The “detective film” is one of the great genres that is not a genre, a kind of tendency that threads through narrative film throughout the years in many countries and many forms, always present in the mainstream (especially through television) but also there on the edges, which is what this fake genre is dedicated to.
We all know there are really no such things as private detectives, the kind of private detectives in chandler and ross macdonald. there is a passage in one of the last novels by the great champion of the form ricardo piglia, where a down on his luck private detective reminds the narrator that the category does not exist - always tied in with industry, with the state, the pinkertons being the most famous private militia operating as the arm of the state in the American 20th century. But the detective of legend remains solitary, perpetually down on his luck (if he is not, like Poirot or Holmes, a man of independent means), a character of the margins. The genre seems to resist films with expansive budgets, and seems to drift towards expressive esoterica more than conventional masterpieces.
Sorry not to include any television films here (if I had more space I would add Christopher Petit’s Miss Marple Episode “A Caribbean Mystery”) or any number that are simply overseen (Ditirambo especially, or the Ray Feludas, but even something like Penn’s Night Moves, or Wayne Wang’s Chan is Missing).
I’m trading police movies as an entirely different subgenre, so no Grafs, none of Chabrols Lavardin films (the TV movies are masterpieces, the films are merely pretty good), no Maigrets.
Genre Introduction: Death & the Compass
my first pick is the odd, overlooked yokomaha bj blues, ostensibly directed by the industry veteran eiichi kudo (best know for his '60s samurai films like 13 assassins) but by all evidence an auteur project of the star yusaku matsuda; cinematographer, screenwriter and editor were all close collaborators with the actor, and stylistically this shares more in common with matsuda's one directing credit (a-homansu, from '85) than anything i've seen from eiichi kudo.
this was, i believe, meant to be a film to promote a concert tour matsuda was going on that year; in practice it is something of a goodbye to and complication of the raffish private detective figure matsuda played in a few movies and one hit tv show in the '70s, much like a-homansu would be a killing off of the action hero persona that made him an icon. it is an odd film, somewhat obscure both in reputation (tom mes does not even mention it in his fairly comprehensive overview of the actor at the midnight eye website) and in form.
this is private detective as dead end job, walking through the city too late at night, always on the verge on unlocking things you would rather not know.
this was, i believe, meant to be a film to promote a concert tour matsuda was going on that year; in practice it is something of a goodbye to and complication of the raffish private detective figure matsuda played in a few movies and one hit tv show in the '70s, much like a-homansu would be a killing off of the action hero persona that made him an icon. it is an odd film, somewhat obscure both in reputation (tom mes does not even mention it in his fairly comprehensive overview of the actor at the midnight eye website) and in form.
this is private detective as dead end job, walking through the city too late at night, always on the verge on unlocking things you would rather not know.
Eight-thirty at night; people come out of the cinemas,
leap onto trams and go off home.
A fire engine passes, the riot squad, a police car.
From the distance comes the sound
of pipe-gun and rifle fire. Just wait,
tomorrow morning
a number of nineteen to twenty-three-year-old corpses
will be lying on either side of the road.
Eleven-thirty: the last bulletin comes onto the radio.
Some piddling reader indifferently announces
a five-year plan
for worker and peasant self-sufficiency.
The hungry yawn yet again.
(Night)
When I look at this shirt,
the seventh shirt I possess,
I am filled with contempt
for those who wear worn-out old clothes
and talk of troubles and troubles and
troubles without end.
Dear shirt number seven,
you must never change.
Stay just as your are,
smooth and shining.
(Stay Just as You Are)
Years pass, months pass, days pass—
two sets of teeth go to the market.
Days pass, months pass, years pass—
two sets of teeth cook, go to school.
Four sets of teeth sit at the table,
simply in order to eat.
Two sets of teeth suddenly shake in fury,
the other two tremble in fear.
Four pairs of gums are face to face
across the table. One day
a story of teeth is shown on the screen
and dentures watch in thousands before
they come home to spend the night
sitting in a bowl of water.
(Teeth II)
All translated by John W. Hood from “The Films of Buddhadeb Dasgupta”
There is a great comment in a recent interview with one of the more mediocre, acclaimed recent Bengali film directors where the director being interviewed rails off a bunch of reasons why everyone in the industry needs to compromise to make films at all, and then kind of laughs and says “I mean everyone but Buddhadeb.”
