Dionysos

NFA: "The creators themselves were aware that the thematization of violence against women, prostitution, suicide, and assistance in suicide could provoke disapproval, and they consulted the subject matter with representatives of authorities and the church. As a result, a smoother and more melodramatic film was created than it was initially, but it was all in vain. The commission of the FSK (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle = Voluntary Self-Control - a humorous name for an institution in the country that officially abolished censorship) refused to recommend the film for screening, and the churches declared a boycott against it. Demonstrations and counterdemonstrations were held in front of movie theaters, and the screenings in the movie theaters were loudly disrupted." The most interesting aspect of the film is the retrospective flow of flashbacks and multiple different temporal planes of the past (it sounds more complicated than it actually is) presented by the monologue of a single narrator. The subjectivity and intimacy derived from this is supported by the fact that the narrator does not address us, but rather her object of love. Moreover, he does not respond, so the whole story actually unfolds within the soul and memory of a single person, whom we are compelled to observe from the outside as she pursues reconciliation with her own past and her final acts of freedom - we become judges, evaluating the credibility of the repentance of a person who has fully exposed herself before us, like that ancient predecessor who could only be judged by the judges after she was stripped naked before them.

I don't know what else to call it, so I'll call it "tyranny of the camera." While in conventional films, the camera constantly cowardly submits to the movement of the actors, this truly authoritarian camera finds its (static) place and then we only observe how the characters must submit to the space that had been defined for them by its framing (and the fact that this camera is truly uncompromising is beautifully evident in the occasionally decapitated heads of disobedient characters...). Traditional camera and editing surrender to the story's pleasing and seemingly natural narration, in which time ellipses serve to unrealistically cut out seemingly unimportant scenes. Akerman allows the camera to capture even the "boring" parts, and in that, she discovers more than all "Hollywood" stories combined (Akerman, unlike Truffaut, would not omit a traffic jam...). In this case, it penetrates deep into the stereotype of the lifestyle (see feminism), in which even the smallest deviation from the norm can become an explosion of suppressed frustration.

This film should be mandatory for everyone who believes that a documentary is, by its very nature, what is meant to observe and capture reality "objectively" and in "unscripted" situations. Foolishness for many reasons, of which the Rouch/Morin duo choose only a few: first of all, in the context of the social sciences (among which the sociological documentary belongs), the recurrent illusory separation of subject and object, which inevitably imprints the observer's point of view on the observed reality. This is beautifully demonstrated by the authors' repeated entries into the actual film and their interactions with extras. Furthermore, the naive separation between scripted fictional scenes ("feature film") and authentic situations ("documentary") - the camera is always an invasive element, and its mere presence transforms the entire situation and behavior of the actors. This is beautifully shown in the brilliant final part, where the film's characters watch themselves during the screening, and in the subsequent discussion, there are mutually contradictory interpretations regarding the nature of spontaneity in their own and others' speeches. In short, it is a mockery from over half a century ago of those who expect a documentary to capture the emanation of pure Truth.

The second part continues exactly where the previous part ended, after the main character's transformation from a white terrorist into a friend of the people. This transformation seemed very poorly managed to me throughout Hungarian Rhapsody: 1st moment = István is bred with the intolerant attitude of the aristocracy, and he cruelly fights on the side of counterrevolution; 2nd moment = István recommends allocating land to retail farmers, in order to "take the wind out of the sails of the reds," so it is clearly just an opportunistic calculating gesture; 3rd moment = István, dressed in peasant rags, sits at the table with the former aristocracy. Nothing happened between moments 2 and 3 that would coherently explain this transformation. Fortunately, this problem no longer exists in Allegro Barbaro (and it is therefore paradoxical that a story in which characters do not transform is better), and we can enjoy the eternal struggle of arrogance and brutality of wealth and power with the suffering and resistance of poverty in the background of passing history. There is no need to talk about the mastery of mise-en-scène, and the playful placement of individual characters is also very pleasing, which is not only the result of clever movement of actors on the stage but also of miraculous film editing.

At least in the first hour, an almost brilliant mockery of all seemingly unquestionably valid claims of language on the objective construction of social life. Greenaway sets up a truly linguistic game in which the randomness of every linguistic system is perfectly demonstrated, in the sense that the meaning of things and therefore their naming is not given positively but is derived negatively by differentiation from all other names (from the word "table" itself, nothing is derived, but we gain the idea of a table by contrasting it with "chair," "wall," "child," "spaceship," etc...). The randomness of specific expressions is therefore obvious. The language we speak every day can be playfully disrupted, allowing the author to build a completely new system, which can form, for example, around a worldwide bird conspiracy, thanks to the aforementioned randomness/arbitrariness. Just as the stereotypical idea of language is shattered, so is our traditional expectation of film. It is a perfect work in this respect but it simply should have been shorter.

