“Pari” - Dariush Mehrjui (1995)

In the mid 1990s Dariush Mehrjui made three successive films (Sara, 1993, Pari 1995, and Leila, 1997), each focusing on an Iranian woman trying to find fulfillment in a society not normally sympathetic to a woman’s plight. The first two films of this trilogy, Sara and Pari, were based on well-known works of Western literature and adapted to Iranian circumstances. In the case of Sara, which was based on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the adaptation was straightforward, since the Iranian social context matched well with the 19th century social environment described by Ibsen. But Pari, which was based on works by J. D. Salinger, was a more difficult stretch, and I would say not so successful. Even so, Pari stands (as does Salinger’s work, in general) as an interesting attempt to deal with philosophical/spiritual struggles, and it deserves more than passing consideration.

Normally, I concentrate on a film’s own narrative, as it stands, and pay little attention to its original sources from other media.  However, in this case I will make some explicit comparisons with Salinger’s relevant stories – “Franny” (1955) [1], “Zooey” (1957) [2], and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948) [3].  Although there are necessary changes to fit Salinger’s stories into an appropriate Iranian context, it is surprising just how closely Mehrjui’s film matches up with Salinger’s work and in some places is almost a literal transcription.  Since Iran had no copyright relations with the United States, there were no contractual agreements made at the time of production.  Nevertheless, Salinger, who was always litigious about his intellectual property privileges, managed to have his lawyers block a planned screening of Pari  in the New York in 1998.

As useful background information for this work, it is worth pointing out that across the relatively sparse literary output over the course of Salinger’s life, many of his stories concern various experiences of the fictional Glass family over a period of years in mid-20th century New York City. In particular, the family focus is on the Glass family’s seven precociously intellectual children, particularly (in descending orders of age) Seymour, Buddy, Zooey and Franny, all of whom appear in altered form in the film Pari.  The 1948 suicide of Seymour Glass, the oldest and most charismatically brilliant of the Glass children, is described in Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, the story that launched Salinger to literary stardom.  Parts of this story, though in altered form and set later in time, are depicted in Pari.  But for the most part, Pari reflects the two stories, “Franny” and “Zooey”, which Salinger set close together in time in 1955.  Together, those two stories relate the development of Franny’s spiritual crisis, which was occasioned by her reading a 19th century book, The Way of a Pilgrim, which she found on  Seymour’s long unattended bookshelf.  The Way of a Pilgrim and its sequel, The Pilgrim Continues his Way, describe the spiritual journey of a wandering mendicant monk in Russia who finds spiritual bliss by ceaselessly repeating the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me") as a mantra.  Franny, who is about 23 years old, then has long discussions in this connection with her brother Zooey, who is two years older.  Although Seymour had died seven years earlier, considerable reference is made to his strong intellectual influence on both Zooey and Franny in those two stories.

Transferring a written fictional story into film often presents problems to the filmmaker, particularly in connection with how to present cinematically the thoughts of the characters that were described in prose in the original text.  In this respect Salinger’s prose would seem to offer  some advantages, since overt conversations dominate over internal monologues in his stories. But with Salinger, the long conversations are taken to the limit, and in his stories occupy almost the entire story space; there is very little depiction in the way of physical action or movement. Mehrjui does his best to depict as much of this conversational material as possible in cinematic action, but there are limits to what can be accomplished in this respect.  Another issue that had to be dealt with was that Salinger’s stories are anchored in the intellectual New York cultural milieu heavily influenced by its Jewish population [4,5]. Translating the wise-cracking New York social culture banter into an Iranian Islamic context was a real challenge, which turned out to be only partially met successfully.  Despite these difficulties, though, it is surprising to me to see just how faithful many of the scenes in Pari are to the Salinger’s original text.

In Pari, the principal characters are

• Pari (Salinger’s Franny) – played by Niki Karimi, who had the lead role of Sara in Mehrjui’s previous outing
• Dadashi (Salinger’s Zooey) – played by Ali Mosaffa
• Safa (Salinger’s Buddy) – played by Khosro Shakibai
• Assad (Salinger’s Seymour) – played by Khosro Shakibai

And the film narrative goes through four stages:

1. Pari’s Story (essentially Salinger’s “Franny”)
2. Dadashi’s Story (essentially the first part of Salinger’s “Zooey”)
3. Assad’s Story (a modified portion of Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”)
4. Pari and Dadashi

1.  Pari’s Story
The film begins with two scenes that are drawn from the story “Zooey” and can be understood within the conversational context in that story but appear to be quite mysterious and without explanation in Mehrjui’s film.  In the first such scene, Pari is shown in a swimming pool and being pushed down under the water by her companions (this was a dream that Franny relates in Salinger’s story).  In the second mysterious scene, Pari is shown entering an empty college classroom and obsessively filling the blackboard with philosophical epigrams, after which she erases the entire blackboard. This is also described in context in “Zooey”, but is totally unmotivated here in the film. 

