La Notte Brava (Mauro Bolognini, 1959)

La Notte Brava

Dir: Mauro Bolognini, 1959, 95 min

Playing at Close-Up Cinema on December 30, 2023

Before embarking on a career as a director, Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote the script for La Notte Brava. The resulting film, about three hoodlums during a day out in Rome involving burglary and hooking up with sex workers, is considered one of the classics of Italian post-war cinema and like other works by Pasolini, a film not devoid of controversy when it was originally released. Directed by talented and visionary, if unjustly underrated Mauro Bolognini who has often been described as "the most Proustian of Italian film directors", the attention to details and the direction of an international cast have remarkably translated Pasolini's world of outcasts, prostitutes, petty criminals, and downtrodden youngsters into a vivid and tough portrait of Italy at the end of the 1950s, especially a sketch of Rome and the raw characters driven by their primary instincts.

Tabi’at-e Bijan [Still Life] (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1974)

Still Life

Tabi'at-e Bijan (Still Life). 1974. Iran. Written and directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. With Zadour Bonyadi, Mohammed Kani, Hedayatollah Navid. 93 min.

An elderly railway signalman is unable to understand the meaning of “retirement” when he is handed over his retirement letter. Still Life, the film that shook Iranian cinema to its core and won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale, is an unforgettable, masterfully paced exercise in stillness and loneliness that doesn’t shrink from depicting exploitative tendencies within contemporary Iranian society. Shahid Saless uses the inarticulacy of his protagonist as an aesthetic strategy and finds poetry in seemingly dead moments. Made only in 11 days and shot with the painterly vision of the cinematographer Houshang Baharlou, this landmark work pushed the boundaries of cinema like no other Iranian film of the 1970s. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

Night of the Hunchback (Farrokh Ghaffari, 1964) | MoMA

Shab-e Ghouzi (Night of the Hunchback). 1964. Iran. Directed by Farrokh Ghaffari. Screenplay by Ghaffari, Jalal Moghadam. With Ghaffari, Pari Saberi, Paria Hakemi, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz.

Inspired by a tale in A Thousand and One Nights, this black comedy takes place over the course of one of those nights, as a troupe of traveling actors, the father of a bride, and a hairdresser and his assistant (played by director Farrokh Ghaffari himself) try to rid themselves of an unwelcome corpse while uptown Tehranis party to Ray Charles R&B. In a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, Ghaffari, also a critic and film historian, intended this film as a critique of upper-class pretensions and an ode to simple folkloric pleasures, and while the film was a commercial flop the film nonetheless gained international attention and promised a new beginning for Iranian cinema. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

Dayereh-ye Mina [The Cycle] (Dariush Mehrjui, 1974)

The Cycle (Dariush Mehrjui, 1974-76)

Dariush Mehrjui and his wife were brutally murdered on October 14, 2023. MoMA screens this film on November 1.

This harrowing tale of poverty and drug addiction in the slums, in which people desperately sell their blood to survive, is based on Gholam-Hossein Sa’dei’s short story “Garbage Dump.” Banned due to objections from the Iranian Medical Association, The Cycle was shelved for three years before it was eventually shown at the Shiraz Arts Festival. The left saw the story of the poor selling contaminated blood for injection into new veins as a metaphor for the corruption of Pahlavis. For Mehrjui, however, this was more a candid investigation of a real problem, and it eventually helped inspire the formation of the Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization. The casting of the popular filmfarsi star Forouzan was controversial, but her fine performance proved the versatility of Iranian actors. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969) | MoMA

The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969)

Dariush Mehrjui and his wife were brutally murdered on October 14, 2023. MoMA screens this film on October 26.

This milestone of the Iranian New Wave portrays, with heartbreaking intensity, the themes of solitude and obsession in the story of a poor villager (unforgettably played by Ezzatolah Entezami) whose only source of joy and livelihood is his cow. When the cow is mysteriously killed one night, the metamorphosis begins. Based on short stories by psychiatrist Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi, The Cow was smuggled to the Venice Film Festival in defiance of an export ban, where it was almost immediately and internationally recognized as a masterpiece. Poignantly wrapped in layers of religion and leftist politics (two major forces of the 1979 revolution), The Cow came under the spotlight more than a decade later, when Ayatollah Khomeini hailed it as an example of “good cinema,” as opposed to the many “corrupting films” of the Pahlavi era. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

