Thursday, 13 August 2026

Sixty Years of Art Cinema 1960-2020 : Bruce Hodsdon continues his series - 6 (57) Egypt and the Arab World

 Part 1 Egyptian realism and Arab cinema d'auteur   

 Salah Abu Seif b.1915   Tewfik Saleh b.1926    Youssef Chahine  b. 1926   Shadi Abdel-Salam b.1930

 

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The first screenings of the Lumière's cinematographe in North Africa were arranged in cafes by local entrepreneurs only in cities with large populations of foreign residents like Cairo, Alexandria and Oran. Elsewhere in the Arab world the first public film shows were delayed for social or religious reasons being only for elite audiences – foreigners and members of the westernised bourgeoisie. A two-tiered system grew up: imported films in comfortably appointed locations, and in poorer, more improvised conditions for popular audiences. Like screenings, the first film productions were the work of foreigners but remained low in number through the 1920s – in Egypt only13 silent features were completed between 1926 and 1932. “In contrast European film-makers made great use of some parts of the Arab world as film locations with over sixty features being shot in North Africa alone before the end of the 1920s” ( Armes, Nowell-Smith ed, 662).

 


Roy Armes concludes that “Arab cinema remained synonymous with Egyptian cinema as Egyptian producers gradually came to dominate film markets throughout the Arab world.”  The first film studio, Misr, opened in the mid-1930s, but production initially remaining at a low level until 1945. The end of the war Samir Farid described in Ecran (May 73 quoted Armes) as “the cinema of  the war profiteers.” In postwar conditions the opportunity for the very profitable speculative investment of “parasitic capital” accumulated during the war in very low cost film production, more than doubled to rise above 50 features a year from 1945 to 1950, as did the number of cinemas although mainly in Cairo and Alexandria. This allowed  Egyptian films and Egyptian dialect to play an important part in neighbouring countries. Otherwise, “the bulk of these films may have little value individually, but they did establish a lasting film tradition in Egypt” ( ibid).  

 

The Will

Following two co-productions made in Iraq in 1945, a dozen or so select 'national' productions were made up to the revolt by army officers in 1952 which marked the end of British colonial dominance. This opened a gap between the commercial cinema and a small number of films made with more serious intent such as The Will/
Al-Azimaalso translated as Determination (1939), on which Abu Seif worked as an assistant, identified as a striking example of independent filmmaking. The story is set in the environment of petty bourgeoisie family life involving Muhammad a young man “with a good education” living with his parents (his father is “a simple barber”) in a traditional neighbourhood, who becomes caught in the vicissitudes of an arranged marriage - a  plot complication is that neighbour's daughter happens to also be his beloved - linked to his inability to find a job which delivers an income to meet the requirements of the bride's parents. 


Viola Shafik identifies the extent to which the conventional plot compromises social critique by introducing wish fulfilment (”fairytale”) elements in order to meet film industry demands for a romantic resolution. Nothing finally stands in the way of their marital happiness, however, when Muhammad is able to set up a company with the son of his supporting pasha, a compromise that allows the filmmakers to concentrate on the realistic portrayal of the setting, “the environment of the protagonist,” in a form of plot trade-off given “the increasingly unfavourable attitude of the industry towards realist representation” (ibid ). The original intention of the director was to call the film The Alley/ al-Hara) rejected by the producer “as not suitable for advertising.”  Director and co-writer Kamal Selim (1913-45) took great care to accurately portray everyday life during economic crisis of the 1930s, the first Egyptian film “to deal realistically with a social problem drawn from real life and conditions in Egypt” (Galal el-Charkawi “ quoted Armes “Third World Cinema” 201).

 

The Will was the forerunner of realist filmmaking in Egypt from the early 50s, a few directors such as Abu Seif, Tewfik Saleh and Youseff Chahine becoming engaged, and prominent writers turned their attention to cinema, especially Naguib Mahfouz who completed 18 scripts and left deep traces especially on the work of Salah Abu Seif, the most popular representative of cinema realism in Egypt (Shafik 133).  Claims for The Will as a precursor to postwar Egyptian “neorealism” have been based on works in 1957 of two of the most talented filmmakers : Abu Seif's The Tough Guy/ The Thug/Al-futuwa, and Chahine's Cairo Station/Bab al-hadid and At Land / Al-ard (1969), q.v.

 

The legacy of Seif and Chahine transformed the face of Arabic cinema reaching the 150 million Arabic speaking audience in cinema and on television in the Middle East and beyond. These directors in the course of their prolific careers made films like those mentioned above that dealt realistically with social problems drawn from social conditions in Egypt. Armes suggests that “the precise nature of this realism needs to be set against the prevailing attitudes and assumptions of Egyptian film-makers, rather than seen as a “source” for a postwar “Egyptian neorealism, if [such] qualities are to be established” (ibid 200). This includes their base in serious literary adaptation. Armes questions the approach made to Third World cinema in Africa and Asia in the Eurocentric construction of a “realist tradition” set against what is viewed as the mindless escapism of the popular commercial cinema of the time. Realist filmmaking in Egypt continued in varying degrees to be seen in the work of Henry Barakat*, Abu Seif, and Tewfik Saleh finding culmination in Chahine's At Land (q.v.). Viola Shafik suggests that

 

Egyptian realism is the only Arab realism that has entered film history under the name 'realism.' This is not to say that Egyptian realism was more 'realistic ' or more adequate to reality than other comparable trends in Arab cinema. Its name only expresses the changed attitude of a part of commercial Egyptian film making toward social reality. Its essential characteristics are description that attempted to be faithful to the environment and the choice of the simple man from the lower social strata as protagonist.

