Where To? (1957)

 

Director: Georges Nasser

Screenplay: Youssef Habchi Achkar, Halim Fares and Georges Nasser

Cast: Laura Azar as The Mother; Tannous Dik as The Doctor; Shakib Khouri as The Brother; Mounir Nader as The Notary; Raouf Rawi as Farid

Ephemeral Waves

 

But our cow is happier than I am.

This is one of the few films I have seen from Lebanon; for me, experiencing the world through its cinematic history is vital, for their virtues as films and the stories their existence tell, their cultural contexts and what they show onscreen (or if a genre film how its told) adding even greater layers. With Where To, the story begins with its director/co-writer Georges Nasser. Born in Tripoli, Lebanon in 1927, Nasser was one of the first Arab filmmakers to study cinema in the United States¹, obtaining a degree from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) before returning to Lebanon in the mid-50s. His first film was Where To, which would become the first Lebanese picture to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 1957¹.

The film's main narrative is also significant as it reflects real history, where the patriarch of a farming family, leaving his wife and two sons, migrates to Brazil for wealth alongside many men. This was commonplace, with Brazil's population includes an extensive number of Lebanese Brazilians stemming from this influx of migration from one side to the world to the other. From 1860 to 1914, between a third and a half of the population of Mount Lebanon, a mountain range is the country, is believed to have emigrated, ninety percent of all emigrants from the Lebanese territory thought to have been Christian². Over the century, including Muslin Lebanese migration, more would emigrate at various time periods such as during World War II, and the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90 among others. Even as late as Israel's 1982–2000 occupation of southern Lebanon, and the war surrounding this, led to more to migrate, especially with individuals from the Shia population moving for economic reasons². These many times show, yes, Lebanese migration to Brazil has been a common historical connection between the two countries.

The history is significant to the point, with the first examples from 1860 to 1914, it even ties in with Brazil's last emperor Dom Pedro II, whose trips to the Middle East in the 1870s included an extensive tour of Lebanon. Gaining a reputation in Lebanon, seen as man of virtue and enlightenment, legends of this tour included stopping at the side of a road, to the ruins of Baalbeck, a city in Lebanon, and talking to peasants, suggesting to them to abandon their current lot to migrate to Latin America². The reality is likely more complicated than this over the centuries on, especially as Lebanese migrants had to find their way in their new homeland, living as "mascates" (peddlers) once they actually reached Brazil if need be until they could find a foothold economically to live in their adopted homeland. Nonetheless, a sizable population of Lebanese-Brazilian culture exists as a result of these migrations, where "the Lebanese community is now highly mixed into society, intermarriage is incredibly common, while few speak even the basics of Arabic." if a 2014 Executive Magazine web article on this history, "How the Lebanese conquered Brazil", is completely accurate². The story of Where To however offers the other side of the picture, of those left home in Lebanon, the world of the families left abandoned.

The father joins those migrating to Brazil, the fictional form of the many who attempted to find their luck and success in a country. \w\here ultimately many would migrate and successfully integrate within their new land, Where To's patriarch however is the tragic side of this, as his is a tale of the failure and the emotional wreckage as a result of this decision many took. The film is naturalistic, in context to fifties cinema I have seen as it takes its place among the many influenced by this direction, famous from Italian neo-realism. That of also casting non-actors but still with a sense of glamour to tone of the film which is unlike what realism in modern cinema looks like, stripping more back over time in how we make "realistic" films now. For its time, this is stripped back in how having non-actors presents a lack of visages to obscure the emotions, to obscure its subject in unnecessary artifice to the material. The contemplative tone to its drama, whilst arguably melodrama in places and in the use of the score for heightened dramatic effect, is still strong and still in mind to the era (and now) radically different in tackling this type of material.

Thus, when the father leaves, the wife has to work harder by herself, to maintain their land alongside raising their sons. But, in a perfectly executed time slip, by way of a circle of the cattle driven plough, the boys start to grow up, as kids still having to help on the land too, and the pair changing in their desires as they grow up. The oldest eventually wishes to stay the farmer, to help his mother, also because as a child the first blossom of romance with a neighbourhood girl were there, a girl he was already friends with which begins to become more as they mature. The youngest, boosting of wanting vast numbers of cattle, shepherds and landmass as a kid, gets a knack of farm management but also becomes restless, also becomes one of the many men, trying to find work in then-modern Lebanon and cannot, who wants to get a passport and go to Brazil. It is an obvious story, but a compelling one, and history even beyond Lebanon's of migration of its population is resonant in how many in other countries have done for the same reasons characters within this film do. Where To documents those who wished for a better life and moved regardless of their actual nationality.

