BURN director Gillo Pontecorvo's scathing critique of colonialism is set against backdrop of the exploitative sugar trade of the 19th century. If you get over the problem of Marlon Brando playing a blond Englishman with a terrible accent, then this really is a marvelous film. To Brando's credit, this was the film he was the proudest of in his long career.

The story is set in the 19th century, and begins when Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) is sent by the British government to a small Caribbean island. The Portuguese, who now run the island, slaughtered the native Indian population and then imported slaves from Africa. The slaves work the lucrative sugar plantations, and the British seek to usurp the Portuguese as masters of the sugar trade.

When Walker, the British government's agent arrives, a slave revolt is brutally squashed and its leader garroted. Walker was supposed to fuel this revolt and ensure its successful conclusion, so he casts around for a new rebel leader, seeking someone who has "nothing to lose." Walker finds what he's looking for in charismatic slave Jose Dolores (Evaristo Marquez). By persuading Dolores to rob the Bank of the Holy Spirit, Walker manipulates circumstances in which the slaves must defend themselves against reprisals. Walker supplies arms, and soon a slave revolt takes place.

This is a volatile period for those on the island. The sugar is rotting in the plantation fields, and somehow, the black slaves must be persuaded to stop the uprising, and get back to work accepting the yoke once more under the guise of employment. Walker is all too aware of Haiti as an example of a revolution "carried to [their] extreme consequences." It may be useful to ignite a revolution, but it's harder to stop it once it's already in motion. One great scene depicts Delores--now a self-appointed general of the revolution as he enters a huge mansion to negotiate with the whites. The mansion is manned with black footmen, complete with powdered wigs. The slaves are 'freed' and the British take over the sugar trade on the island. But, of course, the slaves aren't really free; they've just exchanged masters.

One scene depicts Walker advising the local landowners on the merits of paying the former slaves for work, and he compares the situation of owning slaves vs. paying plantation workers to maintaining a wife vs. paying a prostitute for an hour. He asks "which do you prefer? Or should I say which do you find more convenient? A wife or one of these mulatto girls?" Then he proceeds to lecture about the salient characteristics of each situation based on economic factors: "what is the cost of the product? What does the product yield?" And in this manner, he breaks down human beings into units of production. It's all simply a matter of economics for him.

The film analyzes the nature of freedom and empire through the slave revolts. Both the Portuguese and the British fail to grasp the notion that: "If a man gives you freedom, it is not freedom. Freedom is something that you must take." As Delores says: "If a man works for another, even if he's called a worker, he remains a slave. And it will always be the same since there are those who own the plantations and those who own the machete to cut cane of the owners." Delores grasps the fact that the whites need black labour: "they may know how to sell sugar, but we are the ones who know how to cut the cane." Soon, the Royal Sugar Company has exclusive "rights of exploitation" and this 'right' effectively controls the island's entire economy. Thus corporations run politics and people are no more than troublesome commodities.

One of the interesting aspects of the film is the relationship between Walker and Delores. To Walker, achieving his goals is sport. This is not an emotional campaign for him, and he approaches his goals unemotionally, logically, and with a dispassionate analysis. To the wealthy white landowners he says that they will defeat Delores "not because we're better than he is or that we're braver than he is, but simply because we have more arms and more men than he has."

The film feels a little cheesy at first. Many of the actors are dubbed in English, so the result is poor. However, if you loved The Battle of Algiers, Burn is an excellent companion piece. By the half way point, it's clear that we are privy to something truly extraordinary, for the story expands and presents some great universal truths through the difficult relationship between Walker and Delores.

Walker is a wonderfully amoral character--he could have sprung right from a Conrad novel, but there are also shades of Graham Greene here. He makes friends with the slave population, but he only uses them to achieve his goal, and he's not interested in their fate beyond that. The film portrays, quite brilliantly, the nature of a guerilla uprising and the continuation of the revolutionary flame. Walker seems all too aware of the danger of a popular uprising, when he cautions the white rulers "the guerilla has nothing to lose." And that in killing a hero of the people, the hero "becomes a martyr, and the martyr becomes a myth. A myth is more dangerous than a man because you can't kill a myth." Similarly, "a hero who betrays is soon forgotten."