Pari is then shown in her college, expressing intense dissatisfaction with the arrogance and pedantry of her college philosophy professor, who is lecturing the class on Khayyam and Rumi.  She seems to feel that her teachers are merely posturing and not penetrating to the ultimate truths of these great thinkers.  Fed up with what is going on around her in Tehran, she decides to take a bus to Isfahan and visit some family members and her fiancé there. Her fiancé meets her at the bus station and starts talking about his own intellectual endeavors at his university, which account Pari also finds boring and self-serving.They then go to a restaurant, and Pari tells her fiancé about the Sufi book she has been reading (this book is like The Way of the Pilgrim, but here it describes a wandering monk in Khorasan and his repetitive prayer makes reference to God, not Jesus).

The Sufi book that Pari has discovered has pointed her to a new way of conscious engagement with her surroundings that is entirely different from the academic detachment that she has found so dissatisfying and pseudointellectual at the university.  In fact the Sufi-inspired mantra-prayer technique is entirely distinct from any intellectual contemplation of God.  You don’t even have to believe in what you are doing; you are simply instructed to endlessly continue the repetitive chanting.  The argument goes that if one continues the practice, whether believing in it or not, one will be transformed into a sublime state of consciousness. The technique has similarities with the Brahmanic “Om”, Zen “No-Mind”, and Tibetan Buddhist chanting, which suggests that it has been rediscovered many times and in many places around the world. 

Pari tries to tell her fiancé how important her mantra-prayer has become to her and how it reflects truths from other religions, such as Buddhism, but her fiancé is dismissive and merely asks her, “do you really believe this stuff?”  Under increasing emotional stress, Pari rushes out to the restroom and eventually faints.  She is taken back home and after witnessing the death of an aged relative, decides to go back to Tehran.

2.  Dadashi’s Story
The film now cuts to Dadashi in Tehran, who is reading a long letter from his brother Safa.  In this scene there is an account from Safa's perspective of Assad’s mysterious suicide by self-immolation. Dadashi’s mother approaches him and asks him to see if he can straighten out Pari, whose spiritual crisis is now taken to be a nervous breakdown.

Dadashi goes ahead and finds Pari sleeping on the couch, and he launches into a long conversation with her about the books she has been reading.  In this sequence, Dadashi comes across as rather dogmatically overconfident, as he insists that Pari should surrender to God (Ali’s teaching), rather than succumbing to the arrogance of selfishly trying to find her salvation on her own and make her own judgments.   Pari is unconvinced by Dadashi’s rants and urges him to leave her alone.

3.  Assad’s Story
Dadashi now enters Assad’s old study and examines some of his brother’s old notebooks. The scene then moves to a depiction of Assad’s suicide some years earlier.  Assad in this sequence is shown to be generally benign and thoughtful, but he has apparently reached some irreversible level of philosophical despair.  He speaks cordially to small child that he meets and then quietly and deliberately arranges his self-immolation.

4.  Pari and Dadashi
Dadashi approaches Pari again, this time by calling her on the phone and pretending that he is Safa.  When Pari sees through that ruse, she runs away.  This sequence of the film then diverges from Salinger’s text, as Dadashi finds Pari and dramatically challenges her to burn herself alive as Assad had done.  The film closes with Pari acceptance of Dadashi’s retelling of Safa’s story that if one is dying on a hillside with his throat cut and a bunch of women walk by carrying jugs on their head, one should still be able to sit up and see how the women carry their jugs safely over the hill.

On the whole, Pari doesn’t manage to capture the charm of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. For one thing, the Dadashi character is just a bit too pushy and arrogant in this depiction. The New York energy of Zooey fails to translate into an acceptable Iranian equivalent. Similarly, Niki Karimi’s Pari character is bit too intense and strained to gain a sympathetic audience here. And the intellectual repartee of the story doesn’t generally come across.

The first part of the film, though, which essentially shows Salinger’s "Franny” story, is more successful. Here the characteristic Salinger concern about phoniness and authenticity, and the inevitably accompanying awareness that an obsession about other peoples’ phoniness becomes, itself, an affectation, is reasonably well portrayed.

Another thing that I liked was Mehrjui’s ending to the film.  The film's closing story about the women jug bearers actually comes earlier in Salinger’s story “Zooey”, as something of a passing reflection on the part of Buddy (Safa in this film). In the movie, though, Merhjui has elevated this curious metaphor to a final image that stands for acceptance of, and ultimately embracing, life’s eternal mysteries. In this finally enlightening perspective, Pari’s ceaseless prayer is shown to be simply a way to maintain one’s meditative immersion in the immediacy and wonder of life, as it happens right in front of us all the time.

