Monthly Archives: March 2021

José Arroyo and Richard Layne on The Deer/ Gavaznha (Masoud Kimiai, 1974)

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We continue with our exploration of the Iranian Cinema on offer at the Wales One World festival with a discussion of the extraordinary The Deer/ Gavaznha (1974), a metaphor for pre-revolutionary Iran’s social relations, focussing on down and outs living in a courtyard with a heroin addict and a bank robber as heroes. The influence of Italian neo-realism is everywhere present in a film that is simultaneously symbolic but also pulpy and visceral. It’s an iconic film extra-textually as well: a cinema showing the film was burned down killing hundreds of people. It’s a film that is still banned in Iran. Behrouz Vossoughi gives an extraordinary performance.

Thanks to a friend, Richard and I have also been able to see the film’s original ending where Ghodrat (Faramarz Gharibian) believes Seyed (Behrooz Vousoughi) has betrayed him and shoots him. As Seyed is on his knees he explains that friendship comes before anything and Ghodrat , visibly moved, gives himself up to the police. The film ends with the promise of the two friends re-uniting at the end of the prison term with the promise of healing and solidarity in the aftermath of the current situation. It’s very moving.

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

A ban robber tries to convince a heroin addict to change

A life imprisoned. Setting doves free will be a metaphor. In the meantime, it’s all barbed wire.

When people are seen as sheep but also as ranking below them to the extent their homes are turned over to animals

The courtyard

Is it a queen who’s long hair gets shaved in prison?

 

Ehsan Khoshbakht, the director of Filmfarsi, wrote us a quick note to pick up on some of the points discussed in the podcast on The Deer:

‘The Deer is a black & white film and the colour version on YouTube is ….(an) unauthorised digital colorization. Colour films were very rare in Iran, even as late as mid-70s.
‘Another point that I wanted to raise is that with the exception of the opening dialogues added to the film in post-production (which you read in bracketed subtitles), this was the most complete version of the film which I telecined from Kimiai’s own battered print — the only way I could show it in the west. So this was the uncensored version, but since I didn’t have access to the separate audio track of the film, I couldn’t remove those forced lines and the best approach was to present them in brackets’.
Many thanks to Ehsan Khoshbakht for his film, for helping the The Deer circulate, and for answering some of the questions we posed in the podcast.
Those of you who want to follow a more extended discussion on Iranian genre  cinema in general and The Deer in particular can do so in this fascinating conversation  between Kaveh Askari and Ehsan Khoshbakht
here:

Ehsan makes an interesting comparison of it with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, particularly the ending

José Arroyo

 

 

 

José Arroyo & Richard Layne on Filmfarsi (Ehsan Khoshbakht, 2019) Wales One World Festival

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The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

A discussion of Filmfarsi, a film by Ehsan Khoshbakht, on a mode of filmmaking extremely popular in Iran — urban gangster films, melodramas, musicals — set in urban working class milieus, that evoked and challenged the country’s vaunted leap in modernity. IAccording to Ehsan Khoshbakht, the film’s director, ‘Something rare, euphoric and mad was recorded on celluloid: the Iranian way of life after the second world war, with all its paradoxes. Even the sleaziest films became documents. If the majority of key Iranian arthouse films of the 1960s and 1970s were set in villages and rural areas (a tradition continued until after the revolution), filmfarsi was about the thriving cities, which were expanding blindly, thanks to petrodollars’.

t’s very different to the type of cinema Abbas Kiarostami was also doing in this period. It’s a cinema quickly banned after the ’79 revolution, and a cult on VHS. The filmmaker shows the wide range of filmmaking, its transnational perspective, its ritual and fetishistic post -79 consumption, and well evokes why it was so powerful, why it’s been banned and why it is so cherished.

He’s also offered a wonderful introduction in The Guardian, which can be found here.

It begins with: ‘Shortly after the 1979 Iranian revolution, the country’s national newspapers published a joint subpoena, unique in film history. All the key stars of “filmfarsi” – a form of popular cinema that embodied the aspirations and illusions of a modernising society – were summoned to the revolutionary court. The careers of hundreds of actors and directors ended overnight. Unlike the Hollywood blacklisting of the McCarthy era, there was not even the opportunity for a mock hearing. The cinema, seen as emblematic of corruption, “westoxification” and the decadence of the ousted Pahlavi regime, was consigned to oblivion.

