(aka "Ramparts of Clay" )
directed
by Jean-Louis Bertuccelli
France / Algeria 1970
In the same year as the 1962 Tunisian independence, poet
Forough Farrokhzad made her ground-breaking documentary,
THE HOUSE IS BLACK,
about a leper colony in Tabriz, Iran. The film introduced a new form of
documentary, where rhythm and lyricism pre-empted discourse and spoke from the
vantage of an unproblematized ‘I.’ Some five years later, French filmmaker
Robert Bresson took a Georges Bernanos novel as the source for his
MOUCHETTE,
where ambient noise came to the foreground in lieu of excess imagery, which
itself was further economized by the most succinct framings, exploiting
synecdoche and vigorous editing. It presented the story of a 14-year-old girl
fallen prey to the unwholesome character of her town, and whose defiance,
strength and resolve are put to the test.
Both of these films set the stage for discussing an unfortunately buried film,
Jean-Louis Bertuccelli’s REMPARTS D’ARGILE (RAMPARTS OF CLAY), a 1970
French-Algerian production set in a Tunisian village on the heels of
independence. It’s a fiction film that sets an example for documentary films
in the observational mode. There is scarcely any dialogue, but it’s not
missed. It is not the case that characters mysteriously avoid speaking and
confine themselves to body language. In other words, it’s not a forced,
conscious muteness. The film is in the great tradition of those silents that
dispensed with inter-titles. Sound is incorporated chiefly as an extra
visceral dimension and not the thinly veiled exposition that is commonplace.
The discourse is the image plus the dominantly non-verbal sound. The language
is the arrangement of these elements. Here, there is no need to inscribe words
or inject speaking voices to carry what has been made immediately apparent to
the spectator through mise-en-scene. It is truly a talking image that
pervades.
The three most garrulous characters are inanimate—the pulley servicing the
village well, the wind, and the legion of rocks. They are like The Three Fates
re-assigned to a social reality post. The film isn’t anchored to its main
character, Rima (Leila Shenna), though her presence pervades. An Algerian
village gives body for its Tunisian counterpart, rendering a fine performance
in a fiction film that excels as living documentary. We witness the
protagonist as one of many, but decidedly not, one FOR many.
The film’s grammar is tuned for inference, as if conforming to the mystery
genre—not for capturing knowledge of the elusive act the genre hinges upon,
but, rather, reveling in the small mysteries behind an interplay of lives,
culture and place—not with dry discourse or conventional exposition, but the
efficient elegance of the talking image.
The occasional silences that take hold in contrast to the dominant panoply of
sounds partition the film into resonant intervals. They can arise suddenly,
keyed to a distinct sound, like a break step in dance terms. The sound need
not be loud or aggressive in amplitude, but simply distinct, such that it
gains relative prominence as the sound track falls into silence. These brief
stretches of contemplative montage delineate the stanzas in this audio-visual
poem.
The sounds populating the film are characteristically cyclical, typically
work- and routine-oriented. With a dearth of leisure, the film is one big
visual work song, the content of which bears similarities with Mexican
corridos in that it tells a story rooted in historical incident and the
personal awakening of consciousness.
The film moves in a montage that gives life to the crowd, cashing in on the
currency of bodies in a lingering iteration of diversity—not few for many, but
many as many brought together in a few installments of motif, such as drinking
water, an age-old currency of life, here in the denomination of a traveling
bucket going from mouth to mouth, proffered, pulled in, instigating
anticipation, revelry, and lastly, something über communal binding young and
old. And what better juxtaposition from this cacophonous montage than breaking
on the sound of a footstep in the current scene to the silent expanse of dry
cracked earth in the next scene—a more lingering montage to gather up just
enough stillness as it unfolds in meditative counterpoint.
Theatrical Release: Cannes 1970
Reviews More Reviews DVD Reviews
DVD Review: I.D.E. - Region 2 - PAL
Big thanks to Fred Patton for the Review!
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CLICK to order from:
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| Distribution |
I.D.E. Region 2 - PAL |
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| Runtime | 1:19:33 | |
| Video |
1.64 : 1 Original Aspect Ratio
16X9 enhanced |
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NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes. |
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| Bitrate |
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| Audio | French Dolby Digital 2.0 | |
| Subtitles | French (burned in) | |
| Features |
Release Information: Studio: I.D.E. Aspect Ratio:
Edition Details: Chapters 12 |
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| Comments | First off, this film doesn't need subtitles. There are less than a dozen dialogue bits that are redundant given the picture. This film is out of print of NTSC VHS. The picture good. It's a dual-layer disc, and an all-around job well done. There may be some minor combing in the opening scenes. The director commentary is splendid, and works perfectly with the lack of dialogue in the film. The film sounds exquisite. |
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CLICK to order from:
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| Distribution |
I.D.E. Region 2 - PAL |
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Thank You!
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