Beyzaie and Crime Thriller: The crime thriller is a cinematic genre that offers a suspenseful account of a crime and is characterised by the moods evoked, giving the audience intensive feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. According to the oxford dictionary of film studies, crime film is “an extremely wide-ranging group of fiction films that have crime as a central element of their plots.” (Kuhn 2012: 101-102)
Susan Heyward’s definition of the term crime thrillers are films of suspense that are supposed to instil terror into the audience. According to Heyward, a thriller relies on intricacy of plot to create fear and apprehension in the audience.
On the face of things, it may seem immaterial to talk about these characteristics within Iranian crime films when it has been generally from Iranian cinema in any true sense but there is much to be learnt from looking at the progression of a genre that began as a rudimentary imitation of Hollywood in the late 1950s by Samuel Khachikian and other filmmakers and went on to forge the visions of the great new wave directors such as Bahram Beyzaie who imprinted his films with a unique beat and national colour both before and after the Islamic revolution.
Whereas the crime film is a feature of almost all national cinemas, with distinct versions in the European, American and far east cinemas such a Korean and Japanese cinema, it was not so prominent, however within Iranian cinema and exceptionally rare in the pre-revolutionary period, making Beyzaie’s forays into the genre, particularly noteworthy.
Much has been said and written about the mythical, metaphorical, ritual, philosophical, existential and feminist aspects of Beyzaie’s films. But in this paper I would like to discuss a lesser explored aspect of his cinema which is a representation of the criminal world and his utilisation of the main thematic and stylistic elements and methods of the crime thriller genre such as suspense, tension, mystery, kidnapping, missing people, murders, rape, revenge, investigations, plot twists, death traps, nightmares, identity crisis, paranoia, false accusations, low key lighting, revealing camera movement, noirish atmosphere and iconography.
Beyzaie is not a filmmaker whose films can be pigeonholed in a specific genre. He often exceeds the boundaries set by generic conventions and stereotypes.
By focusing on Beyzaie’s three films Kalagh/The Crow (1976), Shayad Vaghti Digar/Maybe Some Other Time (1988) and Sag Koshi/Killing Mad Dog (2001), I would like to discuss how Beyzaie conveys his ideas about the mythical and philosophical through the framing device of the crime thriller plot and narrative structure. Pointing out and analysing the discreet yet highly conscious and pervasive influence of the genre.
I believe that in all these three films Bayzaie has crafted a tough melodrama that moves swiftly and unexpectedly.
Narrative Structure: The narrative structure in thrillers is often based around crime but not always. A crime thriller narrative is mainly based on the conflict between good and evil which can be physical or psychological. There is always a constant conflict between the protagonist and the outside or inside forces which is the driving engine of the drama. It is usually a villain-driven plot, whereby the villain presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome.
Beyzaie uses a narrative structure that teases the audience by presenting a puzzle or riddle to be solved in the end of the films. By using the elements of suspense, paranoia and mystery, Beyzaie creates a shocking and threatening world and a menacing atmosphere where loyalty and safety has no meaning and everybody feels threatened.
In The Crow the narrative device is the advert of the missing girl that drives the characters and develops the plot. Although no crime is committed in the film, the story points which unfolds takes the shape of one seen in a crime thriller and draws its audience in the same way that a film about a murder or disappearance would do so.
In Maybee Some Other Time, Kian, the female protagonist struggles to redeem her true identity as fractured and unstable. In Killing Mad Dogs, which is a modern-day Iranian film noir, we encounter a highly intricate mystery narrative concerned with the female protagonist. It contains all the crime genre narrative elements including murder, chases, shootouts and double crosses that all become part of the plot. Golrokh Kamali (played by Mozhdeh Shamsaie) is struggling within a highly male- oriented world and underground criminals of Tehran to amend the misfortunes of her husband who has incurred large debts and is imprisoned.
While the conflict in Killing Mad Dogs is between Golrokh and the criminals, in Maybe Some other Time, the conflict has a psychological nature and is between Kian and her personal dilemma and unconscious. The threat here is more emotional and mental rather than physical.