 

Egyptian realism's qualitative importance, according to Shafik, has caused “constant confusion in film history due to its marginality in numbers” (only about 32 films out of more than 1000 features 1951-71) confined to 3 directors. “Egyptian realism differs remarkably in its themes and narration from the other genres of the Egyptian film industry – farce, melodrama, or musical – while “having a strong commercial element” ( ibid 128).

 


Tewfik/Taufik Saleh (above,
 1926-2013) was recognised in critics' circles, as “one of the pillars of Egyptian realist cinema who between 1955 and 1980 directed seven short films and seven full-length features without due appreciation” (Heshan Tata). Saleh's oeuvre is considered the only one in Egyptian cinema as a paradigm of Third World cinema advocated by Solanas and Getino's Third Cinema manifesto, q.v.6 (52). All Saleh's films dealt with the themes of social injustice, underdevelopment, political abuse and class struggle. (IMDB). The two most significant and controversial were The Rebels/Yiwmmyiat Na'eb fi Al Aryaf (1967) subject to censor modifications and accusations of defeatism on its release with “the theme of how oppressed societies repeat the mistakes of their oppressors when they lack knowledge of the past and future.”  Saleh, a Marxist, further incorporated this theme into the form, particularly in the editing strategies, of his next film, a recognised masterpiece, The Duped/Al-Makhdu'un (1971) adapted from a short story by Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani, a militant of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was assassinated in 1972 by the Israeli Mossad.


The Duped


The human tragedy of four Palestinian refugees of different generations and professions in
 The Duped representing the 'human excess baggage' in Arab countries attempting to escape across the border into Kuwait following Nukba (the catastrophe), the 1948 declaration of the independence of Israel. The unscrupulous driver of the empty water truck in whom they place their trust could be seen in his complexity as “embodying all Arab rulers seeking wealth rather than the well-being of their population” (Taha). The Dupes was made after the defeat of the Arab armies by Israel, Naksa (the setback), in 1967.

 Roy Armes points out how apparent similarities between such work of these Arab directors and some of the key Indian directors of the 40s and 50s, such as Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, and Ritwik Ghatak, were wrongly viewed as precursors of a neorealism which found its fullest expression in reception of the first films of Satyajit Ray beginning with Pather Panchali. ”This is not to deny,” Armes suggests, “the fact of the effect of Italian neo-realism on Ray and many other non-western filmmakers.” As Third World critics and theorists published their own accounts of their national cinemas,  Manthia Diawara on Black African cinema comes immediately to mind, it becomes clearer that such “racialist traditions” constructed by westerners, involve a distortion of both filmmakers' relation to their national industry and the particular qualities of their work, as Armes goes on to further discuss in “Third World Filmmaking and the West” (pp 69-74).

  


Salah Abu Seif 
(above,1915-1996) was born to landowning parents in Cairo. He saw his first feature film in 1927 at the age of 12 when films were either imports accompanied by Egyptian narrations or made by Europeans living in Egypt.  Seif graduated in economics and commerce in 1932 while working as a freelance reporter following movie stars, and as a factory clerk during the day when he met Egyptian filmmaker Niazy Mustapha who offered Seif a job as a film editor.

 

In 1939 Seif won a scholarship to study film in Paris, encountering Italian neorealism in Rome. Returning to Cairo in 1942, he pioneered location techniques in impoverished city locations. When location shooting was not available to him, he reconstructed sets in great detail to represent real locations as accurately as possible. Seif's preference for realistic stories and settings based on seriously regarded novels with the addition of popular music, he saw as a means of establishing a closer relationship with the audience, earning him the description of “the artist for the Egyptian people.”


Seif's first film as a director, Number 6 (1942), a black comedy about the financial exploitation of families hit by sudden death, was banned after the Al Azhar, the official Muslim Church, protested that the subject was offensive to the Muslim majority in what was the first of Seif's many engagements with censorship during the course of his filmmaking career. In the 50s and 60s he directed two dozen of his 47 features as director ”making him a dominant figure in the Egyptian film industry.” In addition to tightly scripted studio dramas mostly with a realistic flavour, he ranged across other genres from musicals and action thrillers to dramas with a political edge such as Case 68/Al-Qadia 68 (1969) and Malatily Boathouse/ Hammam al Malatily (1973), both films attracting protest in the way they dealt with the social climate in Egypt after the Six Day War with Israel in 1967.

 

Your Day Will Come

Abu Seif led the way with a screenplay by Naguib Mahfouz (q.v.) of Emile Zola's seminal work of literary naturalism Thérèse Raquin re-titled Your Day Will Come /Lak yawm ya Zalim (1951) which he subsequently remade as The Criminal / Al-Mugram (1968). He followed with Foreman Hassan (1952), and The Tough Guy / The Thug (1957), from a Mahfouz script centred on Haradi, as a young peasant starting out in a Cairo vegetable market he seems young and foolish, but the film does not attempt a psychological study, his behavior suddenly changes from unskilled worker into an unscrupulous speculator threatening the position of the 'king of the market', the theme drawn from newspapers in what Shafik describes as “a typical  example of Egyptian realism” that was also one of the most successful with audiences. “In Egyptian realism, Shafik suggests, “analysis of the totality of societal conditions is often undertaken only superficially and reflects the diffuse political convictions of the producer” (139).

