jorozko

From a very specific premise (a documentary on the construction of a new building in Barcelona's "barrio chino") Guerin has produced a film that is surprisingly comprehensive and universal.

A huge range of subjects and characters are present in the film (children, teenagers, homeless, the old, immigrants, drug addicts,prostitutes, etc) giving them an extraordinary metaphorical significance without departing from the documentary approach.

Shot in static shots (except for the marvellous and hopeful final tracking shot) and edited from 120 hours of footage with Guerin's characteristic precision, rhythm and visual poetry.

Max Linder was not only a master of physical comedy (creating lots of gags later imitated by almost everybody else) but also a great director in the "primitive mode of representation". Almost every scene is done in only one long shot but every bit of the frame is fully utilised with very studied actors' movement and creating different spaces within the frame.

The film mixes very successfully slapstick with farce and even social commentary with hilarious results thanks to Linder's wonderful performance and visual precision.

This film is a great surprise. Apart from being thematically unusual (murder, suicide, corruption, capital punishment, rape, etc) it is visually astonishing and years ahead of its time, anticipating lots of stuff from 40's film noir to art-house European cinema (Bergman's Wild Strawberries for instance).

The film uses the `narratage' technique first used the same year by Preston Sturges in `The Power and the Glory' (also a very interesting film, directed by William K. Howard and a clear precedent of `Citizen Kane') which consists of voice-over narration and flashbacks and flashforwards, but if takes it much further with a very complex structure that includes flashbacks within flashbacks, dreams, hallucinations, flashforwards and characters appearing in scenes where they were not originally present and commenting the action with the main character.

The film is also extraordinarily shot with quasi expressionistic photography, lots of tracking shots, montages and very imaginative use of stock footage. To make all this even more admirable the film was produced on a very low B budget and it runs only 65 minutes.