A lost art returns

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

CANNES, MAY 15. This is the beginning of the twenty-first century, and the Cannes International Film Festival, now into its sixth day here, has been unrolling fare that one would have thought belonged to another era. Not that it is not good.

On the contrary, some of the movies here have managed to bring back a certain charm peculiar to the 1950s and the 1960s. The charm of story-telling, the art that cinema lost in its quest to shock and seduce, returned.

Pictures became motion and madness, when events were blown out context - indeed virtually plucked out of the larger stories themselves - and narrated with a sense of darkness and gloom. It was a time that saw cinema without a sense of rhyme or rhythm. Well, here at Cannes, there were at least two films that made pleasant viewing, because they told stories, and, one guesses everybody wants to listen to them, better still see them as they unfold on the screen.

James Ivory's latest offering, The Golden Bowl, is a wonderfully etched period piece, set in London and Italy at the turn of the last century. The director's eye for detail and beauty is remarkable, and his ability to mix and mingle such a nicety with the narrative without any pretense to stylistic snobbery is visually arresting and mentally stimulating.

The Golden Bowl describes the plight of an impoverished Italian prince who marries for money, but is pursued by his lover to what, at times, seemed like a tragic finale. When the woman weds the wife's aged father just to be close to her paramour, disaster seems set to strike.

Adapted from Henry James' last novel, The Golden Bowl brings that eternal team - Ivory, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and producer Ismail Merchant - together again. Ivory lets us into the secret of this enduring union. ``Respect is the biggest ingredient. No one stands around and orders the others with all kinds of opinions.''

Yet the road is not always without rough patches. The biggest hurdle is raising money, and The Golden Bowl was no exception. All the more so in the times we live in when people's idea of movies has changed so drastically that men like Ivory or Merchant find they have to work even harder to convince financiers.

Another gripping film at Cannes was Liv Ullmann's Faithless. The script was written by that great Swedish master film-maker, Ingmar Bergman, who now lives alone on a small island in the Baltic Sea. Into his eighties now, he based Faithless on something that happened to him, a long time ago.

The movie opens with an elderly writer, sitting by a window and letting his imagination wander. It focusses on a woman, Marianne, who begins telling a story that is emotional and riveting.

Happily married with a little daughter, Isabelle, Marianne begins an affair with her husband's best friend, David. The outcome may be all too predictable - despair and despondency following roses and stars - but Ullmann captures the essence of this human drama with rare optimism and extraordinary portrayal of characters.

The director contends: ``Faithless is based on a real event in Bergman's life. He tried to write about it for many years, but was only able to do so when he found the seedbed for the script in the character and temperament of an actress.

It was she who brought the situation to life for him, she embodied the role for him. This is what our movie is about.''

The actress is Lena Endre, and Bergman always wrote his screenplays with the actors in his mind. The characters almost always lent themselves to those who played them. That was, and still is, Bergman's great touch and style. Ullmann, of course, respected that, and took on Lena to play a splendid role. Faithless may be 150 minutes long, but there is seldom a dull moment, and it speaks of Ullmann's complete control over the images. Not surprising though. She was once married to Bergman and must have learnt a great deal from the auteur. Faithless is an exciting example of that.

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Section  : Entertainment