Zavallilar
(The Poor Ones)
dir. Yılmaz Güney & Atif Yılmaz
Turkey 1975
72 minutes
English subtitles
The Way Home: The Films of Turkish Master Yılmaz Güney
Auditorium, Library and Archives Canada
Friday, February 17, 9:00 pm
Three incarcerated men—Abuzar, Arap, and Hacı—are anxious about their release from prison. They have no-where to go and beg to stay in prison at least until spring, where they can bide the winter months with a source of food and a roof over their heads. Arap has been imprisoned after being cheated by his employer, whom he then tried to fight. Hacı found himself in prison after being betrayed by a prostitute with whom he had fallen in love. Abuzar turned to a life of crime after witnessing his mother kill a man to whom she had been sold. Telling their stories, the three men embody social issues in Turkish society.
Sunday January 29
06:30 PM
Details
Country: Turkey
Year: 1974
Language: Turkish
Runtime: 72 minutes
Rating: 14A
Principal Cast:
Director: Yilmaz Güney, Atif Yilmaz
Three convicts relate the causes for their imprisonment in Yilmaz Güney’s gripping drama, which had to be completed by a collaborator after Güney was himself imprisoned for harbouring anarchist students.
Notes
In this strong foreshadowing of Yol, three convicts, the "poor ones" of the title, are released on a snowy night into a world in which they are outcasts. Flashbacks reveal their unfortunate pasts and the reasons they landed in jail (which seems more a refuge from the harsh outside than anything else). Their stories, involving betrayal, prostitution, and murder, accumulate into an indictment of the rampant injustice in a country that does nothing to prevent the innocent from falling into crime. Güney plays Abuzer, marked for life by witnessing a murder as a child, but the film had to be rewritten and his role reduced after shooting was first begun when Güney was imprisoned for harbouring anarchist students. Completed by his collaborator Atif Yilmaz, The Poor Ones nevertheless falls among Güney's most committed and critical works
The Poor (Zavallilar)
Directed by Yilmaz Güney, Atif Yilmaz. With Yilmaz Güney, Yildirim Önal, Güven Sengil
Turkey 1974, 35mm, color, 72 min. Turkish with English subtitles
Like so many of Güney’s subsequent films, The Poor is about prisoners. The film opens on a winter night as three convicts are released. A complex structure of flashbacks describes how they came to be imprisoned, while at the same time following the men through the night as they find themselves faced with reentering a society in which they are outcasts. All have had lives marked with betrayal, degradation and violence stemming from their poverty. Filming was interrupted in mid-production when Güney was himself briefly imprisoned for having sheltered some anarchist students. Rather than delay the film’s completion, Güney asked his mentor Atif Yilmaz to finish it, despite the major revisions required since Güney himself had been playing one of the three leads. The result is a fascinating mix of hard-bitten realism and florid melodrama.
