George Stevens Has Found a Place in the Sun... in Bologna

All photos by Margherita Caprilli

 

Nattlek (Mai Zetterling, 1966)

Nattlek

Nattlek [Night Games] (Mai Zetterling, 1966)

Actors: Keve Hjelm, Ingrid Thulin, Jörgen Lindström, Naima Wifstrand, Lena Brundin

In this compelling work of cinematic rigour, a man returns to his childhood country home, accompanied by his fiancée. In flashbacks, we learn of his troubled relationship with his mother, who is also the object of his sexual fantasies. Living a sybaritic life, the mother hosts one party after another, the guests resembling characters from a nightmare or circus, completed by a jazz band (the ensemble featuring well-known Swedish musicians Jan Johansson and Georg Riedel). The present is woven into these scenes from the past which, rather than offering simple reminiscences, provide explanations for the behavioural traits of the leading character.

This second feature by actor-turned-director Mai Zetterling, after the remarkably accomplished, if highly scandalous Loving Couples, is arguably even more controversial. Described by some as "pornographic" (accusers included the former child star Shirley Temple), it is in fact one of the most intelligent and sincere studies of the agonies of puberty; the story of a young boy surrounded and troubled by women.

Cinemas in Antonioni's Films

Cine Romolo in La signora senza camelie (1954)

 

Walden Cinema (?) in Saffron, UK, in I Vinti (1953)

Cuadecuc Vampir (Pere Portabella, 1970)

Cuadecuc Vampir

This note was written on the occasion of the screening of Cuadecuc Vampir at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020 where Mr. Portabella's scheduled and much-anticipated attendance was cancelled due to the Covid crises. Fortunately, he managed to participate via Zoom and Esteve Riambau engaged in a conversation with him which you can view over here. — EK

Duke Ellington disliked the term jazz, instead preferring "beyond category" when referring to any type of musical accomplishment. This mesmerising tour de force of audio-visual etching by Catalan filmmaker Portabella, which plays with but shrewdly eschews experimental filmmaking, underground cinema, documentary film, behind-the-scenes film and even fiction, is strictly Dukish in being "beyond category".

The Spanish genre director Jesús Franco was churning out one of his more expensive horror flicks (El conde Drácula), starring Christopher Lee, when Portabella, who was present on the set, made his own film based on the events. Cuadecuc Vampir is a film about images being constructed (with fake fog and cobwebs), and about Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is far more eerie and haunting than not only Franco's film, but anything since Dreyer's Vampyr. It is also a film of political metaphors, the kind one would expect being made under Franco's dictatorship.

Cinemadoosti: Iranian Cinephile Documentaries

Poster for VHS Diaries

A programme curated for DocuNight, currently streaming on their platform. Although I have discussed Jerry and Me here, the rights couldn't be acquired by DocuNight, so this one is not being streamed as planned. — EK

In Memory of Negahdar Jamali

This programme celebrates the intense passion for film and its possibilities that persists among Iranians, in a series of documentaries that reflect 'cinemadoosti' – the Persian word for cinephilia. These are films about daydreaming and the high price one pays for it, the story of marginalised and estranged people whose passion for cinema becomes their raison d'être.

The image of an Iranian cinephile asserts certain clichés which are not entirely unfounded: often a lonely male who collects filmic memorabilia and devours the content of film magazines; a figure occasionally facile and portentous yet burnt by an unbounded love for the movies. A name-dropper and date-of-production memoriser who likes to be seen as a walking film history, a 'cinemadoost' (cinephile) living in a parallel universe.

The Glass Key (Stuart Heisler, 1942)

After the successful Hollywood adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Paramount joined the race to find another story by the author to bring to the screen. When an initial attempt to make a film based on Red Harvest (with Alan Ladd as the lead) fell through, the studio dusted off one of its older properties, The Glass Key, previously filmed by Frank Tuttle in 1935. 

