361. Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star)v (1960)

Directed By Ritwik Ghatak

Synopsis

A girl lives for her family, gives them all her money. They don't really appreciate her. She gets T.B. and presumably dies. Feel good movie of the year!

Review

I am sorry I have taken so long between posts but my life has been quite full lately and I really have not had the time to watch anything. I suppose it's a good thing, but I missed doing these reviews.

This film is an unflinching look at family life and how horrible it can be. This is an Indian melodrama and as such there is plenty of singing, however it is anything but a musical, the music is always an integral part of the story and when it is incidental it is extremely interesting in its expressionist experimentalism. In fact if anything truly stands out in this film as completely original it is its amazing soundtrack. That being said the film is quite excellent in other ways to, from the camera work to the acting.

The acting is excellent throughout, although the father does seem like a caricature at times as does the mother. In spite of being a melodrama the story never seems to fall into excessive sentimentalism, the reactions to situations seeming quite normal and ringing true to life throughout. A very good film which shows you what you get in life for being nice and selfless.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Meghe Dhaka Tara is strongly melodramatic in tone, especially as concerns the sufferings heaped on the protagonist. As in many of his other films, Ghatak also uses surrealistic sound effects, such as sounds of a lashing as the heroine suffers yet another tragic twist of fate.

The film is online, here is the link for the first part.

360. La Joven (The Young One) (1960)

Directed by Luis Buñuel

Synopsis

A girl, a gamekeeper and her grandfather live on an island. Her grandfather dies and the gamekeeper starts having illicit thoughts about the young girl. Meanwhile a black man escaping a lynching mob appears on the island and develops a friendship with the girl. He comes then into obvious conflict with the gamekeeper.

Review

Buñuel has an immensely varied career from silent surrealism in Chien Andalou to Belle de Jour through films in English such as this one. Note that the official title is in Spanish but the film is actually filmed in English by American actors and fully spoken in that language.

Interesting as well when following Buñuel's career is to spot the constant themes pervading such a variety of films. Here you get trademark bugs, animals killing each other or being killed by man, the idea of Eros and Thanatos and as in Olvidados the inappropriate sexual feelings towards young children.

Buñuel manages to make the viewer participate in some kind of awkward voyeuristic experience by having some very "wrong" shots of the girl, this works extremely well in the context of the film. A film that ends up being about equality and the stupidity of prejudice, where the person accused of rape is the one who hasn't committed it and does not tolerate it, whereas all other characters to the exclusion of the girl seem to be more or less accepting of rape... except that acceptable rape is committed by a white man.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

La Joven is one of Buñuel's more serious films, dealing with racism and rape. Based on a story by Peter Matthiessen called Travelin' Man.

Beginning with a version of Sinnerman: