FILM NUB

THE 400 BLOWS - A Quest for Freedom

2020-10-06T04:41:00.008-07:00

François Truffaut's first full-length film and also his semi-autobiography, The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups), released in 1959 is a landmark film of the French New Wave.

Truffaut spent the initial years of his film career as a critic, writing for the famous French film journal, Cahiers du Cinema. Writing about films and being in contact with one of the greatest critics, André Bazin the foundation on which Truffaut stood was rock solid. Somehow, when the film was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival (1959), it did not receive the appreciation and acknowledgement it does today. One of the reasons being how young he was to have made a film and how he used to bash the old and seasoned French filmmakers in his critiques for promoting traditional filmmaking methods.

Gradually, the film received the appreciation it deserved. It was identified to be unique in its own way and a success of the unconventional style of filmmaking which resonated with the French New Wave.

The film is about a 12-year-old kid Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), who is treated as a pariah by his teachers, his self-absorbed mother (Claire Maurier) and a doltish yet diverting father (Albert Rémy). His parents, who are unable to cope with Antoine's behaviour, put him in a correctional institute.

The film opens with a sequence of tracking shots of the Eiffel Tower through the streets of Paris. Well, this is not the first shot but actually the entire opening credit sequence. I believe, this opening sequence compliments the rest of the film and deserves to be treated accordingly as it in itself makes an interesting subject. It precisely is how one would look for the Tower if visiting the city for the first time. The freedom Antoine craves for is verbatim to freedom that the movement in the opening shots suggest. It almost feels like a view through a child's eyes.

The language of the film has an unforced and spontaneous flow to it, which was a result of Truffaut's unwillingness to become a member of the herd. The first half of the film does have a reflection of other famous French filmmakers like Renoir and Becker (I do not imply Jean Renoir and Jacques Becker as members of said herd). It is the next half of the film that brings out its individuality and the brilliance of Truffaut. While making 'The 400 Blows' Truffaut has used an amalgamation of the techniques that were used not only in cinema but also television.

The film has several bijou instances such as Antoine wiping his hands off with the curtain, hiding his savings and trying his mother's makeups which instantly takes the audience (the mischievous ones) back to their own childhood.

Antoine after attempting to run away several times and trying to make money by selling a typewriter he stole from his father's office gets finally caught. His father, who is jaded by his son's devilment sends him to a correctional institute.

In a scene where a photographer takes mugshots of Antoine, Truffaut has used a freeze of barely a few seconds. As if the director is trying to suggest the permanence of the event and a full stop to Antoine's quest for freedom.

At the correctional institute Antoine is shown being questioned by a psychologist. Truffaut did not use dialogues that the boy could have memorized from the script, rather the questions were made and asked from him on spot while the camera was rolling. The boy answered all the questions spontaneously. Meanwhile, the particular expressions that appear on his face were pure and true which would have been almost impossible if Truffaut were to use the traditional practices. As Satyajit Ray says in his books, "a major goal of all dialogue in a film: making a character come alive."

The last scene of the film and probably the most famous one shows Antoine running away from the institute through a village towards the sea. He believes that the sea he had heard about, if he could reach would bring an end to all his problems. The camera tracks him until he reaches the edge of the sea. Then it stops. There is nowhere Antoine could run anymore. After looking around for a while he turns towards the camera and starts walking in the direction of the viewers, this is when the shot suddenly freezes. The film ends with Antoine caught mid-run looking towards the audience. The impact of the use of freeze to end the film is uncanny. The way he looks towards the audience is unsettling as if he is blaming us, the society for the situation he is in.

CHARULATA - A Bird Trapped in a Golden Cage

2020-09-01T12:45:00.001-07:00

Released in 1964, Satyajit Ray’s Charulata is an adaptation of Nashtanirh (The Broken Nest), a novella written by Rabindranath Tagore.

The film is about a young, educated and beautiful woman named Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee). She is married to an upper class gentleman Bhupati (Shailen Mukherjee). He is a follower of renaissance of Bengal and runs an English newspaper, ‘The Sentinel’ which aimed to lambaste the British Government in India.