The Forgotten Revolution: Iranian Cinema Before 1979 (A Retrospective at Sinema Transtopia, Berlin, September 2021)

Downpour (1972)

The Revolution of 1978-79 changed both the fate and face of Iran. Like most revolutions, it also suppressed the past and its images – and with it one of the most innovative cinemas of its time. This programme aims to show some of the key films from the more progressive cinematic revolution, which was discontinued by a social one for which the country eventually became known. Films banned, lost or simply forgotten are revived in this overview of Iranian cinema before 1979, which features German premieres of newly restored Iranian New Wave masterpieces. Starting and moving forward from the 1962 Oberhausen prize-winner The House Is Black, directed by poet Forough Farrokhzad, the programme traces the course of the blazing years before the Revolution. — Ehsan Khoshbakht

This selection of Iranian pre-revolutionary films plays at Bi'Bak's Sinema Transtopia (Berlin) in September 2021. For further information on the screenings and tickets visit Transtopia's website here.

Ahmad Shah Qajar Being Filmed for Fox Newsreel

The last Qajar king being filmed

 
Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last shah of the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925), being filmed in Paris by Frédéric Fesneau for the Fox Newsreel in either 1925 or 1926 (a year after he was stripped of his title, so no longer the Shah of Iran).

Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXXV

 
Download the guide to Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021 in pdf format.

The full line-up and titles in each strand will be announced later.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021

A few days ago we reopened Cineteca’s cinemas and all the screenings are seeing an extraordinary presence of audiences. It’s been a wonderful start!

The 35th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato will take place in person in the theatres and open-air venues of Bologna between July 20 to 27, 2021.

The programme is fantastically rich and full of discoveries from across the world, an invitation to start experiencing again the thrill of being part of an audience, watching and sharing cinema masterpieces.

Also this year, for all those who will not be able to attend in person, a selection of films from the festival will be made available through the MYmovies streaming platform.

The Glass Key (Frank Tuttle, 1935)

The Glass Key (1935)

Written in spring 2020 for the catalogue of Il Cinema Ritrovato. EK

Based on a celebrated novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key focuses on the relationship between a crooked businessman and his loyal associate, whose plans for the upcoming election are blown apart by a murder. The story first appeared in “Black Mask” magazine in 1930. Paramount bought the movie rights for $25,000 before the hardcover edition was even published in 1931. Though Gary Cooper was announced as the leading actor, the film was not made until 1935, possibly due to a fear of failure (the crime cycle of the early 1930s was quickly falling out of fashion). 

However, Tuttle’s take was very different, shaping the characters in a more psychologically nuanced way. Ed Beaumont (played by George Raft in one of the better roles of his career) is a rye-drinking, sharp-dressed gambler who protects businessman Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold) against rival gangs and is smart enough to tell him what to wear too. Madvig is backing a local senator in his electoral campaign, and also plans to marry his daughter; meanwhile Madvig’s own daughter, Opal, is in a relationship with the senator’s troubled son. Ed stays cool-headed, balancing these conflicting interests, which are increasingly open to exploitation by a rival gang. When the senator’s son (Ray Milland) is killed, the rival gang mobilise their newspapers to accuse Madvig of the crime. 

The Crown Jewels of Iran (Ebrahim Golestan, 1965) | Notes on the film and its restoration

Ebrahim Golestan's 1965 short documentary, Ganjineha-ye Gohar [in English: The Crown Jewels of Iran], will be screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021. This will mark the world premiere of the restored version and a new beginning for a film very difficult or even impossible to screen in a cinema for almost 55 years. Like its title, The Crown Jewels of Iran is a true jewel of Iranian cinema, though so far a buried one. 

Made for the Central Bank of Iran to celebrate the collection of precious jewels kept in the treasury, this film remains filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan's most visually dazzling work, embellished with terrific camera movements. 

Some of the most iconic landscape photography in the history of Iranian cinema can be found within a minute after the opening credits, in which peasants of various ethnicities and tribes are quickly reviewed, all posed in a graceful manner, like kings without being kings. Like a work of musical composition, a simple act of ploughing is spread across shots of various size and angle, creating an intimate visual symphony. And then appears one of Golestan's allegorical match-cuts: a farmer seen on the horizon before a cut to a diamond on a dark background – the farmer is the jewel. 