★★½

Notes:

1. J. D. Salinger, “Franny”, The New Yorker, January 1955.
2. J. D. Salinger, “Zooey”, The New Yorker, May 1957.
3. J. D. Salinger, "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish," The New Yorker, January 1948.
4. “History of Jews in New York City”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_New_York_City (accessed May 16, 2013).
5. “Glass Family”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_family (accessed May 17, 2013).
6. J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey, Penguin Books, 1964

“The City of Photographers” - Sebastián Moreno (2006)

The Chilean documentary The City of Photographers (La Ciudad De Los Fotógrafos, 2006), directed by Sebastián Moreno, has valuable offerings on several dimensions. For one thing it provides an interesting angle on the turbulent period of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990). This is a fascinating story of how ordinary citizens used their cameras as witnesses to stand up for the basic human right of expression. These heroic people in Santiago, Chile, stood alone, because the US government, rather than defending democratic interests, was perniciously intervening on the side of the oppressive dictatorship at the time.  So on this level, the film presents material for further reflection (in the light of the "Arab Spring") concerning the somewhat ill-defined term of crowd-sourcing.  But perhaps the most significant dimension of the film concerns what it reveals about the nature of narrative witnessing.  What role can the witness play, and how does visual imagery play a part?  After all, this documentary film is not only reflective but reflexive: it is a documentary about documentarians.

Because the film was made for Chilean audiences, for whom the gory details of the Pinochet dictatorship were all too familiar, there is little coverage in the film concerning some of those historical details. So it might be useful to recall that for all of its history prior to the Pinochet period, Chile had perhaps the strongest traditions of democratic government in South America. But given the enormous wealth and power divide between the privileged classes and the common people throughout Latin America, there were always simmering social tensions in those countries that made the option of Communism politically attractive to some sectors of society.  In particular, Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution was always a model for emulation, and the US government was determined to thwart a repeat of something like that happening again on the content. Chile, because of its vast copper reserves, was one particularly important theater in this drama.  Due in part to its robust democratic institutions, Chile was a seething cauldron for this political contest, and during the 1960s there emerged a united front of leftist Chilean political parties, led by Salvador  Allende, that vied for political control.  The US CIA engaged in various interventionist tactics to block Allende, but in the end they were unable to prevent his coming to power in 1970 [1].  This was a major worldwide event, because it marked the first, and perhaps only, time that a fully socialist government (i.e. fully committed to Marxist socialist principles) came to power via democratic elections.     

The US government then actively encouraged (although the extent to which it offered any actual material support at that point is unclear) for the military coup d’etat that installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator in 1973. Thereafter the US government actively supported the “Operation Condor” operation of right-wing South American governments, including the Pinochet regime, to suppress and terrorize all political opposition [2]. Among the activities of this so-called “dirty war” of oppression were acts of “disappearing” political opponents: victims were first tortured to death and then vanished from sight.  US citizens, even today, find it almost impossible to believe that their own government could have supported such murders and torture, so they tended to discount the evidence when presented – particularly when the evidence was not well documented and could thereby be dismissed as hearsay (which is a typical problem when dealing with secretive operations involving military intelligence).  For example a few years later, former CIA operative Jesse Leaf revealed that the CIA had taught torture techniques, based on captured Nazi documents, to the SAVAK secret police of the government of Iran ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi [3,4,5].  Again, US citizens could not bring themselves to believe that their own people supported torture – in fact torture that was worse than waterboarding, incidentally. 

What did it take for US citizens finally to wake up to the realization that their government supports torture?  It was graphic, pictorial evidence from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that proved to be inarguable [6].  There it was shown in pictures for all to see.  This kind of visual revelation is what The City of Photographers is all about.  It was brave photographers merely doing their civic duty who revealed the atrocities that were being committed by the Pinochet government.  This had political consequences for the evolution of Chilean society, and it serves as a general reminder for us today, too.

The story of these photographers essentially begins in 1978 when one of them, Luis Navarro, discovered the abandoned Lonquen mine, where he discovers the remains of fifteen laborers who had been tortured to death and buried there in 1973. They had been made to “disappear”. This photographic evidence was the first step in opening up to the world the kinds of atrocities that were being committed by the Chilean dictatorship.

It should be remembered that not everyone in Chile was against the Pinochet dictatorship.  The privileged clashes felt that Pinochet was a bulwark against Communist chaos.  As long as the Chilean government could keep hidden their “dirty war” tactics, it could retain support from a significant portion of those who proceeded with business as usual.  But photographic evidence is difficult to deny and can provide revelations.  More and more photographers began to join the cause of providing documentary evidence concerning the oppressive tactics of the military police.  In 1981 they formed the Independent Photographers Guild Association (AFI was the acronym in Spanish), and this provided them with accreditation as a professional body.