In The Crow we have both forms of conflicts, the psychological between the old lady and her memories from one hand and the physical conflict between Asieh and her kidnapper from the other hand. In Killing Mad Dog, the pace of tension is faster than The Crow and Maybe Some Other Time, because in this film the narrative and plot is more complying to the conventions of thriller genre whereas the two other films dealing with mystery. Paranoia, suspense, anxiety, suspicion, tension, raising of stakes for the protagonist are some of the crime thriller elements that are used extensively by Beyzaie in Killing Mad Dog.
Detective Figures and Heroism: When analysing the characters in Beyzaie’s thriller films in terms of crime genre, it may go against the conventions of the genre and the character types may not conform exactly to the genre rules. Unlike American thrillers, in Beyzaie’s films, the protagonists are frequently ordinary citizens unaccustomed to danger. Although there is no detective or private eye in Beyzaie’s thriller films, it is the protagonist who is established as a detective figure, following the pattern of a mystery detective story and making their principal function in the narrative to investigate the case and uncover the hidden truth.
In The Crow it is the television presenter who assumes the detective role as she delves into the case of the missing girl advertised in the newspaper by an unknown person. In Maybe another Time, Moddaber (Kian’s husband) who is a documentary filmmaker, serves as a detective and embarks on a mission to find out if his wife is unfaithful to him and it is Modabber who reveals the truth and resolve the mystery behind the lives of the twin sisters.
While protagonists of thrillers have traditionally been men, in Beyzaie’s films it is often strong-willed women becoming the leading characters, as they get involved with unshrouding the mystery at great risks and costs to themselves. These women are often the victims of a male-dominated patriarchal society where they have been persecuted or suppressed by their husbands or the authorities. In The Crow, though Esalat is ostensibly the film’s protagonist, but in fact it is the vulnerable but equally brave Asieh who discovers the truth at the end. In Killing Mad Dog, the female protagonist become embroiled in the commission of crime and its consequences.
Like Hitchcock, Beyzaie, places an innocent woman into a strange, life-threatening and terrorising situation. According to Gilles Deleuze, in Hitchcock’s films, the criminal has always done his crime for the innocent man who, whether we like it or not, is innocent no longer. He believes “one does not commit a crime in Hitchcock, one delivers it up, one gives it or one exchanges it.” In Killing Mad Dog, Golrokh must fight and make sacrifices for the sake of her husband in order to restore the equilibrium that has been disrupted by her husband’s evil doing. Everything turns against her presumptions by the end and there is no equilibrium or rather there might be a “terrible equilibrium” is attained by her as Gilles Deleuze assigns to the characters of Hitchcock. In her journey towards the end of the film Golrokh has to deal with some crooks and villainous people to whom her husband owes money. Beyzaie often relies on Golrokh’s vulnerability and desperation to create tension in the narrative.
In a particularly memorable scene of Killing Mad Dog Golrokh meets an Iranian version of a yuppie businessman who is working in a fancy office, wearing nice clothes and, most notably, inserting an inordinate amount of English words into every sentence he speaks. He is a caricature of the typical westernised Iranian a greedy, unfeeling capitalist out for his own interests. When he forced Golrokh to meet him for dinner, she appears distraught and helpless but then in the foreboding scene where Golrokh must enter his flat, Beyzaie subverts our expectations by showing that Golrokh is not only wise to yuppie’s scheme, but is ready and willing to confront him with a gun and get what she wanted.
In a later sequence of the film we come to realize that although she was empowered and able to take control in a difficult situation she is still highly at risk. In another scene that Golrokh has meticulously planned to prevent her from being in great danger she goes to confront another set of villains in an upper flour and she is unable to escape and being raped by the villains.The rape scene is a turning point in the narrative of Killing Mad Dog. After the rape Golrokh is not the same naive and sentimental woman as she was before. At the end after she discovers her husband’s dark secrets and has finds out that she has been used and deceived by him, we see how she changes. She became more vigilant and cautious and says that she wants to tackle with the crooks not just for the sake of her husband but also for herself. She was tortured, raped and humiliated but she doesn’t want to step back and give up.
