Dibyendu's WallScript

In 1989, Nanni Moretti made the film Palombella Rossa (Red Lob), and only recently was it screened in Kolkata for the very first time. Within the Indian context—particularly that of West Bengal—the film seems uncannily relevant and timely. Moretti, in truth, has always delighted in sprinkling comedy through cinema. In most of his films, he himself steps into the role of the protagonist. Though he is a familiar name in global cine-circles, his popularity is not widespread. His comedy, in many respects, invites comparison with Hollywood’s comedic traditions. Some even draw parallels with Woody Allen. Yet, Moretti is hardly a household name even in America—perhaps owing to his Marxist worldview. At the same time, the Hollywood-influenced filmmaking he employed never found full acceptance within the stylistic schools of European cinema. And yet, despite this estrangement, it is rare to encounter in the last two or three decades a film so profoundly politically correct as Palombella Rossa. ...

In 2001, in an interview given to the Stockholm Newspaper Press, Ingmar Bergman could not restrain himself when confronted with the state of twenty-first century European cinema. He compared the business of filmmaking to a butcher’s trade and the profession of prostitution. His remark arose from witnessing the flood of unrestrained pornography and imported sexuality sweeping into European cinema. At eighty-two years of age, the disgusted Bergman, withdrawn into the solitude of the island of Fårö, was directing a stage production of Mary Stuart. At a time when Hollywood’s unreality had completely swallowed global cinema, Bergman’s vision made me return afresh to the classical body language of film—its native grammar of image, gesture, silence, and aesthetics—which once more announced to my mind the vast, still-unrealized potential of this modern and popular art.   In three days, I watched six films. It was as though I rediscovered cinema’s archetypal imagination. Winter Light (196...