Some of the best scenes take place as Walker ponders moral questions. There is much to be learned from this film concerning warfare, empire, and human nature, and developing a conscience can be hazardous to one's health when dealing with corporations, empires and colonialism. For as Walker says "that's the nature of Profit. One builds to make money, and to go on making it, to make more, sometimes it's necessary to destroy. Yes, I think perhaps it's inevitable." Burn is a great political film with a memorable musical score from Ennio Morricone.

There's a famous and well-respected article by Serge Daney called The Tracking Shot in Kapo, in which he discusses a movie about concentration camps by the great Gillo Pontecorvo. The article centres on a tracking shot where Pontecorvo's camera moves in on a slain woman. Daney quotes a review by nouvelle vague filmmaker and critic Jacques Rivette: "the man who decides at this moment to make a forward tracking shot to reframe the dead body – carefully positioning the raised hand in the corner of the final framing – this man is worthy of the most profound contempt."

Daney then defines his conception of cinema by agreeing with the above sentiment -- even though he hasn't seen the film.

This might seem like an odd kind of criticism, but it has a certain kind of legitimacy. I've been known to moan about a 9:11 documentary called THE FALLING MAN, in which the filmmakers have put sad music in the background over interviews with grieving relatives of terror attack victims, to make it emotional. The people I tell nod: they agree with me in principle, though of course they'd be entitled to feel differently if they saw the film and found it worked/was not offensive in actuality.

Of course, actually writing a review of a film one hasn't seen is another matter. In The Guardian newspaper, Andrew Pulver reviewed Rivette's own CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING, with the capsule summary, "...documents in exhaustive detail the relationship between the eponymous women. Dialogue is minimal and events, such as they are, are propelled by a whimsicality characteristic of its era." It's pretty obvious from this that he simply missed all the dialogue by SKIPPING OUT some time during the first half hour. The cheeky blighter! (Thanks to Comrade K. for spotting this.)

In the spirit partly of Daney and partly of Pulver, I thought it might be interesting to write about a few of the many films I haven't seen and don't like. I'm not condoning this practice at all, I just want to see what will happen and who I offend.

(Note: I found it so depressing trying to find images from these films to illustrate them that I just gave up and went for some attractive images of general angst, which kind of show how I feel when I think about these movies.)

1) 9 SONGS. It's hard to pick a Michael Winterbottom film that sums up the spectacular lack of appeal his work has for me, there are so many contenders. A COCK AND BULL STORY passed the time, but in retrospect I rather felt it had STOLEN the time. I quite enjoyed 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE for the smart script and playing, but for a film about the record industry it had no clue how to put across a song.

So I think it's a safe bet I wouldn't like this 2004 tale of shagging and concert-going, especially as I hate hate hate everything else I've seen by the man I call Michael Autumnbottom (I call him that because it's the only way I can discuss him without feeling a bit depressed). In particular JUDE where they slaughter a pig for Dramatic Effect and attempt to capture a JULES ET JIM feeling elsewhere by the simple procedure of ripping off whole sequences from JULES ET JIM.

Based on what I have seen, Autumnbottom is one of the most visually insensitive directors working -- constantly! -- in the UK today. I just want him to stop.

2) The remake of FUNNY GAMES. I walked out of the original around half an hour in. Haneke seems to approve of this, he says, "Those who walk out don't need the film." I think he is confusing NEED and LIKE.

He thinks he's proving that we shouldn't enjoy violent films by making a violent film that is supposed to be impossible to enjoy. But I like many violent films, I just don't like films that are supposed to be impossible to enjoy. "Enjoy" may be the wrong word: I watch THE BLOOD OF THE ANIMALS in awestruck horror, Alan Clarke's ELEPHANT imparts a terrible dread, COME AND SEE is like being punched in the heart. But there is some form of pleasure and beauty there still. Haneke's film could achieve this beauty through its ideas, but the ideas are too painfully thick-headed and lumpen.