The Deer Freed — On International Rediscovery of Masoud Kimiai's Classic

The Deer گوزنها

اولین حضور رسمی فیلم گوزن‌ها در صحنۀ بین‌المللی کمی دیر رخ داده، اما برای دیده شدن فیلم‌هایی با اهمیت تاریخیِ گوزن‌ها هرگز دیر نیست.

فستیوال رتردام 2021 در هلند، گوزن‌ها را برای نمایش در بخش Regained فستیوال انتخاب کرده است، فیلمی که به خاطر حوادث سیاسی و اجتماعی‌ای که به طور مستقیم و غیر مستقیم به نمایش این فیلم در ایران گره خورده و محبوبیت کم‌نظیر آن بین تماشاگران و منتقدان ایرانی (در واقع یکی از معدود فیلم‌هایی ایرانی که هر دو دسته دربارۀ آن متفق‌القول‌اند) باید دهه‌ها پیش دوباره کشف می‌شد.

من همیشه دربارۀ شانس موفقیت گوزن‌ها در خارج از ایران تردید داشتم و مطمئن نبودم فیلمی باشد که غیرایرانی‌ها آن را دریابند. نمایش‌های اخیر فیلم و ارزش‌های مسلم آن ثابت کردند که من اشتباه می‌کردم. بازی بهروز وثوقی (یکپژوهشگر و استاد دانشگاه اسپانیایی/بریتانیایی اخیراً بازی وثوقی را بهترین و دقیق‌ترین تصویر اعتیاد در سینما خواند)، فضای خانۀ سید، مضامین سیاسی فیلم و الهام خلاقانه از سینمای آمریکا، به خصوص موج فیلم‌های «دورفیق» از ایری رایدر تا بوچ‌ کسیدی و ساندنس کید، این اثر مسعود کیمیایی را به یکی از محبوب‌ترین فیلم‌های ایرانی نمایش داده شده در خارج از ایران تبدیل کرده است.

نمایش این فیلم هم‌چنین مهم‌ترین وظیفه‌ای را که در قبال گوزن‌ها داریم یادآور می‌شود: این فیلم باید هرچه زودتر مرمت شود. دلیلی برای به تأخیر انداختن آن وجود ندارد. در فیلم، رقص برهنه یا سکس وجود ندارد. فیلمی است که سرنوشت‌اش پیوندی محکم با مسیر انقلاب ایران دارد. آیا مشکل هم‌چنان بهروز وثوقی است؟ اگر این حدس درست باشد، ایران یکی از معدود کشورهای دنیاست که قصد دارد یکی از بهترین بازی‌های سینمای ملی‌اش را به خاطر مهمانی آخر شبی که بازیگر آن نیم قرن پیش رفته، زنده‌به‌گور کند. آیا 42 سال شکنجۀ دائمی وثوقی در خواب و بیداری کافی نیست؟

Playing with Camera: 'Music Films' from Bach to Bob Dylan (2021)

من هم مثل خیلی‌ از فرزندان عصر سینما و تلویزیون، بخش عمده‌ای از تاریخ موسیقی را از طریق تصاویر متحرک و با دیدن نوازندگان و موسیقی‌دانان و خوانندگان در فیلم‌های داستانی و مستند کشف کرده‌ام. بین آواز و ساززدن لویی آرمسترانگ به‌عنوان قطعات ضبط‌شدۀ موسیقی با تصویر ثبت‌شدۀ او در فیلم‌ها، با آن عرق روی پیشانی و چشمان درشت‌شده و زخم روی لبش که حاصل دهه‌ها دمیدن در ترومپت‌ بود، ارتباطی حیاتی وجود داشت. این نه‌فقط برای دیدن کشمکش فیزیکی یک موزیسین با خودش و بدنش و سازش در حین اجرا، بلکه برای دیدن روابط او با بقیۀ موزیسین‌ها بود و اینکه آرمسترانگ چطور فضای پیراموش را می‌بلعد، چطور به طبّال گروه با شوق نگاه می‌کند و نخ می‌دهد یا چه شوخی‌هایی در گوش جک تیگاردن زمزمه می‌کند که ما هرگز نمی‌شنویم. شنیدن کی بود مانند دیدن؟