Trailer for Celluloid Underground (2023)

 

Still Life (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1974) reviewed by John Gillet for Sight & Sound

Perhaps Berlin’s main achievement was to reveal the progress of the young Iranian director Sohrab Shahid Sales, with A Simple Event (reviewed from last year’s Tehran Festival) in the Forum and Still Life in competition. The new film continues his preoccupation with the lives of inarticulate people—in this case, an elderly railway signalman who receives news of his retirement with utter incomprehension— developed through lengthy scenes in which the characters are simply observed going about their daily chores. Without Sales’ extraordinary control, the result could be  intolerable, but for me the film’s exact placing and timing of shots, rather like a slow symphony scored pianissimo throughout, was entirely hypnotic. 

Sven Klangs kvintett (Stellan Olsson, 1976)

Playing at Close-Up Cinema in London on September 24, 2023. – EK

Voted by Swedish film critics as one of the "25 greatest Swedish films ever", Stellan Olsson's tender drama is based on a play by Henric Holmberg and Ninne Olsson, about the failed transformation of a dance band, formed by a group of young friends, into a proper jazz band in southern Sweden of the late 1950s. Excited by the discovery of a new musical language, they discuss Charlie Parker, and one of them, the saxophonist Lars Nilsson, goes as far as imitating his idol not only in his saxophone sound but also in his wild lifestyle. Shot in stunning black-and-white, many traces of the tableau-like compositions that Swedish cinema through figures like Roy Andersson became known for are already established here. So is the cracking humour. This gem of Swedish films is ripe for rediscovery.

San Sebastian Film Festival Retrospectives

Year Retrospective

1959 René Clair

1960 Masters of Nordic Cinema; Jean Grémillon

1961 Emilio Fernández; Georges Méliès; Japanese Cinema

1962 Florian Rey; Greta Garbo; The Cartoon World

1963 Bulls and Bullfighters on the Screen

1964 Elia Kazan

1965 Horror Cinema

1966 Buster Keaton; Science-Fiction Cinema

1967 New Spanish Cinema

1968 New American Cinema

1969 Josef von Sternberg

1970 Fritz Lang

1971 King Vidor

1972 Howard Hawks

1973 Rouben Mamoulian

1974 Nicholas Ray

1975 Henri-Georges Clouzot

1976 Dolores del Río; Humphrey Bogart; Film Noir

1977 Luis Buñuel; Pier Paolo Pasolini; Spanish Cinema from the 2nd Republic

1978 Cinema We Haven't Seen for Decades; Cinema as an Expression of National Culture; Cinema by Women

1979 The Cinema of Nationalities

1980 Stanley Kubrick; José María Berzosa

1981 Brazilian Cinema; Spanish Cinema from the 40s; Spanish Cartoons

1982 Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Leopoldo Torre Nilsson; Roberto Rossellini