Beyzaie deconstructs the stereotypes of heroism and feminism in Iranian cinema. His sacrificial heroines as brought forward by Saeed Talajoy in his article on Beyzaie, are the victims of a corrupted male- oriented society. In Beyzaie’s films there is a representation of the feminine which one can trace more generally across the varied spectrum of the 1940s crime films such as Rebecca, Suspicion, and Gaslight.
Suspense and Tension: One of the key characteristics of the crime thriller genre is suspense. Filmmakers use suspense to create tension and excitement in audiences as the film approaches its climax. Tension is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible.
Suspense is also one of the main elements of Beyzaie’s thriller films. In his films the suspense is timed by long camera movement and also by cutting to increase steadily engaging our concern. The violence, excitement and suspense are key draws of the crime genre which are perfectly timed and spaced within The Crow and Killing Mad Dog. In these films the fear of being trapped in a world where nothing is safe, creates a very strong sense of suspense and anxiety. There are Hitchcockian touches and references in the narrative as the protagonist faces the danger. The most overt example of suspense in The Crow being a sequence where in the female protagonist (Asieh), gets into a kidnapper’s car by accident and then makes a dramatic get away.
From the onset we can hear the Bernard Hermanesque orchestral music when we see a very stylish view of the kidnaper’s car sliding through the streets of modern Tehran and we see the reflections of the buildings on the windscreen of the car offset by the horrified face of the kidnapped Asieh. She is further terrified when the driver brandishes a knife in a haunting and dramatic shot which put the audience at unease. Then when she strikes at the opportunity to make a getaway, there is a veritable smorgasbord of Hitchcockian references with each thing she runs past being a tension inducing homage to the filmography of the master of suspense including a giant billboard with a terrifyingly upbeat female face selling 7UP, a shot of passer-by who in the context of the shot appears to take a voyeuristic enjoyment in her peril. She then goes into a clock store, taking a sigh of relief, the tense music stops and after moment of silence, we hear the intense deafening tick-tucks of clocks from all around her and we again feel uneasy as does she chime of the clock bells and the music starts up again.
Beyzaie, has now carefully curated a series of shots refers to Hitchcock’s The Birds, Psycho, Spellbound and Vertigo. She then passes a Shia relic of an upright hand symbolizing protection from evil but also appearing very much like a call to stop. Then a mirror and then running past a canon pointing at her through a terrifying window displaying dozens of mannequin heads. And through a high angle shot of her running into and disrupting a huge flock of birds which is the most recognizable and direct reference to Melanie’s situation in the Birds. She twirls all the way around surrounded by scaffolding and urban menace; a theme so concurrent with Beyzaie that we find it again in his film Mad Dog Killing three decades after. She runs down a long set of steps which in the shot could be close enough to 39 Steps. And finally when she believes that she is safely at home we are shown the most threatening view of yet when we see her from behind as she gets into the shower to relieve her stress the audience is left in a continued state of suspense from our familiarities with the famous shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho, as if the shot is from the view of Norman Bates in Psycho.
Living Under the Surveillance: Surveillance is one of the pre-occupying concerns of the modern era and is addressed by many filmmakers particularly Alfred Hitchcock and in films like Rear Window. Surveillance and being observed closely is also a main thematic element of Beyazaie’s films and a pre-occupation of his.
One of iconic motives of Beyzaie’s films is a picture of a large pair glasses. It is a metaphor for the ever present watchful eyes of the big brother, as the camera monitors people in public spaces and shows that we are living under the gaze of others.
In both The Crow and Killing Mad Dog, we see a high angle long shot of the pavement that the two main protagonists (Asieh and Kian) are passing by under a big advert glasses of an optical shop.
In Killing Mad Dog, Golrogh is being watched and bugged by the receptionist of the hotel and by the workers outside the hotel. In a scene from the beginning of the film, Nasser Moaser is driving a car in the night and his partner Javad Moghadam is hiding in the back seat. As Nasser drives on the street, we see some Basijis and revolutionary guards who are approaching the car and peering through the window. There is also a shot in The Crow where we witness Asieh from above through a pair of eyes or spectacles fashioned from the urban environment as she run away from the kidnapper.
In Killing Mad Dog, Kian is feeling that she is being observed all the time whether is in bed or in the street.