Bhupati is a loving but distant husband who is mostly absorbed in his intellectual pursuits and pays minimal attention to Charulata.
They live in an enormous house, and other than the domestic help, it’s just the couple, Charulata and her husband in the house. She is bored and lonely and the couple seems to be in no sexual relationship.

Later in the film, Bhupati’s young cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee) comes to stay with them for some time. Ray has shown his arrival like a thunderstorm, literally, as a metaphor since Charu’s life was about to go through a swirl.
Amal is a genial and free spirited young man. Charu and Amal begin to spend time and are drawn to each other. Charu begins to fall in love and sensing this, Amal distances himself from Charu as he was unwilling to betray his brother’s trust. This gives the film an ambiguous ending, returning Charu to her lonely existence.

Bhupati later realizes Charu’s love for Amal and is shocked and heart broken. This is where Ray ends the film leaving the rest to the imagination of the audience.

The opening sequence of the film is one of the most extraordinary and brilliant introduction to a film and a character. It sets up and prepares the audience for what they are going to witness for the rest of the film is the epitome of the art of film making.
The opening seven minutes of near silence has no dialogue whatsoever but sets the stage for the film giving all the necessary details forcing the viewer to form a conjecture about the film.
Charulata is a film way ahead of its time talking about adultery and loneliness in the simplest of ways. The film raised questions like, to what extent were educated Indian women expected to abide to a restricted domestic role, creating a conflict between aesthetic existence and the ethical existence.

Inspired, as he has admitted, by the final shot of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Ray ends the film on a freeze-frame or rather, a series of freeze-frames. Two hands, Charu’s and Bhupati’s, reaching tentatively out to each other, close but not yet joined. Ray’s tanpura score rises in a plangent crescendo. On the screen appears the title of Tagore’s story: Nashtanirh. Irretrievably broken? Ray, subtle and unprescriptive as ever, leaves that for us to decide.

BICYCLE THIEVES - One of De Sica's Masterpieces

2020-08-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

Released in November, 1948 Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (Ladri Di Biciclette) was one of the few films that began the Italian Neorealist movement. The film is set up in postwar Italy, paralyzed by poverty and unemployment.

The film opens with a scene of a crowd where several desperate men were asking for available jobs, while the guy announcing the vacancies was failing to control the turmoil. Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani)is thrilled that he has finally been offered a job but at the same time is cursing his fate to have landed with one that requires the bicycle which he had already pawned. The job was so important that his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) had to pawn all their cotton and linen sheets to redeem the bicycle.

This is when we encounter one of the most brilliant scenes of the film. When Ricci is waiting for his bicycle he sees a man with a bundle of sheets just like his, climbing up this unending wall of shelves with thousands of other sheets. The scene is a direct representation of the situation the country was in after the war.

While returning Maria goes to thank the "Wise Woman", who predicted that Ricci would get a job. Meanwhile Ricci, who is impatiently waiting downstairs, leaves his bicycle and goes in to see what was keeping her. De Sica is teasing the audience here. He knows that the viewers are waiting for the moment, but the bike is still there.

This is when Bruno (Enzo Staiola), Ricci's little son is introduced. He is a stout-hearted kid who loves the bike as much as today's kids love their smartphones. He idealizes his father and imitates every action of his.

Then of course, the bicycle is stolen, and then begins a hopeless odyssey of Ricci and his son through the city of Rome. The police was of no help, neither were his friends. It was just them trying to find a needle in a haystack.

De Sica has used this journey of the father and son to reveal the reality of a war-torn nation. As we see the protagonist wandering places, the only thing they did was uncover scenes of abject poverty similar to theirs. One such scene was of the church, where hundreds of poor and many homeless had gathered to find refuge in God but more importantly to find food.

After losing all hope, to his astonishment, Ricci finally spots the thief. He follows him to his home and Bruno was even able to find a policeman. They somehow even get the opportunity to search the thief's house which was rather a room where he lived with his entire family. Of course he was poor, evidently even more than Ricci. This was De Sica's justification for the thief's actions. They weren't able find any proof against the said thief. Since there were no witnesses or proof, Ricci was forced not to press charges.

Through the entire film Ricci is unable to embrace the fact that his son is the important possession and not the bicycle. He is so obsessed with getting his job back that he repeatedly ignores his little son. In a later scene, Bruno is almost run over by a car while his father is lost in his misery.