These people were street photographers, most of whom were, I believe, free-lance operators who sold their photographs to various media outlets. It was an open group of men and women that could be joined by anyone with a camera and the passion to reveal the truth, and among those shown in the film are the following participants who comment and reflect at the time of the film production (2006) on their photojournalistic activities of twenty years earlier:

• Jose Moreno (the father of director Sebastián Moreno)
• Luis Navarro
• Claudio Perez
• Paz Errazuiz
• Inez Paulino
• Percy Lam
• Kena Lorenzini
• Jose Duran
• Oscar Navarro
• Marcelo Montecinos

This is very much a human story, as people describe how they joined the guild and found what became a shared mission and their personal calling.  As time went on, leftist demonstrators against the regime became their friends, counting on them to record the police brutality that usually ensued when there was a demonstration.  Since the political activists wanted to hold their demonstrations without the police knowing about them in advance, they would secretly inform the photographers about their upcoming events.  Some of the photographers struggled with this in connection with their feelings of sympathy for the activists and at the same time their felt need to maintain a sense of reportorial objectivity. Eventually it became something of a cat-and-mouse game, with the activists, the police, and the photographers all becoming personally familiar with each other, even though they were on opposite sides of an ongoing argument.

Soon the photographers discovered that there were about 1200 apprehended and missing people – people who had been disappeared, and they felt the need to make these people reappear to the public eye by publicizing photographs of them.  But for about 500 of the disappeared people, there were no available photographs, so the photographers set about the task of finding past photos of these people and creating a pictorial memorial in ceramic tiles of all of them.  This reflects an underlying theme of the film: a person’s photographic image is more real than a mere description of that person in words.  The image evokes a sense of presence about the person – this person truly existed and had a life, just like the rest of us.  As Ana Gonzales, one of the mothers who had lost children to government disappearance, said, “not having had a photo of your family is somehow not having had part in the history of mankind.”

To counter the public’s growing awareness of government atrocities, the government took various measures against the photographers.  For awhile they banned all images from magazines. So the journals responded by publishing issues with blank-out spaces with the word “censored” where images were intended on some pages. And the people began wearing enlarged prints of disappeared people’s photos around their necks on the streets, keeping the ultimate question about their whereabout constantly in the faces of the authorities. 

The government also tried to infiltrate the group with spies and informers, but the photographers were quick to learn how to identify the lack of genuineness of a government snitch. 

As the photographers continued their investigations, they would occasionally suffer beatings at the hands of the police.  One of their number, Oscar Navarro, even got the nickname “Kamikaze” for his willingness to risk plunging into the midst of some dangerous encounters. But there were more sinister things than beatings; they learned that the CNI (the Chilean internal intelligence agency) was murdering people as part of their “dirty war” activities. One of the AFI members, Rodgrigo Rojas, was an idealistic teenager who had committed himself to the AFI photojournalistic movement. While photographing one newsworthy event on the road, the military poured gasoline over him and immolated him.  The surviving photographers who recollected him twenty years later still shared a sense of guilt and sadness for not having restrained the young boy from pursuing the dangerous operations in which they were engaged.  The AFI photographers lost other good friends this way, too.  The Chilean academic Jose Manuel Parada was a good friend of the photographers.  One day the bodies of Parada and two of his academic colleagues were found dumped by the side of the road with their throats slit. 

In addition to such butchery, the government tried to discredit the photographers.  Luis Navarro was arrested while photographing Pinochet entering the government palace and held for five days.  We are not informed what they did to him, but there is a suggestion that he was abused. Afterwards the government propagated a false story that Navarro had been a government informer for years. Some of the public believed the story, and it took Navarro years to recover his reputation from the slander.

Over the years, the violence took its toll on many of the photographers.  Some of them wondered if they were getting caught up in an eternal narrative of violence.  They asked themselves if they were actively looking for violence, seeding the world with their own preconceptions.  They wondered what was happening to their souls.  Oscar Navarro is still disturbed twenty years later by the time in those days when he asked a police-beaten boy to remove his hands covering his face.  When the boy did so, Navarro saw (and photographed) that the boy’s eye had been gouged out by a police baton.  Navarro had earlier said that his camera was his weapon, but his sense of powerlessness on that occasion still lingers with him.

But despite all the tragic occurrences, this film is still a story of triumph. These “ordinary” people (ordinary in the sense that they did not have authorized power from the establishment) had collectively stood together and used their cameras to provide a social witness. What they captured were pictures, and these pictures had a richness to them that conveyed, in way that words could never do, the horror of what they were witnessing.  Such witnessing offers a lesson for the rest of us. In an age when governments and commercial organizations are using electronic media to invade our private spaces, they also often reject the people's right to record government and corporate depredations in the public space.

