TIFF | Bride of the Earth

Friday February 3
06:30 PM
Details
Country: Turkey
Year: 1968
Language: Turkish
Runtime: 78 minutes
Rating: 14A
Principal Cast:
Director: Yilmaz Güney


A poor Anatolian man sets out to make his fortune so that he can marry his beloved, but her family has their eyes on a more profitable match with a rich landowner. Yilmaz Güney’s lyrical revenge drama echoes the masterful cinema of Satyajit Ray and Roberto Rossellini.


Notes


In this rural revenge drama, Güney plays Seyit Han, a poor man in love with a woman from his Anatolian village who returns his affection. Seyit Han postpones their marriage so that he can make his fortune elsewhere and return to the village to claim his "bride of the earth." During his prolonged absence, a rich landowner begins to woo the lonely woman, and her brother, intent upon making this propitious wedding happen, spreads the rumour that Seyit Han has died. Filled with striking images of entrapment — a man stuck in quicksand, a woman in a wicker cage — and landscapes of daisy-covered plains, Bride of the Earth powerfully explores the still feudalistic ways of rural Turkey, the superstitions and codes of honour that entrap women and thwart love. "Contains surprising moments of quiet lyricism that suggest Güney was becoming familiar with the cinema of Satyajit Ray and Roberto Rossellini" (Bilge Ebiri).

Film Notes from Harvard Film Archive | Bride of the Earth

Bride of the Earth (Seyit Han)

Directed by Yilmaz Güney. With Yilmaz Güney, Nebahat Çehre, Hayati Hamzaoglu
Turkey 1968, 35mm, b/w, 78 min. Turkish with English subtitles

The first film that Güney acknowledged as a fully realized effortBride of the Earth stars the director himself as a man separated from his bride-to-be by the superstitions and feudal conditions of rural life. The film’s attention to poverty as a barrier to happiness and personal aspiration looks forward to Güney’s more overtly political work while demonstrating his eye for striking images, particularly in his dramatic use of landscape, as well as more baroque, almost Bosch-like touches- a woman trapped in a wicker cage, a man in quicksand up to his neck.