“La Grande Illusion” - Jean Renoir (1937)

Jean Renoir’s most popular and well-known work, La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion, 1937), is considered one of the all-time great anti-war films, but there is almost no combat portrayed. Instead, the action, set mostly in World War I German prisoner-of-war camps, concerns the escape efforts of several French officers confined in the camps. Made just before the onset of World War II, the film stands more as a testament to the brotherhood of mankind, than it does as an explicit depiction of the futility of war. But with the imminent threat of fascism sweeping across Europe at the time, the film’s ultimately humanistic message concentrates on the positive alternatives and avoids merely dwelling on the horrors of violence and suffering.

The film was an immediate critical success, unusual for a Renoir film, although it was soon banned by the invading German army, which attempted to destroy all prints. The period during the late 1930s was when Renoir, who was an experienced filmmaker in his early 40s, emerged as one of the world’s greatest filmmakers. Besides La Grande Illusion (1937), other great works during this period include Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange, 1936), La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast, 1938), and La Règle du Jeu, (The Rules of the Game, 1939). These films tend to feature multi-participant narratives that not only allow the viewer to sympathize with the individual characters but also see the larger scheme of things and the social issues that concern them. This vision, this view of humanity at large, is what elevates Renoir’s films to the level of great artistic statements. To reach high levels of artistry, Renoir was always looking to extend his technical mastery of film and employ new techniques. He was one of the early innovators in the use of sound techniques and in the use of extensive camera movements that employed deeper-focus cinematography. For a more detailed analysis of how Renoir employed these techniques in a particular sequence in this film, see “The Tour of the Fortress in Renoir’s La Grande Illusion – a Scene Analysis”, which takes place in the third "act" (second of three mini-narratives discussed below)

Renoir also usually obtained good performances from his principal actors in these films. Notable in this film are the following players:

• Jean Gabin plays Lieutenant Marechal. Gabin was a rapidly rising film star in France, who would also appear in Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937), Marcel Carne’s Le Quai des Brumes (1938) and Le Jour Se Leve (1939), and Renoir’s La Bête Humaine.
• Erich von Stroheim gives a mesmerizing performance in the role of Captain von Rauffenstein. Von Stroheim was a famous director in the silent era, and his work had been an inspiration to the youthful Renoir during his formative stages.
• Marcel Dalio, who plays the key role of a Jewish soldier in this film, Lieutenant Rosenthal, also played a major role in La Règle du Jeu. The Jewish Dalio’s real, original name was Israel Moshe Blauschild, and both his parents died in Nazi concentration camps. He, himself, just managed to escape the invading Nazis in 1940.
• Julien Carette plays the stage actor Cartier. This role was something of an homage to Charlie Chaplin, the viewing of whose films enthralled the young Renoir and inspired him to take up filmmaking.
• Pierre Fresnay plays the urbane Captain de Boeldieu. He had earlier appeared in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).
• Dita Parlo, a popular German actress, plays the German widow Elsa.

The story of the film comprises a narrative prologue, followed by three somewhat separate mini-narratives that have been strung together.

Act 1: Introduction. Lieutenant Marechal is assigned to accompany Captain de Boeldieu on an aircraft reconnaissance mission to overfly German territory. They are shot down by German flying ace, Captain von Rauffenstein and taken prisoner. When von Rauffenstein discovers they are both officers, he asks for them to brought before them, and he soon discovers that de Boeldieu is a wealthy and cultured patrician, like himself, and that they even have common acquaintances. This introduces one of the film’s thematic strands: the commonality that upper-class Europeans have that transcends national borders. Von Rauffenstein feels an instinctive affinity with de Boeldieu, because they share a set of values and a common code of behaviour. But he feels nothing of the sort for Marechal.

Act 2: Prisoner-of-War Camp N17, Hallbach. At this officers’ camp, de Boeldieu and Marechal join a rowdy group of French prisoners. Among the prisoners is a former music hall stage actor, Cartier, who is constantly mugging and showing off before the others. Another inmate is Lieutenant Rosenthal, a wealthy Jewish businessman who shares with his fellow prisoners the abundant food parcels that are sent to him by his family. All of them besides de Boeldieu are middle or lower class, and they feel a feel a sense of bonding with each other that they don’t share with de Boeldieu. This displays a second theme: the comradery shared by all kinds of people with a common nationality, in this case French. During this act, the high-spirited group of French prisoners engage in an arduous effort to dig an escape tunnel out of the prison camp. Just as they are about to make their escape, though, they are all transferred to other prison camps. Upon their departure from the camp, they are unable to inform the incoming British prisoners of the existence of the tunnel due to the language barrier separating them.

Act 3: Prisoner-of-War Camp N14, Wintersborn. The third act begins after an intervening montage sequence indicating that some time has elapsed and that the prisoners have been scattered and shifted across a number of different prison camps. Finally, de Boeldieu and Marechal find themselves transferred to the Wintersborn camp, which is located in an old medieval fortress. There they find that the commander of the prison camp to be von Rauffenstein, who in the intervening years has evidently suffered severe spinal injuries and burns so that he is unfit for active combat and has been assigned to run the remote prison. The injuries, in fact, have now forced von Rauffenstein's behaviour and manner to be even more exaggeratedly stiff than ever.

Von Rauffenstein examines the dossiers of de Boeldieu and Marechal and observes that they have both attempted numerous escapes from their previous prison camps. He informs them that escape from this one will be impossible and, in his stiff manner, cordially gives them a tour of the old fortress. This is an interesting sequence displaying Renoir’s artful moving-composition cinematic techniques and is discussed in detail in “The Tour of the Fortress in Renoir’s La Grande Illusion – a Scene Analysis”.

Marechal and de Boeldieu learn that their old friend Rosenthal is also imprisoned here, and they join up again and start plotting how they might escape from this prison. It will require a lengthy handmade rope and some sort of decoying action that will distract the guards. De Boeldieu, living up to his sense of honor, decides that he must serve as the decoy and sacrifice himself in order for Marechal and Rosenthal to escape. In the event, de Boeldieu is shot and killed by the reluctant, but equally honor-bound von Rauffenstein, but Marechal and Rosenthal manage to get away via the rope.

Act 4: Escape. In the final act, Marechal and Rosenthal set out on the road seeking to escape Germany. Rosenthal has a badly injured foot, though, and they have no choice but to seek shelter in a rural farmhouse that is tended by a widowed German lady, Elsa, who is looking after her young daughter. Elsa’s husband and all her brothers had already died in the war, but she sympathizes with the human plight of the two French escapees and takes them in. While Rosenthal recuperates, the two settle down for awhile, helping the young widow with the farm work. Though Marechal and Elsa eventually fall in love, Rosenthal and Marechal finally realize they have to leave, and they set out again on foot. They finally find the Swiss border and make it across before a pursuing German attachment can get them.

