fagerard

In addition to my previous comment, after double-checking online the opening titles, I believe it is worth pointing out too that the artistic consultant of "The Magic Kite" was Pierre Prévert (illustrious screenwriter and poet Jacques Prévert's younger brother, and his collaborator on various productions). As for the cinematography, the DOP was nothing less than Henri Alekan (best known for his work on Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast", on Julien Duvivier's "Anna Karenina" – starring Vivien Leigh –, as well as on Wim Wenders' "The State of Things' and "Wings of Desire"). Two more reasons to have a further look at this possibly underrated film and to give it a chance to enter some day the charts of French kid-movies made before the Global era (which that project developed between France and China was quite ahead of, in its very own way).

I do remember quite vividly having seen this film in black and white on TV, around 1970 – I was a teenager at the time and never forgot that enigmatic title, "Dzhamilya". As I happened to read Chinghiz Aitmatov's original novel, a few years ago, every single page of it reminded me the stunning visuals of the whole movie. In his foreword to the book, French writer Louis Aragon described "Dzhamilya" as perhaps the most beautiful love story ever told... So there's no real surprise that I probably fell a bit in love, at age 14, of the young leading actress, Natalya Arinbasarova, Andrei Konchalovsky's wife, who had already used her, a couple of years before, in his directorial debut, "The First Teacher" (1966), after a story by the same author and also set in the remote Kirghiz countryside, near the Chinese border – another jewel for the audience who are not afraid of anthropological truth in film and prefer poetic inspiration to action movies. There's definitely something of both Andrei Tarkovsky's and Terrence Malick's visions about these two underrated Russian masterpieces of the late 1960s, i.e. "Dzhamilya" and "The First Teacher" (which I strongly recommend to see as well).

I'm not surprised the French TV has programed Norman Jewison's classic "In the Heat of the Night" the very day after the 2008 historical election of the 44th President of the US... Of course, Sidney Poitier is still as smart and handsome as he was in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", but both films were not aiming exactly the same audience. Being such a perfect thriller, "In the Heat of the Night" addresses a much larger number of spectators of all ages, and not only intellectual ones. Just watch it, or watch it again nowadays, and show it to your children—an excellent way to have a better understanding of how some clever blockbusters are capable of actually improving society. Even if it took four decades to make the dream of Mr Tibb's fans come true. Sidney Poitier can be proud of his job at the time. As the first black Hollywood star ever, he's definitely one of those giants of the XXth century who helped people to think about what "Liberty" really means in order to bring a major change on earth.