A celebration for the eyes(1975)
Director: Assi Dayan
Country: Israel
Runtime:86min
This film is THE most sought after Israeli film ever made due to long and complicated trial that is still going for 30 years and which prevents this tiny
Country: Israel
Runtime:86min
This film is THE most sought after Israeli film ever made due to long and complicated trial that is still going for 30 years and which prevents this tiny
masterpiece from being shown under any circumstances...
And all this started from the one screening in the (then) only public channel on television, way back. I've got this rarest gem from a dear man who taped it back then and amazingly, the quality's quite goof, all things considered.
I've translated the dialogues and now I present you Dayan's 2nd feature which to this day he considers as his greatest work.
Here's a translation I've made of a nice article from a local blog, "it's not McGuffin":
A celebration for the eyes - a cinematic wonder no one can see
Due to a complicated legal dispute, there's no legal way to watch "a celebration for the eyes"- Assi Dayan's second film as director. The relatively Positive side to that is that the conflict broke out following the film's broadcast on Channel 1 in the early nineties - which means there were (very few) people who have recorded it and with their aid I managed to watch the movie which the title of this post indicates the high esteem I have for it.
I feel that if the film was available today, more people would share my feeling. Although when the film was released in 1975 (two years after created) it did not get much of a crowd, but in many ways the film was ahead of its time - its use of the Hebrew language, its humorous attack on the militarism of Israeli society, by its mix of European influences with a local ,Mediterranean flavor.
I think that nowadays it can become a cult favorite and win a new critical evaluation.
It's enough to hear the story written by Dayan with Naftali Alter to understand the spirit of the film: a man comes to town that lies on the northern border and intends to commit suicide. The townspeople rescue him, but later they discover he's a well known poet, the kind whose death place can become a site of pilgrimage. Since a wave of tourism would do wonders for the bleak economic situation of the town, the residents try to encourage him to commit suicide and even arrange a local celebration for the occasion of the suicide. A girl that falls in love with him try to resist. In addition, the town is preparing for a wedding full of colorful characters. A military exercise held near the town also has an impact on the plot.
An upgrade factor for the film are the dialogues. I believe that Dayan (who is 67 years old now) is the most unique dialogue writer ever in Israeli cinema, a writer with a personal style, with a slang and spoken language awareness, a writer whose sentences often work on more than one level. In his good moments, he reminds me of Hanoch Levin (The greatest Israeli playwright). He takes ready-made phrases and delves to their bottom, often in order to expose a painful (while funny) dimension in his characters - so that when a girl falls in love with the poet, she tells him about the way the soldiers treat her: "I was a mattress" -and all that during a sex scene, of course.
Dane creates in the movie a carnivalesque atmosphere, reminiscent of Fellini's films and more than that, the movies of Emir Kusturica which were made later. Many shots end with blurring of the frame - a breaking of cinematic language which communicates with the breaking of language produced through the dialogue.
Not for a single moment is the film heavy handed nor too complex. This is primarily a movie that never stops to make you laugh and at the end manages also to touch your heart deeply even though it has no positive characters and there's cynicism at almost any moment. It was not easy for the Israeli public to accept such a wild work in real time. Dayan turned to make movies which were easier to digest and managed to make some great popular movies which were smarter than most give them credit for, all that before he created in the nineties his "trilogy" which made him one of the most respected directors in this country.
All the characteristics of Dayan's cinema are already there in this early work - from the military humor of "Halfon Hill" up to the lyrical touch of "Life According to Agfa". Dayan's latest film is a comedy about a psychologist who rents his medical clinic for people who wish to commit suicide, so its a full circle...
gabinbal@KG
And all this started from the one screening in the (then) only public channel on television, way back. I've got this rarest gem from a dear man who taped it back then and amazingly, the quality's quite goof, all things considered.
I've translated the dialogues and now I present you Dayan's 2nd feature which to this day he considers as his greatest work.
Here's a translation I've made of a nice article from a local blog, "it's not McGuffin":
A celebration for the eyes - a cinematic wonder no one can see
Due to a complicated legal dispute, there's no legal way to watch "a celebration for the eyes"- Assi Dayan's second film as director. The relatively Positive side to that is that the conflict broke out following the film's broadcast on Channel 1 in the early nineties - which means there were (very few) people who have recorded it and with their aid I managed to watch the movie which the title of this post indicates the high esteem I have for it.
I feel that if the film was available today, more people would share my feeling. Although when the film was released in 1975 (two years after created) it did not get much of a crowd, but in many ways the film was ahead of its time - its use of the Hebrew language, its humorous attack on the militarism of Israeli society, by its mix of European influences with a local ,Mediterranean flavor.
I think that nowadays it can become a cult favorite and win a new critical evaluation.
It's enough to hear the story written by Dayan with Naftali Alter to understand the spirit of the film: a man comes to town that lies on the northern border and intends to commit suicide. The townspeople rescue him, but later they discover he's a well known poet, the kind whose death place can become a site of pilgrimage. Since a wave of tourism would do wonders for the bleak economic situation of the town, the residents try to encourage him to commit suicide and even arrange a local celebration for the occasion of the suicide. A girl that falls in love with him try to resist. In addition, the town is preparing for a wedding full of colorful characters. A military exercise held near the town also has an impact on the plot.
An upgrade factor for the film are the dialogues. I believe that Dayan (who is 67 years old now) is the most unique dialogue writer ever in Israeli cinema, a writer with a personal style, with a slang and spoken language awareness, a writer whose sentences often work on more than one level. In his good moments, he reminds me of Hanoch Levin (The greatest Israeli playwright). He takes ready-made phrases and delves to their bottom, often in order to expose a painful (while funny) dimension in his characters - so that when a girl falls in love with the poet, she tells him about the way the soldiers treat her: "I was a mattress" -and all that during a sex scene, of course.
Dane creates in the movie a carnivalesque atmosphere, reminiscent of Fellini's films and more than that, the movies of Emir Kusturica which were made later. Many shots end with blurring of the frame - a breaking of cinematic language which communicates with the breaking of language produced through the dialogue.
Not for a single moment is the film heavy handed nor too complex. This is primarily a movie that never stops to make you laugh and at the end manages also to touch your heart deeply even though it has no positive characters and there's cynicism at almost any moment. It was not easy for the Israeli public to accept such a wild work in real time. Dayan turned to make movies which were easier to digest and managed to make some great popular movies which were smarter than most give them credit for, all that before he created in the nineties his "trilogy" which made him one of the most respected directors in this country.
All the characteristics of Dayan's cinema are already there in this early work - from the military humor of "Halfon Hill" up to the lyrical touch of "Life According to Agfa". Dayan's latest film is a comedy about a psychologist who rents his medical clinic for people who wish to commit suicide, so its a full circle...
gabinbal@KG