So we need to  keep in mind the distinctions between public and private spaces. People have a right to privacy; but they also have a right to free speech, i.e. public expression, in the public space. The photographers in The City of Photographers were intensely aware of the ambiguities of this process.  As I see it, they often asked themselves the difficult question concerning to what extent were they capturing reality or actually making it. This is a problem that cannot be avoided. Every witness to an event, every documentarian, is also a participant. But we all do believe in a shared "reality" and a “true” (mutually agreed on) narrative description of what has happened. And the richness of visual imagery provided by photography is irrefutable. When photographic evidence is presented to the public, it is up to the public to decide what to make of it. The AFI photographers in Chile were aware of this challenge and conscientiously and humanely tried to operate within the inevitable compromising constraints entailed. From all of this we can see that there is a task set before us to which all of us interested in helping to defend and preserve democracy around the world can contribute – "we’re all this together”.  This is what the AFI members of The City of Photographers have shown us.

★★★½

Notes:

1. “United States intervention in Chile”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervention_in_Chile, accessed 25 April 2013.
2. “Operation Condor”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor, accessed 25 April 2013.
3. Seymour M. Hersh, “Ex-Analyst Says C.I.A. Rejected Warning on Shah; Shah Was a Source for C.I.A.”, The New York Times, 7 January 1979.
4. Alexander Cockburn & James Ridgeway, “The Shah and the Hot-Egg Tango”, The Village Voice (“The Moving Target” column), 4 December 1978.
5. A. J. Langguth, “Torture’s Teachers”, The New York Times, 11 June 1979.
6. Scott Shane, “U.S. Engaged in Torture After 9/11, Review Concludes”, The New York Times, 16 April 2013.

“Cartouche” - Philippe de Broca (1962)

Cartouche (aka Swords of Blood, 1962) was a French historical action-comedy written and directed by Philippe de Broca that starred two epic film figures of that period, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale. On the surface, the film is clearly a ridiculous historical farce, with broad comedic turns that border on slapstick.  Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a shameless and irreverent thief who mocks everyone he encounters.  As such, the film appears to be directed at the adolescent community and anyone who enjoys seeing the authorities get their comeuppance.  But the film has other dimensions and themes to it that are quite at odds with its lightweight tomfoolery, and these extra layers are what really interest me.

The story of the film is based on a real figure in French history, Louis-Dominique Bourguignon (1693 - 1721), who achieved legendary status in his day as a French Robin Hood who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. To deceive the authorities, he went by other names, too, including Louis Dominique Garthausen, Louis Lamare, and Cartouche.  But whatever the historical reality of Bourguignon was, what we see in this film seems mainly to be tongue-in-cheek fantasy.  Nevertheless, there are some interesting aspects here that go beyond the superficial silliness.  One is associated the romantic personae of the two principal characters; and another is the dramatic swerve in the fourth act that altogether changes the tenor of the story.

The principal characters in Cartouche are

• Louis-Dominique Bourguignon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) – a dauntless thief.
• Venus (Claudia Cardinale) – a Parisian commoner.
• Malichot (Marcel Dalio) – the original ringleader of the Parisian thieves. Dalio had a lengthy film and TV career that included appearances more than two decades earlier in the classics, La Grande Illusion (1937), Rules of the Game (1939), and Casablanca (1941).
• Isabelle de Ferrussac (Odile Versois) – the wife of the Parisian Police Chief, Gaston de Ferrussac.

The film’s four acts are quite distinct, and in fact the fourth act utterly alters the entire mood and meaning of the film.

1.  Bourguignon, the Thief
The first act features Bourguignon’s devilish antics, as he careens around the city streets picking pockets at his leisure. As a member of Malichot’s gang, he is supposed to be subservient to his ruthless master, but his natural rebelliousness prevents him from appropriately knuckling under to  the chief.   He also meets and wins the love of the street wench Venus during this part, but he and his two pals have to run away from town after rudely challenging Malichot’s leadership.

2.  In the Army
To escape punishment from Malichot’s thugs, Bourguignon and his two friends run away and join the army.  But the army is commanded by witless fools who sacrifice their soldiers in near-suicidal encounters with their enemies. Although fearless, Bourguignon looks out for himself, first, so he abandons the conflict and runs for cover.  Hiding in the bushes, he and his friends are the only ones to survive one of their company’s futile attacks, which winds up earning them a decorations as heroes.

3.  Cartouche in Command
Bourguignon returns to Paris, now under his new name of Cartouche, and he reclaims Venus and again challenges Malichot.  This time he gets the upper hand, and the entire gang rallies to follow the more humane Cartouche,  who tells them they should only steal from the undeserving rich.  So Cartouche becomes the king of the Paris thieves, and Venus is his queen.

4.  Cartouche and Isabelle
In the final act the film abruptly turns away from its previously carefree tenor. The pivotal event is one of Cartouche’s robberies during which he encounters a regal, upper-class woman, Isabelle de Ferrussac, whom he had briefly seen in the first act. Isabelle’s aristocratic air and reserved demeanor ultimately proves to be an irresistible challenge to Cartouche. Unabashedly lustful of Isabelle even in front of Venus, Cartouche openly throws himself at the feet of the still hesitant Isabelle.  Soon, though, Cartouche is arrested by the police and headed for the gallows. Despite Cartouche’s betrayal, Venus leads the gang in a desperate rescue, but she dies in his arms during the skirmish. In the finale, Cartouche grimly conducts a grand nocturnal burial by placing Venus’s body, now covered with stolen jewels, in a stolen golden coach and sinking it in the river.