In a very absurd and surrealistic scene of the film, reminiscent of Scottie’s nightmare in Vertigo and also Rosemarie’s feverish nightmare scene in Plolanski’s Rosemariy’s Baby, we see Kian sleeping on the bed in a very long corridor and feels disturbed from being under the gaze of the surgical team members: “I’m under surveillance from every side. Escap is impossible”, she says to her psychologist. The zooming camera to the ceiling, the shadowed lighting and the atmospheric creepy ominous music, all create a very impressing nightmarish scene.
Subjective POV Shot: A camera shot that is used a lot in thrillers is a POV shot, which puts the audience in the shoes of the protagonist or antagonist. You basically see everything that they see, and you get a feel of what they are feeling.
In Killing Mad Dog, Beyzaie used a very complex narrative and a sophisticated orchestration of point of view and filmic time.
There is a POV shot of Golrokh as she looks out through the window of a car, shows the chaos of the city which looks like a war zone; the constructions of big towers, the trenches, the slogans stensilled on the walls in favour of war and the Basijis marching in the street.
In Maybe another Time, Beyzaie uses the POV shot to blur the boundaries between reality and imagination. There is a scene where we see a MS of Kian is sitting at the table and listening to her husband who talks to her out of the frame. Then Beyzaie cuts to Kian’s POV shot and we see an empty chair which is indicating that it was Kian’s imagination.
Beyzaie’s core aesthetic, his stylistic camera movement and tracking shots and mise-en-scene, are consistent in his entire filmography but are most present and iconic within The Crow.
In a very dramatic shadowed lighting scene Asieh goes down into a basement in search of clues about the fate of the long missing girl, the use of low key lighting, the continuous cawing of the crows, the sharp lines of the structural beams, a rat jumping onto Asieh and a close up of her horrified face, all serve to create an effectively dreadful and expressionistic atmosphere.
In the pivotal reveal sequence in The Crow, Asieh goes into the old lady’s hidden room, the opening shot is a very Hitchcockian turning of a doorknob shot, going on to Asieh looking around the room as the camera proceeds to adopt her POV and we look around the room as her, seeing the preserved possessions of the old lady that she reminisced so fondly about throughout the film, and revealing, finally, the photo of the missing girl that was from the newspaper advert, bringing a conclusion to her husband’s investigation.
Establishing that the old lady was behind the whole affair in a desperate attempt to remind people of her existence and her past. The world around the old lady had changed to become something completely altered and unrecognisable, a viable connection can be drawn between that and the conflicts of modernity versus the preservation of the past that occurs in Tehran at the time the film was made or even today. We can see how Beyzaie illustrate the interaction between present and the past, between the habitual memory and the virtual memory as Bergson outlines.
According to Bergson time is not linear, but amorphous and in flux. He believes that the past exists concurrently with the present and each point in the future splits into a present that passes and a past that is preserved, without this, there could be no motion through time: time would not move if the present could not pass.
This is exactly the anachronistic aspect of Beyzaie’s films, a kind of crystal-image suggested by Gilles Deleuze, a representation of the splitting of time, the movement of past and present reflected through the images, the simultaneous existence of the past and present where the pure-virtual image interacts fleetingly with present.
The pure crystal-image, where the actual meets its virtual image occurs in Killing Mad Dog, where Kian is facing a portrait of a woman similar to herself among the historical objects of the antique shop. It is a painting of her twin sister but could be the virtual image of herself and her mother as well. In fact Beyzaie by choosing Susan Taslimi to play the role of the twin sisters and also their mother, shows that the actual and the virtual cannot be separated; there is no longer a distinction between the present and the past for Kian at that moment. The virtual image becomes actual.
The Crow and Killing Mad Dog, these are films about lost people, places and moments in time.
The Dark City: The crime genre is generally predisposed to taking place in an urban setting and in ordinary suburbs, although sometimes they may take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as remote areas and deserts. City is a comfort place that evil forces are engaged with their criminal job.
Beyzaie’s cinema especially the films that I’m focused on in this paper doesn’t put crime as the center of plot but he applies some major elements of crime thriller genre in his films that are dealing with the urban life in modern Tehran. All three films convey a sense of fear and living in an unsafe, dangerous and threatening place.