It is not just the despairing journey of the two that makes the film one of a kind, but also the miraculous survival of the poor kid. The kid who later becomes his father's savior. By now Ricci had lost all hopes and was tempted enough to do the unexpected. He himself tries to steal a bicycle, continuing the cycle of theft.

The film had such a huge impact on its initial release that when the British film magazine Sight & Sound held its first international poll of filmmakers and critics in the year 1952, Bicycle Thieves was voted the greatest film of all time.

As I have told you before, nothing will give you a better understanding of the film except for you watching it. So, if you have somehow read the blog till here I think you would be interested, therefore I urge you to watch it!

PATHER PANCHALI - The Greatest Directorial Debut

2020-08-15T04:15:00.002-07:00

The directorial debut of Satyajit Ray was a statement for Bengali, Indian and World Cinema. In fact, this film is credited with putting Indian Cinema on the world map.
Pather Panchali is an adaptation of a 1929 novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay about a young boy named ‘Apu’ growing up in rural Bengal. He belongs to a poor family, but his imagination and curiosity are hardly affected by the abject poverty of his family.

The film has portrayed a brilliantly detailed picture of a village in Bengal where the mother gets into deep debt while attempting to raise her daughter (Durga) and a young son (Apu) while also caring for an old aunt (Indir Thakrun). She has minimal help from her husband, a ne’er-do-well idealist who thinks education has placed him above physical drudge.

The mother is a resilient woman trying to do her best to keep their home together. She is often irritated by the old aunt in her house and even ill-treats her continuously in a manner one would highly disapprove, but cannot really hate. Despite all her efforts she eventually had to give in and move to the city with her family after a terrible tragedy.
Inspired by filmmakers like Jean Renoir and Vittorio De Sica, and himself being “the Renaissance man”, Ray was able to make the film with a humanitarian touch. One of the innumerable reasons that makes this film one of its kind is the fact that the actors he did cast were untrained. Not only he taught himself the practice and the art of film making as he went along, he also helped the cast to discover their potential as actors. Despite the tight budget he was working on, he devoted himself entirely to finish this film.

The composition of every shot, the background score, the sound effects, the expressions and actions of not just the characters but the animals as well; there is not a single element in the film that does not carry a significance, a message of its own.

Ray has used such expressive shots that the film takes no time in touching the hearts of the audience. The film is so intricately carved that unlike the usual films with forced expressions and exaggerated emotions, Pather Panchali shows every human emotion in its most natural and purest form. Ray gave such attention to details that a lot of people almost found it mystical.

Ray was undoubtedly the first ‘auteur filmmaker’ of India, in fact of the entire South Asia. Some critics called him the complete filmmaker as he meticulously wrote his own scripts, composed film scores, made sketches of costumes, screenplays and even designed posters for his films. There is a trend of pure humanism that runs through almost all of his films that is utterly consistent and thought provoking.

Pather Panchali is a timeless piece of art which has this unfading influence on every film maker or film fanatic. It had such an impact that after the legendary news editor of Times of India, late Sham Lal watched the film in February, 1956, he was so moved that he dedicated almost an entire page of the newspaper to an essay he wrote on the film. This has probably been the only time in the 182 years of existence that the Times of India had done something of this kind. Pather Panchali, he said, would “rewrite the history of Indian Cinema”.

Honestly, you can go about reading hundreds of blogs and articles on the film but you won't understand the depth and brilliance of it unless you watch it yourself.

Did I just cut the branch I was sitting on by saying that?

Well.

Kick-off!

2020-08-09T05:55:00.005-07:00

Hello fellow cinephiles, or maybe just an interested fellow, welcome to Film Nub.

This blog won't be like all those other review pages, talking about the recently released films. Here you'll find me talking to you about the classics. After all that's the foundation, right. I'll be talking, and I say talking instead of writing or blogging because when I write I imagine a conversation going on between the writer that's me and the reader, you all. So I'll be talking about films like Pather Panchali, Aparajito, Bicycle Thieves, Taxi Driver, Psycho as well as filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Vittorio De Sica, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock and many more.

About me? I'm just a student lost in the world trying to find refuge in this other world, known as CINEMA.