films. Many have made excellent points about the place of these films within taste cultures, about the nature of horror film viewing, about the way that horror films challenge dominant social institutions, and about the relationship of the body to horror cinema. However, no one has placed these films in a rich historical context to examine how the films comment on contemporary social issues. Lowenstein does just that.

Jon Kraszewski is an assistant professor in the Department of Communciation at Seton Hall University. He completed his Ph.D. in Communication and Culture at Indiana University in 2004. His essays have appeared in journals such as The Journal of Film and Video and The Velvet Light Trap and in anthologies such as Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (eds. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette; New York University Press, 2004).

The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, by Alberto Elena. London: SAQI Books, 2005

JASMIN TAHMASEB McCONATHA

Alberto Elena’s The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, presents a comprehensive overview of the career of this famous Iranian filmmaker and director. In this work, Elena, a film scholar working in Spain, has written an evocative book about Kiarostami’s life in the cinema. Originally published in 2002, this updated volume is an English translation of the original Spanish text. Divided into seven chapters the book attempts to present “a coherent image of the director and his films” (10).

Film evolved as a medium in pre-revolutionary Iran. Hundreds of theatres depicted a variety of films from the West as well as those made in Iran. In the past two decades Iranian films have received worldwide acclaim. During the 1990’s, at the height of international interest in Iranian films, those of us with an Iranian background who live in the Diaspora flocked to see Iranian films, especially those of Abbas Kiarostami. Abbas Kiarostami is one of the most controversial pre- and post- revolutionary Iranian filmmakers. He began his film career in 1970, a time when Iranian cinema moved from Filmfarsi to more serious films. He was a pioneer in this early period of Iranian films, films that tend to focus on the complexities of contemporary life. In a career spanning more than 35 years, Abbas Kiarostami has produced a variety of high quality films.

Because of his contributions, Kiarostami is an important cultural figure in contemporary Iran. Low ticket prices and the lack of other forms of public entertainment have a prompted the popularity of the cinema in the country. In Iran, as in many other societies, film has become one of the few forms of cultural critique, a way for people to participate in an ongoing moral discourse. Contemporary Iranian films tend to draw on the moral and religious contours of social fear, cultural anxieties, personal tragedy, and the importance of self reliance in difficult circumstances. Elena points out that, despite restrictions, Iranian filmmakers produce 60 to 65 films per year. In fact there are not enough cinemas in Iran to show the numerous films that are widely produced (147).

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How does Kiarostami fit into this theatre of Iranian cinematic creativity? According to Elena, Kiarostami has addressed the human condition in the manner of cinema-verité, stories of everyday life combined with cinematic poetry. Given the numerous restrictions placed on films in post-revolutionary Iran, especially on films depicting the lives of women, Iranian filmmakers have focused much of their attention on the stories of children. Kiarostami is no exception. He has struggled to depict the lives of his characters with simplicity and sincerity. One of his greatest films is The Traveler (1974). It is also his first feature film and one of his greatest films. The film also has “the novelty of being the first Iranian film shot using live sound” (27). Kiarostami introduces a recurrent theme in his work, the complex world of childhood. In the film a young boy, Ghassem, lives in difficult circumstances: his family is insensitive to his needs, his overwhelmed teachers are more oriented to discipline than to teaching, and Ghassem struggles to enjoy the simple pleasures of childhood, in this case viewing national soccer matches. The film follows Ghassem’s attempt to make his dream come true. He goes to great length to achieve his desire, he deceives his friends, his mother, and he even steals money to pay for bus fare to Teheran, in order to attend the match. Although Ghassem feels riddled by guilt, he nevertheless undertakes his journey, a journey that ultimately does not satisfy (27).