 

 Mahfouz and Seif equate the rules of the free market economy with the pre-Nasserist political system, which they see as leading to trade monopolies and illegal speculation. As becomes clear, the influential 'king of the market' has friends at the very top who support and profit from him […] but this system breaks down violently as a result of the police raid...[however] the ending is sceptical, a new 'Haradi' enters the market... (ibid)

 

 Between Heaven and Earth/Baynaeme l-Samaa wa al-Ard (1959) and other such realistic studies of Egyptian lower- and middle-class life were Chahine's Cairo Station (q.v.) and Tewfik Saleh's first feature in 1957, an adaptation from Mahfouz's novel, Street of Fools/Darb al-nahabil  (Armes “The Arab World” 665).

 


Youssef Chahine
 (above, 1926-2008) born into a middle class family he “experienced an education shaped by the realties of Britain's seventy-year occupation of Egypt.” His father was a financially unsuccessful lawyer, a supporter of the nationalist Wafd party. Youssef was brought up anti-British and Christian, educated at Victoria College Alexandria where he was taught in English. He persuaded his parents to allow him to study drama abroad spending two years at the Pasadena Playhouse near Los Angeles. According to Roy Armes, the cosmopolitanism inherited in Alexandria (Chahine  was fluent in half a dozen languages) remained a regular presence in his work. He was also “a strong local patriot, his best films being profoundly Egyptian” even when made in another country such as Lebanon where he made two films that he nevertheless counted among his least important works. Chahine was always conscious of remaining in touch with the audience. Yet his films were also intensely personal.

  

Youssef Chahine in Cairo Station

Entering the industry as an assistant director, by the age of twenty-four Chahine directed his first feature Papa Amin/Baba Amin in1950 followed by seven more in the next 8 years. A concern for situating trauma socially comes remarkably together in his first signature feature, Cairo Station/Bab al-Hadid (a.k.a.The Iron Gate) (1958). Critical and international recognition of Chahine's bitingly effective, controlled direction (while also himself playing a crippled and simple newspaper boy maddened by repressed desire) and the analogy with Italian neorealism, was not so successful with home audiences “startled by the upfront sexuality [ as the film] fans out from a sweaty realistic base towards social observation, florid melodrama and dark suspense” in the portrayal of poor and dispossessed characters at the main railway station in Cairo (Trevor Johnston “Time Out').

 

Chahine's acceptance of the commercial failure of Cairo Station  did not lessen  personal motivation. Armes observes that, as his technical skills increased, he allowed more of his intimate emotions and attitudes to emerge. “From the first he showed an interest in the psychology of the individual, madness and schizophrenia [becoming] a constant feature of his work.” At the same time he showed increasing concern with situating these traumas socially in working towards an analysis of interaction between the individual and society (Armes, Third World Cinema 245). His reaction was to move from the straightforward social realism of Cairo Station to a more questioning note in The Land /Al-ard (1969) which for Armes marks a considerable advance on Cairo Station. The technique is more assured and the political focus stronger in making an implicit critique of Nasser's failure to extend his reforms to the nationalisation of land. Not surprisingly the the novel's 1933 setting is retained - the powerfully told story of peasant unity emerges as far more than merely of historical interest” ( ibid 248).

  

Given its social origins, it was natural for Chahine to welcome the Nasser revolution of 1952, since at first it was essentially a bourgeois nationalist movement without an articulated ideology. In the spirit of national renaissance and renewed patriotism, the film industry flourished and took on a new seriousness.

 

In the 1950s, serious writers such as already noted Nobel prizewinner and author of 45 novels, Naguib Mahfouz (who worked with Chahine on three films (Jamila, Saladin and The Choice), and the socialist novelist Abderrahmane Sharkawai (author of Chahine's second 'realist masterpiece' The Land, Armes ibid 246).

 

The Land

Despite his disagreements with the Egyptian film censors, Chahine's politicisation during the period between the Suez crisis in 1956 and the Six Day War of 1967 took the form of commitment to Nasser's policies which “raised expectations in the Arabs neither Nasser nor Egypt could possibly fulfil” (Peter Mansfield 'The Arabs' quoted Armes 'Third World' 247). An image of a new Saladin who would unite all Arabs and liberate Palestine from Israel was what Chahine intended to project in the period epic Saladin (1963), the making of which he took on at short notice. The more complex allegory of The Choice/ Al-ikhtiar (1970) a murder mystery with a schizophrenic protagonist, a politicisation he admitted was “haphazard,” culminated with The Sparrow/Al-usfur (1973), in which blame for defeat by Israel in the 1967 war is lucidly laid on corruption in the political establishment leading to the film's banning for two years. Rather than abstract theorising Chahine ”continued to depict a living, contradictory reality.” Arguably his later films “achieve a quite remarkable fusion of the political and the personal” (ibid). This sense of growth, Armes suggests, means that “Chahine’s work demands a chronologcal treatment that relates to social and political changes such as Egypt underwent following the overthrow of King Farouk” in a military coup and replacement by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the presidency. 

Following The Land (q.v.) and The Choice, the latter released in the year of Nasser's death, and his replacement by his designated successor Anwar El-Sadat, Chahine carefuly balanced his denouncement of high level corruption in The Choice / (1970) with a final affirmation of patriotic feeling. For the first time in 22 years articles appeared in the Egyptian press attacking the Nasserist revolution.

