#1050: BEYZAIE, Bahram: Downpour (1972)
BEYZAIE, Bahram (Iran)
Commentary
None.
Introduction
Downpour [1972]
Spine #1050
Blu-ray
Blu-ray
With brash stylistic exuberance, this first feature from Bahram Beyzaie helped usher in the Iranian New Wave. When he takes a job as a schoolteacher in a new neighborhood, the hapless intellectual Mr. Hekmati finds that he is a fish out of water. Shot in luminous monochrome and edited with quicksilver invention, Downpour, which has been painstakingly restored from the only known surviving print, captures with puckish humor and great tenderness the cultural conflicts coursing through Iran at a pivotal historical moment.
129 minutes
Black & White
Black & White
Monaural
in Persian
1:37:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2020
Director/Writer
Bahram Beyzaie was 34 when he wrote and directed Downpour.
The Film
The Film
It is nice that the Collection has this one film by an Iranian director not named Abbas Kiarostami — whose eight films
- Where is the Friend’s House? (1987) [Spine #990]
- And Life Goes On (1992) [Spine #991]
- Close-up (1990) [Spine #519]
- Through the Olive Trees (1994) [Spine #992]
- Taste of Cherry (1997) [Spine #45]
- Certified Copy (2010) [Spine #612]
- Like Someone In Love (2012) [Spine #708]
- 24 Frames (2017) [Spine #956]
are all excellent — but it’s nice to get a look at something made before the Revolution (1979).
Parviz Fannizadeh is Mr. Hekmati, a teacher newly arrived in the village. His first day of class goes badly when all the kids misbehave and are totally out of control.
He kicks out the one who he perceives to be the main troublemaker, only to have to deal with the kid’s older sister, Atefeh (Parvaneh Massoumi) later on. There is an immediate attraction between the two, even though Atefeh is sort of engaged to Rahim (Manuchehr Farid) — the village’s rich man, who is allowing Atefeh and her family to stay in one of his homes.
The film does not play out like the traditional Iranian commercial genres — abgushti (stewpot) or luti (tough guy) — which Beyzaie discusses below; it has an integrity to it which is common to all good “art” films … it doesn’t patronize its audience.
“The film’s structure of vision and power has three layers: the desirous exchange of looks and words between the two protagonists; the invasive looking at, and gossip about, the protagonists from Mr. Hekmati’s fellow teachers, the children, and the villagers; and the state’s controlling gaze at Iranian society. In the seventies, surveillance by the shah’s domestic intelligence service, SAVAK — which had unchecked power to detain, torture, and execute dissenters — was pervasive. As Barbod Taheri has said, the film’s frequent relays of furtive and controlling gazing are ‘symbolic of the observing and controlling looks of SAVAK’s secret agents in society.’ In inscribing and suggesting these looks, Downpour offers a powerful critique of the secret police without referring to SAVAK directly — a message that, despite the subtlety with which it is delivered, would not have been lost on contemporary audiences. Many viewers would have read the film as Beyzaie’s defiant act of looking askance and sneering at a government that would have failed to read the film with its grain, thus missing its criticism.”
Commentary
None.
Introduction
By World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese.
Interview
Interview
With director Beyzaie on Downpour.
Completely self-taught, he knew what he wanted to do — make good cinema …
He provides examples of commercial Iranian films which bored him …
Night of the Angels (1968) [Fereydun Gole]
Hossein Kord Shabestari (1966) [Esmail Kushan]
Toofan-eh nooh (1967) [Siamak Yasami]
… and those which he thought were good:
… and those which he thought were good:
Styavosh at Persepolis (1967) [Fereydoun Rahnema]
Brick and Mirror (1965) [Ebrahim Golestan]
And films from the so-called Iranian New Wave:
The Cow (1969) [Dariush Mehrjui]
Gheisar (1969) [Masoud Kimiai]
Films he mentions as influential:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) [Robert Wiene]
Battleship Potemkin (1925) [Sergei Eisenstein]
Bicycle Thieves (1948) [Vittorio De Sica] {Spine #374}
J’accuse! (1919) [Abel Gance]
Pather Panchali (1955) [Satyajit Ray] {Spine #783}
Seven Samurai (1954) [Akira Kurosawa] {Spine #2]
He wrote books on Japanese, Chinese, and Indian theater.
It is amazing that he stayed in Iran until 2010 — even after they burned his films, including this one. We owe this restoration to the one 35mm print which survived, with the 1972 subtitles burnt into the film stock.
Beyzaie mentions that Fannizadeh died of some kind of drug addiction, age 42 …
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