شاهکارهای مستند دربارۀ موسیقی، مانند جاز در ظهری تابستانی، پشت‌سر را نگاه نکن و مونتری پاپ، هم به درک من از انواع مختلف موسیقی که در آن‌ها شنیده می‌شد (جاز، راک‌اندرول، گاسپل، فولک، راک، موسیقی سنتی هندی) کمک کرده‌اند و هم اطلاعات بی‌اندازه مهمی در خود داشته‌اند دربارۀ ارتباط موسیقی با جوامع و دوره‌های فرهنگی که این آثار موسیقی از آن‌ها برآمدند. هدف این کتاب مطالعۀ هر دو جریان و نقش سینما در ترجمۀ آن به تصویر و چگونگی بازنمایی موسیقی است.

این کتاب حاصل دو دهه نوشتن دربارۀ سینمای موسیقی است و رویکردی تجدیدنظرطلبانه دارد، هم تجدیدنظر در موضوع در مقایسه با آثار مکتوب دیگر و هم تجدیدنظرِ خود این نویسنده در دریافتش از موسیقی که این آخری باعث شد بخش عمده‌ای از نوشته‌ها و دیدگاه‌هایی را که در اوایل کار دربارۀ موسیقی داشتم، دور بریزم و آن‌ها را در طرحی تازه بیان کنم.

Brecht in a Persian Miniature: A 1978 Interview with Iranian Filmmaker Marva Nabili

The Sealed Soil (1976-77)

Marva Nabili's The Sealed Soil [Khak-e Sar bé Mohr] has been rediscovered and reclaimed in recent years as a feminist masterpiece. However, judging from the interview you are about to read, the film didn't enjoy the same enthusiastic reception upon its initial release. Though premiered at the Berlinale Forum (along with films by Dorothy Arzner, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Germaine Dulac, Laura Mulvey, Karin Thome, Ursula Ludwig, John Cassavetes, Barbara Kopple, Godard & Miéville and Taviani brothers) and enjoying a healthy festival run afterwards, it was forgotten until its name appeared on a couple of lists about great films made by women directors. It was then that both Cahiers du Cinéma and Sight & Sound took note of the film and the filmmaker (who made only one other work, for the US television.) In Sight & Sound, the film's "poetic tone, sparse dialogue and focus on its heroine’s daily life" was compared to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman.

Chronicling the life of woman in a small village in southwest Iran, the film's US premiere took place on January 25, 1978, at Pacific Film Archive where my friend, Tom Luddy, interviewed Marva Nabili. Below is an edited version of that conversation of which an audio tape of poor sound quality survives. Since some of the audience questions are inaudible even to the people present in the auditorium, Tom occasionally repeats them for Marva. He also has the unenviable task of translating and abridging the long-winded, abstract questions. (I have altered the order of some of the question/answers to have the more general questions appear at the beginning.)

The reason I bothered to transcribe the interview was the fact that I was hoping to show the film in Berlin next month (Sinema Transtopia, May 2021) but I discovered that the Arsenal/Berlinale print of the film is too worn-out to be screened. Even before this revelation. I knew a restoration was much needed and already long overdue. If someone comes forward, there's a good chance that we could make this great piece of cinema available to general audiences. Hopefully, next time around they'll ask more sensible questions.

* * *

TOM LUDDY: Is the first American showing of the film to a public audience?

MARVA NABILI: Yes.

LUDDY: Well, we're very honoured. Can you talk a little bit about your life as a woman filmmaker in Iran?

Cinema Architecture: The Sheridan Theatre

https://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/649454664461500416/the-sheridan-theatre-in-miami-beach-florida

Something to Live For: The Cinema of George Stevens

George Stevens with Elizabeth Taylor

[This blog post was last updated on June 22, 2021]

The retrospective Something to Live For: The Cinema of George Stevens will take place in Bologna, during the 35th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato, July 20-27, 2021.