 

After the start of reprivatization [of the industry] in 1971, the production of realist films decreased rapidly and did not flourish again until after [the assassination] of Sadat in 1981 with the work of a second generation […] New realism appeared, at least regarding its subjects, to be much more pragmatic than the old version, although it functioned according to the same mechanisms. It similarly borrowed from commercial genres, but rather than melodrama it used elements of the action and police film […differing] externally in its choice of environment, mainly that of the urban petty bourgeoisie, and a stronger integration of original locations. (Shafik 142),

 

 Shafik notes that in the late 1970s new cinema currents made their appearance in different Arab countries (184). ”It comprised numerous directions, sinima djidid (New cinema) in Algeria,  sinima al-shab (Young cinema) in Egypt, and al-sinima ai-al badila (Alternative cinema) in Syria). These classifications rarely differentiate between genres in referring to realist or auteur works. In these new Arab cinema d'auteur, howeverunlike in other forms of committed categories such as realism, the radical striving is for personal expression, be it on the formal, aesthetic or content level. In Chahine's The Sparrow /Al-Usfur (1973) the realist narrative showed signs of disintegration indicating the director's new formal orientation, his shift from mainstream and realist cinema toward the auteur film. The Sparrow was shot in 1971 but what Armes refers to as “a directly critical examination of the Nasser era, attacking corruption [in what Chahine] saw as characteristic of the time while celebrating the patriotism of ordinary people” (Armes, Nowell-Smith ed. 664). This did not please the political leadership. The Sparrow was released two years later, after Egypt's Yom Kuppur war against Israel in October 1973. “The basic dramatic structure of a crime and its investigations had been disintegrated by an imposed epic structure (Shafik ibid).”

 

 At the time Chahine was preparing a third increasingly disillusioned look at contemporary Egyptian society and the noveau riche in The Return of the Prodigal Son /Awdat al-ibn al-dall (1976), a wide gulf opening between the steadily more radical thinking of Chahine and the policies pursued by Sadat.


Alexandria...Why?

For Armes “it is not surprising that Chahine, by nature an eclectic director, should turn his attention elsewhere.” A heart attack when still in his early fifties led him to question his own life, and the first result was....Alexandria Why? / Iskandariyya...Iih? (1978), “a splendidly fluent picture of a vanished world - Alexandria in 1942 awaiting the arrival of Rommel's troops.”  The autobiographical concerns of Alexandria...Why? are continued and strengthened in An Egyptian Story (1982), “a directorial self-revelation within the context of popular cinema to rank with anything in Fellini, especially in the fantasy sequences which refuse all claims to realism in a bold blending of the personal and the political;  fictional and documentary, scenes follow the fortunes of Chahine's charismatic filmmaker-hero- alter ego Yehia in Fellini-esque images of his life on trial (Armes Third World Cinema 252).”

 

The third and fourth companions in the Alexandria series are Alexandria Again and Forever/ Iskandariyya Kaman wa Kaman (1989) and Alexandria-New York (2004)Chahine directed the last of his 37 features Is This Chaos?/ Hiya fawda...? in 2007.

 


1970 marked he appearance at the London Film Festival of the first film by Egyptian writer-director Shadi Abdel-Salam (above, 1930-86),The Night of Counting the Years. Salam had previously worked as an art director on Cleopatra, Jerzy Kawalarowicz 's Pharaoh, q.v. 6 (36), and on an episode of Roberto Rossellini's tv series, Mankind's Fight for Survival. Rossellini is acknowledged for his support in the credits of The Night. The original title, El Mummia/The Mummy, presumably was thought misleadingly evocative of a horror film entry, for what was an unexpected sudden art film breakaway from “the hidebound traditions of the local industry.”  In this respect the road to release of The Night was suggested by John Russell Taylor as paralleling the reception of Satyajit Ray's first film Pather Panchali in Bengal, “both incurring envy and bureaucratic interference.” What Armes describes as “a complex study of modern and traditional values seemed to herald a renaissance of Egyptian cinema, the appearance of a “new cinema” familiar throughout the world in the1960s (203, Third World Cinema).” John Gillett described it as “something of an act of faith […] uncompromising and entirely personal. (Monthly  Film Bulletin May 1972). ”

 

The Night of Counting the Years

Salam's film is based on real events. During Ancient Egypt's 21st Dynasty, priests in Thebes tried to stop robbers by moving more than 50 Royal mummies from the Valley of the Kings and burying them in a single tomb. In 1881, treasures from the tomb began appearing on the world antiquities market. Local Horrabat villagers had discovered the tomb and were systematically pillaging its archaeological booty. “The director has evoked the spirit of Ancient Egypt” through a studied, slow narrative creating a brooding atmosphere “concentrating on the moral dilemma of the tribe's younger members (ibid).“

 

Martin Scorsese (quoted by Rod Bishop) has spoken of “the extremely unusual tone of The Night of Counting theYears - ”stately, poetic, with a powerful grasp of time and the sadness it carries.”  Scorsese further attributes this to “the carefully measured pace, the almost ceremonial movement of the camera, the desolate visually ravishing settings, the classical Arabic spoken on the soundtrack, the unsettling music score by the great Italian composer Mario Nascimbene, all working in perfect harmony to contribute to the feeling of fateful inevitability.” Ironically rather than being embraced as a breakthrough Egyptian art feature, the coalescing of these standout qualities kept The Night, an outlier on the shelf, from national release for at least two years despite its positive reception at its premiere, promoted by Rossellini at the Venice Film Festival, and at the 1970 London Film Festival.


Bishop notes that Salam spent the final decade of his life trying unsuccessfully to mount another feature provisionally a companion art film titled Akhenaton the Tragedy of the Great House – the life of Egypt's most fascinating Pharaoh who was labelled a heretic and criminal by many of his peers, and much later by some Egyptologists, as a visionary, the world's first monotheist and revolutionary. Bishop reports that in 2013 in a Dubai Film Festival publication, 475 critics, writers and academics chose The Night of the Living Dead as the greatest Arab film ever made.