The narrative focalization of La Grande Illusion follows Marechal pretty much all the way through the film, and along the way it emphasizes key relationships with the following three people:

• von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu. The working-class Marechal cannot easily relate to the two aristocrats, and the contrast between their strict codes of honor and his own down-to-earth humanism is constantly emphasized. Von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu live by an outmoded set of rules that have often had destructive and inhuman consequences. De Boeldieu, in fact, acknowledges that the world will soon do without people of his type, and he effectively chooses to bow out by sacrificing himself for his two “humanist” comrades.
• Rosenthal. Marechal sometimes displays thoughtless antisemitic prejudices, but his instinct to take all people as human beings eventually wins out. This, of course, contrasts with the antisemitism that was having such terrible consequences in Germany at the time.
• Elsa. Marechal overcomes whatever feelings he may have against the German enemy and falls in love with her. Again, the universality of humanism triumphs over local prejudices.

Renoir’s presentation of the virtues of liberal humanism – that “man is the measure of all things” – entails an external, universal, and “objective” narrative view of the action. The camera’s point of view is not personally involved and subjective, but is seen from the perspective of a sympathetic, but somewhat detached, “silent witness”. This is achieved by Renoir’s preference for medium and long shots involving multiple characters, often in movement. The resulting point of view is thus more global and all-encompassing. His approach contrasts with the existentialist mise-en-scène of his contemporary and rival, Marcel Carné, who was the champion of “poetic realism”. Carné’s work was atmospheric, emotional, and often fatalistic concerning the romantic longings of his individual protagonists, while Renoir’s work was more reflective about the larger scheme of the human enterprise.

The work of both Carné and Renoir induce in the viewer a feeling of melancholy. Carné’s melancholy concerns the eternal loneliness of the individual and the hopelessness of romantic fulfilment. Renoir’s melancholy is less personal and more reflective on universal truths affecting humanity. Here in La Grande Illusion, there is an implicit faith underlying the film that ultimately the universal commonality of humanity will overcome the depredations of nationalism, racism, and outmoded social class distinctions. Yet Renoir's view is not completely optimistic. World War I brought about the senseless deaths of 15 million people. France suffered 1.3 million battlefield deaths, and Germany suffered 1.7 million deaths on the battlefield. These people died because of stubborn adherence to the prejudices and traditions that humanism is supposed to overcome someday. At the end of the La Grande Illusion, it is unclear in the narrative whether or not the now-free Marechal and Rosenthal will return to France and rejoin the armed struggle. They have passed over the artificial line of the Swiss border, but they may not have passed beyond the artificial barriers in their minds concerning the evils of war, itself. When we viewers watch the film today, knowing the horrors that awaited Europe in World War II, we may be even more circumspect than Renoir was in 1937.
★★★★

The Tour of the Fortress in Renoir’s “La Grande Illusion” – a Scene Analysis

In retaliation against the traditional studio format of assembling a motion picture, various filmmakers in the 1930s instigated the concept of composition in depth. Their concern was to eliminate the exhausted principle of expressing a story with a great number of shots, thereby abolishing the mechanical and impersonal technique of cross-cutting. By composing in depth, a scene can be executed in one shot, switching the dramatic emphasis from editing to the expressive placement and movement of both actors and camera. With fragmentation reduced to a minimum, the natural unity of an incident is preserved, allowing the characters and their actions to be evaluated within the total environment. Such an approach may suggest a more theatrical and stage-like presentation of material; however, due the kinetic penetration of the camera as a flexible viewpoint, the effect can be completely cinematic. This method of filmmaking leads to a condensing of events and ultimately to a crystallization of ideas and themes. Ophuls, Welles, and Mizoguchi are usually the names that first come to mind when speaking of the floating camera, yet it was Jean Renoir, director of the film under analysis here, La Grande Illusion (1937), who was one of the earliest and most successful demonstrators of this approach. Like the others, Renoir understood the necessity of ignoring the factory formula in constructing a film and devising his own style. He has commented with awareness about his art,

“The longer I work in my profession, the more I am drawn to mise-en-scene in depth in relation to the screen; the more I do that, the more I am able to avoid confrontation of two actors who stand like good boys in front of the camera as though they were at the photographer’s. It’s more convenient for me to place my characters more freely at different distances from the camera, and to make them move. To do that I need a great depth of field. . . “

It is evident, even in earler Renoir films, such as Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) and Toni (1934), that he does not depend on editing to communicate the meaning of an incident. Renoir observes the action with continuity, alleviating arbitrary fragmentation that would undermine the reality and duration of a scene. His visual preoccupation is to force the cinema into a three-dimensional perspective by shooting through empty rooms to the action taking place beyond. With landscape scenes, Renoir maintained the unity of the setting, by using the horizontal pan as well as characters stepping into the frame from behind the camera. With the use of composition in depth, Renoir united his characters instead of separating them from their milieu by isolated shots. The result was a more explicit realism and derived vitality of characterization from the flexibility of the camera.

The action in La Grande Illusion prior to the Tour-of-the-Fortress sequence analyzed here has brought about a transfer of the French prisoners to a new prison camp. This new location is introduced in two scenes, the first of which is a visual survey of the camp commandant’s private room and his subsequent interview of the prisoner representatives in the adjoining office, and the second of which is the tour of the fortress grounds given the prisoners by the commandant. The commandant is Von Rauffenstein and the prisoner representatives are De Boeldieu, Marechal, and Demolder. Two of the prisoners, Boeldieu and Marechal, have had prior acquaintance with the commandant by virtue of having been shot down in their plane by him earlier in the film. The first scene in Rauffenstein’s office ends with his invitation to the three standing prisoners: “and now, gentlemen, would you be so kind as to give me the pleasure of your company.” He calls his orderly for his cap and muff, and the shot dissolves to the beginning of the scene to be presently analyzed.

Shot #1 (342 frames)
Action: Dissolve to the exterior of a door and what appears to be a courtyard of the fortress. Rauffenstein is seen in an eye-level, frontal long shot as he opens the door and moves to the right, followed by Boeldieu. The camera dollies to the right, following the two. Two German soldiers walking a guard dog enter from the right and pass in front of Boeldieu and Rauffenstein. Just as they pass the door, Marechal and Demolder enter the door frame and follow the rightward moving of Rauffenstein and Boeldieu. The camera tracks with the g roup as they pass behind an archway pillar and, upon reappearing on the other side, move to their left a few steps (away from the camera) down a corridor and stop in front of a group of soldiers at drill. The soldiers are now on the left side of the frame, and the four principals are on the right

Kinetics and Graphics: Throughout this shot the principals remain in long shot. The guards with the dog move diagonally from a medium shot in the lower right of the frame to a long shot in the upper left.