The drama is simple, the melodrama subtler but there, the mother getting sick from overwork, but melodrama heightens what is still unfortunately relevant too still. As the older son becomes the farmer to care for his mother, the youngest gains an education but cannot find work. Here as well though, without letting comments trivialise this film's concerns which at a national scale, this is also set within a family who scrape past from poverty, as workers on the land, trying their best to survive in an entirely different economic and practical context, one for director Georges Nasser telling this story for his fellow countrymen and women. He is aware of drama's use for this, as twenty years later, the father will eventually return a broken man, and his remorse as his life was not successful as other (real) Lebanese migrants comes as if he is now a ghost, a hollow man, floating in to his old world again. His one way to help his family in remorse for the sins he feels he has, not even able to say who he is to them, is by an act of kindness after an accident of melodrama, a car hitting someone, but this in itself is as unexpected an event to transpire as it would if it happened in real life.

For the outsider, this film from a country whose cinema is not commonly accessible means a great deal. Lebanese customs are show including sword dancing, and dance with shields, at a wedding reception. Thus too you see life of a family - one son who has found everything staying where he is, the other showing the frustrations of all those who finally emigrated out of their homeland - that in itself a cultural aspect in how these universal issues any can have are dealt with in this context, in time and location. This means so much more knowing how difficult the film actually was for Nasser to make, commenting decades later that he did not even have access to technicians let alone actors¹, making this a hard fought for debut to produce with those with him. Sadder is in knowledge this was not a success at all when it was first released. His career onwards was a struggle. His next film Le Petit Étranger (1962), a French language coming of age story, was both a critical and commercial failure. Even more intriguing, but taking twelve years to be created and his last film, would be Matloob Ragol Wahed (Only One Man Wanted, 1974), a Palestinian allegorical tale that, a Syrian production, combines its themes with a b-western template with garish primary colour and female nudity, a kitsch cultural political work that I never heard of until writing this review tragically, but in its little knowledge of sounds like Nasser throwing caution to the wind even in a lurider genre context for the themes¹. Only a year later, the Lebanese Civil War begins, lasting between 1975 to 1990, sounding as cataclysmic for how long and bloody that time passing sounds, and Nasser went on, with no success, to create a Lebanese film syndicate, before becoming a teacher at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts¹.

It is with happiness that, decades later at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, a 91 year old Nasser was able to return with a world premier of his debut's restored version. As with these films, sadly were it not for the likes of MUBI, they are difficult to see, and unless physical media is available, even MUBI can only have temporary access to a film which, in movie markets, is tragically not going to be picked up. Unless you get the cineastes to take the chance and get the film more readily available, cinema really has a danger of forgetting cinema is a time capsule, only better than other mediums of expression because the cineastes fought tooth and nail to make sure films like this were preserved and accessible even briefly. A film like this does deserve more attention; I normally write of cult and "unconventional" cinema, but the same reasons I am drawn to those films applies to cinema from countries like Lebanon barely accessible even still. I will be honest in saying it is a form of tourism, but my interest within deep diving into "world cinema" in the truest sense is noble where it leads to films like this. Where To is as much the underdog, still subversive in offering an alternative eye in how, casting his glance in a story based on history in his country, Georges Nasser does not even need over eighty minutes, under that running time by a couple, to fully flesh out so much meaning in pondering the desires and strains of a man (of many) migrating in hope of finding more, and the consequences. The calmness and how elegant the film is, beautiful in its restored monochrome as the camera will linger for a minute or so up at clouds in the sky, is timeless. That of the era, its distinct music scoring of older films, has not aged, merely is a tool of before which touches the heart strings. A film like this you would hope, through cineastes, will eventually get a higher spot in recognition because it deserves it.

==========

1) Taken from the Middle East Eye web article Georges Nasser: The return of Lebanon’s first great film luminary, published on Wednesday January 24th 2018 and written by Joseph Fahim.

2) Take from the Executive Magazine web article How the Lebanese conquered Brazil, published on July 3, 2014 and written by Joe Dyke.