For much of the film, Cartouche is a relentless sequence of prankish acts on the part of Belmondo and his wiseguy pals.  This is exemplified in the pirouette-filled sword fights that frequent the action.  In fact it might be interesting to compare the choreographed swordplay in Cartouche with what appeared later in Asian martial arts films.  In both settings the almost ludicrous acrobatics are very carefully staged, but the later Chinese martial arts action is probably more seamless and skillful.  On the other hand, the swordplay in Cartouche is performed without the benefit of special effects.  Nevertheless, there is something disturbing in Cartouche in connection with the film’s casual depiction of killing.  Cartouche and his pals are seen smirking their way through numerous scenes filled with blood and guts.  Is all this carnage supposed to be funny?  Perhaps it is just part and parcel with the cavalier tough-guy attitude that prevails in this context.

The real lasting feature of Cartouche, though, is the fact that it stands as the ultimate vehicle showcasing its two stars, Belmondo and Cardinale. Jean-Paul Belmondo was perhaps the French anti-hero of this period, but with impertinent and comic overtones.  He emerged to become an iconic cultural figure with his role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (À Bout de Souffle, 1959).  Critics at the time struggled to articulate just what was the essence of Belmondo’s charm.  Clearly he was not classically handsome, and he was sometimes characterized as “handsome-ugly”. But he had a kind of naturally good-natured recklessness that was appealing to women (or so they tell me).  Basically, he was a naughty boy, a wiseguy, who was continually forgiven for his transgressions – the kind of guy that the gangsters in Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) imagined themselves to be. And it was Cartouche that best displayed Belmondo’s impertinent persona. 

Claudia Cardinale was an entirely different figure.  She was one of those unique actresses who projected a feminine allure that somehow went well beyond mere physical beauty.  There are others who had this kind of magic, too, such as Marlene Dietrich, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, and Maria Schneider.  But perhaps Claudia Cardinale was my favorite of all of them.  She was naturally beautiful, without need of any adornment, and she was always physically sensuous, passionate, and innocent all at the same time.  Static images do not capture her charm; you have to see her flashing eyes in action.  She was the ultimate screen goddess, and she lit up every scene that she was in. 

So I assume that anyone watching Cartouche is naturally mystified when in the third act Cartouche turns his back on Venus (Cardinale) and falls for Isabelle. Clearly on the level of pulchritude, Claudia Cardinale, as Venus, was far more desirable than Odile Versois (who is pretty in her own way), as Isabelle.  Cardinale suggests passionate, animated engagement, in comparison to Versois’s bleached-out passivity.  What was it about Isabelle that so charmed Cartouche?  (I will set aside the possibility that de Broca simply erred by casting the too-beautiful Cardinale in the role of the street wench, Venus.) Perhaps it was the fact that Isabelle was refined and oh-so upper-class.  This made her an iconic trophy that Cartouche, the embodiment of French masculine charm, simply had to have. But there is another factor, too, to consider: Isabelle was a blonde. And it might be said that the mysterious seductiveness of blondes is even greater in France than elsewhere. In fact the French even hold academic conferences where their intellectuals examine and discuss the nature of why they are so attracted to blondes [1]. 

Whatever it is that fueled Cartouche’s downfall – blondes, class – it doesn’t matter. What lingers by the end of the downbeat fourth act is the unfathomably self-destructive craving that often leads men to turn away from what they hold most precious.  Why are we so often like that?  We viewers know that Venus was Cartouche’s messenger from God.  But Cartouche at the end of the story is still blind to his failings, and he covers Venus’s naturally beautiful form with jewels – as if those artificial decorations could somehow enhance her perfection.  What we are left with at the end is an enhanced awareness of romantic engagement’s ultimate ephemerality. Isabelle was a a frozen image, a static cosmetic form; while Venus embodied the promise of interactive magic that may come.

★★★

Notes:

1. Henry Samuel, “French University to Study Whether Gentleman Really Do Prefer Blondes”, The Telegraph (2009), 13 January 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4230941/French-university-to-study-whether-gentleman-really-do-prefer-blondes.html.

“Zorba the Greek” - Michael Cacoyannis (1964)

There was something unique about Zorba the Greek (1964) that makes it stand out far above the accolades that it gained: it won three US Academy Awards and was nominated for four others, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. It remains today as one of the greatest cinematic expressions of existential engagement and is still a must-see for every young person setting out on his or her own.