No other director has been credited for filming such disparate situations and figures, of such cultural and historical importance: from Laurel & Hardy's cake-throwing parties to the Crucifixion; the unique elegance of Astaire/Rogers's dance numbers and the liberation of Dachau, the latter a real-life document. This year's American master and the man behind such classics as A Place in the Sun and Shane is George Stevens, who rose from the rank of camera-cranker at Hal Roach Studios to become a filmmaking ace and comedy specialist in the 30s. However, after participating in active combat and filming some of the major atrocities of WWII, something changed in this romantic adventurer. The newly gained intellectual maturity, combined with Stevens's characteristic fluency and brio, proved fertile ground for directing an array of masterpieces which, along with a survey of his late 30s and early 40s masterpieces, are the main focus of this retrospective. — Ehsan Khoshbakht

"Nothing Sacred About My Stipend Either": A 1938 Interview with Ben Hecht

Ben Hecht

Interviewed for Variety by Radie Harris, printed in the UK in World Film and Television Progress, Apr-Nov 1938.

Ben Hecht, looking somewhat like a Goldwyn "folly" himself, in a blue moire dressing gown, sat in the living room of his three-room suite at the Hotel Algonquin, N.Y., and confided that he had just finished his daily dozen for the year by elevating his right thumb to his nose and waving all other four digits exuberantly in the direction of Hollywood!

It seems that Mr. Hecht and his latest employer, Samuel Goldwyn, have had a tiff, and now they're farther apart than Cecil Beaton and Conde Nast. "I left in a childish huff," Hecht explained, "because Sam wouldn't allow me to bring a few of my friends in to the projection room to look at some of the rushes on The [Goldwyn] Follies. I asked Sam whether it was in a desperate effort to save it from the public, but I'm afraid the significance was lost on him. I didn't really want to write another Follies, anyway. The current one was revealed to me in a dream and you know how unreliable dreams are so I packed my luggage, crossed off a couple of zeroes on my next year's income tax, and here I am back in New York, to write a novel for Covici-Friede, my first since A Jew in Love. I'm about a third way through now, but it won't be finished for another year. I'm calling it Book of Miracles—and it has no picture possibilities." (That's one of the major miracles; it will most likely be sold from the galley proofs!)

The Goldwyn Follies (1938)

Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (Stuart Heisler, 1947)

Notes written on the occasion of the screening of an impeccable 35mm print of the film in Bologna, courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive — EK

Female insecurity in a male-dominated world is at the core of this proto-feminist melodrama, dubbed the “feminine version of The Lost Weekend”. Alcoholism as a subject found its way into three of Heisler’s films. In addition, his interest in women’s issues manifested itself in at least six films in which women are the leading characters, most prominently in two works starring Susan Hayward, Smash-Up and Tulsa. 

Talented singer Angie Evans abandons her profession to support the rising career of her musician husband. The birth of their child ties Angie further to the drab apartment in which she wastes her life, while her husband’s acclaim only adds to her sense of insecurity. She turns to drink and gradually becomes addicted. Told through one long flashback, the story leaves no room for optimistic resolutions, dragging Angie – an adequate performance by Hayward – through scene after scene of humiliation. 

The Age of Innocence: American Cinema's Studio Era Revisited (2021)

عصر معصومیت

 

کتاب «عصر معصومیت: بازخوانی سینمای استودیویی آمریکا» منتشر شده و باید در کتابفروشی‌ها و در سایت‌های اینترتی برای خرید آنلاین نسخۀ چاپی موجود باشد.

این کتاب اول از مجموعه‌ای است که توسط نیما حسنی‌نسب سردبیری می‌شود. او پشت جلد این کتاب نوشته:

«حکایتِ نام‌ها و فیلم‌ها و روایتِ شیوه‌ها و مسیرهای فیلم‌سازی در کارخانه رویاسازی هالیوود هم لذت‌بخش است و هم راهگشا؛ چه برای آن‌ها که می‌خواهند آثار تاریخ‌سازِ آن روزگار را بهتر تماشا و درک کنند و چه کسانی که قصد دارند از این گنجینه برای ورود به کار سینما پشت و‌ جلوی دوربین بهره ببرند و از میراث به‌جامانده استفاده کنند تا مسیر دشوار و دلپذیرِ «سینه‌فیل تا سینه‌است» هموارتر شود.