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 * Henry Barakat (1914-97) directed 65 features between 1942-93 including many adaptations of successful novels by Egyptian authors alongside popular genre films. He spent much of the thirties in France where he developed a special regard for poetic realism in French cinema and for 19th century classical novels.  


Barakat's first feature was a successful adaptation of a Chekhov story,  Vagabond/Ashareen (1942). He took 6 months to shoot on location what is regarded as his masterpiece, The Nightingale's Prayer/Doaa ei-Karawan (1959), about the oppression of a poor peasant girl by upper class men which challenged the then subject norms for Egyptian cinema, “its success an inspiration for young filmmakers.”


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NOTE - Renumbering is still due to take place


Previous entries in this series can be found if you click the following links. 

 

Sixty Years of International Art Cinema: 1960-2020 - Tables and Directors Lists to Accompany Bruce Hodsdon's Series

 

Notes on canons, methods, national cinemas and more

 

Part One - Introduction

Part Two - Defining Art Cinema

Part Three - From Classicism to Modernism

Part Four - Authorship and Narrative

Part Five - International Film Guide Directors of the Year, The Sight and Sound World Poll, Art-Horror

Part Six (1) - The Sixties, the United States and Orson Welles

Part Six (2) - Hitchcock, Romero and Art Horror

Part Six (3) - New York Film-makers - Elia Kazan & Shirley Clarke  

Part Six (4) - New York Film-makers - Stanley Kubrick Creator of Forms

Part Six (5) ‘New Hollywood’ (1) - Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty, Pauline Kael and BONNIE AND CLYDE

Part Six (6) Francis Ford Coppola: Standing at the crossroads of art and industry

Part 6(7) Altman

6(8) Great Britain - Joseph Losey, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Richard Lester, Peter Watkins, Barney Platts-Mills

6(9) France - Part One The New Wave and The Cahiers du Cinema Group

6(10) France - Part Two - The Left Bank/Rive Gauche Group and an Independent

6(11) France - Part Three - Young Godard

6(12) France - Part Four - Godard:Visionary and Rebel

6 (13) France Part 5 Godard with Gorin, Miéville : Searching for an activist voice

6(14) France Part 6 - Creator of Forms - Bresson 

6 (15) France Part 6 - Creator of Forms - Jacques Tati

6 (16) - Part 6 - Creator of Forms - Carl Th Dreyer

6 (17) - Italy and Luchino Visconti

6(18 - Italy and Roberto Rossellini - Part One

6(19) - Rossellini, INDIA and the new Historical realism

6(20) - Rossellini in Australia

6 (21) - Italy - Michelangelo Antonioni

6 (22) - Italy - Federico Fellini, Ermanno Olmi

6 (23) - Italy - Pasolini, Rosi

6 (24) - Interregnum - Director/Auteur/Autoren

6 (25) West Germany

6 (26) - Alexander Kluge Part One

6 (27) - Alexander Kluge Part Two

6 (28) - The Young German Cinema: Reitz, Schlondorff, von Trotta

6(29 ) West German Cinema - Fassbinder

6 (30) West German Cinema - Straub & Huillet

6(31) - New Spanish Cinema

6 (32) - Bunuel in the 60s

6 (33) Nordic Cinemas - Bergman and Widerberg

6 (34) - Scandinavia - Sjoman, Zetterling, Troell

6 (35) - East Germany - Konrad Wolf, Frank Beyer

6 (36) - East Central Europe - Poland

6(37) - East Central Europe - Hungary Part One

6 (38) East Central Europe - Miklos Jancso

6 (39) East Central Europe - Czechoslovakia

6 (40) East Central Europe - Yugoslavia

6 (41) - The Soviet Union

6 (42) - Asia - Japan - Part One

6 (43) - Japan - Part Two

6 (44) - Japan - Part Three - Shohei Imamura

6 (45) Asia - India Pt 1 - Satyajit Ray

6 (46) Asia - India Pt 2- Ghatak, Dutt, Sen, Parallel Cinema

6 (47) Asia - China - Part 1: Mapping Chinese Cinema 

6(47) Asia- China - Part 2: The Shanghai Revival (1947-1949)

6 (48) - Brazil Pt 1- Cinema Novo, dos Santos, Rocha

6 (49) Brazil Pt 2 - de Andrade, Diegues, Guerra

6(50) - Latin America - Argentina

6 (51) - Chile - Allende and Popular Unity

6 (52) - Latin America - Bolivia, Jorge Sanjine

6 (55) - Cuba

6 (56) - Iran, The Middle East and Africa

Thursday, 6 August 2026

On 4K Warner Archive Blu-ray disc - David Hare unpacks NIGHT AND DAY (Michael Curtiz, USA, 1946)

Screens from Warner Archive’s new 4K to Blu-ray of the perplexing festival of illusion and pretence that is Michael Curtiz’ “biographical” movie of Cole Porter, NIGHT AND DAY from 1946.





