peter-de-rijcker

All the comments reflect my own experience and feelings. Frédéric Rossif is a cineast who touches both heart and mind by his documentary work, as well as Ken Loach does in his social-political statements. More than the latter's "Land of Freedom" in color, the black-and-white of Mourir à Madrid reveals as much Spain's tragic sufferings of civil war as it pictures an archaic rural world now almost vanished.

The film score by Jarre, which I taped from the movie once shown on TV, is magnificent: it's Spanish guitar themes are still as beautiful and haunting as the ones of "Jeux Interdits". And yes, it's deplorable indeed that it hasn't already been re-edited and remastered on DVD; it can't be that difficult to bring it out and distribute it, seen the rubbish that does nowadays... An idea for Criterion?

From the first moment I saw the movie I rejoiced every bit of it : the crisp splendid black-and-white photography introducing an overwhelmingly barren landscape interacting with the drama we all know to come, the haunting "ancestral" score by Theodorakis, the impact of all sounds, the use of the choir with its laments and warnings and commentaries on everything and everybody, the tensions between good and evil mixed with love and hate, the unavoidable fate of the protagonists who cannot escape destiny as prescribed by bloodline and gods.

Besides being moved by too many unforgettable scenes enforced by splendid suggestive cutting (the actual murders, Electra's cutting her hair for the revenge to come, the confrontations between mother and daughter or brother and sister expressing their antagonistic emotions), the ultimate brilliance this masterpiece is Irene Papas outcry of grief and distress, the camera turning on itself as taking literally heaven and earth as her witness.

Appealing as strong to me as E. Munch's cry or Picasso's Guernica, I visited Mycene much later and still felt the movie's impact discovering this cursed place through Cacoyannis' lens.