‌جلد اول از مجموعه‌ «دفترهای سینه‌فیلیا» ‌درباره‌ی ‌چند ‌كارگردان ‌سینمای ‌آمریكا ‌از ‌پایان ‌عصر ‌صامت ‌تا ‌دوره‌ی‌ مصادف ‌با ‌زوال ‌سینمای ‌كلاسیک ‌آمریكا ‌در ‌اواخر ‌دهه‌ی ‌۱۹۵۰ ‌است. احسان خوش‌بخت با پیشینه‌ی سال‌ها تحقیق و بررسی سینمای آمریکا مثل نقال‌های خودمان یا بونشی‌های سینمای ژاپن انگار کنار پرده نقره‌ای ایستاده و دارد چیزهای مهم و جذاب و دست‌اولی از زندگی و کارنامه چند نام بزرگ و مهمِ یک دوران سپری‌شده را توصیف می‌کند؛ از جان فورد و اورسن ولز و رائول والش تا ادگار اولمر و دبلیو اس ون دایک مشهور به وودی یک‌برداشته و همچنین زنان کارگردان مطرح در نظام استودیویی که شرحِ موجز سازوكار تولیدشان در‌‌ فصلی دیگر از کتاب آمده است. بخش پیوست این جلد مروری است بر پانتئون سینمایی معروفِ اندرو ساریس که هنوز از مهم‌ترین منابع برای شناخت و دسته‌بندی‌ کارگردان‌های هالیوودی در دوران طلایی است؛ فهرست و توصیف‌هایی که می‌تواند نقشه راه مناسبی برای سینه‌فیل‌های سرگردان در اقیانوسِ دست‌رسی دیجیتال به آثار تاریخ سینما باشد.» — نیما حسنی‌نسب

شرح عکس روی جلد: استودیوی ساموئل گلدوین پشت‌صحنۀ ما دوباره زندگی می‌کنیم (1934) به کارگردانی روبن مامولیان (نشسته مقابل دوربین) با بازی فردریک مارچ و آنا استن. پشت دوربین هم گِرِگ تولند نشسته؛ چند سال پیش از این‌ که همشهری کین را فیلم‌برداری کند

The Star (Stuart Heisler, 1952)

“Come on Oscar, let’s you and me get drunk,” says Bette Davis, as Margaret Elliott, picking up the Academy award on her desk (Davis’s own Oscar in fact). Already intoxicated, Davis drives across town giving us a ghost tour of LA mansions, which look like exhibits in a wax museum. With one hand on the wheel, she puts the statue on the dashboard, its head hidden behind the rear-view mirror. She grabs the bottle and makes a toast, “To absent friends,” the image of the headless piece of gold, the blurred lights in the darkness and the bottle capturing Hollywood’s solitary universe in one shot.

Revolution, Televised

This article was commissioned by the Iranian documentary streaming website, DocuNight. The programme dedicated to films about Iranian revolution featuring an array of thoughtfully selected titles is still live and many of them are seeing their internet premiere. Highly recommended. — Ehsan Khoshbakht

It has happened more than once. While speaking with documentary filmmakers of a certain generation (Med Hondo, one of the greatest African filmmakers, for one) I have been told how much they would have loved to go to Iran in 1978 to film, document and report back on the revolution as it was happening – followed by an expression of regret, that they couldn’t get into the country. This conversational turn has been repeated often enough that when that great documentarian of our time, Jocelyne Saab, talked about wanting to shoot the Iranian revolution, I hastily and foolishly jumped ahead, saying “But you couldn’t get in, could you?” She gave me one of her calm smiles and replied: “I could, and I made a film about it – Iran, Utopia in the Making – which was shown on public television in Japan, Algeria, Sweden and Switzerland.”

Filmfarsi — Streaming in the UK

Filmfarsi (dir: Ehsan Khoshbakht, 2019) will stream in the UK for free (though limited to 300 viewers only), as a part of Wales One World film festival, commencing from March 14, accessible until March 20, 2021.

(It can only be viewed in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey.)

Booking is essential and can be done here.