The story is based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s Greek novel, Life and Adventures of Alexis Zorba (1946), the 1952 English version of which was titled, Zorba the Greek. The screenplay from writer-director-editor Michael Cacoyannis is a bit different from the novel, and I think the changes made improve the telling.  Nevertheless, as was the case with Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), whose production also had to convert a first-person authorial perspective into the concrete imagery of film and thereby made similarly significant changes, I again recommend both reading the novel and seeing the film.  Despite their somewhat differing perspectives, both the texts and the films have valuable things to offer.

The film’s plot concerns a thirty-something writer, Basil (Alan Bates) [1], who comes to the island of Crete to look after his recently gained inheritance: an abandoned lignite mind on the island.  He meets and hires a Greek peasant, Alexis Zorba (Anthony Quinn), to assist him with these matters, and the rest of the story concerns their activities on Crete over the better part of the ensuing year.  Along the way there are four narrative threads that are followed over the course of the story:

• The quest of making something economically sustainable out of Basil’s inheritance
• The amorous relationships of Zorba
• The amorous relationship of Basil
• Basil’s relationship with Zorba and how it affects his outlook on life.

In fact it is the last narrative thread that is the most significant.  In the novel, emphasis is made on the idea that Basil is going through a spiritual crisis.  He turned away from Orthodox Christianity, has been seriously exploring Buddhism, and now finds himself stuck in a mental block.  In the film this spiritual crisis goes unmentioned: the author is simply said to be suffering from “writer’s block”.  But in both cases It is through his relationship with Zorba that he begins to see another perspective on things.

The narrative goes through roughly five stages of development.

1.  Arrival
While Basil is waiting for a ship to take him from Greece over to Crete, Zorba approaches him seeking employment.  Zorba is rough-hewn peasant, perhaps in his fifties, who says he is a musician and can do all sorts of jobs. Basil is bookish and refined, Zorba is the opposite – extroverted and boastful.  They make the crossing in rough seas and find their way to an impoverished Cretan village near Basil’s abandoned lignite mine. There they are joyfully welcomed by all the locals, and they go on to make arrangements to stay in the local “Ritz” hotel run by an eccentric old French lady, Hortense (Lila Kadrova).  At a local café, Zorba and Basil see that a beautiful and lone Widow (Irene Pappas) spurns the amorous advances of senior village figures’s infatuated son, Pavlo, and that she is also the object of the all local peasants’ lustful and resentful gazes.

By the end of this section all four narrative threads are operative, with Zorba evidently pursuing Hortense’s affections and emphatically suggesting that Basil seek similar favors from the Widow.

2.  Settling in
Zorba and Basil get more acquainted with each other as they attend to the lignite mine.  In particular, Basil learns about Zorba’s need to express himself through dance and his passionate engagement with the living here-and-now.

The mine is very much run down, with decaying wood beams making it regularly subject to cave ins.  Zorba then comes up with the idea of getting the rights to the surrounding trees on the hillside that are owned by the local monastery.  With wood from the trees, they can refurbish the mine and sell the rest as timber.  Zorba goes to the monastery to negotiate, and although Kazantzakis’s cynical views of the Orthodox Church are largely cut out of the film script, there is sufficient material here to see that Zorba views the monks as superstitious and corrupt fools who can be seduced with wine.

During this section of the story, Zorba continues his affair with Madame Hortense.  Meanwhile the reticent Basil is evidently attracted to the Widow but too shy to act.  When Zorba urges Basil to act, Basil says he doesn’t want to make trouble.  But Zorba responds by saying.

“Boss, life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.”

3.  Romancing the ladies
Basil is worried about lack of progress with the mine and his declining funds, so he sends Zorba on a trip to a nearby commercial town to acquire some provisions for their timber venture, which will involve a trolley wire structure to transport logs down the hillside.  When Basil is angered by receiving a message from Zorba boasting of his sexual exploits with a prostitute in the commercial town, he decides to punish Zorba by telling Hortense the lie that Zorba intends to marry her.  Meanwhile Basil finally summons up the courage to go to the Widow’s residence and spends a the night in her arms.  However, Pavlo learns of their tryst and commits suicide.

4.  Dead end
When the Widow attempts to attend the church Easter ceremony, she is blocked by Pavlo’s father and forced out into the courtyard, where a venomous crowd has gathered to stone her for her “immorality”. Basil is unable to stop them, but Zorba arrives just in time to prevent a local village thug from knifing the Widow.  However, when they attempt to leave the scene together, Pavlo’s father runs up and slits the Widow’s throat.  The crowd quickly disperses, and Zorba and Basil are left to stare at the slain woman on the ground.

Later, Hortense, now more frail and suffering from some consumptive illness, presses Zorba about his supposed marriage promise.  Zorba relents and they holds a private ceremony exchanging vows under the stars, with only Basil (and God) as witness.  But Hortense’s illness worsens, and spying village crones rush around saying that the foreigner is dying and that since she has no legal heir, they should all grab her belongings before the government confiscates them.  With Hortense still alive, the villagers, mostly women, surround her house like scavengers and begin stripping everything.  Hortense dies in Zorba’s arms, as the cackling ladies swarm into the hotel and grab everything that is movable. 
   
