting queer undercurrents borne out of a middle-aged man’s forbidden infatuation with a teenage boy, and tampered that with solemnity of tone, a pervading air of melancholy, the anxiety of a choleric outbreak, and Venice’s decaying grandeur gorgeously photographed by Pasqualino De Santis, for a bristling meditation on art, beauty, self-destructive longings and mortality. Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde), an allusion to Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, has come over to Venice for rest and self-exile in order to recover from debilitating health concerns and a dreadful concert. While staying in the luxurious Grand Hotel des Bains in Venice Lido, he notices the pubescent Polish boy Tadzio (Björn Andrésen), who comes to embody for him the epitome of physical beauty, and becomes obsessed with him to the detriment of his own wellbeing. The fastidious composer, ironically, had earlier preferred form over aesthetics, as indicated through the flashbacks, which were a tad jarring vis-à-vis the “present” captured through limpid, deliberately-paced and exceptionally composed mise-en-scène. He silently follows Tadzio, as if hypnotized, in the hotel’s dining room, at the adjacent beach, and through the city’s winding alleys, who in turn starts subtly responding to the attention. Accompanied by Mahler’s music, this film was led by Bograde’s magnificent turn – the muted passions and tragic vulnerability that he brought in reminded me heavily of Gian Maria Volonté in Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli – and closed with one of cinema’s bleakest on-screen deaths.

Director: Luchino Visconti

Genre: Drama/Historical Drama/Romantic Drama

Language: English

Country: Italy

The Spirit of the Beehive [1973]

 Victor Erice’s celebrated debut feature The Spirit of the Beehive remains both a seminal Spanish film and an exceptional chronicling from a child’s POV. Made during Franco’s fascist regime – which was notorious for suppressing “non-compliant” works of art – Erice was compelled to express his critiques and disillusionment through elliptical, allegorical and allusive means; one therefore must engage in critical readings of the film to interpret its brooding political undertones. What remains unambiguous, however, is that this was a haunting and ethereal masterpiece, and a sublime text on how cinema can be a distillation of magic, poetry, memory, politics and defiance rolled into one. Set in a rundown village in 1940 – with the devastating Civil War having just ended with the Republicans’ defeat – the moody, minimalist and delicately weaved narrative is centred around wide-eyed six-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent). Her ageing father (Fernando Fernán Gómez) remains absorbed in beehives, while her mother is lost reminiscing about someone she’s lost in the war. Her closest friend is her sister Isabel (Isabel Tellería), who loves playing little pranks on her naïveté. When James Whales’ Frankenstein is screened at a rundown theatre which the sisters watch in awe, Ana becomes fixated by the misunderstood monster – more so, when Isabel teasingly convinces her that he exists as a disembodied ghost at an isolated cabin nearby. Consequently, upon encountering a wounded Republican soldier who’s taken refuge there, she helps him assuming he’s the spirit’s manifestation, and is deeply scarred when he’s killed. Torrent, who’d star in Saura’s equally haunting masterpiece Cria Cuervos 3 years later, and Tellería were unforgettable, as was the magnificent, washed-out cinematography by Luis Cuadrado who started losing his eyesight during the filming.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

p.p.s. This also happens to be my 2000th film review at Cinemascope.

Director: Victor Erice

Genre: Drama/Coming-of-Age/Fantasy

Language: Spanish

Country: Spain

The Report [1977]

 The Report may well be the frostiest and harshest work of Abbas Kiarostami’s oeuvre, devoid of either the infectious playfulness or philosophic inquiries or wry ironies that one associates with his films. Made during the final days of Iran’s corrupt and hated imperial regime, which was soon to be upended by an oppressive theocratic state, most of its copies were destroyed during the Iranian Revolution and was banned thereafter; this was also a rare foray for him outside “Kanoon”, which he returned to with his fascinating and experimental next film First Case, Second Case. Influenced by his own marital troubles which eventually led to divorce – making it a rather caustic self-portrait – this was an unsentimental and downbeat examination of a miserable middle-class couple stuck in toxic matrimony. The husband, Mahmad (Kurosh Afsharpanah), is an unlikeable civil servant who’s accused of taking bribes, and loves spending his time outside work drinking, gambling and even engaging with prostitutes in company of his two buddies; the wife, Azam (Shohreh Aghdashloo), has come to disdain everything about him – his emotional apathy, avoidance of familial responsibilities, denial, and spending hours away from home – and vacillates between anger and irritation bordering on hysteria, intent of leaving, and suicidal tendencies. The film’s depiction of a fractured marriage, consequently, had a dystopian quality about it, informed as much by Kiarostami’s own personal woes as by the political turmoil brewing outside the frames. He would direct another film centred on marriage 33 years later – viz. the fabulous and beguiling masterpiece Certified Copy – but the two couldn’t be further apart in their tones, forms and structures; this was, instead, a closer precursor to Asghar Farhadi’s compelling film A Separation.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Genre: Drama/Marital Drama/Social Drama

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

The Traveller [1974]