King of the Movies - A Henry King Documentary

Henry King retrospective (Fox output only) at NFT, London

When Henry King went to London in 1977 to open a retrospective dedicated to his 20th Century Fox films at the National Film Theatre (now BFI Southbank), BBC Television seized the opportunity and filmed the 90 year-old master at what seems to be a single-take, single-set-up interview. Film clips aside, King of the Movies, directed by Philip Chilvers, relies almost entirely on the brilliance of King’s storytelling, which entertains, illuminates and charms. 

Elegantly dressed in his typical late-period style of bowtie and horn-rimmed glasses, resembling a professor of American history, King reminisces on half a century in “the strangest business in the world”. He talks about his love for the rural American landscape (“I like the countryside of any country”); discovering Tyrone Power and Alice Faye; overcoming the limitations of early sound film by moving to Florida to shoot his first talkie Hell Harbour; Zanuck’s issues with his moustached heroes (Power and Peck); the translation of spirituality in the movies through the use of light (“I want a holy light here,” he asked the cameraman Arthur Miller in The Song of Bernadette); his years in Paris and meeting Hemingway, which led to King directing a series of high-profile films focused around 20th-century American authors. 

The Deer (Masoud Kimiai, 1974)

The Deer plays at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021.

For two consecutive decades and in various Iranian critics' poll, The Deer has occupied the very top place as "the best Iranian film ever made." Known for his rape/revenge drama Gheysar (1969)—which changed the course of Iranian cinema—director Masoud Kimiai (former assistant to Jean Negulescu and Samuel Khachikian) adds an explicitly political dimension to the story of his typically defiant characters. Here, in a nod to Hollywood's "buddy film," the familiar hero of Iranian popular cinema is prompted into social action, far beyond the usual romantic conquests. There is a sense of an imminent revolution in this story of a former champ turned junkie who reunites with a leftist classmate and is redeemed by revolutionary anger. Picking up where the anti-hero of Gheysar left, the leading character (Seyyed, played by versatile method actor Behrouz Vossoughi) again takes the law into his own hands and challenges the established order.

Philosophical Treatises of a Master Illusionist: A Conversation about Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016), arguably one of the the greatest of Iranian filmmakers, was a master of interruption and reduction in cinema. He, who passed away on Monday in a Paris hospital, diverted cinema from its course more than once. From his experimental children’s films to deconstructing the meaning of documentary and fiction, to digital experimentation, every move brought him new admirers and cost him some of his old ones. Kiarostami provided a style, a film language, with a valid grammar of its own.

On the occasion of this great loss, Jonathan Rosenbaum and I discussed some aspects of Kiarostami’s world. Jonathan, the former chief film critic at Chicago Reader, is the co-author (with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa) of a book on Kiarostami, available from the University of Chicago Press. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

* * *

Ehsan Khoshbakht: Abbas Kiarostami's impact on Iranian cinema was so colossal that almost swallowed up everything before, and to a certain extent after. For better or worse, Iranian cinema equated Abbas Kiarostami. It was good because it made Iranian cinema a global phenomenon. And not so good when it overshadowed other filmmakers and other existing modes of filmmaking in Iran. Can you think of any other filmmaker whose presence could have dominated a national cinema to such extent?

Jonathan Rosenbaum: As you know, I tend to view Kiarostami more in transnational terms. In terms of being identified with a national cinema from outside that particular nation, I suppose one could cite Satyajit Ray, Almodovar, Bergman, and Kurosawa, among others. But from a transnational perspective, I suspect that the only figure comparable to Kiarostami, both in terms of influence and in terms of stirring up controversies, would be Godard. Godard himself apparently once said that the cinema that begins with Griffith ends with Kiarostami. For me, both directors excelled in creating global newspapers during separate decades -- Godard in the 60s, Kiarostami in the 90s. And people are still quarrelling about their formal procedures in comparable ways. Another parallel with Godard worth mentioning is the capacity of both filmmakers to keep reinventing themselves, in terms of audience, format, relation to narrative, and much else besides. You might even say that Godard and Kiarostami each have had as many "periods" as Picasso did.