The screen (above) of Cary Grant as Cole and Monty Woolley as himself is the first gesture of straightwashing that, given Code enforcement buries the homosexuality of either/or both personalities.
But this is only the beginning for this two hour excursion into artifice, illusion, denial, reinvention and massaging via screenplay and production design. The only thing Curtiz and the crew appear to render naturalistically is the presentation of the 23 Porter numbers that are beaded throughout the action of the picture in what can basically be called diegetic form. In other words, in situ. But even here the shots only show Cary/Cole playing the piano, while the full might of the giant brassy Warner Orchestra blasts away in synch, albeit nowhere to be seen.
The artifice keeps multiplying with the advent of new characters. In an early sequence set in France after the war (Great) the movie introduces a French chanteuse, “Gabrielle”, played by an almost unrecognizable Eve Arden. For the one and only time in her career, Eve opens her mouth and starts speaking with a broad French accent. Or is it? As she moves around the set gesticulating as only Arden could the accent seems, and in fact is, perfectly genuine and convincing. Arden finishes the sequence with a rendition of “I’m Unlucky at Gambling” sung perfectly in French. We never see her again.(More’s the pity.) 



The movie casts some still fresh actors in bits, like Dorothy Malone here in short bobbed hairstyle and a polished quietly spoken New England Patrician accent. Other performers include Jane Wyman in Auburn Blonde rinse, directed to shout her lines. At one point Cole/Cary is introduced to an up and coming vedette, played by Mary Martin, as “herself” as she takes on an ingenue bit. She’s the one and only “real” thing or characterization in the picture. Other delights include Paul Cavanaugh, a Warner second stringer sporting a blonde rinsed marcel wave. And Sig Ruman also playing himself, badly.
But by far the strangest and most intriguing aspect of the film’s quasi-realist-artifice is the color design. I cannot figure who determined it but the picture color codes major sequences with massed blocked single color. Thus in an early number an unnaturally acid Blue is sprayed to cover the entire background of the frame effectively creating a kind of geometric picture frame effect for the sequence. The wardrobe has been put together in a combination of drabs and secondary acids including that eye burning blue, morbid taupes, and dirty greens. Only when the show moves outdoors do we get a “natural” palettte. The duality seems rigorously enforced.


For the players, Curtiz manages to horsewhip almost everyone into brisk delivery, given the doggedly adulatory nature of the biographical screenplay and the downplaying of Cole’s wife, played by Alexis Smith with a gloomy resignation. The strangest performer in the show is Cary Grant who looks more often than not like he’s definitely not enjoying the job. Gossip records major clashes between Curtiz and Grant all through the shoot But so did Errol Flynn who loathed Curtiz’ dictatorial method. In Errol’s case the whip cracking paid off. With Cary it doesn’t always. But all this makes for compelling, sometimes hair raising viewing.
Nobody can call this movie in any way a success, but the presentation of 23 numbers is an unalloyed joy, and the sheer perversity that seem to cloak the picture in supernatural shade is frankly irresistible.
The new 4K master and disc is, as always with Warner Archive, flawless.

For much more comment and reaction scroll down to this item on David's Facebook Page where his thoughts were first posted.

Wednesday, 5 August 2026

In response to a recent question - The Top Ten Posts of all time on the Film Alert 101 blog - David Stratton, Tony Rayns, Ross Barnard, Barrie Pattison, Bruce Hodsdon, Tom Ryan, Peter Hourigan and Karl Quinn feature

 

Posts

Melbourne International Film Festival (online) - David Stratton has some thoughts about MIFF's decision to withdraw THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN (Sandra Wollner, Austria, 2020) from its program
Posted by Film Alert 101
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Tony Rayns writes an open letter to the people of Busan supporting the work of Busan International Film Festival Director Lee Yongkwan
Posted by Film Alert 101
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Calling all fans of Hollywood Pre-code Movies - Ross Barnard sets up an online film club.
Posted by Film Alert 101
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Adelaide Film Festival - An open letter to Bill Mousoulis about Angie Black's THE FIVE PROVOCATIONS
Posted by Film Alert 101
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The Current Cinema - Barrie Pattison reports on the Chinese blockbuster THE EIGHT HUNDRED (Guan Hu, China, 2020)
Posted by Film Alert 101
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Sixty Years of International Art Cinema - Bruce Hodsdon continues his series - 6 (3) ‘New York’ filmmakers: Elia Kazan and Shirley Clarke
Posted by Film Alert 101
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"This is not how it looks" - Tom Ryan talks to Michael Winterbottom at the time of the release of NINE SONGS (UK, 2004)
Posted by Film Alert 101
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Melbourne International Film Festival (Online) - Tom Ryan takes exception to MIFF censoring its selection
Posted by Film Alert 101
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Streaming on Netflix - Peter Hourigan alerts cinephiles to the availability of twelve titles by the Egyptian master Youssef Chahine
Posted by Film Alert 101
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Melbourne International Film Festival (online) - Karl Quinn responds to Tom Ryan and David Stratton about MIFF’s decision to pull THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN from its program and reports on his interview with the director Sandra Wollner
Posted by Film Alert 101
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The Current Cinema - The editor cant resist a few remarks on THE ODYSSEY (Christopher Nolan, USA, 2026)

 


OK...here's my thoughts on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

First. I haven't read the book. Then again I hadn't, (and still haven't) read The Bible when I saw Nicholas Ray's King of Kings and George Stevens The Greatest Story Ever Told though I was a lot more familiar with the basic story. I might try and read The Odyssey now, just as I might try and read Albert Camus' The Outsider after seeing the recent Ozon film version.

Second. I watched the film at the Ulladulla Arcadia Twin Cinemas at 10.00 am with a half dozen others, most around my own age. The charge for the toilets at the end of the 2.46 minute running time of the actual visuals (which I presume means that there are 20 minutes of credits to make up the advertised time of 186 minutes) was hectic.