Dasgupta was part of the I guess what you’d calll the second wave of Indian parallel film directors, much younger than Mrinal Sen, Ghatak, Shahani, more of a contemporary of John Abraham (who he was friends with) and Adoor Gopalakrishanan. The early films (there are a number of early documentaries that are not available anywhere) are sharp, nominally realist, fit comfortably within the maybe what Mrinal Sen was doing in his work of the ‘80s. B
By the time he makes Bagh Bahadur in the late ‘80s there is a clear break, an attempt to start including folk theater elements and a tilt towards a fully non-realist style; but the late ‘90s the break is complete, and you get a fully realized style, based on theater and a kind of painterly abstraction. Stories break and drift away, the characters become increasingly unmoored from their lives and obligations, lines of figures walk along lonesome landscapes. Somehow in the 2000s he becomes one of the most awarded filmmakers in India. He outlives most of his contemporaries.
By the early 2010s he has trouble getting work financed. There is a very striking series of short films, nominally based on the work of Tagore. He makes a lovely film financed by the still active (now defunct) children’s film commission, which is never released in theaters.
He makes this film in 2012, a detective movie, starring Nawazzuddin Siddiqui, not yet a bankable art house star (Gangs of Wasseypur is not released yet). It plays at a few festivals, it doesn’t play in theaters ever, it shows up online just late last year. I saw it 3 years ago, shared by a friend who made me promise I wouldn’t share it with anyone else because the rights situation was so dire.
It’s available now. It starts simply and then drifts. There is a lovely dog. There are some lonely apartments, some lonely villages. It ends in one of my favorite gestures in anything I’ve seen in a long time. I hope you like it.
leap onto trams and go off home.
A fire engine passes, the riot squad, a police car.
From the distance comes the sound
of pipe-gun and rifle fire. Just wait,
tomorrow morning
a number of nineteen to twenty-three-year-old corpses
will be lying on either side of the road.
Eleven-thirty: the last bulletin comes onto the radio.
Some piddling reader indifferently announces
a five-year plan
for worker and peasant self-sufficiency.
The hungry yawn yet again.
(Night)
When I look at this shirt,
the seventh shirt I possess,
I am filled with contempt
for those who wear worn-out old clothes
and talk of troubles and troubles and
troubles without end.
Dear shirt number seven,
you must never change.
Stay just as your are,
smooth and shining.
(Stay Just as You Are)
Years pass, months pass, days pass—
two sets of teeth go to the market.
Days pass, months pass, years pass—
two sets of teeth cook, go to school.
Four sets of teeth sit at the table,
simply in order to eat.
Two sets of teeth suddenly shake in fury,
the other two tremble in fear.
Four pairs of gums are face to face
across the table. One day
a story of teeth is shown on the screen
and dentures watch in thousands before
they come home to spend the night
sitting in a bowl of water.
(Teeth II)
All translated by John W. Hood from “The Films of Buddhadeb Dasgupta”
There is a great comment in a recent interview with one of the more mediocre, acclaimed recent Bengali film directors where the director being interviewed rails off a bunch of reasons why everyone in the industry needs to compromise to make films at all, and then kind of laughs and says “I mean everyone but Buddhadeb.”
Dasgupta was part of the I guess what you’d calll the second wave of Indian parallel film directors, much younger than Mrinal Sen, Ghatak, Shahani, more of a contemporary of John Abraham (who he was friends with) and Adoor Gopalakrishanan. The early films (there are a number of early documentaries that are not available anywhere) are sharp, nominally realist, fit comfortably within the maybe what Mrinal Sen was doing in his work of the ‘80s. B
By the time he makes Bagh Bahadur in the late ‘80s there is a clear break, an attempt to start including folk theater elements and a tilt towards a fully non-realist style; but the late ‘90s the break is complete, and you get a fully realized style, based on theater and a kind of painterly abstraction. Stories break and drift away, the characters become increasingly unmoored from their lives and obligations, lines of figures walk along lonesome landscapes. Somehow in the 2000s he becomes one of the most awarded filmmakers in India. He outlives most of his contemporaries.
By the early 2010s he has trouble getting work financed. There is a very striking series of short films, nominally based on the work of Tagore. He makes a lovely film financed by the still active (now defunct) children’s film commission, which is never released in theaters.
He makes this film in 2012, a detective movie, starring Nawazzuddin Siddiqui, not yet a bankable art house star (Gangs of Wasseypur is not released yet). It plays at a few festivals, it doesn’t play in theaters ever, it shows up online just late last year. I saw it 3 years ago, shared by a friend who made me promise I wouldn’t share it with anyone else because the rights situation was so dire.
It’s available now. It starts simply and then drifts. There is a lovely dog. There are some lonely apartments, some lonely villages. It ends in one of my favorite gestures in anything I’ve seen in a long time. I hope you like it.