Frank Sinatra was offered the role of the protagonist in Don Siegel’s seminal cop thriller Dirty Harry, as were John Wayne, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. It was eventually bequeathed to Clint Eastwood, and the rest, as they say, is history, as this turned out as, alongside ‘Man with No Name’ in Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollar Trilogy’, the most iconic role of his career. ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan is a laconic, loner and no-nonsense police officer who deplores criminals from the bottom of his gut, and is game for disobeying his superiors, breaking a law or two, and taking extreme measures to stop them. Thus, with his 44 Magnum, which he proudly refers to as “the most powerful handgun in the world”, as his trusted sidekick, he goes about bringing down a psychopathic maniac who is extorting the city of San Francisco for big money in return for stopping his murderous rampage. The film can be construed as a direct assault against the punk and hippie culture that had left many conservatives shaken during the Vietnam-era (interestingly, Harry’s favourite line, after catching criminals, is, “You've got to ask yourself a question, “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”) – some had even found the film “fascist”. Nevertheless, it became a roaring popular success for its anti-establishmentarian spirit and its spectacular depiction of vigilante justice – interestingly, two more films with similar themes also became huge hits the same year, viz. The French Connection and Get Carter. This visceral, violent and edgy movie, which was brilliantly paced and edited, and was aided by a thumping score, spawned a number of sequels as expected.
Director: Don Siegel
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Action/Police Film
Language: English
Country: US
Notorious Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski, who had made only shorts until then, made his feature length debut with the acclaimed psychological thriller Knife in the Water. Photographed in stark black-and-whites, and shot nearly completely on water, the film had as its focus a power play between two men belonging to disparate social backdrops – consequently it was as much a portrayal of the battle of wits between them, as it quite smartly explored class struggle for one-upmanship. Coldly distant uber-wealthy couple, the cocksure and arrogant Andrej (Leon Niemczyk) and his coy but sultry wife Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka), is on their way to their sailing tryst on their personal yacht when they end up giving a ride to a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) who accepts the husband’s invitation to join them on their boat. Andrej’s contempt towards the young man is obvious from the beginning as he goes about, initially subtly and eventually overtly, humiliating him by displaying his prowess as a sailor as well as his physical strength. However, what started as seemingly playful tussle for superiority turns into simmering hostility, with the film reaching its crescendo when the titular ‘knife’ gets thrown into the water – followed by a sly but expected plot unfolding concerning the hitherto silent wife. This startling debut feature for Polanski managed to be an arresting character study, aided by a sparsely used snazzy jazz-based score, excellent photographic angles, gradually peaking sexual tension, and terrific narrative and character buildups, leading to a memorably ambiguous climax, with the acerbic social commentary and dark nihilism kept just beneath the surface.
Director: Roman Polanski
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Social Satire
Language: Polish
Country: Poland
Bhuter Bhabishyat, the debut feature of Anik Dutta, has turned out to be the surprise hit of the season. A whimsical storyline, a motley of idiosyncratic characters, script filled with hilarious one-liners and witticisms, beautifully guised social satire, great storytelling, impeccable production designs, great screen chemistry between the various actors, a number of fine performances by the ensemble case, and terrific photography – loads of things worked for this refreshingly humorous movie, thus helping it appeal so strongly to viewers, and having recommendations about it spread largely through positive word of mouth. The movie is about a young ad filmmaker (Parambrata Chatterjee), who, while contemplating the plot for his first feature film while waiting in an old and dilapidated palatial mansion, gets acquainted with a quintessential Bengali bhadralok with Leftist leanings (Sabyasachi Chakraborty) who offers to tell him a story about the plight of ghosts in contemporary Calcutta that might just make for the perfect movie. To say any more would be to reveal key spoilers. The ensemble cast includes turns by Swastika Mukherjee, Saswata Chatterjee, Mir, Paran Bandopadhyay, among others. Though the movie – an unabashed tribute to the great Satyajit Ray (with references to his Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Hirak Rajar Deshe) – doesn’t have great depths as such (its essentially an intelligent but lighthearted comedies), and quite self-indulgent at times, it did manage to be a mighty enjoyable watch for me.
Director: Anik Dutta
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Ensemble Film
Language: Bengali
Country: India
Made between two of his most renowned arthouse masterpieces, viz. Solaris and Stalker, The Mirror ranks among the most acclaimed as well as inaccessible movies of Russian maestro Andrei Tarkovsky. This unabashedly experimental and deeply personal film was Tarkovsky’s haunting meditation on such themes as memory, childhood and Russia’s history. Leisurely paced, and shot using such avant-garde techniques as regularly changing from colour to black-and-white and vice-versa, and interjecting the flow of the largely stream-of-consciousness narrative with abstruse poetry as well as montages documenting Russia’s political past, the film chronicles the shifting (and at times unreliable) memory of the protagonist’s growing up in the countryside and his feeble attempts at coming to terms with memories of his childhood days and his mother. This is a technically and psychologically complex film comprising of multi-layered narrative, not made any easy by the shifting perspectives and the director’s opting for a more rambling approach as opposed to a more structured storytelling – consequently, the film requires certain minimum effort on the viewers’ front despite the concise length. However, the difficulty that one might face at times in fully comprehending all the details notwithstanding, I was both intrigued and interested by what was transpiring on the screen – the philosophical tone and content, coupled with the excellent photography, the rhythmic flow, and a number of brilliantly conjured cinematic moments, made this a unique viewing experience. And the strikingly beautiful Margarita Terekhova gave startling turns in the double role as the narrator’s mother as well as his wife.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Avant-Garde/ Experimental Film
Language: Russian
Country: Russia (erstwhile Soviet Union)
Summer, also referred to as The Green Ray, was the penultimate film in Eric Rohmer’s “Comedies et Proverbes” series. Like most of his films, this too wasn’t plot-centric or laden with heavy symbolisms; rather, the simple storyline concerns matters of the heart – the journey of an idealistic girl in search of true love. Delphine (Marie Riviere) is a deeply unhappy soul who is facing a series of heartbreaks as much for her quest for love as for her eccentric and irrational nature. She is hell-bent on going for a nice vacation during the summer, but the fact that she doesn’t have company to share her time with has further compounded her mental agony. She is also recovering from being jilted by her fiancé, and these all have reduced her to the mental state of a teenage girl. Rohmer provided us with a nicely constructed resolution to the protagonist’s sadness and pain which managed to be simplicity and subtlety personified. However, despite the fame preceding it, I found this to be one of the lesser films of his oeuvre vis-à-vis those I’ve seen so far, as most of its length seemed to be devoted to exploring and portraying certain facets of Delphine’s character and her psyche that could have perhaps been achieved without devoting so many irreverent incidents to that end – rather, the vacation that she finally decides to take and the ensuing incidents there could have been devoted greater screen-time to. Nonetheless, it did manage to succinctly capture the perils, spiritual loneliness and heartbreaks that come with modern urban life, as well as the little joys that, despite their ephemeral nature, make life worth living.
Director: Eric Rohmer
Genre: Drama/Romance/Psychological Drama
Language: French
Country: France
