Years & Movies: 1983
The Best Film of World Cinema of 1983 according to FilmGourmand was named "Le Bal" by the Italian director Ettore Scola. The film "Le Bal" premiered in Paris on December 21, 1983.
The film "Le Bal" is a screen version of the play of the same name, staged by the French director Jean-Claude Penchenat from his own play at the Théâtre du Campagnol in 1981.
Filmmakers from three countries took part in the making of the film "Le Bal": France, Algeria and Italy. Since out of the 5 film companies that took part in the creation of the picture, two represent France, since it is based on a performance by a French director and a French theater, since all the actors involved in the film are French, we decided to consider this film French. Moreover, the film tells, albeit without a single word, the half-century history of France, from the 30s to the 80s of the XX century.
It is not by chance that we have made these arguments, because, being nominated for the Academy Award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film, this film represented Algeria. But, firstly, the decision to nominate a film in which not a single word is spoken in this category is quite strange, and, secondly, the decision to "attribute" this film to the Algerian cinema may well be explained by the fact that another, "purely French" film - "Coup de foudre (Entre Nous)" by Diane Kurys - claimed the Academy Award in the same category. However, neither one nor the other French film was lucky: the Oscar went to the Swedish film masterpiece "Fanny and Alexander" by Ingmar Bergman.
In the same year, 1984, Ettore Scola's film "Le Bal" was nominated for the Golden Bear - the main prize of the Berlin International Film Festival. But the jury of the film festival, chaired by the famous actress Liv Ullman, awarded the victory to the American film "Love Streams" by John Cassavetes. By the way, at this festival, in the absence of other applicants from France, the Ettore Scola's film represented France without any equivocations. Ettore Scola won the Silver Bear for directing the film.
In the countries that were directly involved in the creation of the film "Le Bal", Ettore Scola's film production received the highest cinematic awards. In France - the Cesar Awards for Best film and for directing. And in Italy - the David di Donatello Awards in the same categories.
It can not be said that the film "Le Bal" was met with numerous reviews from film critics. But those rare reviews of professional film critics which were devoted to this film, had an enthusiastic character. For example, Vincent Canby of The New York Times described the film of Ettore Scola as "a strikingly handsome, very stylized film ... a graceful, dreamlike extravaganza, a cavalcade of a half-century of popular music and manners, danced and mimed by a large cast of elegantly deadpan clowns".
Modern moviegoers highly appreciated the film of Ettore Scola. 66% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film "Le Bal" a rating from 8 to 10, and 22% of users rated the film "ten". Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Ettore Scola's film "Le Bal" according to FilmGourmand was 9,115, thanks to which it took the 138th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
In addition to Ettore Scola's film "Le Bal", the following pictures were included in the "top ten" of the best movies of world cinema of 1983 according to FilmGourmand:
- Once Upon a Time in America. Director Sergio Leone, USA. Movie's Rating - 8,844; 203rd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Nostalghia. Director Andrei Tarkovsky, Italy. Movie's Rating - 8,654; 263rd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Zelig. Director Woody Allen, USA. Movie's Rating - 8,552; 295th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Narayama-bushi kô 楢山節考 (The Ballad of Narayama). Director Shôhei Imamura, Japan. Movie's Rating - 8,546; 302nd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Scarface. Director Brian De Palma, USA. Movie's Rating - 8,263; 434th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. Director Richard Marquand, USA. Movie's Rating - 8,254; 440th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Белые росы (White Dew). Director Igor Dobrolyubov, USSR. Movie's Rating - 8,199; 467th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- The Meaning of Life. Directors Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, UK. Movie's Rating - 8,121; 561st Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Tsisperi mtebi anu daujerebeli ambavi ცისფერი მთები ანუ დაუჯერებელი ამბავი (Blue Mountains, or Unbelievable Story). Director Eldar Shengelaia, USSR.
10 most "cinegenic"*, in our opinion, events of 1983:
- The shooting of a South Korean Boeing over Sakhalin. A Korean Air Lines (KAL) Boeing 747-230B passenger jet that invaded Soviet airspace for unknown reasons was shot down by a Soviet fighter jet. 269 passengers of the airliner were killed.
- The trial of Klaus Barbie. Known as the "Butcher of Lyon", Klaus Barbie was delivered by the Government of Bolivia to France. As a Hauptsturmfuhrer of the SS during World War II, Barbie became famous for his special cruelty in the torture and execution of French Resistance figures, for which he was twice sentenced to death in absentia in France. After the war, under the protection of the US Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), Barbie was transported under a false name to Bolivia, where he rose to the post of security adviser to the President of Bolivia, Luis Garcia Mesa. After being extradited by Bolivia, he was sentenced to life in prison and lived until 1991.
- Nellie massacre. In the town of Nellie in the Indian state of Assam, 2,191 Muslims were killed in one day just for taking part in democratic parliamentary elections.
- Petrov's feat. Lieutenant Colonel of the USSR Armed Forces Stanislav Petrov saved the world from a nuclear disaster, a step away from which the planet was due to the false operation of the Soviet missile warning system. Information about Petrov's feat became public only 10 years later.
- Terrorist attacks in Beirut. In Lebanon, the terrorist organization Hezbollah carried out a series of terrorist attacks: the American embassy in Beirut was blown up (66 people were killed and 120 people were injured), the barracks of peacekeepers from the United States and France were blown up (241 Americans, 58 French, 6 Lebanese were killed).
- A letter from Samantha Smith. The Soviet newspaper "Pravda" published a letter from an American schoolgirl Samantha Smith, addressed to Yuri Andropov. Samantha received an invitation to visit the USSR. 2 years later, she died in the United States in a plane crash.
- The invasion of Grenada. US troops invaded the island of Grenada. The purpose of the invasion is to overthrow the pro-communist Revolutionary Military Council, which seized power on the island through a military coup.
- The Brink's Mat robbery. In the UK, six robbers broke into the Brink's Mat warehouse of the Heathrow International Trade Center, near Heathrow Airport in West London. The robbers stole gold bars, diamonds and cash worth a total of 26 million pounds (equivalent to 70 million pounds today). Only two of the six criminals were caught, and most of the gold bars weighing 3 tons have not yet been found. The robbery was called the "crime of the century".
- Execution of Baha'is. In Iran, 10 women between the ages of 19 and 54 were executed by hanging for belonging to the Bahá'í Church.
- Maze Prison escape. 38 prisoners, who were members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), armed with 6 shotguns, hijacked a prison truck and escaped from Her Majesty's Prison Maze in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. In the process of escaping, one of the jailers died of a heart attack, and twenty more were injured, including two who were wounded by shots from weapons smuggled into the prison. This escape was the largest escaped prisoner in British history.
Besides, Luis Buñuel, George Cukor died.
* -With "cinematic" in the present context, we mean events that either have already found their reflection in world cinema, or deserve to become the basis of the plot of a future film.