Martin Scorsese founded the World Cinema Project in 2007 to help with the preservation and restoration of landmark films from countries around the globe. This fourth collection—which follows the initial 2013 boxed set (VL Online-3/14), the 2017 second volume (VL-9/17), and a 2020 third release—once again spotlights six films from various eras, featuring differing styles and subjects, with several emphasizing the brutality and lingering corrosive effects of colonialism.
Sarah Maldoror’s 1972 film Sambizanga unfolds a few weeks before February 4, 1961, the day an insurrection was launched for Angolan independence against the colonial Portuguese government. Tractor driver Domingos Xavier (Domingos de Oliveira) shares a happy, loving relationship with his wife, Maria (Elisa Andrade), and their children. But early scenes of domestic playfulness are interrupted when Domingos is violently dragged out of their domicile one morning on suspicion of subversive activity (Domingos, in fact, has been handing out anti-government leaflets). Maldoror’s narrative cuts between Maria’s odyssey to find out where her husband has been imprisoned and Domingos’ harrowing experiences in jail as he continues to protest his innocence and refuses to name any of his compatriots. Although both the plotting and politics are fairly straightforward and somewhat predictable, Maldoror brings emotional intensity to the story through Maria’s desperate efforts to find her husband.
Next up is Prisioneros de la Tierra, Mario Soffici’s 1939 Argentine political melodrama highlighting the travail of the “mensús”—poor contract laborers often impressed into service (and invariably cheated) to harvest tea leaves in the Amazonian jungle under miserable conditions. The story revolves around a love triangle involving the sadistic German expatriate boss Köhner (Francisco Petrone); Esteban Podeley (Ángel Magaña), a worker evolving into a revolutionary; and a beauty named Andrea (Elisa Galvé), daughter of an alcoholic doctor (Raúl de Lange) who is tasked with tending to the men felled by widespread malaria. As in Sambizanga, the theme of oppression runs throughout this film that ends with a tragic twist.
The third film, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s 1976 Chess of the Wind, is the only widescreen entry (and, aside from “Sambizanga,” the only other color film). Unseen since its disastrous debut at the fifth Tehran International Film Festival (a reel was shown out of order) and remaining shelved under the Islamic religious regime following the Shah’s overthrow in 1979, this intimate drama is wonderfully bonkers—Dallas by way of Hitchcock, very much resembling the Chinese puzzle box thrillers from ‘80s films by Brian De Palma. Although viewers initially have no idea of what the relationships are between the principals introduced during the opening minutes, it eventually becomes clear why the wheelchair-bound lady of the house, Lady Aghdas (an inspired Fakhri Khorvash), is driven to rip pages out of books in silent rage. She is dressed in mourning after the recent death of her reasonably wealthy mother, a widow who remarried and then suddenly died a day later.
Lady Aghdas suspects she was murdered by her new stepfather, Haji Amou (Mohamad Ali Keshavarz), who has since taken possession (with a newly drafted deed) of the family estate. Amou brought with him his two orphaned adult nephews—Ramazan (Akbar Zanjanpour) and Shaban (Shahram Golchin). Ramazan has proposed to the Lady Aghdas, who very reluctantly accepts (while continuing to flinch in disgust whenever he touches her) as a stalling action that ultimately leads to conspiracy: she kills Haji Amou with a flail while he prostrates himself in prayer, after which Ramazan together with Lady Aghdas’s devoted maid Kanizak (Shohreh Aghdashlou) drag the body into a cellar where it is hidden under a bottomless glass jar, awaiting an acid bath. Days later, however, the body disappears and the movie hurtles into a frenetic final third as Lady Aghdas grows increasingly paranoid and the viewer is uncertain which parties will emerge victorious in this lethal chess match to gain wealth and power. Of special note is Lady Aghdas’s use of her wheelchair, which moves sometimes slowly and deliberately and other times fast with a maniacal purpose—essentially becoming a character in itself. And a lesbian-relationship-suggestive scene—the first in Iranian film history—adds a startling twist that deepens the mystery at the center of the tale.
Dikongué-Pipa’s 1975 Muna Moto is a luminous, heartbreaking love story set in rural Cameroon, opening with an extended scene capturing the Ngondo ceremony of the coastal Duala people celebrating hope and renewal. As drums play and the crowd dances, a young man approaches a woman and snatches her child, initiating a pursuit by both the woman and bystanders. In flashbacks, viewers learn the reason for this disturbing incident. Ngando (David Endene) and Ndomé (Arlette Din Bell) are young lovers who hope to marry but are thwarted because of the high cost of the dowry that Ngando—a poor fisherman whose catch dwindles due to foreign commercial fishing enterprises—cannot afford.