The film is certainly not Italian soft porn, and the sporadic sex scenes in it (although quite explicit at times) only make sense in the context of the entire film, which primarily revolves around the overall societal movement in Italy from the late 70s and especially the 80s. The progressive era of consumptive "normalization" with the fading radicalism of the 60s and 70s brought most Italians to the embrace of simple pleasures such as color televisions, cars, and of course, sex (let us remember Pasolini's famous justification in Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom). The male characters in the film become symbols of this betrayal (Bellocchio himself was a member of the Communist Party and also a member of a Maoist cell in the 70s) or, for some, a sense of wisdom - notably Giulia's fiancé (who seemingly has no other role in the film) and her young lover. However, the film is not that simple, as it is complicated by (who else but) a woman. Giulia may appear at first glance as the most obvious manifestation of this primitive indulgence in sexual pleasures, but in her ambiguity, she would need to have not been played by the surprisingly very good M. Detmers and, most importantly, Bellocchio could not end the film with a perfect conclusion in which the role of the seemingly self-evident school lectures from antiquity to Feuerbach is fulfilled. Is Giulia a modern-day Antigone and therefore a positive character? And does the film thereby become Bellochio's denunciation of the times or a confession of his past mistakes?

The beginning of the film undermines the viewer's expectations by presenting the predictable behavior of both sides of the conflict - the mafia and the main protagonist, Salvatore, along with the locals who are terrorized. Fortunately, this initial idyllic image falls apart due to the cautiousness of the locals, who are determined to fight against the uncompromising activism and the "worldly" mainland Italy that Salvatore represents. His power struggle with the mafia becomes more complex and isolating, and as a character, Salvatore, portrayed brilliantly by Volonté, is surprisingly ambiguous. Given the development of the situation, his motivation to altruistically help the oppressed, based on his firm convictions, gradually blends with self-sacrificing martyrdom, bordering on self-adoration. However, the feature debut of the three directors did not achieve (and deservedly so, even though it's still a very good film) the same recognition as the famous films/debuts of the early 1960s that changed the face of Italian cinema, such as Accattone (1961) by Pasolini, Time Stood Still (1959) + The Job (1961) by E. Olmi, and Bandits of Orgosolo (1960) by Vittorio De Seta.

"Nudity is simplicity. Like love, birth, and water. Like the sun, the beach, all of it." It is also fitting to add: like a wave. That is, the new one. The one with its lightness and simplicity in which the director is able to capture Paris in its own thousand reflections and at the same time with all its crowded streets, cafes, and shops. And yet, just as easily capturing the inner self of the main character in her nudity and (this is not meant obscenely) her final unveiling in front of another person and the city itself. The self-centeredness that breeds isolation and detachment from others, characterized by the use of taxis, is overcome by a symbolic transfer to a bus, in which the protagonist can no longer travel alone. Similarly, the exchange of a phone call for a personal visit to the hospital is symbolic - looking the enemy in the face in person is the basis for overcoming and taking responsibility for one's own life.

First of all, the characters are superficially outlined. Perhaps intentionally, and it might not be generally harmful. When the protagonists are diminished by their flatness, it can create space for everything between them - the film space can be plastic. However, the director did not succeed in that either, which is the real problem, as he probably tried to grasp the space of the whole of Eurasia (see the second title of the film). Something from the director's unfulfilled goals speaks to the viewer through numerous shots of cities from Moscow to Paris, but this formal gimmick alone cannot save the absence of the overall atmosphere. The feeling of a cold and insurmountable current that engulfed the main character did not happen to me. All that remained was a gangster film, which is also predictable, at least in terms of the fate of the main characters (perhaps deliberately as a symbol of the inevitability of that "eastern" current?). This is my first Bartas film, but I think his previous films were, at least from what I've read, better so I won't be discouraged by this film from the author (because on its own, let's admit it, this film could have done that).

With a bit of exaggeration (but not that much), the viewer may feel, after almost two and a half hours, that they have only seen four cuts - between four separate stories. The countless intuitive and at the same time imaginative rides, Kalatozov's detailed false ceilings, and various camera angles are certainly still diligently studied by students at the Moscow Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. Similarly, the story progresses smoothly from the seemingly invisible humiliation of a poor country, through the identification of the source of its misery in capitalism maintained by an imperialist colossus up north, and through the first isolated, uncoordinated attempts doomed to failure, to the conscious, organized mass victory of the revolution in the final story. Originally, even I, despite being an old leftist, wanted to be strict and criticize the film's overly readable plot. But when I hear (as in so many Eastern European films) the cries such as those who say, "it's all ideology," "victory of form over content," or "manipulation/abuse," I change my mind. An objective assessment would probably be that which saw Batista as the smiling guy who didn't do anything that the US ambassador saw with his own eyes (find out, for example, what the golden phone was), in 1961, the US sent a humanitarian mission full of freedom fighters to Cuba (probably like those in Syria today), and so on. There remains one unrelated question to ponder: how is it possible that Cuba is constantly elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council by the General Assembly of the UN? Strange, when we know that the whole world despises it because of Castro's totalitarian regime...