Comments: Though this shot features continual movement of the characters, the moving camera enables the frame to remain in relative compositional balance. The initial movement of Rauffenstein and then of Boeldieu to the right, anticipated by the initial placement of the courtyard door slightly to the left of frame center, is countered by the guards’ movement to the left. The two groups pass exactly in the center of the frame and move apart. The camera has begun to move slightly to maintain this balance, so that the courtyard door is now considerably more to the left of frame center. As the leftward moving guards pass in front of the courtyard door, Rauffenstein pauses slightly to wait for Marechal and Demolder to come out. Though this is a perfectly natural gesture, the pause serves to enable Demolder and Marechal to replace the compositional element filled by the guards, who are no passing out of the frame. The camera movement, too, has paused for this compositional replacement, and it resumes when Rauffenstein and Boeldieu resume their movement to the right. Since all four principals are now moving together to the right, the tracking camera maintains the balanced frame. `Rauffenstein’s pause is so brief as to be almost imperceptible, yet it provides for a fluid and elegantly integrated action.

The spatial aspects of the fortress are an important element in this entire scene, and Renoir continually provides a feeling for the milieu by creating a sense of depth in this and succeeding shots. The courtyard is lit with pools of light and darkness which, in combination with the relatively large depth of field of the camera, helps to achieve a sculptural effect. The foreground of this shot is in darkness, and the midground is relatively bright. The diagonal movement to the left by the guards and the dog brings them through this plane of light, adding to the perception of depth. The archway pillar, behind which the characters move, is also dark and in the foreground and abruptly draws attention to it (away from the midground area where the characters move). In addition, the pillar is sufficiently wide to occupy the entire frame for a moment. This serves to separate the action of the foregoing with what follows and acts as a hidden cut for the remainder of this shot. The elegance of this shot is that the sense of depth and the hidden cut are presented in a fluid and natural fashion.

Shot #2 (455 frames)
Action: Cut to Rauffenstein and the prisoners in medium shot facing the soldiers at drill. The camera angle has bee shifted slightly to the right, and its position h as been moved slightly to the left so that the soldiers are lined up on the left, the principles are on the right, and a long tunnel-like corridor stretches out in the background. The corridor is slightly to the right of frame center. Rauffenstein turns towards the prisoners (so that he is almost facing the camera) and says, “My Men are not young, but they are amused when they play at soldiers.” Rauffenstein then turns and moves a way from the camera down the corridor. The prisoners, one by one, follow him. The tunnel bends slightly to the right and then, further on, more sharply to the left. When each figure reaches the leftward turn of the tunnel, he disappears from sight. Just as the last of the prisoner, Demolder, passes from sight, the drill guards, wh o have remained immobile on the left side of the frame, present arms.

Kinetics and Graphics: The movement of the characters is primarily away from the camera, but the architecture of the tunnel dictates character movement that is first left to right and then right to left. This shift of lateral character movement direction enables Renoir to shift the principal direction of character movement from that of left to right in Shot #1 to that of right to left in Shot #3.

The initial static composition of this s hot when Rauffenstein utter his line is an inverted “V”, with Rauffenstein at the apex. The drill guard forms the left flank, and the French prisoners form the right flank. There is light on the faces of Rauffenstein, Boeldieu, and Marechal, the most important characters in this scene, while Demolder, w ho is closest to the camera, is in relative darkness. Demolder’s presence in this entire scene is primarily for the purpose of providing a compositional accessory to Marechal and extending the screen depth-of-field.

Comments: The use of planes of light contribute to the feeling of spatiality in this shot, just as in Shot #1. When Rauffenstein (the apex of the compositional “V”) leaves down the tunnel, the other members of the right flank of the “V” peal of one by one and move down the tunnel. The timing of these successive movements is quite deliberate and contributes again to the awareness of the depth of the tunnel. The movement of light and shade across the bodies of each character in h is turn also adds dynamism to the figure movement. On the left side of the frame, the lower part (foreground) is well lit, the central part is in darkness (midground) and the upper part of the frame is also well lit (back wall). Moreover, the end of the corridor – or the end of the part that is visible to the camera – is bathed in light. All of these lighting effects contribute to the sense of the fortress’s presence. The final movement of the drill guards when they present arms at the end of the shot draws the viewer’s attention from the extreme long shot of Demolder disappearing down the tunnel to the medium shot figures of the guards – a further enhancement of the feeling for the depth of the tunnel

Shot #3 (1295 frames)
Action: Cut to a low-angle shot of a stone stairway at the to of which is a doorway in long shot. Rauffenstein, followed by the three Frenchmen, enters the doorway and descends the stairs, moving from the center top of the frame down the stairs to the lower left of the frame. The characters come to a stop on the stairs (still seen in a low-angle shot) where there are two soldiers standing at attention near some field guns on the left side of the stairs. All are now seen in medium long shot.

Rauffenstein, referring to the guns, says, “I have twenty-five of those.”

Boeldieu looks interested and says, “Hm, really?”

Rauffenstein, continuing to speak of the guns, says, “I suppose you know Maxim’s . . .“

Apparently the guns are French made and perhaps captured weapons.

Marechal interjects in a mock-sophisticated tone. “Why, of course, sir. Personally I prefer the restaurant Maxim’s.

Boeldieu responds, “Touché.”

Rauffenstein then leans toward Boeldieu and says, “I used to know a pretty girl at Maxim’s back in 1913, . . .” and then in English, “her name was Fifi.”

Boeldieu, also using English, says, “So did I.”

Marechal all the time has been observing the formalities of their conversational manner with evident amusement.

Rauffenstein and Boeldieu now descend the stairs, leaving the fame on the lower left. The camera pans to the left to c enter on Demolder and Marechal. Demolder points to a niche in the wall apparently containing a small religious statue and says to Marechal, “Twelfth century.” Marechal shrugs and descends the stairs, moving to the left of the frame. The camera pan follows his movement so that he passes the camera level in close-up and is seen descending to long shot from a high camera angle. The camera pan halts when the entire length of the stairway is in full view. Near the bottom of the stairway, Rauffenstein and Boeldieu can be seen reaching the landing and disappearing through a doorway at the right. After Marechal has descended a ways, Demolder enters in medium shot in the upper right of the frame, following Marechal. All the characters walk into long shot. About half-way down the stairway, two more German soldiers can be seen standing at attention ion each side of the stairs, looking almost like fixtures in the wall.

Kinetics and graphics: The initial low angle view of Shot #3 has a door frame that is in almost the same relative position in the frame as the passageway frame seen at the end of shot #2. Moreover, the first frame I Shot #3 is virtually a black and white negative of the last frame in Shot #2 in terms of the graphics. That is to say that wherever a part of the frame is lighted in the Shot #2 frame, that same part is in darkness in the Shot #3 frame.

When Rauffenstein first stops on the stairway to point out the Maxim field gun, Boeldieu comes to the same step and Marechal stops on the step above and between them. Since this is a low angle shot, they form a triangular three-shot composition –

Demolder is directly behind Marechal and a German soldier standing near one of the guns is directly behind Rauffenstein so that both are obscured du ring their conversation. After Rauffenstein and Boeldieu descend the stairs and leave the frame, Demolder emerges from behind Marechal, and the camera pans to the right so that a new three-shot composition is produced. This time Marechal is flanked by Demolder and the German soldier. Here they are all on the same level.