1983 The Other Road 2; The Door of the Orient 2

1984 Richard Burton; Cinema and Video

1985 Roman Chalbaud; Ashes and Diamonds; The Vietnam War on Screen

1986 The Guys in the Photo; Luise Rainer

1987 Robert Siodmak; Forgotten Films; Chile

1988 Jacques Tourneur; ABC of Latin America; You Only Live Once

1989 James Whale; All Kieslowski; Great Latin American Melodramas

1990 Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast

1991 Richard Attenborough; Every Way… or Some Way? (5th Centenary of Ignatius of Loyola); Kurier

1992 The Other Shore; Welcome, Mr. Cassavetes

1993 William A. Wellman; The Best 100 Years; Chicano Cinema

1994 William Dieterle; The Best 100 Years (and 2): The European Adventure; John Sayles

1995 Gregory La Cava; The Best 100 Years (and 3): The Shop Around the Corner; Hou Hsiao-Hsien

1996 Tod Browning; The Red Nightmare; Eloy de la Iglesia

1997 Mitchell Leisen; A Long Absence; Getting to Know Peter Bogdanovich

1998 Mikio Naruse; Hunger, Humour and Fantasy; Terry Gilliam

1999 John M. Stahl; The Boom Italian-Style; Bertrand Tavernier

2000 Carol Reed; The TV Generation; Bernardo Bertolucci

2001 Frank Borzage; It Happened Yesterday; Getting to Know Otar Iosseliani

2002 Michael Powell; 50 from the 50s; Volker Schlöndorff

2003 Preston Sturges; Michael Winterbottom

2004 Anthony Mann; Woody Allen

2005 Robert Wise; Rebellious and Untamed; Abel Ferrara

2006 Ernst Lubitsch; Emigrants; Barbet Schroeder

2007 Henry King; Cold Fever; Philippe Garrel

2008 Mario Monicelli; Terence Davies; Japan in Black: Japanese Film Noir

2009 Backwash: The Cutting-Edge of French Cinema; Richard Brooks

2010 New Paths of Non-Fiction; Don Siegel

2011 America Way of Death: American Film Noir 1920–2010; Digital Shadows: Last Generation Chinese Film; Jacques Demy

2012 Very Funny Things: New American Comedy; In Progress: Ten Years with Latin American Cinema; Georges Franju

2013 ANIMATOPIA: New Paths of Animation Cinema; Nagisa Oshima

2014 Eastern Promises: Portrait of Eastern Europe in 50 Films; Dorothy Arzner

2015 New Japanese Independent Cinema 2000–2015; Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack

2016 The Act of Killing: Cinema and Global Violence; Jacques Becker

2017 Joseph Losey

2018 Muriel Box

2019 Roberto Gavaldón

2021 Flowers in Hell: The Golden Age of Korean Cinema

2022 Claude Sautet

2023 Hiroshi Teshigahara

2024 Violent Italy: Italian Crime Films

2025 Lillian Hellman

Retrospettiva

Locarno film festival retrospectives: A list

2025 — Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945-1960

2024 — The Lady with the Torch: Columbia Pictures, 1929-1959

2023 — Mexican Popular Cinema

2022 — Douglas Sirk

2021 — Alberto Lattuada

2020 — Kinuyo Tanaka

2019 — Black Light

2018 — Leo MaCarey

2017 —Jacques Tourneur

2016 — Beloved and Rejected: Cinema in the Young Federal Republic of Germany, 1949–1963

2015 — Sam Peckinpah

2014 — Titanus

2013 — George Cukor

2012 — Otto Preminger

2011 — Vincente Minnelli

2010 — Ernst Lubitsch

2009 — Manga Impact

2008 — Nanni Moretti

2007 — Retour à Locarno

2006 — Aki Kaurismäki

2005 — Orson Welles 

2004 — Newsfront

2003 — All That Jazz

2002 — Allan Dwan

2001 — Out of the Shadows: Asians in American Cinema

2000 — Une autre histoire du cinéma soviétique 1926–1968 

1999 — Joe Dante e l’altro cinema indipendente.

1998 — Marco Bellocchio

1997 — 50 +1 ans de cinéma américain

1996 — Youssef Chahine

1995 — Abbas Kiarostami

1994 — Frank Tashlin

1993 — Sacha Guitry

1992 — Mario Camerini

1991 — Jacques Becker

1990 — Lev Kuleshov

1989 — Preston Sturges

1988 — Alberto Cavalcanti

1987 — 40 ans de Festival à Locarno

1986 — Keisuke Kinoshita

1985 — Boris Barnet

1984 — Lux Film (1934–1954)

1983 — Mikio Naruse

1982 — Powell & Pressburger

1981 — American Cinema of the 1950s [?]

1979 — Yasujiro Ozu

1978 — Douglas Sirk

1977 — Citel Films Geneva

1976 — Pietro Germi [?]

1975 — Totò, Portrait of An Actor

1974 — Swiss cinema [?]

1973 — Swiss Cinema Retrospective 1920-1944

1972 — 25th Anniversary Retrospective

1971 — Cinéma et Résistance

1970 — Claude Autant-Lara

1969 — Luchino Visconti

1968 — Satyajit Ray

1967 — Tribute To Soviet Cinema

1966 — G. W. Pabst

1965  — Jiri Trnka + Manoel de Oliveira

1964 — Andrzej Munk + Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau + Louis Lumière

1963 — John Ford

1962 — Jean Vigo + King Vidor

1961 — Georges Méliès + Fritz Lang

1960 — Luis Buñuel

1959 — Ingmar Bergman

1958 — Humphrey Bogart + Norman Mclaren

1957 — Akira Kurosawa + G.W. Pabst + Francesca Bertini

1956 — Ethnographic Film Review [?]

1955 — Aspects of Italian Neorealist Cinema

1954 — Comic Cinema in the Silent Era

1947 — Reconstruction

1946 — Revue du film documentaire