An early encounter in Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine humorously, but astutely illustrates the aimlessly resigned plight of the impassive, perennially unemployed director Bahman Farjami (Bahman Farmanara) as he apologetically acknowledges to a former actor turned businessman that he hasn’t made a film in 24 years. The episode, which occurs after Bahman visits the […]
At a “half-open” detention facility and work camp on the island of Imrali, a group of hopeful, but resigned men ritualistically converge on the entrance of the main penitentiary ward: first, for the disbursement of weekly mail and subsequently, for the eagerly anticipated posting of the list of prisoners authorized for a one-week furlough. A […]
Part social realism in its searing depiction of the plight of the underprivileged against the transforming economy of an increasingly modernized Turkey, and part poetic essentialism in its psychological portrait of a desperate man succumbing to the mania of a delusive, blind faith, Yilmaz Güney and Serif Gören’s Umut (Hope) captures the precarious atmosphere of […]
From the casual and personably familiar (and inferentially self-confident) running commentary of the film’s introductory behind-the-scenes footage of the cast and crew, Sacha Guitry sets the infectiously picaresque and disarming tone of The Story of a Cheat. An interstitial silhouette of Guitry’s profile provides the clever transition from real-life auteur to fictional character as the […]
In the essay Woman of the Mist and Gosho and the 1930s from the book Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, Arthur Nolletti examines the complex narrative and visual strategies employed by Heinosuke Gosho that culminate in what would become one of his most accomplished works. Perhaps the most indicative of this style is his […]
Heinosuke Gosho’s The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine is a breezy and effervescent slice-of-life comedy on a harried – and easily distracted – freelance writer (Atsushi Watanabe) whose deadline for a commission work to write a play for a theater company in Tokyo is quickly approaching. Scouting for a suitable retreat where he can complete his […]