Comments: There are five figures in the first part of Shot #3 (including one of the German guards) and Renoir forms two successive three-shot compositions out of them on the stairway. The first one has Boeldieu and Rauffenstein on a different level than Marechal, emphasizing their class differences. The second composition has all three figures on the same level. These situations are not symbolic; they simply contribute another moment to the overall psychological effect.

As in the end of Shot #2, Shot #3 closes with a view down a darkened passageway through which the main characters are departing and which is lit up at the end so as to accentuate its cavernous nature.

Important elements of this shot and, indeed, of the entire scene are the presentations of the relationship between Rauffenstein and Boeldieu and of Marechal’s awareness of that relationship. To that end Renoir deems it not necessary to give any visual importance to the field guns referred to in the scene. The general cavernous stairway is sufficient for this shot, and instead the camera concentrates on the verbal byplay of Rauffenstein, Boeldieu, and Marechal. Similarly there is no visual attention paid to the architectural detail pointed out by Demolder.

Shot #4 (980 frames)
Action: German guards with a sentry dog are seen in medium closeup moving left to right. The camera tilts upward to see the touring group moving in the opposite direction in medium long shot. To the right of the characters is a solid stone wall.

As the figures approach to medium shot, Marechal says to Rauffenstein, “I beg your pardon, sir, but was this little home built just to put up me and Captain de Boeldieu?”

Rauffenstein turns around stiffly adjusting his monocle and says, “Excuse me?”

Boeldieu, walking next to them explains, “Are we your only guests?”

Rauffenstein stretches his hand out to his right and says, “Of course not! Your comrades are behind there.”

That to which he is pointing is out of the frame to the left. Rauffenstein then departs along the path to the left. Boeldieu then looks up in the direction Rauffenstein had point and leaves the frame to the left also. Demolder, who had been in the background, is now left with Marechal. He point out something off camera (to his right) and says, “Thirteenth century.” Marechal says, “Is that so,” but he is preoccupied with the fortress wall to which Rauffenstein has just drawn their attention. Demolder and Marechal leave the frame to the left. The camera lingers momentarily and then begins an upward tilt and a slow pan to the left. Slowly the huge height of the fortress walls are observed towering in the background. The pan ends when the corner of the fortress ramparts comes into view.

Kinetics and graphics: The principal character movement in this shot, as in Shot #3, is upper right to lower left, although this movement is countered initially by the guards and the dog moving in the opposite direction as in Shot #1. When the characters top to converse, th ere is again an arrangement of the three main characters as follows:

The characters are grouped to the right of frame center, producing a viewer expectation that they will relate towards the left of the frame and thus extending the frame psychologically leftwards. Demolder is directly behind Rauffenstein, so he is not visible until Rauffenstein makes his exit. Demolder then moves into Rauffenstein’s position so as to maintain the above static composition. After Boeldieu leaves, Marechal and Demolder move slightly so that they are in a frontal two shot.

Comments: The sense of depth, an important aspect of the scene, is provided in this shot by the camera pan at the end of the shot. The fortress wall that comes into view is considerably behind the pathway used by Rauffenstein and the prisoners. The wall is brightly lit, but the base of it, where there are German sentries and jagged rocks, is in dark shadows. The contrast between the brightly lit, monolithic fortress wall and the shadowy terrain below make t his a visually striking shot.

The earlier part of Shot #4 is simply a build-up for the subsequent pan. In order to heighten the drama of the pan, Renoir draws out the preparation for it. There are four beats to this preparation:

1. Rauffenstein looks up, and points and says, “Your comrades are over there.” He then leaves the frame.
2. Boeldieu looks up to his right pensively and then departs.
3. Demolder looks in the same general direction and says, “Thirteenth century.”
4. Marechal looks up to his right.

Each of these beats is deliberate and a few seconds long. After Demolder and Marechal leave, the camera holds its position a little longer and then slowly begins its tilt.

As in Shot #3, the detail pointed out by Demolder is given no visual importance. It is merely a descriptive statement that adds to the milieu.

The use of slow disclosure at the beginning of th is shot, a major cinematic device employed by Renoir in this film, is the only such use in the scene here considered.

Shot #5 (144 frames)
Action: Cut to a view through a doorway looking out on a fortress bulwark. The bulwark is a corner of the fortress wall, and one assumes that it is the same bulwark viewed from the g round at the end of Shot #4. We are now looking from the interior of the fortress outward. The characters, moving from right to left, appear on the bulwark in long shot and are seen through the door frame. There are German guards in the background looking over the parapet.

Kinetics and graphics: The cut f rom Shot #4 to Shot #5 not only presents a reverse s hot of the fortress bulwark, but with reversed graphics, in the abstract formal sense, as well. The final view of Shot #4 shows a dark tree in the center of the frame with the brightly lit wall surrounding it. Thus the center of the frame is dark and the surrounding area is light. Shot #5 has the center of the frame bright (the view through the doorway looking outside) and the surrounding area of the frame dark (the doorframe and the wall of an interior room).

Comments: This is an establishing shot for Shot #6.

Shot #6 (506 frames)
Action: Cut to a medium shot of the same view as in Shot #5. The frame is rather crowded with the three characters and not much of the fortress is visible in this shot.

Rauffenstein, after looking over the parapet, says, “A drop of thirty-six meters. No one will escape from here.”

Boeldieu then addresses Rauffenstein – “It was very pleasant of you, sir, to have shown us around your estate.”

Marechal, continuing his ironic polity, says, “Yes, it’s a really pretty castle, sir, . . . “ As Rauffenstein and Boeldieu pass towards the camera and leave the frame to the left in closeup, Marechal, continuing, says, to Demolder, “. . . so ancient!” – and then to himself as he follows the others, “. . . and so cheery.”

Kinetics and graphics: This is the only shot in the sequence in which there is relatively short depth-of-field. Demolder and the German soldiers directly behind the others are out of focus. After Rauffenstein and the three prisoners have left the frame, the focus racks such that the surrounding terrain over which the fortress wall looks comes into sharp focus.

Comments: Rauffenstein’s statement that the fortress wall drops thirty-six meters leads one to believe that this is indeed the same wall seen at the end of Shot #4.

Shot #7 (774 frames)
Action: Cut to another doorframe. This time the door is closed and is placed slightly to the left of frame center. Rauffenstein opens the door from the outside and, moving from right to left, places himself on the left side of the door frame awaiting Boeldieu.

Boeldieu comes to the door frame from the right, and as he enter the room, he says, “I beg your pardon.”

Rauffenstein follows im into the room, and they come to a stop after having moved forward into medium shot.

Rauffenstein says, rather confidentially, to Boeldieu, “I am sorry I could not have given you a room of your own.”

Boeldieu answers, “I am very grateful, . . . but I could not have accepted in any case, sir.”

Behind them Marechal followed by Demolder enters the room through the door.

Rauffenstein, addressing them all, says, “Gentlemen, I hope that our little promenade did not overtire you.”

Marechal answers loudly, “Not at all, sir, . . . not at all.”

Rauffenstein bows stiffly and moves to the right of Boeldieu. Marechal and Demolder also move to the right in their turn as the camera follows Marechal’s movement in medium shot. In order to follow this movement, the camera pans to the right and tracks forward. The pan halts when another doorway is centered upon, through which Rauffenstein is seen to move toward his office (in which the prisoners were interviewed immediately preceding this scene). Demolder and Marechal move to the left of this doorway, and Boeldieu stands at the right side of it. All of them look after Rauffenstein, who is trailing away in long shot.

Kinetics and graphics: There are three momentarily static compositions in this shot. First Rauffenstein and Boeldieu stand facing each other and b o wing for a moment in the door frame. Later they move forward and slightly to the right so that they are on equal sides of the picture frame. The third composition is the final view.

The movement to the right by Boeldieu and Rauffenstein after they h ad first moved left through the door frame is the first rightward movement since Shot #2. Character movement was begun to the right in Shot #1 and continued in Shot #2, but reversed at the end of the shot. Movement was to the left in Shots 3, 4, 5, 6, and the beginning of 7. Thus the character movement (with respect to the screen directions) is changed only when Renoir h as them alter their directions within a given shot.

Comments: The closed door seen at the beginning of th is shot is the first closed door since Shot #1. This means that the characters are now back inside the fortress interior. Renoir uses the doorframe and archway frame through which to view the action, both as a device to establish depth and spatiality and a device to center the composition. Doorframes are used prominently in shots 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8 of this scene.

Shot #8 (883 frames including fade-out)
Action: Cut to reverse shot through the same doorway seen in the previous shot. Boeldieu in medium s hot is peering through the left of the doorway towards the camera, and Marechal and Demolder are looking forward on the right side. They are still looking after the (not seen) departing Rauffenstein.

Marechal, referring to the commandant, says, “Fourteenth century.”

Boeldieu adds, “Pure gothic.”

Behind the , three German attendants approach them.

One of them says, “Do you mind? It’s a search.”

While the other attendants search the prisoners, the same man says amicably, “you know, your friend, Lieutenant Rosenthal. . . . He’s here.”

Marechal lights up – “I don’t believe it! Old Rosenthal!”

Boeldieu remarks, “I see his luck was no better th an ours.”

The same attendant says, “The Commandant has given me orders to put you in the same room. . . He says you’ll be better fed that way.”

They all smile, but Marechal turns to one of the other attendants who has gone so far as to turn Marechal’s hat inside out in order to carry out the search and become incensed. He snatches his hat back, and there is a brief scuffle which culminates in Marechal keeping his hat as the scene fades out.

Kinetics and graphics: The compositional symmetry and order disintegrate into chaos in this shot. There is none of the balance and stability of the previous shots and the progression towards chaos ends with the final scuffle.

Comments: This shot represents a psychological withdrawal from the discipline and austerity presented by Rauffenstein and the fortress architecture. The entire scene has been dominated by Rauffenstein, but at its end we see a return to prominence of Marechal and also the striking degree to which Marechal’s personality contrasts with Rauffenstein’s.

[Mike Ceraso contributed to this article.]

“The Lady of Musashino” - Kenji Mizoguchi (1951)

The Lady of Musashino (Musashino Fujin, 1951), writer-director Kenju Mizoguchi’s morality tale set in contemporary post-war Japan, again takes up the theme of disadvantaged women in a male-dominated society. Somewhat like the earlier Women of the Night (Yoru No Onnatachi, 1948), Mizoguchi paints a picture of moral decline in a society devastated by a massively destructive war and the invasion of foreign ideas and practices that are seen to be weakening Japan’s traditional cultural strengths. Although European filmmakers, particularly the Italian neorealists, had shown an increased interest during this postwar period in the everyday concerns of ordinary people, Mizoguchi’s concern for contemporary social issues, both in Women of the Night and The Lady of Musashino, does not fit into the neorealist category. The form of both these two films is still essentially theatrical and somewhat contrived. Nevertheless, both films take on a dramatic appearance of social criticism and depict shockingly frank situations involving women subjected to compromised situations.

The story of The Lady of Musashino revolves around the life of Michiko Akiyama, which is played by Kinuyo Tanaka, who also starred in Mizoguchi’s Women of the Night (Yoru No Onnatachi, 1948), The Life of Oharu (Saikaku Ichidai Onna, 1952), Ugetsu (Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953), and Sansho the Bailiff (Sanshô Dayû, 1954). At the beginning of the film, which is set in the closing stages of the war, Michiko and her husband, Tadao Akiyama, referred to simply as “Akiyama”, have fled the devastating air raids of Tokyo and have made it to her parents’ large estate in nearby Musashino. (Musashino at that time was apparently a lush pastoral area in the countryside, but the relentless urban expansion of Tokyo has now rendered it a district of that city.) Also living nearby is another member of the extended family, Michiko’s cousin, Eijo Ono, and his wife, Tomiko. Since virtually all able-bodied men were serving in the military at this time, it is clear that both Akiyama and Ono are considered to be somewhat unsavory characters, especially to Michiko’s father who comes from a samurai lineage. Soon, however, the hardships of the wartime period take their toll (the horrors of the atomic bomb attack are mentioned casually, as if they were just one among many), and both of Michiko’s parents pass away, leaving their estate at Musashino to Michiko. After the war ends, another cousin of Michiko’s, Tsutomu, who had been a prisoner of war, returns and also takes up residence with Michiko’s family.

The intra-family social situation now has these principal players:

• Akiyama. Michiko’s husband comes from peasant stock and is now a university professor. Michiko’s patrician father saw him as vulgar, undependable, and unworthy of his daughter. His academic interest in the Julian Sorel character from Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, identifies him as a moral relativist and a man willingly polluted by new-fashioned foreign values.
• Eiji Ono. Michiko’s cousin has become rich running a munitions factory, and is therefore a profiteer. He is shown to be a man of loose morals and almost exclusively devoted to personal material gain.
• Tomiko Ono. Ono’s wife is brazenly lascivious and openly makes a show of how loveless her own marriage is.
• Tsutomu. Michiko’s other cousin is younger than the others and studies at a university. He is presented as a naive, unformed youth subject to the temptations of sex and alcohol.
• Michiko. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she suffers through the domestic turmoil and stands as the only person with any moral fibre.

As the story unfolds, conventional social values are challenged. Tsutomu begins drunkenly carousing and sleeping with many pretty girls at the university. Akiyama openly propositions Tomiko for a sexual liaison. Tomoko makes a sexual play for Tsutomu. And Tsutomu begins to lust after his older cousin, Michiko, who has similar, but suppressed, feelings, in turn, for him. But noone is very happy through all this, and all the lustful gestures seem like “frowns of a summer night”. Michiko resists Tsutomu’s advances on moral grounds, not because they are cousins, but because she is a married woman. Eventually, when she learns of Akiyama’s plans to run away with Tomiko and swindle her out of the deed to her estate, Michiko decides to commit suicide first and leave the bulk of her estate to Tsutomu. She poisons herself with government-supplied cyanide, believing that she has “saved” Tsutomu from moral depravity.