5. Timber trolley
With the romantic quests disastrously terminated, there is still the possibility of realizing Zorba’s ambitious plan of harvesting the timber from the hillside forest.  The villagers and the monks gather for a ceremonial inauguration of Zorba’s now constructed trolley wire for timber transport.  The local bishops gives his blessing and successive logs are sent hurtling down the hillside transport wire.  But Zorba’s system was badly designed, and after only three logs, the entire structure is destroyed, sending everyone scurrying for cover.

With all their hopes and plans at an end and Basil’s funds exhausted, Zorba and Basil stare at each amidst the ruins.  It can be seen that despite all the disappointments, Basil has become a changed man – now more resigned to dealing with things as they come and hence more Zorba-like.  Zorba knows that Basil now must return to England and his old life, but he is delighted to hear Basil’s final request – “teach me to dance, will you?”

Although much of the philosophical and religious speculation in the novel has been removed from the film script, the movie does convey the most essential element, perhaps even better and more vividly than Kazantzakis’s prose does -- the unquenchable spirit of Alexis Zorba.

Of course, free spirits like Zorba are always seen in the social milieu that tries to restrain them, and the movie here effectively portrays that social context and issues associated with it.  One cultural theme concerns the position of women.  In the Cretan village society shown in Zorba the Greek (and similar to many traditional societies), the men are obsessed with “face” and the felt need to demonstrate a dominant will.  The easiest target for them to dominate is women, and the social mores almost encourage hostility towards them.  But what could be more unbearable to them than the presence of the defiant and indomitable figure of the Widow? Irene Pappas’s performance here, almost without the benefit of any dialogue, is electric; her smoldering glances and watchful, impassioned demeanor are almost the perfect exemplar of a dark-eyed Aryan beauty.  To the men in the village, she is poison and the embodiment of all their impotent frustrations.  They cannot tolerate her continued existence. The French woman Hortense, on the other hand, is the complete outsider [2].  She is not even a woman to the local villagers; she is just someone to laugh at and to rob.  In the end, because as Zorba remarks she “crossed herself with four fingers” (was not Orthodox), she was not even worthy of a funeral. In contrast, although Zorba was not exactly the apotheosis of feminism, he was much more empathetic towards women.  As he remarked to Basil:

"And as for women, you make fun of me that I love them. How can I not love them? They are such poor weak creatures... they take so little. . . . and they give you all they got.”

Yet the villagers are not simply cast as brutes. Through Walter Lassally’s expressive cinematography and the melodic instrumental folk music of Mikis Theodorakis, the village life is presented as rich and full of the joys and woes of life.  For the most part, Zorba and Basil are part of and take part in their world.

In the context of this traditional society and its sometimes stifling traditions, we have Zorba’s spirited existential expressiveness. Over time he has learned to turn away from the social traditions that suppress people. At one point in the film, Basil chides Zorba about his lack of patriotism. Zorba disgustedly responds by telling him what patriotism taught him to do:

“I have done things for my country that would make your hair stand on end. I have killed, burned villages, and raped women”

Now, he says, he takes people for what they are, not what they represent or what uniform they wear. 

Throughout the film Zorba tries to relate to people in ways that are meaningful to them.  When he meets Hortense, he speaks to her in an engaged, sympathetic fashion. In contrast, Basil holds back in reserve and smirks at her unstylish behavior. In fact Zorba  generally chooses to plunge directly into the goings on that are right in front of him. Indeed, Zorba’s immersion in the vitality of life, itself, is symbolized by the fact that when Hortense dies, he returns to her room to retrieve the one living thing that remained there – her caged parrot.  Similarly, when at the end of the film Zorba’s timber trolley construction is destroyed, he again rushes to save Hortense’s parrot.  For him, life in all its forms is to be treasured.  At the end, the two of them have the following exchange:

Zorba: “Damn it Boss, I like you too much not to say it. You've got everything except one thing: madness! A man needs a little madness, or else...

Basil: “Or else?”

Zorba: “...He never dares cut the rope and be free.”

In contrast to Buddhism’s ego-denying nihilism, Zorba always immerses himself passionately in the living moment, which is exemplified by music and dancing.  Those two modes of being represent the two choices for Basil, and in the end he chooses Zorba’s path.

★★★★

Notes:

1. To adjust to the UK-Greek co-production and the performance of  Englishman Alan Bates, the ethnicity of the writer is altered somewhat.  While Kazantzakis’s unnamed narrator was Greek, the film’s protagonist is said to be half-English and half-Greek.  This actually has a positive result, because it makes Basil even more of an outsider to the Cretan local community.
2. In the novel, the narrator was Greek, not half-English, so Hortense was the only real “foreigner”.