Ngando lives with his uncle (Abia Moukoko), who inherited Ngando’s deceased father’s wives as well as Ngando himself. Ngando urges his uncle to help him with the dowry but after he sees Ndomé, the uncle—who in one scene berates his five seemingly infertile wives—decides he wants the beautiful young woman for himself, and after uncle and nephew are estranged the former begins negotiations with Ndomé’s father for her hand. In a last-ditch effort, Ndomé sleeps with Ngando in a bid to lower her worth as a marriage partner and thereby reduce the dowry price. But this only results in the child seen at the beginning of the film. Muna Moto benefits from its two stars’ chemistry as they frolic in the water, jokingly banter, and profess their deep love for one another—wonderful scenes that ultimately deepen the domestic tragedy.
Before André de Toth became a Hollywood director, he made several films in his native Hungary, including 1939’s Two Girls on the Street, a fine character study involving the titular down-on-their-luck women. In the opening, bitter Gyöngyi Kártély (Mária Tasnádi Fekete) upends the wedding plans of her lover by announcing at a celebration that she and her child in the womb were abandoned by the would-be groom, embarrassing her parents and leading Gyöngyi to leave the small town in disgrace.
Arriving in Budapest, Gyöngyi quickly obtains an abortion (while not graphic, this scene is far more detailed than any film made in production-code Hollywood at the time) and goes looking for work, finally settling for a position as a violinist in an all-female nightclub band (all female, except for the unremarked-upon drummer guy in drag). In a separate storyline, indigent construction worker Vica Torma (Bella Bordy) is sexually harassed and injured on the job but is treated sympathetically by the project’s architect, Csiszár István (Andor Atjay), who offers her a place to sleep in the tool shed, which also has an office and a bedroom.
After Vica peppers Csiszár with questions while he tries to work, she retires to the bedroom but does not close the door and Csiszár sees her shadow as she undresses. An aroused Csiszár tries to force himself upon Vica, but she is able to evade his advances and is met by Gyöngyi, who happens to be passing by and offers the girl a place to stay. Vica ultimately repays the favor by writing to Gyöngyi’s father, who feels remorseful and gives Gyöngyi an annual allowance that allows her to move with Vica into a nice apartment building. It turns out that the new residence was designed by the inhabiting architect, who sets about wooing Vica (he doesn’t recognize her as the woman he tried to rape earlier). Gyöngyi, who appears to have an amorous interest in Vica, tries to intervene by creating a fake love triangle meant to expose Csiszár for the cad he is. Although this story would never remotely fly in post-#MeToo Hollywood, the film’s would-be happy ending is somewhat ambiguous due to an ominous soundtrack cue harkening back to the cheaply paid laborers on the construction site.
Last up is Uday Shankar’s 1948 film Kalpana, a semi-autobiographical Bollywood film starring the director as Udayan, a filmmaker pitching a story to a disinterested producer who only wants to make money. In the film within a film, Shankar (who in real life was a world-renowned dancer) plays the younger Udayan, a stage actor who dreams of one day creating a cultural center for teaching the arts to students. In his fantasies, Udayan recreates Hindu myths with impressive special effects involving light and shadow as dancers twirl across the screen.
Like Prisioneros de la Tierra, Muna Moto, and Two Girls on the Street, Kalpana features a love triangle, as well as highlights postcolonial aftereffects in an India newly liberated from British rule. While celebrating India’s diverse native culture, Udayan is bounced between competing lovers, the radiant, self-sacrificing Uma (Amala Uday Shankar, the director’s wife) and the volatile social-climbing Kamini (Lakshmi Kanta).
All of the melodrama leads to a spectacular finale—a visual showcase as Udayan’s cultural center puts on an elaborate, music-and-dance-filled extravaganza for potential wealthy donors, who only seem to be interested in the dancing girls. Replicating the broader story of Shankar’s actual failed cultural center, Kalpana cannot escape being a bitter, accusatory film, although it is redeemed by the joyous dancing sequences, especially a wonderful fantasy sequence inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Interesting side note: while Western audiences may not be familiar with Uday Shankar, they certainly know his sitar-playing brother, Ravi.
Presented with new 4K and 2K digital restorations, extras include new introductions by World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese; interviews featuring film historian Suresh Chabria and filmmaker Kumar Shahani (on Kalpana), film historians Paula Félix-Didier and Andrés Levinson (on Prisioneros de la Tierra), Two Girls on the Street director André de Toth, and “Sambizanga” director Sarah Maldoror and Annouchka de Andrade (Maldoror’s daughter); a new program by filmmaker Mohamed Challouf featuring interviews with Muna Moto director Dikongué-Pipa and film historian Férid Boughedir; the 2022 documentary The Majnoun and the Wind by Gita Aslani Shahrestani, featuring Chess of the Wind director Mohammad Reza Aslani and others; and a 72-page booklet with essays on the films by critics and scholars Yasmina Price, Matthew Karush, Ehsan Khoshbakht, Aboubakar Sanogo, Chris Fujiwara, and Shai Heredia.
An interesting collection of world cinema films mixing macro (colonialism) and micro (love triangles) themes, this latest set from Martin Scorsese’s important restoration project is recommended.