Mizoguchi films all these dramatic events in a style that is rather pedestrian, for him. There are none of his justly-famous long and well-choreographed scenes with extensive tracking and fluid pictorial composition. Even in the gritty, Women of the Night, there were at least some long, elaborate takes involving careful camera tracking and character movements. But in The Lady of Musashino, the film is shot and put together in rather conventional fashion As a consequence, the film, which actually does have something of an expressionistically suggestive scenario, fails to have the expressionistic visual presentation that could support the story and which gives some of Mizoguchi’s other films, such as Sansho the Bailiff, their powerful emotional evocation. In fact one surmises that The Lady of Musashino may have been shot in something of a rush. After all, Kinuyo Tanaka starred in four other films in 1951 besides this one, so the shooting schedule may have been constrained.

Another shortcoming of the film is the acting. Although Kinuyo Tanaka’s performance is characteristically excellent, the other performances are exaggerated and overly histrionic. The men suddenly become ludicrously drunk or so wantonly libidinous as to be laughable. The modern-day setting only magnifies these theatrical shortcomings. When we see a film that is set in a distant period, for example, we suspend our sense of disbelief; and we are more willing to accept schematic and stylized gestures on the part of the actors. But in a modern setting we expect more naturalism, and we have some minimal standards of realism that must be met. This is something that the actors in The Lady of Musashino fail to do. As a consequence, Tomiko and the men are so shamelessly selfish and malicious that the viewer may have difficulty accepting the seriousness of Michiko’s situation.

This brings us to a final difficulty, and that is with the philosophical intent, or message, of the film. At one point when Tsutomu and Michiko seek shelter from a sudden storm in a hostel, Tsutomu tells her, “love is freedom, and freedom is power”, echoing the presumed “immorality” of Stendhal's vision. But Michiko answers that though she does love Tsutomu, she must resist his advances, because, “morality is the only power.” Then she goes to say that there is something even more powerful than morality and that is “one’s word”. By this she means that sharing and holding to a covenant, just for the sake of it being a covenant to which one is “true”, is the most powerful and meaningful thing on earth. This form of loyalty is more important than any morality, she asserts. In fact, she thinks that by maintaining such a level of rigid behaviour, one can wait (or, perhaps, society as a whole can hold together and wait collectively) until public morality ultimately changes for the better and becomes more responsive to the authentic wishes of the people.

But this defining moral position expressed by Michiko, I claim, is not only valueless, it is fundamentally unconscionable. Her position articulating the notion that by swearing to a covenant – an oath of loyalty to an arbitrary public morality which one doesn’t fully embrace – endorses the notion that one should simply be the instrument of a higher power, without evaluating or comprehending the nature of that higher power. This is the same kind of oppressive ethic that was perpetrated on their own people by both the Japanese military government and the German Nazis – to worship power and moral authority, itself, and to hold loyalty to such authority as the highest of all values. You can see the same kind of ultimately corrupt manipulation of the people for the purposes of maintaining blind loyalty to a “Leader” being perpetrated in Iran today. And you can even see it going on in the United States by reading Jeff Sharlett’s chilling account of “The Family”, which depicts a fundamentalist organization insinuating itself into powerful institutions today. "The Family" demands unconditional commitment to a sketchily defined “Jesus” for the purposes of establishing an autocratic hegemony. This group actually celebrates the Nazis for aggregating power by demanding blind loyalty via an arbitrary covenant.

So perhaps we should not just assume that the sentiments expressed in the equally reprehensible message behind, The 47 Ronin (Genroku Chûshingura, 1941-42), which celebrated blind loyalty and seppuku (hara-kiri), were forced upon Mizoguchi by the Japanese government wartime sponsors of the film. Perhaps he actually shared those sentiments expressed in that film – that self-destructive acts of saving “face” are the highest form of behaviour and more important than life, itself. Any philosophy that elevates death above life and "honor" above love, however, is not the Sufi’s way.

It is said that Mizoguchi converted to Buddhism sometime around 1950. After seeing The Lady of Musashino, I would guess that, in view of his great films that came later, he made that conversion after 1951.
★★

"Chungking Express” - Wong Kar Wai (1994)

Hong Kong film director Wong Kar Wai (Wáng Jia-wèi) first attracted attention in the West with the release of his third film, Chungking Express (Cantonese: Chung Hing Sam Lam, which means “Chungking Jungle”; Mandarin: Chongqing Senlin) in 1994. It was actually made during a pause in the postproduction work of Ashes of Time (Dung Che Xai Duk), an elaborate Chinese Wuxia (martial-arts) costume film that had been started much earlier and was being made along somewhat more mainstream lines. Chungking Express, by contrast, represented a continuation and further development of Wong Kar Wai’s now-celebrated personal style of filmmaking, which had been evolving through his first two features, As Tears Go By (Wong Gok Ka Moon, 1988) and Days of Being Wild (A Fei Zheng Chuan, 1990). With each successive step in this progression, Wong’s narratives appear to be more aimless, more unstructured. The focus is more and more strictly on the psychological mood of the characters.

In Chungking Express, the narrative comprises two separate stories, told in sequence, about policemen working the beat in the vicinity of the Chungking Mansions, a famously seedy Hong Kong locale and gathering place for night people of all ethnicities. (Wong Kar Wai originally planned to have three stories, but wisely expanded the second and more compelling story of Chungking Express”, deferring presentation of the third story to his next film, Fallen Angels.) In some films, the backstory is minimal – we jump straight into the action without knowing much about the backgrounds of the principal characters. Here, it is just the opposite: the backstories of the two narratives are most significant foci of attention, and a considerable portion of each of the two stories is spent on melancholy reflections concerning the recent offscreen romantic breakups of the two cops.

In the first story, Takeshi Kaneshiro, who would later appear in Wong’s Fallen Angels (Duo Luo Tian Shi, 1995) and Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (Shi Mian Mai Fu, 2004), is plainclothes cop He Zhiwu and is also known as “Cop 223". He hangs around a late night fast food stand, “The Midnight Express”, from where he calls up his answering service hoping that his girlfriend, May, who has just dumped him, has left a message. To provide some sort of structure to his now empty existence, he sets himself arbitrary tasks, such as strenuous jogging and eating daily doses of canned pineapple (May’s favourite). What we see are the outer manifestations of the man’s inner emotional wasteland. He figures that if she doesn’t come back to him in one month, by the time of his birthday, then it’s all over, and he will have to give up. Meanwhile Cop 223's melancholic reflections are interspersed with a separate and parallel set of noirish underworld scenes tracing the activities of a mysterious woman in a blonde wig, sunglasses, and wearing a trenchcoat (played by Taiwanese film star Brigitte Lin), who is organizing a big-time drug smuggling operation with some local Indians. Eventually, Cop 223's self-imposed time limit on his girlfriend elapses, and he resolves to fall in love with the next woman that he runs into. This turns out to be the mysterious blonde-bewigged drug smuggler, who has just been double-crossed by her co-conspirators and is running away from a deadly shootout. As it happens, 223 had already accidentally run into this women by accident 57 hours earlier (in story time) at the beginning of the film. This is one of Wong Kar Wai’s recurring themes: that of missed opportunities and connections. In many stories and films there is a fascination with the chance, lucky encounter, because we observe only the real encounters in our experience, not the missed ones. But in our imagination we ponder all the missed encounters and connections that might have taken place but did not. This is where Wong Kar Wai stories live – not in the physical world of action, but in the dreams and imaginations of his characters.