The façade of the city in Killing Mad Dog and The Crow is noxious and menacing. A city where people can become lost in, kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered.
In Killing Mad Dog, like the American classic noirs, the big city symbolizes the corruption and darkness that has a great effect on the lives of the film’s characters and the chaos of the capital foreshadows what awaits Golrokh in the brutal male-dominant culture of Iranian society.
Nevertheless the crime element also exists in most of Beyzaie’s historical and mythical films and scripts such as Marg-e Yazdgerd/The Death of Yazdgerd (1980) and The Stranger and The Mist.
Although The Death of Yazdgerd has a historical setting, it is an overtly criminal thriller using the tropes and trademarks of that genre. The film opens with a shot of a corps and frames it in the manner of a murder mystery that needs to be investigated.
Beyzaie, challenges the historical narrative by employing a Rashomon style multi layered non-linear narrative in which the miller, his wife and their daughter, while trying to exculpate themselves, each one has its own version of the murder and the identity of the corpse.
By using a complex narrative structure and by concealing the real identity of the slain warrior and the motives behind his killing, Beyzaie invites us into a mysterious and suspenseful world.
Plot Twists: Plot twist is a common narrative device in crime thriller films. It is a radical change in the expected direction or outcome of the plot of a film which usually surprising them with a revelation near the end of the film.
In The Crow, the twist happens when we realize that it was the old lady who put the advert of the missing girl on the newspaper not a killer or a kidnapper.
There is also a twist in the final sequence of Maybe another Time when the twin sisters meet up in Vida’s home, and it is revealed that Modabber had a wrong idea about the identity of the woman in the car and it wasn’t his wife Kian but her twin sister Vida whom she lost in her childhood.
In Killing Mad Dog, we learn in the end that it was not Golrokh’s husband who was wronged by his business partner, Javad Moghadam but rather he who was fixing to betray both Golrokh and his business partner, stealing the money and running away off with his secretary Fereshteh who takes `the role of a femme fatal in Beyzaie’s style of film noir. In an expertfully arranged sequence of the film, we are shown a MS of Golrokh, as the camera tracks back, into the side of the frame imerge Javad Moghadam and his gang menacingly walking towards Nasser and Fereshteh who are shown in the background running away in the plain. The last long take shot is an ambitiously choreographed crane shot in the style of Miklós Jancsó, a balletic act of violence shows Nasser Moasser getting killed like a mad dog: “So this is the end of the Killing Mad Dogs.”, murmurs Golrokh to herself as sitting in the car with a gunshot heard from out of the frame. Although Beyzaie never strictly adheres to the dogma of the noir and crime thriller genre, preferring to indulge his intellectual and artistic interest in the mythical and ritualistic realms that he is so masterful at representing.
Crime Thriller Iconography: Iconography is what we associate, visually, with a genre. The usual icons of crime thrillers and noir films are dark streets, car chase, guns and other types of weaponary, bars, cigarettes, alcohol, raincoats and fedoras, police sirens, low key lighting, shadows, etc…
The iconic elements of crime genre are recognizable in The Crow, Maybe another Time and Killing Mad Dog. In The Crow there is a scene that Asieh and her husband Esalat are heading by car to the scene of the crime after being informed of a girl being murdered. This scene features an incredible array of film noir and crime thriller. Stylistic iconography such as heavy rainfall, dark streets, neon city lights reflected upon the wet asphalt, police sirens, flash photography, shadowed figures carrying umbrella moving in the rain, all set a mood of film noir.
In Maybe another Time, which is more a psychological thriller, everything bares the mark of suspicion and doubt which is a driving force for many a crime thriller protagonist. The low key lighting, stylized cinematography, and arranging the shots accompanied by Bernard Hermanesque film score, help to create such a nightmarish world.
In Killing Mad Dog, anything could pause a threat, from a constantly ringing telephone to a turning door handle to construction workers peering through Golrokh’s window from the street, all serve as highly disturbing devices setting the viewer at on ease along with the protagonist. Regarding the iconography, there is a variety of common icons such as weapon and blood on display which fully qualify for a crime thriller.