Third. I therefore did not see the film on IMAX, 70mm or any other advanced format beyond the usual presumably 4K projection that is the standard these days. For some that might mean I saw something resembling a VHS pan and scan tape compared to the real thing that Nolan shot entirely with IMAX film cameras. 

In that light I have decided that, with permission, I am going to filch Ross Campbell's report posted on Facebook about his IMAX experience. Ross writesSaw Christopher Nolan's film THE ODYSSEY this afternoon at Melbourne's IMAX cinema. Congratulations to Kevin Adams and the entire IMAX projection team for their splendid presentation of this epic achievement. THE ODYSSEY is the first full-length feature film to be made entirely on full-frame 15-perforation 70 mm IMAX film. Cinema’s biggest format. Cinema’s biggest screen. And it’s film!

"Melbourne's IMAX is one of a very small number of venues in the world, and the only one in the southern hemisphere, that still maintains these remarkable projectors where the film runs horizontally through the machine. Melbourne’s projection team has become internationally recognised for keeping the 15/70 equipment in first-class operating condition. Projectionists from other countries have looked to Melbourne as one of the exemplars of non-digital IMAX presentation.
"The 15,000-watts of combined sound, distributed across the front screen channels, side surrounds, rear surrounds, overhead channels and the sub-bass system, envelopes the audience in a totally immersive experience. Sitting centre towards the back rows, it was enthralling.
"I look forward to seeing THE ODYSSEY again, currently screening at the Sun Theatre Yarraville, where it’s being shown on film in the 2.2:1 widescreen 70 mm format; it’s in the Barkly auditorium where Rob Murphy and Brian Davis had such success with Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT in 2016.
"Prior to seeing the film, I found a very helpful podcast from The Rest Is History team on YouTube where they give a detailed chronological account of Homer’s ODYSSEY. Both Homer and Nolan delight in playing with a non-linear presentation of the story: flashbacks within flashbacks? Decidedly. The Rest Is History even has fun in suggesting an Australian connection with the emphasis on ‘barbecues’. Theirs is an engrossing account of THE ODYSSEY to prepare one for Nolan’s magnificently imagined film. The first sight of the Trojan Horse alone is worth the price of admission.

Fourth. I admired Nolan's decision to avoid any mock Shakespearean dialogue. The conversations are down to earth. There are no four letter words uttered that I recall.

Fifth. I had some trouble following the narrative, the individual highlight sequences being straightforward, as it cut between pasts and presents in a sometimes complicated manner though from the moment Odysseus returns home, the last hour or so is pretty straightforward.

Sixth. For a cinephile Nolan doesn't seem to have learnt many lessons regarding choreographing hand to hand combat and battles in general. A look over the symmetries of late Kurosawa from Throne of Blood through Yojimbo and Sanjuro would have been a big help and maybe some quick pointers might have been gained even from the Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies and from just about anything made by Tsui Hark.

Seventh. There is music, throbbing and rather undulating throughout. It places a layer of bubbling and unmusical sound over everything. Not sure if that isn't finally just irritating.

Eighth. I dont quite understand why Odysseus had to keep his identity secret when he finally returned. His son twigs who he is but no one else does. He has to have the epic battle in the Palace to round out the action so I assume it's all related.

Ninth. Nolan's current career arc strikes me as somewhat similar to Cecil B De Mille, William Wyler and George Stevens who all used their authority to make more and more bloated pictures as their careers headed for conclusions (I know Wyler made a handful of pictures after Ben-Hur including, The Children's Hour andThe Collector and Stevens made The Only Game in Town to finish off but you know what I mean). Nolan is a way away from the conclusion of his career so I recommend for next, I know I know, something like The Collector, or maybe something like Following, Memento or even a remake of some little known European thriller like Insomnia. Maybe Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques...just saying...

Sunday, 2 August 2026

Adrian Martin starts a new Substack blog. A sample and a link to subscriptions...

 Melbourne-born, Barcelona-based Adrian Martin has started his own Substack blog drawing attention to the massive catalogue of his past and continuing writing. Below is a sample he has sent through. If you would like a free 7 Day trial then click through here. For a sample, keep reading..

Three Scenes of the 1970s

A suite of moviegoing reminiscences from 2017


1. In the Realm

In 1977 I was 17, not yet old enough to legally attend the Melbourne International Film Festival. And certainly not old enough to view the uncensored print of Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976), a Japanese film already notorious for its unbridled – and sometimes unsimulated – sex scenes. But there I was, unaccompanied, bravely queuing up with thousands of strangers outside the enormous, old-style Palais theatre, very early on a Saturday morning, to see this ultra-special event, in 35 millimetre celluloid on a vast, loud screen.

The feeling of engaging in an illicit adventure both before and during the screening was overwhelming; I was convinced that the cops would bust in at any second and drag me – only me – whimpering from the theatre.

Near the end of the session – as the genitals of Kichi (Tatsuya Fuji), voluntarily strangled to death, are tenderly severed and brandished by his enthusiastic lover, Sada (Eiko Matsuda) – we all heard a bloodcurdling scream, issuing from a distressed audience member up in the highest seats of this picture palace. Emergency service was required for this suitably transgressed spectator.

Afterwards, in the nearby back streets of this suburb along which I walked home in a daze, an even stranger apparition seized the world – this one more in tune with the Georges Bataille-style surrealism and eroticism of the film just witnessed. Parked cars, with no one visible in any seat, rocked gently or violently back and forth, as if seized by a magical will. Clearly, some spectators, unfazed – or perhaps incited – by the final castration scene had raced to their mobile bedrooms to live out the movie before its credits had even stopped rolling.