 The Traveller, Abbas Kiarostami’s second full-length feature – or first, depending on whether you consider his evocative and poetic preceding work The Experience as one – was an absorbing, madcap and quixotic paean to childhood and adolescence. It was, in turn, the Iranian master’s love letter to a kid’s impudence, exuberance and non-conformism, which’re invariably bound to be heavily frowned upon by adults and viewed as reckless folly and insubordination. What the movies represented for Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s unforgettable The 400 Blows – as much a brewing passion and a beautiful dream as a means for adventure and escape from the dreariness of existence – football played that role for this film’s impish, 12-year-old pint-sized dynamite Qassem (Hassan Darabi). Obsessed with the game, he freely disobeys his desperate parents and dogmatic teachers to play football in the alleys with his buddies. His obsession reaches a state of monomania upon deciding to embark on the seemingly crazy quest to collect enough money to sponsor a trip to Tehran and catch a game of his favourite team at Azadi Stadium. He demonstrates exceptional doggedness, ingenuity and resourcefulness, and freely crosses ethical quandaries to fund his odyssey – including, in arguably the film’s most memorable segment, taking money from kids and their parents by staging a fake photoshoot using a broken camera – with the help of his loyal friend Akbar who truly wants Qassem to succeed. Shot in grainy B/W with a blend of frenetic energy, playful irony and empathy, and with storytelling flair vividly complemented by documentary realism, this was a joyous act of solidarity against stifling impositions and restrictions, while the insouciant, irrepressible and rebellious kid remains an indelible creation in Kiarostami’s oeuvre.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Genre: Comedy/Slice-of-Life

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

The Experience [1973]

 Abbas Kiarostami’s gently observational feature-length debut The Experience – produced by the filmmaking department of ‘Centre for the Intellectual Development of Child and Adolescent’ (“Kanoon”) that he’d helped found – was informed by the neorealist form, Iran’s social realist milieu, and Kiarostami’s deep empathy for nonconformist kids and adolescents living in the margins, for a tender, impish and poetic subversion of the ‘poor boy falls for rich girl’ trope. Gorgeously photographed in richly composed B/W frames, with images often shot through glass panes which gave them a subtly voyeuristic quality, we follow a day and a half in the life of an impoverished teenager whose dreams add a sliver of hope and escapist joys into his tough Dickensian existence. The orphaned Mamad works as a lowly factotum in a photography studio – serving tea, brooming the floors, assisting with developing the negatives – where he also sleeps at night. Though constantly scolded by his middle-aged employer, more so when he indulges in acts of pubescent naughtiness by creating a cut-out from a signboard featuring an attractive model, he keeps getting drawn towards small acts of playfulness and rebellion. He’s also, in the meantime, become enamoured with a lovely girl slightly older to him; she’s far beyond his social station, but that doesn’t stop him from blushing at her sight, or day-dreaming about her, or crafting a little plan to get closer to her. He's therefore the quintessential Kiarostami kid who’ll indulge in bolder and more reckless displays of mischief and disobedience in the magnificent run of films that he’d make featuring young actors. This delicately-strung work, incidentally, was nearly devoid of any dialogues, which made it all the more affecting, meditative and impressionistic.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Genre: Drama/Social Drama

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

The Godfather Part II [1974]

 The Godfather wasn’t just scintillating cinema, it was a smash hit too. Francis Ford Coppola, consequently, got a free-hand for the follow-up, and he expanded the tapestry into a breathtaking saga which was broader and richer, as well as darker and edgier. He leveraged unutilized sections from Mario Puzo’s titular novel covering the past – beginnings and rise of a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) – while simultaneously taking the principal narrative centred around Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) forward as he accelerates his chilling spiral – driven by the Machiavellian quad of power, capital, corruption and violence – which he’d embraced in the previous film. The second part, therefore, was both an adapted prequel and an original sequel backed by a sprawling script. While Vito’s journey was laced with warmth and was driven by memories of Sicily, familial loyalty, bonds he forged with fellow Italian-Americans, and street-smarts, making the flashback sections an elegiac immigration story, Micheal’s was colder and harsher as he displays a terrifying ability to outsmart his rivals and terminate anyone who offends him, propelled by his ruthless cunning and an absolute inability to forgive. Thus, as he battles the duplicitous Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) and antagonistic politicians, he also gets into shattering conflicts with his simple-minded elder brother Fredo (John Cazale), his profoundly disenchanted wife Kay (Diane Keaton), and hot-headed old-timer Frank (Michael V. Gazzo). While the film – aided by Nino Rota’s haunting score – abounded with stunning performances, Pacino’s stood out as one of devastating ferocity which made Michael’s character simultaneously arresting, volatile and diabolical; his interactions with Fredo were particularly unforgettable. The film, incidentally, also painted a captivating time-capsule of Cuba as it transitioned from Batista to Castro.

p.s. This is my latest revisit of this film. My earlier review can be found here.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Genre: Crime Drama/Gangster/Family Drama/Epic

Language: English/Sicilian

Country: US