SNCCI MEETING
The Cinema of Costa-Gavras
COSTA-GAVRAS
It happened to me other times to define Costa-Gavras a master of indignation. The ability of being indignant is a rarer and rarer virtue in an historical period and in a reality such as the contemporary one, where the tendency to social and political, cultural and moral decay is more and more normal, and where the habit to the worse has become a rule.
All the more deserving appears the attitude of those who, confronting themselves with the great tragedies of History and with the serious problems of present times, don’t prevent taking a stand, defying commonplaces, and keeping memory alive. Costa-Gavras, in fact, has been and will be a master of indignation, that is a man, before being a director, always motivated by the ethical resentment in front of the injustices of the world and the impositions of the dominant authorities. And, as in many parts of the world the injustices against mankind and the abuse of power, exerted in the most different forms, have occurred without a break, as well as violence has been expressed without cease against weaker peoples and persons, Costa-Gavras has constantly found reasons of indignations, and thus the spur to transfer it in his films.
Filmographies like his are really rare, showing unequivocally civil commitment, democratic convictions, spirit of solidarity If not always the aesthetic results may be on the really great level of his intentions (all the same his professional rigour, his mastery of the cinematographic technique, his skill in directing the actors, his ability to communicate in a transparent way without ever slip in the superficial have never been unquestioned), in his cinema responsible and giving a sense of responsibility, it is evident every time his willingness to take a stand and witness in a participating way in favour of the victims and against the executioners, without any distinction among countries, systems, ideologies. Some examples: the crimes of military dictatorships and of their International partners (Z, Missing), the wickednesses of CIA (Etat de siège), the horrors of Stalinism (L’aveau), the omissions of Vatican (Amen): everything is summoned and submitted to the harsh speech of Costa-Gavras, who has never been influenced by precautions more or less opportunistic or by political, ideological or confessional a priori knowledge. We can say that, rather than a revolutionary, he is a rebel, just in the meaning suggested by Camus. A rebel stirred by a humanism always lined up with the men compelled to suffer the evil caused by other men, and that it aspires to safeguard that individual freedom and social justice that everybody should feel as primary values, and recognize actively at everybody’s benefit. It is not a case that in his last film, Eden à l’Ouest, Costa-Gavras deals with one of the most burning themes on a world ground, that of emigration, to report, through an exemplary event not lacking of metaphoric value, the burden of pains and fears of those who are driven to the search for survival to a country far from their own and, together, the danger of the return of the old monsters never completely defeated among which racism and intolerance. Once again Costa-Gavras’s cinema reveals itself a cinema which looks interested, at least resort, more to the “useful” than to the “beautiful”, obviously without supposing some inconsistency or, still worse, an incompatibility between these two notions. But about this, and much else, we will discuss in Lecce, during the European Cinema Festival in the Conference organised by the National Syndicate Cinematographic Critics, that, will be attended by the director and Anton Giulio Mancino’s and Giovanni Maria Rossi’s reports.
Bruno Torri
Pres. SNCCI