Thanks to 223’s self-absorbed persistence and the blonde woman’s weariness, the second chance encounter does make a connection, and they do go home together. But this is hardly a perfect match and nothing romantic ensues (although a final message left at his answering service makes us wonder). Both of these characters have their own particular problems and are lost in their own internal dreamworlds. The blonde woman passes out on the bed, and Cop 223 heads back to the fast-food “Midnight Express” counter, barely noticing a new employee there, Faye (who offers another one of those chance encounters and missed opportunities) who will figure prominently in the second story of the film.

Once Faye appears, the camera follows her narrative thread, and the second story begins. Faye, played by Cantonese pop singer Faye Wong, loves pop music, particularly “California Dreaming” by the Mommas and the Poppas. She becomes secretly attracted to another customer of the counter, not Cop 223, but the uniformed Cop 663, played by Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who had already appeared in the inscrutable coda of Days of Living Wild and who would become a Wong Kar Wai regular. Faye quietly eyes Cop 663 as he stops by the food counter every evening to pick up food for his airline stewardess girlfriend. But soon 663 is dumped by the girlfriend, just like Cop 223 had been. We then follow Cop 663 as he falls into his own externalizing of his romantic grieving, in this case talking by himself to various objects in his apartment that had somehow been associated with the departed girlfriend. Again, there is focus on loss and inconsolable loneliness. Just as with Cop 223, 663's life (and the screen we are watching) is now “filled” with absence and emptiness.

When a “good-bye” letter from 663's ex-girlfriend is later dropped off at the food counter, Faye discovers a key to his apartment inside. She pockets the key and begins taking afternoon sojourns while 663 is away on duty to this apartment, where she dreamily imagines what life would be like in that apartment with her secret love. But she needs to put her own feminine stamp on these living quarters and erase that of his former girlfriend. Soon she is piece-by-piece redesigning the whole apartment. Despite the obvious alterations, the grieving 663 is completely oblivious and goes on talking to new objects, such as a big Garfield doll that Faye has substituted for the ex-girlfriend’s teddy bear, as if they were simply altered forms of the old familiar objects. For him the objects, themselves, don’t matter; they are simply sounding boards for his interior monologues. Though ridiculous, these whimsical scenes have their peculiar charm and lighten the mood of the sometimes dolorous film.

There is one moment in the apartment that brings Faye to tears. While cleaning 663's bed one day during one of her secret visits, she discovers under his pillow a long hair from the ex-girlfriend. For the short-haired Faye this reminder of the “absent” presence in 663's emotional life is too much for her. For the most part Faye avoids expressing herself in words – in fact, she likes to fill her surroundings with loud rock music so that words are driven from her mind. But she does express herself by other gestures. By the end of the film, she has become an airline stewardess, herself, and is growing out her hair. A year later there is one final chance for an encounter between 663 and Faye, and this time, unusual for Wong Kar Wai, there is finally a real connection. The film ends on a note of promise, not of despair.

Wong Kar Wai’s cinematic style has increasingly fascinated cineastes, gathered industry awards, and attracted a loyal following, but it has also just as increasingly alienated casual filmgoers and has had diminishing success at the box office. Not surprisingly, there are several different critical takes (which are not mutually exclusive) on what Wong Kar Wai’s style amounts to.

1. Some critics see Wong Kar Wai as an Asian version of French “New-Wave” director Jean-Luc Godard, whose casual cinematic pastiches of the 1960s displayed an off-the-cuff attitude that also attracted a cult following.
2. Still other critics, influenced by postmodernist thinkers, see Wong Kar Wai as the natural evolutionary result of postmodernist developments.
3. Others feel that Wong’s work reflected the political anxieties at that time in connection with the Hong Kong handover to the Chinese government.
4. And, of course, many critics complain that his films have no plot whatsoever, just aimless mood-pieces that have been strung together without any plan. Indeed, although Wong’s background was in screenplay writing, Chungking Express was a further step in the direction of extemporaneous filmmaking.

But none of these perspectives really capture the essence of Wong Kar Wai. Though Godard and Wong are both frustrated romantics, their styles are quite different. Godard began creating films in the 1960s that were seat-of-the-pants cinematic essays on contemporary society. They were like visual magazine articles, filled with sly innuendo and cultural wisecracks. But these works had an emotional distance to them, too. They were visualized forms of text. Wong Kar Wai, on the other hand, has a much more consistent, expressionistic style. It is lushly romantic and captures the tensions and moods of nocturnal life in the big city, filled as it often is with existential loneliness. Superbly employing Chris Doyle’s adroit cinematography, Wong Kar Wai captures an essential aspect of big-city life: despite the crowded conditions and numerous encounters with people on the street, there are few opportunities for truly authentic, meaningful encounters. The presence of the crowds offer a constant reminder of the feelings of being cut-off from true human interaction. Wong Kar Wai captures this feeling perfectly in expressionistic fashion by visually exaggerating the crowded conditions and the feeling of close quarters – an effect that would become even more emphatic in his next film, Fallen Angels (1995). In addition, he visually explores the nature of human temporality, itself. With various stop-action sequences and smudge pixilations, including superposed multiple-speed action sequences, Wong Kar Wai hints at deeper and more direct temporal experiences than does Godard. As for both postmodernist cultural and political influences on Wong Kar Wai, I feel these are indirect, at best. Wong’s Existentialist style is simply a response to and a reflection on the modern urban life that is becoming almost universal, and this is not directly traceable to specific political and intellectual issues. His films, in fact, will endure longer than the postmodernist cultural critiques that have been applied to them.

Perhaps the most significant point to make concerns Wong Kar Wai’s unusual narrative structure, or lack thereof. In fact Wong’s films do have a narrative progression and are not simply aimless meanderings. They are internal journeys of the imagination and not so much identified by landmarks in the physical world. This is what makes his films fascinating cinematic experiences and takes them to a level closer to music than to text (which connects with the fact that theme music is essential to Wong’s films).