Dick Cavett Show: John Cassavetes, Peter Falk & Ben Gazzara

Husband (1970)

Notes on the restored version of Dick Cavett Show: John Cassavetes/Peter Falk/Ben Gazzara (21 September 1970), screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019. The entire programme, sourced from a VHS tape, can be viewed below. — EK

A notorious moment in television history, one which is both funny and embarrassing to watch. Dick Cavett's interviews with film personalities are usually precious; they can be casual (resulting in some hilarious moments with certain guests) but at the same time focused. In 1970, two years into its run, Cavett introduced a new, longer format show to coincide with football fixtures, when many TV viewers would be hooked to the sports channel. The first episode to follow this new format, featuring the leading talents of Husbands, made for a disastrous start. Everything that could go wrong with an interview (including the unlikely possibility of the guests taking off their socks on camera, rolling on the floor and wrestling) did go wrong. Seemingly intoxicated, Cassavetes, Gazzara and Falk refused to talk and when they did, it was in incomprehensible half-lines – the spirit of the Three Stooges channelled via three figures of the New American Cinema. Cavett leaves the set in protest, returning later with the audience clamouring, "We want Dick!" The three bad boys kneel in front of him, seemingly apologetic. Yet, five seconds later, the mischief resumes to a maddening intensity. Towards the end it becomes clearer to see that it's all more of an act than actual intoxication. It's up to you whether to see it as a mean attack on the shallowness of such TV shows, or a sign of troubling immaturity. (For further drunk interviewees at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019, see Sterling Hayden in Pharos of Chaos.) 

His name was Negahdar Jamali...

نگهدار جمالی، سینمادوست، مبلّغ سینما و فیلمساز خودآموختۀ شیرازی که برای فیلم‌های ویدئویی وسترن، تارزانی و اکشنی که با کمک دوستان و هم‌محله‌هایش می ساخت، اول در شیراز و بعد به لطف مستند کامران حیدری، «من نگهدار جمالی وسترن می‌سازم»، در سطحی جهان به شهرتی کوچک رسیده بو،د شب پنجشنبه، 22 آبان، بر اثر ابتلا به کرونا فوت کرد.

این خبر را کامران حیدری مستندساز تأیید کرد که قصد داشت فیلم دیگری با مرحوم نگهدار بسازد.

تماشاگران بین‌المللی با وجد فراوان «من نگهدار جمالی وسترن می‌سازم» را در لندن و نیویورک و شهرهای دیگر دیدند و به دنیای ساده اما دیوانه‌وار این وسترن‌باز شیرازی خندیدند، نه از سر تمسخر، بلکه از سر همراهی با شیدایی او و ایمانش به کاری که می‌کرد.

وقتی اولین بار این فیلم را دیدم، نگهدار را رومانتیکی یافتم که شکست‌های متعددش چیزی از عشقش به سینما نکاسته و درباره‌اش نوشتم «نگهدار جمالي يكي از وجدآورترين فيلم‌هاي سال 2013 است كه مي‌تواند هر بيننده‌اي را تحت تأثير قرار دهد و فقر فيلم‌هاي اين مؤلف شيرازي ناخودآگاه او را به وسترن‌هاي اوليه ادگار اولمر پيوند مي‌دهد.»

University of Wisconsin Cinematheque Podcast: Filmfarsi

"Discover a hidden world of Iranian film with this fascinating archival documentary, which resurrects the long-lost popular cinema that thrived in pre-revolution Tehran. Though today it is best known for world-class auteurs like Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, Iranian cinema between the 1950s and 1970s was sensational and melodramatic, chock full of sex and violence. As director Ehsan Khoshbakht wryly notes, the actual quality of many of these films “starts at B and descends to the last letters of the alphabet,” but today they provide a valuable window into the country’s midcentury psyche. Created in a culture caught between religious tradition and modernity, these lowbrow genre films often encapsulated contradictory ideas—on the common motif of actresses wearing miniskirts along with their headscarves, Khoshbakht observes that “women’s freedom meant a feast of male visual pleasure.” Nearly all of the over 100 films excerpted in Filmfarsi were eventually banned in Iran, relegated to the VHS bootlegs that form the raw materials of this invaluable history. To complement our presentation of Filmfarsi, Khoshbakht has also provided an exceedingly rare opportunity to see The Deer, a high-water mark of pre-revolution Iranian cinema." — Mike King