 

Those of you interested in watching the film can follow up bookings here. Many thanks to Wales One World for their superb programme and for the free screenings.

You can see Ehsan Khoshbakht speak to David Gillam on Filmfarsi here:

 

 

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 281 – The Day of the Locust

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Another discussion of — if not a classic — a still remembered film, on Hollywood, and — to add a cherry on top — with the great Karen Black.

An expensive flop in its day, The Day of the Locust maintains a cult intrigue for its critique of Hollywood and descent into madness. It’s new for both of us, and we discuss the qualities its cast brings, what could be better about its industry commentary, its moments of surprisingly graphic violence, and who, or what, its titular locusts are.

The podcast can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

A quick note on End of the Century (Lucio Castro, 2019)

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If you liked Andrew Haigh’s Weekend (2011),  you might want to give End of the Century/ Fin de sieglo  a go. Ocho (Juan Barberini) and Javi (Ramón Pujol) meet in Barcelona. Ocho’s Argentinian, living in Madrid and has just ended a twenty year relationship. Javi is a native of Barcelona but is now living with a husband and child in Berlin. They cruise each other, have wild sex and meet again the next day to wonder around the city. As they chat, they remember they met and mated twenty years before in the same city. A slow-paced absorbing film, sexy and romantic, wistful and sad. There are about 12 minutes with no dialogue and it is not missed. The last section, a what might have been, is particularly affecting. I think it better than Weekend and highly recommend. It’s on BFI and on Vimeo through Peccadillo pictures.

José Arroyo

The Youssef Chahine Podcast No. 31: An Egyptian Perspective of A New Day

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The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

This podcast has been very lucky with its listeners. Hussein, not only provided us with a possibility of viewing the wonderful Dawn of a New Day, but produced the sub-titles necessary to understand it. We can’t thank him enough. I took the opportunity of talking to Hussein to ask him about things we as English-speaking viewers might not have understood. i.e an Egyptian perspective on the politics, the history, the significance of streets and buildings, the customs, the reputation of the actors in the film(Saifuddin Shawkat, Sanaa Gameel) and in Chahin’s other work (Mohsen Mohieddin) . All proved illuminating and enlightening and has certainly helped me understand Dawn of a New Day better. The conversation then continues onto Chahine as a figure in Egyptian cinema and culture and it was so interesting and informative that we will continue with that strand of conversation onto the next podcast.

 

Hussein has also kindly provided us with a link to two interesting stories:

Click on “the cairo tower” and “if lions could speak”. The first is the tower’s story, the other on the two lions on each side of the bridge that tarek crosses to meet Nayla. Hussein tells us, ‘They are of extreme importance in our history and almost became synonymous with downtown Cairo’.
José Arroyo

Lecture on Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)

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A camera move from The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940).

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When a series of blows deflates the very life out of you, in one co-ordinated camera move. From The Shop Around the Corner:

A note and reminder on/of You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937)

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You Only Live Once is surely one of the great works of cinema. I had a discussion with a friend on Facebook about whether Fury was superior but I haven’t seen that for a decade. I remember I  liked this more not for its sentimentality but for its sentiment. The thank you for loving me line is so beautiful, and frankly doesn’t seem excessive at all considering the circumstances.

Visually, it’s astonishing, with Lang’s typical control of camera and expressionist lighting that, particularly in the prison scenes, convey how Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) is imprisoned not only physically but psychically. The play with sound and silence in last dinner scene in jail, so suspenseful and expressive. The frog scene is a superb instance of how editing functions with images and rhythm to allegorise feeling: that gorgeous bit with the water rippling and then concretising the moment as it stops, and then cutting at precise moments to evoke what the characters feel for each other. Gorgeous. And the performances by Silvia Sydney as Joan and Henry Fonda as Eddie are of great power and delicacy.

