The Stranger and the Fog (Bahram Beyzaie, 1974)

Bahram Beyzaie on the set of The Stranger and the Fog

Impossible to see for decades, Bahram Beyzaie's dazzling The Stranger and the Fog, about a mysterious stranger arriving in a drifting boat to a coastal village and falling for a woman, is an endlessly symbolic tale in which ghosts of the past, narrow-minded villagers and forces beyond the controls of the characters take the viewer into a dizzying labyrinth of rituals. In the film's meticulously structured circular narrative, characters, times and spaces rhyme and mirror each other, turning filmmaking into an act of dreaming. Characters are the product of each other's imagination before turning into myth. The film gives the centre of both attention/desire and control to a woman of will therefore it goes beyond the confines of the victimised women of the 1970s Iranian cinema.

Peter Cowie on Gharibeh va Meh (1974)

"Two years in the making, it is a vast, symbolist drama, set in some remote historical period (hazy even to Iranians), and bursting at the seams with action and bloodcurdling confrontations. Why a young man arrives in a boat to disturb the ritual of a small village, why he is pursued by a band of ominous, black-clad strangers, and why he takes once more to the sea, seems unimportant, for Beizai’s [sic] dazzling technique, clearly influenced by Kurosawa, sweeps all before it. No other Middle Eastern cinema could sustain such an ambitious and visually exciting production."  Peter Cowie / Sight & Sound, April 1975

Cherike-ye Tara [The Ballad of Tara] (Bahram Beyzaie, 1979)

The Ballad of Tara

 

Bahram Beyzaie's seamless blend of myth, symbolism, folklore and classical Persian literature in The Ballad of Tara is unparalleled in its complexity. Yet, apart from Downpour (1972), which was restored and revived a decade ago, the director with the most consistent body of work in the Iranian cinema of the 1970s is also, unjustly, one of the most invisible masters of the Iranian New Wave. Here, as well as directing, he has also produced, written, set-, costume-designed and edited a mesmerising tale that fuses the ceremonial legends of the past with contemporary life. Tara, a strong-willed widow encounters the fleeting ghost of an ancient warrior in the forest next to her village. The ghost's appearances become more frequent and finally he talks to her, claiming a sword that she has found among her father's effects. Without the sword, the dead warrior can't rest. But when the sword is restored to him, it's his love for Tara that prevents him from returning to the land of the dead.