Phobia and Traumatic Memories: In psychological thrillers the characters are often suffering from a phobia or paranoia. Like Hitchcock’s Marnie, they may had a traumatic experience in their past that’s stay with them and bothers them all time. The agony and distress of the main character is a deep-rooted phobia that often goes back to their childhood.
The omnipresence of a female protagonist having a nightmare in all three Beyzaie’s films, The Crow, Maybe another Time and Killing the Mad Dog is an on-the-nose suggestion of the fears that these women must struggle with in their respective situation. They all need to go through a psychological journey to overcome their fears and anxieties.
In The Crow, Asieh’s fear is that being kidnapped and murdered or disappearing. She is the victim of a sexual assault and although she can finally managed to escape from the kidnapper but it has a traumatic effect on her and the whole sequence become a turning point in the narrative of film. Before this sequence and this traumatic experience, Asieh was not interested in the story and news of the missing girl chasing by her husband but after that she became obsessive about it and decides to follow the case herself and in fact it is her that is able to reveal the truth and solve the mystery behind the story of the missing girl.
In Maybe another Time, Kian has an identity crisis which is one of the main thematic in Beyzaie’s works. Kian’s character is similar to Hitchcock’s Marnie. They both suffers from a traumatic past. She had a traumatic childhood and as an adopted child she is not sure of her real identity and she wants to know who is she and why she has no picture of her childhood. Kian’s fear is a childhood trauma stemmed aversion to the darkness and dogs. This information explains her anxiety, her nightmares and her confusion about her identity.
In the final sequence of the film when she meets her twin sister, they start to recall their blurred memories, and through a long and well-structured flashback, Beyzaie takes us to their traumatic past. The camera moves through the antique shop (which metaphorically represent the corridor of history and time) and enters into the streets of old Tehran where the twin’s mother has to leave one of them for adoption because of the famine and poverty
By weaving in flashbacks and meta-cinematic footage, the narrative takes the viewer back and forth in time, towards the dark family secrets at the film’s core. While it could be argued that the film is partly a psychological thriller, there are also crime elements and it only barely scratches the surface when covering the psychology of the characters.
Touch of Hitchcock: Gilles Deleuze once said about Hitchcock that in Hitchcock, actions, affections, perceptions, all is interpretation, from the beginning to end (Cinema 1- 214).
I think we can attribute exactly the same to Beyzaie and his works. Beyzaie’s thrillers bare great intentional similarities to the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. Like Hitchcock, Beyzaie found something in Iranian society that was highly congenial to the crime thriller genre. In fact Bayzaei cast a spotlight on modern-day Iran, shown through a crime thriller drama. In the same way that the films of Hitchcock reflect his catholic ideology, similarly Beyzaie chooses to construct his themes, narratives and atmosphere around the ritual, mythical and historical aspects of Iranian culture that his films engross.
Hitchcock once said his intention was “to give the public a good healthy mental shake-ups”. I believe Beyzaie, also makes his audience to think about his characters and their reactions towards the psychological and physical problems they are facing during the film.
As I explained before Beyzaie’s films are also depiction of women’s struggles in a repressive, male-dominated culture. But unlike Hitchcock’s women, Beyzaie’s women are not naïve and stupid. They might be sentimental and emotional but they are clever, determined and brave and are willing to sacrifice for their love at any price.
A deep investigation of Beyzaie’s work shows that Bayzaie’s cinema goes beyond the expected Hitchcockian dramatic turns and suspenseful tropes and expectations the audience might have of the classic crime thriller and incorporates societal issues that the characters must face and relates their struggles to those faced by the ordinary populace of Iranian society.
There is a lot required of the audience from the suspense thriller in general and in Beyzaie’s thriller films. There are many questions that the audience must ask of themselves in order to engage with the narrative and characters. Creating an interactive and participatory relationship with the viewer is one of the hallmarks of Beyzaie’s work.
References:
*Kuhn, Annette and Westwell (2012), Guy. Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press.
*Deleuze, Gilles (1986). Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, University of Minnesota Press.
*Hayward, Susan (2013). Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. Routledge.
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