I wondered why with all its shadows, it’s darkness, the expressionist lighting etc. it isn’t counted amongst noir. My conclusion — apart from it being 30s –is that the couple here — surely two of the greatest performances in American cinema — are in love in an almost ideal way, no kink or deviancy — though theirs is clearly a relationship of the body as well as the mind. Heat of body as well as soul, but all in a socially-sanctified way. Also their ejection from the mainstream is a tragedy, not a chosen pathway due to confusion or trauma. Still as V.F. Perkins’ great piece on the film explains, even their relationship is more complex than evident at first glance:

 

I enclose the’ thank you for loving me ‘ scene here only because it’s so unusual an expression then and so current now. If I was only looking for great, I might have chosen the frog scene, or Fonda’s rejection of Sidney in jail. It’s a film of brilliant scenes, nothing is off. It’s a film I shall return to. In the meantime:

 

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 280 – A Sun

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We explore a wonderful Taiwanese film that Netflix forgot it had, A Sun. An intimate yet epic drama about the effects of a single mistake that reverberate through a family and down the years, it’s gorgeously lit and shot, and although it feels as long as it is, every moment is earned and valuable. It asks fundamental questions of its characters and of us, the most important of which is: What does it mean to be a good person?

The podcast can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Playing with Hank

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The Youssef Chahine Podcast No. 30: Encounter With The Unknown (موعد مع المجهول), 1959

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A discussion of Atef Salem’s 1959 Encounter with the Unknown, part of a cycle of films we will be covering as a way of setting a context for better understanding the work of Youssef Chahine. We discuss the very glamorous pairing of Omar Shariff and Samia Gamal, the superb mise-en-scène and visuals, what such skill brings to a rickety script and what it cannot, the relative lack of conceptual and thematic richness in comparison to Chahine and much else.

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

We also discuss how Shariff is often undressed and displayed for viewing pleasure, and how he, like Cary Grant, is the one that gets chased.:

Credits, a brief plot description, and a bio of director can be found

here:

Richard has also provided the following links:

A BBC news story on Salem’s Death: 

A BBC clip of a Salem in ‘Six Decades of Egyptian Ciinema:

This is an article on Samia Gamal

Here’s another more detailed article with more about her film career. Its interesting that other than Sharif she’s one of the performers in Chahine’s films about which there’s the most information in English available

 

I’ve made a selection of clips so that you can follow the discussion:

Omar at the Beach: Encounter with the Unknown:

Circus Encounter With the Unknown:

Dance number in Encounter With the Unknown:

At the factory:

Another factory setting with very inventive editing Encounter With the Unknown:

In the river Encounter With the Unknown:

Dancing hands in Encounter With the Unknown:

 

 

José Arroyo

José Arroyo

What happens when you smear a noir hero’s lips with red?

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José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 279 – Rocky – Part II: The Rocky series

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Our two-part discussion of Rocky concludes with a look at the entire series of eight films, including the two Creed movies. It’s a series that’s deeply interested in its own history, regularly referring to it in montages of characters’ memories, journeys back to iconic locations, and the reintroduction of one particular character in Creed II. The series rewards its audience for its investment, although despite featuring a soap opera-like series of melodramatic plot developments over its many films, almost everything that refers to a previous film refers to the first one. Other than the events of 1976’s Rocky, which laid the foundation for the series, only Apollo Creed’s death and Ivan Drago’s defeat in Rocky IV have lasting impact on later films.

We discuss how, following his superhero-like physicality in the Eighties, the character of Rocky is brought back down to Earth in his old age, his body ravaged by time, his life broken by loss. And we think about how the milieu evolves over time, the music, for instance, changing from barbershop/a capella singing in the Seventies, through power ballads in the Eighties, to rap and hip-hop in the 2010s. And we discuss much more besides.

You can track significant changes in cinema and culture over the last fifty years through the Rocky films. Each one feels like a snapshot of American life at its time. We can’t recommend most of the films as examples of great film art, but the last three, Rocky Balboa, Creed and Creed II, stand above the first five, the Creeds especially feeling like a breath of fresh air with the directorial talent on display. But it’s a fascinating series to work through, earnest and open-hearted throughout, and immensely likeable.

The podcast can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.