Some will argue that the film isn't violent at all because (most of) the violence is offscreen, but adding up drops of blood is a ridiculous way to measure violence. The film is an endless parade of convincingly fear, suffering and cruelty, intended to teach us that we shouldn't enjoy such things. I know that already. I only enjoy them when they're faked, and when they are part of a film that is enjoyable in other ways.

As Maurice Chevalier says in LE SILENCE EST D'OR, "Some people think it is the director's job to give the audience a hard time."

3) LOVE, ACTUALLY. Isn't the title reason enough? It's like being lectured by a smug public-schoolboy before it even starts. Yet here we have a film which I suspect wants me to have a good time. I can't fault it for that, the instinct is a generous one. But any film which has Hugh Grant as a loveable Blair-like UK prime minister is going to fail with me unless it has an interactive element that allows me to climb up into the screen and bloodily hatchet him to bits (and it's not due to a particular dislike of the actor). Maybe Richard Curtis should write a romcom about Adolf and Eva next. FUHRER WEDDING AND A FUNERAL? Sorry, sorry.

Apart from that, I adore romantic comedies, just not too many recent ones.

4) I'm not too keen on most contemporary cinema from my own country (Scotland) but unlike the admirable forthright Ms Smith I'm somewhat afraid of alienating all my peers and the funding bodies who support them. And as these films constitute the film culture I'm stuck in, they're of more interest to me than any old depressing, flat, unimaginitive cinema I might find elsewhere in the world. So I don't rule out the possibility that I'll take a look at even the most miserable of miserabilist Scottish cinema... at some point. But it's rather disheartening if the only thing that draws one to one's own national cinema is purposes of RESEARCH.

So, anything by Lynn Ramsey.

5) And I'm tempted to add, anything by Ken Loach, although I actually enjoyed RIFF-RAFF up to a point (it had funny bits) and HIDDEN AGENDA up to a point (though falsely pitched as a thriller, it was certainly an intriguing conspiracy story). But I can't see anything making me choose to see LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD or RAINING STONES or most of the others. I tried to watch NAVIGATORS because I do feel strongly about the damage done to Britain's rail services by rampant capitalism. But I didn't make it past the titles. Loach, like Mike Leigh, is really not too strong on using music. My mate Lawrie used to say that a score can't really add anything to a realist film, all it can do is detract from the realism, and while I'd be willing to admit the possibility of exceptions to this dictum, I find nothing in Loach and Leigh's work to disprove it.

And I remember Billy Wilder's preference for making a film at the Ritz Hotel Paris rather than down a coal mine. "What am I gonna do down there? I don't leave the cinema elated..."

Of course, I agree that films should reflect social realities and enlighten as well as elate. I just don't think that's enough, or even a very good starting point. An entertaining film has more chance of being subversive, and therefore effective, than a piece of straight propoganda. Reflecting a fresh bit of society will bolster a strong film, but it will drag a dull one down into the depths of worthiness.

"Lacking a particular inclination, we all decide whether a film is worth seeing based at least on some minimal hearsay, because nobody can see everything." ~ Peter Henne.

Yes, but what we must NEVER do is mouth off about the films we haven't seen.

oops

If you enjoyed Gillo Pontecorvo's films The Battle of Algiers and the more obscure Burn, then there's an excellent chance that you'll enjoy The Wide Blue Road. While this film is less overtly political (Italian Jewish Pontecorvo is a Marxist), there's a subtle political message there.

The Wide Blue Road is set in the islands off the coast of Italy. Since the closure of the local quarry, the only source of income for the local men is fishing. Some men have shelved their nets, and turned to using dynamite to get a bigger catch. Dynamite fishing is illegal, but the local coast guard must actually catch fisherman in the act of using dynamite in order to prosecute them.