I made it home safely that day, avoiding police arrest for my crime against state restrictions over my delicate consciousness. But I had to wait twenty-three years before seeing In the Realm of the Senses again in any form but the pathetically dubbed and cut video version that circulated for decades. On screen, fully restored and re-released, I saw that Oshima’s film had lost none of its hushed, riveting power.

But in 2000 there was no scandal: no public figure made a fuss over it; the cops were not called in; nobody screamed; the empty cars in nearby alleyways sat forlornly still.

As a wise man said: “Only those who lived before the revolution know life’s sweetness”.

Serail

2. Anamorphosis

As hard as it is to imagine from the viewpoint of today, Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) was enough of a commercial success in Melbourne cinemas of the mid-to-late 1970s to create space for the release of an even more experimental film hailing from the Rivette ‘family’: namely, Eduardo de Gregorio’s Sérail (aka Surreal Estate, 1976). Argentinean-born de Gregorio had been a script collaborator on Céline and Julie, always present during shooting to provide any dialogue or extra ideas needed on the spot.

Re-seen today, Sérail loses none of its strangeness. [Note: I will be writing more about the film in a forthcoming issue of Narrow Margin in 2027.] A British novelist (Corin Redgrave) in France is drawn in by a sprawling, atmospheric, mostly empty manor where two mysterious women (Bulle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier from Céline and Julie) spin stories and adopt fake identities. Lurking in the background is none other than Leslie Caron, perhaps more of a Mabusean manipulator than she is letting on.

But what happened to the ending? From the ‘70s, I retain an absolutely vivid memory of the final shot: we are serenely looking at this haunted house from an exterior, distant vantage point when, suddenly, it is as if (pre-David Lynch) a lens is removed from the camera, utterly warping the image. It’s a beautiful flourish: this film about how fiction devours life itself auto-destructs at the end, its fragile illusion going up in smoke.

However, when I test this recollection out on friends around the world, no one can confirm it – and the visual effect is definitely not included on the director-approved DVD edition of Sérail. (De Gregorio himself died in 2012).

I am forced, finally, to accept the hypothesis of another Melbourne cinephile from those years: it was probably the cinema’s projectionist, anxious to set up for the next session (of an altogether different film), who yanked off the anamorphic lens that would have been necessary to unsqueeze the print of the widescreen Sérail.

In this instance, at least, I am grateful that the projectionist’s intervention – his personal contribution to the unwritten, global history of expanded cinema – was perfectly in tune with meta-fictional conceits of the film itself.

Rio Bravo

3. The Ciné-fils

At the very end of the ‘70s, I attended what must have been one of the last ‘children’s Saturday matinees’ scheduled at a suburban cinema situated far from Melbourne’s centre – and most certainly the last to screen an old, classic Western, a ritual that had been slowly dying out across the decade. Ten years previously, when I was a child, my father had often taken me to the cinema to watch Westerns, old and new.

But here was my golden opportunity, as a young cinephile, to see Howard Hawks’ mythic Rio Bravo (1959) – the film beloved of critics from Robin Wood to Serge Daney – projected on the big screen.

I was the only adult present. Just before the screening started, several parents dropped off their very young kids at the cinema door. These children tolerated about one minute of this ancient movie before deciding to run around the aisles, shouting and playing.

Except for one small boy, who detached himself from the group … and silently came to sit next to me. At intermission (it’s a relatively long Hollywood film), he looked up at me and plaintively inquired: “Do you like this film, Mister?” I answered, as enthusiastically but also as pedagogically as I could: “Yes, I sure do! It’s great!”

The film started again, and the boy silently stayed in his seat for the duration, eyes fixed on the screen. At the end, when the lights went up, he said “Bye, Mister”, and walked out into the street where one of his parents was waiting to pick him up.

© Adrian Martin September 2017

Saturday, 1 August 2026

On Apple TV - Rod Bishop recommends STAR CITY (Ronald D Moore, Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi, USA, 2026)


After five seasons of
 For All Mankind on Apple TV, the showrunners Moore, Wolper and Nedivi have produced an official spin-off.

It’s another space-race alternative history and Star City starts with the same premise: the Russians beat the Americans to a crewed landing on the Moon. But the similarities end there. This new series plots its own course as a paranoid spy thriller embedded in a counterfactual account of the 1970s Soviet space program.

The Russian “Chief Designer”, played by the underrated Rhys Ifens (channeling Max Von Sydow), pushes for a new, clandestine operation to send a crew of cosmonauts on a nine-month mission to Venus and rack up another space victory for the glory of Mother Russia.

The Americans have other ideas of course, and Star City spends almost as much time on spy craft as is does on space exploration. Le Carre’s “Moscow Rules” apply here and the malevolent Head of KGB surveillance Colonel Lyudmilla Rascova (the equally underrated Anna Maxwell Martin), holds command over the space scientists. She has to combat traitors and the dastardly Americans, with their CIA sponsored espionage, subterfuge and shadowy agents.

The grainy, gloomy cinematography and the totalitarian brutalist buildings of Star City give the series an unmistakable 1970s feel, reminiscent of the television adaptation of le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. George Smiley would feel at home here.

It’s one of those series that gets better with each passing episode, and as the surveillance increases, so does the tension. Every character comes to feel they are being watched, and only one mistake will end their careers and maybe their lives. Things might turn worse at any moment; like the old 1970s saying “paranoia is true perception”.

Ryan Britt: “Sometimes, and this is a compliment, you forget this is a show about space travel…When Star City is at its best it’s a slow-burning spy show with the subject of optimism under extreme pressure.””