The Turkish paradox
Turkey became aware of the invention of the Lumière brothers almost immediately, whose film The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station was shown in Istanbul as early as 1896. The modernization undertaken by Mustafa Kemal when he came to power in 1923 defined other priorities than the development of a film industry. Until 1939, there was only one truly active director in Turkey, Muhsin Ertuğrul, who was at the helm of a Greek-Turkish production, The Wrong Way released in 1933, intended to bring together two countries undermined by years of war. Foreign productions made a few incursions into Istanbul, such as Journey to the Land of Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), a spy story about an American engineer who has to deal with Nazi agents, to which Orson Welles, a great globetrotter, contributed a lot. The Mask of Dimitrios (Jean Negulesco, 1943), also based on a novel by Eric Ambler, again explores Istanbul and its underworld. At the end of the Second World War, the film industry suddenly experienced an extraordinary boom, which placed Turkey among the world's leading producers, which was not without some paradoxes: the production, although plethoric until the 1970s, was not really disseminated outside its own borders, and was characterized by a genre cinema, willingly eccentric, with rushed finishes, which was accompanied by the establishment of a real star system. The titles of Hassan the Jungle Orphan (Orphan Atadeniz, 1953), also known as Tarzan in Istanbul, or Dracula in Istanbul (Mehmet Muhtar, 1953), or the sub-genre that has been nicknamed the "kebab western" give an idea of the inspiration that prevailed at the time, which does not mean that the films were not interesting. Curiously, the 1970s saw a wave of erotic films, which the military coup of 1980 put an end to and which today have no more than a curiosity value. In the meantime, the second James Bond film, Kiss from Russia (Terence Young, 1964), presented Western audiences with what were then only rare images of Istanbul: 007's journey took him to the Basilica Cistern or to Sulukule, the historic district of the Roma community, now razed. A new adaptation of Ambler, Topkapi (Jules Dassin, 1964), an old classic of the heist film, further roots in the imagination an Istanbul where spies and bandits of all kinds seem to have made a date. In the course of a turbulent century, Istanbul has in fact been a stopover for many travelers, as shown in Elia Kazan's America, America (1963), a long autobiographical fresco that evokes the Armenian genocide and the reasons that pushed many refugees, facing Turkish oppression, to emigrate. Alain Robbe-Grillet also shot a confusing, even abstruse film there, L'Immortelle (1963), but which pays full tribute to the splendor and uniqueness of the city.
A thousand and one lives of Istanbul
The major Turkish films of the 1980s tended to focus on remote areas of the country, such as Yol, la permission, directed from prison by Yilmaz Güney, which examined the wounds of the Kurdish people and won the Palme d'Or in 1982. Authoritarian rule and an unprecedented economic crisis weakened Turkish cinema, and it was only in the mid-1990s, and then at the turn of the 2000s, that it really began to flourish again. At the forefront of this revival was Turkish Cypriot director Derviş Zaim's Soubresaut dans un cercueil (1996), about the tribulations of a petty criminal in a glamour-free Istanbul. Hammam le bain turc (Ferzan Özpetek, 1997), featuring the legendary Pera Palace hotel, is a more stylized, if not overly so, tale of how an Italian inherits a Turkish bath in Istanbul, and the homosexual love affair that keeps him there. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's name has become synonymous with a cinema that is willingly arid, but not without its rewards: Uzak (2004) takes the viewer through a picturesque but unusual Istanbul, covered as it is in a blanket of snow, and gives an almost palpable sensation of it.
Foreign blockbusters are making a strong comeback, whether with new James Bond films, Le Monde ne suffit pas (Michael Apted, 1999) or Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012) and its chase through the Grand Bazaar, or action films like Taken 2 (Olivier Megaton, 2012), whose visions of the city are not without a few clichés. At the very least, the city's rooftops and the exceptional, albeit touristy, views they show justify a mention. A new adaptation of John le Carré's The Mole (Tomas Alfredson, 2011) revives memories of Istanbul as a nest of spies, a common feature of cities at the crossroads of civilizations.
The Turkish diaspora in Germany has given rise to directors who are returning to their roots, such as Fatih Akin in his documentary devoted to the Istanbul music scene: Crossing the Bridge - The Sound of Istanbul (2005). His second film, Julie en juillet (2000), took its hero on an eventful road-movie along the shores of the Bosphorus, while Head-on (2004), which won the Golden Bear at Berlin, oscillated between Hamburg and Istanbul. Deux filles (Kutluğ Ataman, 2005), set in part in the upscale Etiler district far from a postcard Istanbul, captures the preoccupations of two teenage girls, prefiguring, if you will, the public and critical success of French-Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Mustang (2015) about five sisters eager to escape a patriarchal power that suffocates them, and whose journey comes to an end on the shores of the Bosphorus. Cat lovers, of whom there are many, may wish to take a look at Kedi : des chats et des hommes (Ceyda Torun, 2016), a documentary that depicts the city and its hundreds of thousands of stray cats, boasting exceptional shots at ground level or thanks to drones.
While Nuri Bilge Ceylan continues to collect awards (including the 2014 Palme d'Or for Winter Sleep), it's worth saying a word about Turkish mainstream cinema, which attracts the majority of viewers to cinemas: comedies, romantic or otherwise, and action films are popular diversions in a troubled political and economic context, as are the films of star comedian Cem Yilmaz - the latest of which is Ali Baba and the Seven Dwarfs (2015). Ölümlü Dünya (Ali Atay, 2018), with its improbable plot - a Stamboulian family runs a contract-killing business alongside their restaurant - is an example of a cinema that treads unashamedly on Hollywood's toes. Biopics are also in vogue, such as Müslüm (Ketche and Can Ulkay, 2018), about the life of the famous singer Müslüm Gürses, or Champion (Ahmet Katiksiz, 2018), a love story in the world of horse racing. Turkey has also jumped on the series bandwagon, with Börü, a spectacular action series with a strong propaganda element, which has been adapted for the cinema. We recommend Bartu Ben (2019) by the talented Tolga Karaçelik, about the daily life and neuroses of a thirty-something gay man in Istanbul. In November 2020, the series Bir Başkadır, Ethos in French, broadcast on the Netflix platform, was a real hit in Turkey. This creation by Berkun Oya, playwright, director and producer, paints a bleak picture of contemporary Turkish society with all the tensions that run through it, but without ever falling into cliché or caricature. The same is true of Emin Alper's film Burning Days (2022), which depicts a confrontation between rural dwellers and a prosecutor, a figure of law in a time of ecological disaster. The series The Tailor, available on Netflix (2023), has recently enjoyed great success. It's a family and professional drama where love, betrayal and ambition intertwine.