There's an acknowledged status quo on the island. Squarcio (Yves Montand) is known to be a great fisherman, but he's long since given up fishing the old-fashioned way, and now uses dynamite. Everyone knows he fishes this way, but the other fishermen don't condemn Squarcio. They see him as a fellow victim of financial hardship. The coast guard officer is also an old friend of Squarcio's, and while he also knows that Squarcio uses dynamite, he doesn't pursue the matter. Squarcio's childhood friend, Salvatore (Francisco Ravel) hopes to develop a co-op amongst the fisherman and eventually buy a fridge, so that the fisherman can control more of their profits. As it is, the merchant who owns the only fridge on the island gives the men a pittance for their catch.

The status quo on the island alters when a new coast guard officer arrives. He wants to capture Squarcio, and Squarcio, won't give up dynamite fishing--even though his wife (Alida Valli) urges him to stop. Squarcio's quest to support his family by illegal fishing develops into a relentless, stubborn and self-destructive drive.

The Wide Blue Road is really a marvelous film. Yes, it's the story of a simple fisherman, but it's much more than that. One of the film's major themes is an examination of Individualism/Capitalism vs. Socialism--Salvatore's efforts to form a collective are at first assisted by Squarcio, then ignored, and finally undermined as Squarcio places the finances of his own family above all the other families on the island. Squarcio's desire to provide for his family crosses a moral line when he compromises the other families, and as a result, Squarcio and his family become social outcasts.

The Wide Blue Road is a beautiful film. There are some breathtaking scenes of the ocean full of sailboats as the fisherman gather to begin a day's work. The film is a touch sentimental in a few places, but overall, this is an engaging, intense story of one man's hubris. In Italian with English subtitles.

L’organizzazione di questo evento, patrocinata dal Comune di Pontecorvo, è stata affidata all’associazione di promozione sociale “Un Fiume di…”, da 2 anni impegnata nella realizzazione di iniziative culturali e ricreative atte a valorizzare il proprio paese e la Ciociaria. Per la prima volta il Carnevale Pontecorvese, giunto quest’anno alla 55esima edizione, sarà preceduto da un’intera giornata di giochi, spettacoli, musiche e balli con l’obiettivo di rafforzare e rinnovare una manifestazione che rappresenta ormai una delle tradizioni più radicate nella nostra città.

La mattinata sarà dedicata ai bambini delle scuole elementari e medie del territorio; si partirà alle ore 9.30 con spettacoli di maghi, giocolieri e animatori, intervallati dalle esibizioni di canti e balli carnevaleschi proposti dai vari circoli scolastici. Sarà quindi la volta degli artisti di strada provenienti da varie regioni d’Italia, che si cimenteranno in acrobazie e giochi di varia natura: devil, cerchi, diablo, catene, palline e trampoli sono solo alcuni degli strumenti che ci faranno rimanere con lo sguardo rivolto al cielo.
Alle 16.00 è previsto l’arrivo dei CARRI ALLEGORICI: sul palco i MASTRI CARTAI pontecorvesi illustreranno i segreti della propria arte e l’allegoria dei carri; seguirà lo “Spettacolo dei Movimenti”. Alle 17.00 la compagnia dei SAMBARADO, formata da quindici elementi, si esibirà con uno spettacolo di musica, danze e ritmi brasiliani. La manifestazione si concluderà alle ore 21.00 con lo spettacolo della compagnia di teatro di strada MATERIAVIVA che presenterà “Sogni nella notte”, un susseguirsi di suggestioni oniriche in cui compaiono le creature che alimentano da sempre l’immaginario notturno: creature alate, fate, danzatrici, giocolieri, trampolieri, equilibristi, in un crescendo di luci e fuoco. Suggestive immagini di volo, luminose presenze danzanti, altissimi trampolieri alati tra la gente avvolgeranno il pubblico in un’atmosfera da sogno. Faranno da cornice, assieme alle musiche, giochi pirici di grande impatto visivo.

Andrea Salvatori [info unfiumedi.net]