It’s interesting to compare the men versus the women in Chungking Express. There are four focalizations in the film: the woman in the blond wig, Cop 223, Faye, and Cop 663. We peer inside the thinking and feeling of the men, thanks to the interior monologues, but not similarly into the insides of the women. The women are only viewed from the outside and remain opaque and fascinatingly unpredictable. Apparently for Wong Kar Wai, women are eternally mysterious characters: enchanting, but perhaps ultimately unknowable. The only option for men, it seems is to surrender (as Cop 663 does at the end) to their unfathomable allure. The men, 223 and 663, on the other hand, are shown revealing their internal suffering and vulnerability. They are comprehensible, while the women are not. When 663 meets up with his ex-girlfriend again near the end of the film, he stoically presents a friendly, sympathetic smile. The girlfriend, though, seems cruelly unfeeling and invisible behind her disinterested smile. The difference in how we see the two is striking. Note that the two men are so obsessive about their own romantic misfortunes that they are strikingly unobservant of things happening around them. This is ironic, since the two oblivious and self-absorbed cops are supposed to be “watchers" and constantly on the lookout for threats to human safety. The two principal women, by contrast, are acutely observant of the smallest details around them. Faye, for example, notices a single feminine hair on the pillow, while 663 notices almost nothing. And we, the viewers, are observant watchers, too – of both the mysterious charm of the women and the existential loneliness of the men.
★★★½

“Café Transit” - Kambuzia Partovi (2005)

The Iranian film, Café Transit (also known as Border Café, 2005) describes the struggles of a recently widowed mother of two small children in her efforts to live on her own in a traditional male-dominated society. The write and director of the film, Kambuzia Partovi, had earlier written the screenplay for Jafar Panahi’s superb The Circle (Dayereh, 2000), which also covered the theme of women who cannot find a place for themselves within Iranian society. The collaborative association with Panahi continues with this film, because Panahi was the film editor for Café Transit.

The story begins with the young widow, Reyhan, attending to the shutting down of her deceased husband’s roadside “truck stop” café, which is located in western Iran near the Turkish border. According to traditional customs of the local society, she is now expected to marry and move in with her already-married brother-in-law, Nasser, but this is something she doesn’t want to do. Her own background (she comes from another region) does not follow this custom, and, besides, she doesn’t feel any love for Nasser. She prefers to remain an unmarried widow and carry on operating the café on her own. Nasser, however, sees it as his duty to look after his bereft sister-in-law. Gradually it becomes evident, though, that the issue for him is only secondarily a matter a compassion and more a matter of personal honor: he is concerned about losing face in the eyes of the other villagers.

Reyhan is polite and respectful at all times, but she is also determined. She decides to retain the services of her husband’s café assistant, Oujan, and redecorates the place to make it more attractive. The Farsi title of the film is Ghahveh Khaneh, which in English means simply “coffee house”, but here it refers to a kind of café that usually serves relatively simple food to an almost exclusively male patronage. The clientele for such cafés in this area are mostly truckers, many of them European, who are making the long run across Iran and Turkey to deliver goods to and from Europe. Many of these men live away from home for years doing this job, and when they learn that there is now a roadside café with the food and flavour of a “woman’s touch”, they soon flock to be her customers. Such a booming success comes as a further shock to the humiliated Nasser, who operates his own roadside café that is now losing customer’s to that of his sister-in-law.

Nasser increases the pressure on Reyhan to give in to his face-preserving demands, and he eventually turns to the local authorities in an effort to have her place shut down. Throughout all the pressure placed on her, Reyhan remains polite and respectful, but quietly resistant to his demands. Mindful of social restrictions about unaccompanied women appearing before men in public, she remains in the kitchen cooking, hidden from the view of the appreciative drivers who are not even aware that a woman is cooking their meals.

Two additional characters appear as the story proceeds, and they contribute to an external perspective on the events. One is a Greek truck driver, Zakario, who accidentally discovers that the cook of his tasty café meals is a woman, and he gradually becomes romantically attracted to her (despite very few face-to-face meetings). The other outsider is a homeless teenage Russian girl, Svieta, who has fled a war-torn area and is now hitching rides with drivers in hopes of reaching safety in a Western European country. After the penniless Svieta is dumped by a driver at Reyhan’s café, Reyhan offers her shelter and food, and then even employment as an assistant at the café.

Towards the end of the story, Nasser manages to get the authorities to shut down Reyhan’s café and force her in to his own home. But this is not the real end. At the close of the film, Reyhan leaves Nasser’s home, acquires another café directly across the road from Nasser’s café, and opens up for business. The woman has not been beaten.

Although most of the actors and actresses are not professionals and have been drawn from the local area, the two major characters are played by top Iranian performers. Nasser is played sympathetically by Parviz Parastui, one of the most distinguished Iranian actors. Reyhan is played by Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, who is the wife of director-writer Kambuzia Partovi. Her previous appearances in Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (Badkonake Sefid, 1995) and The Circle (Dayereh, 2000) had already displayed her considerable talents of projecting an inner tension. In all these films, she acts in a restrained and respectful manner, never displaying the pyrotechnical emotions that one might feel is justified on the basis of the depicted circumstances. And yet her expressive, compassionate face and gaze suggest her true feelings, and this has a powerful emotional effect.

The cinematography in Café Transit is generally effective in what must have been low-budget filming circumstances. On the other hand the narrative scheme of suggestively encapsulating the entire story as a set of flashbacks doesn’t work so well. The film actually begins with separate shots of Zachario and Svieta in the “present” recounting their memories of their time with Reyhan. For both of them, Reyhan had an evidently seminal effect on their lives and how they should live. Yet the significance and depth of their later interactions with Reyhan is not brought out effectively in the ensuing scenes. And the focalization does not come exclusively from Zachario and Svieta: there are many scenes which could not have been witnessed by those two. Overall, the viewer’s main focus of attention and interest is on the fate of Reyhan, herself.

It is possible that the always unpredictable Iranian censorship authorities (who, according to Partovi, excised several scenes from the film) played some havoc with the storytelling. We should be thankful, I suppose, that the censorship authorities allowed the film to be released at all. (More surprisingly, Café Transit turned out to be Iran’s official entry for the US Academy Awards.) Iranian filmmakers generally have to walk a delicate line when discussing the condition of women in their society. They are forbidden from explicitly criticizing the system, but they still often manage to get their points across implicitly. For example, in The Circle, which was banned in Iran, the women in focus are actually criminalized and excluded from society by an essentially corrupt social system. Café Transit, on the other hand, is more mild – the principal character, Reyhan, is severely constrained by society, but is not cast out of it, and she is presented as a favorable moral model in comparison to the “immoral” vagabond, Svieta.

But the Partovi story has its underlying theme, just the same. It would have been easy to present Nasser as an evil, corrupt character who was abusing Reyhan. But this is not what has been done. Nasser is presented as an ordinary, essentially moral, man who is trying to live by the codes of society. In the hearts of everyone of us there lies the bestial and the angelic. Social values are supposed to summon up the angelic within us. But here we see the ordinary man, Nasser, encouraged by social rules to follow in the footsteps of his thuggish brother, Karim. Just as in The Circle, the people executing society’s moral code are not depicted as inherently evil – they are not essentially corrupt. What is corrupt is any system that evokes the most bestial instincts of man to (a) reduce women to servitude, (b) harm the innocent, and (c) crush dissent and close off the free exchange of ideas.
★★★