Elena explores the symbolism that infuses Kiarostami’s films. Kiarostami’s work, according to Elena, is both idiosyncratic and participatory. Indeed, Kiarostami has tendency to “achieve a creative collaboration with an attentive audience” (189). Stylistically the films are, according to Elena, unaffected and uncomplicated. But as in life, the author points out, the “simple” films are filled with unexpected diversions. As the author acknowledges in the preface, this volume is highly interpretive and does not present a neutral view of Kiarostami’s oeuvre. Elena is most assuredly a devoted fan of Kiarostami. Elena’s devotion is consistent throughout the text. In the various chapters of the work, the author attempts, using cited interviews with the film director, to discover clues from Kiarostami’s personal life that may have inspired the director’s work in film. He also tries to unveil the highly idiosyncratic symbolism that runs through Kiarostami’s cinema. In the end, the reader is led to believe that Kiarostami’s works are structured in a way that ensures a palpable connection between the filmmaker and his audience. There can be, it should be noted, no greater critical praise.

Elena’s specific descriptions of Kiarostami’s films (e.g. Through the Olive Trees, The Wind Will Carry Us), follows a predicable structure. He begins by describing the staged development of each film and follows with an exposition of the technical aspects of the film’s production. The focus of these expositions tends to be more descriptive than critical. On several occasions, the author emphasizes, both explicitly and implicitly, the secretive nature of Kiarostami’s work. By the end of the work, Elena laudably attempts to pull together seemingly disparate data from Kiarostami’s life and practice to form a larger picture of the director’s collected films.

Elena, for example describes the development of an unofficial trilogy of Kiarostami films (i.e. Where is the Friend’s House, Life and Nothing More. . ., and Through the Olive Trees). The intertextuality of the putative trilogy devolves from the presence of the same actors as well as the continuous blurring of fact and fiction. In his unofficial trilogy of films, Elena demonstrates how Kiarostami violates classical narrative style. His films often feature uncertain endings, and, like Vertov and Truffaut, he tends to expose filmmaking as a constructive, fictive art, to his audience. In Taste of Cherry for example, the main character (who is presumably dead) states explicitly to the audience: “The film is over”. Kiarostami also follows the minimalist tradition. His backdrops often are natural settings as opposed

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to constructed sets. In the films, dialogue is often punctuated by silence. Characters central to a film’s plot purposefully avoid one another.

Kiarostami’s films, which, to reiterate, tend to blur the line between fiction and fact, often focus on the importance of thinking critically about social life. Both of these tendencies are evident in Taste of Cherry (1997), one of Kiarostami’s most popular post-revolutionary films. The film’s unsettling narrative and its uncompromising imagery leaves audiences feeling uncomfortable and anxious. The film focuses on a man who wants to commit suicide, a shameful transgression in Islam. We follow the man as he tries to find someone willing to bury him after his suicidal death. The protagonist offers several people badly needed money to bury him. Should these folks accept this “blood” money to feed their children or should they, rather, adhere to the tenets of Islam? The palpable moral tension of this film established Kiarostami as a major filmmaker, an artist whose works were worthy of critical reflection—and worldwide acclaim.

Through his descriptions and analysis Elena presents a well-informed work. The author cites many sources to support his interpretations. The text also demonstrates the author’s knowledge of historical Persian culture and to some extent his awareness of contemporary Iranian society. This knowledge helps to shed light on what motivates Kiarostami’s creativity. Despite Elena’s informed ruminations about Kiarostami’s personal life and his films, the question: “Who are you Mr. Kiarostami?” remains somewhat unanswered.

Elena rightly suggests Kiarostami’s work is deeply rooted in Persian culture— especially Persia’s highly celebrated classical poetry—Hafiz and Rumi, among many others. In addition, the abstract nature of his films parallels the abstract contours of both pre and post-Islamic Persian art. In Persian culture an important distinction is made between the presentation of the public and private self. Walls shield our homes from the outside inspection. Accordingly, outsiders rarely find out what is going on inside the walls of the Persian household. What’s more, family members are expected to maintain the code of privacy, those who do not disrespect the honor of the family. It is not surprising to learn that Kiarostami’s personal story is inconsistent and enigmatic. It is, after all, based upon public presentations. The private man, it would seem, remains hidden behind the walls of his personal fortress, all of which is central to being a Persian.

The great strength of Elena’s The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami is that it is a closely read analysis of the director’s films. It is, in other words, a kind of retrospective of Kiarostami’s oeuvre. As such, the work brings attention to what has been an under-represented and partially understood in the director’s body of work. Elena does discuss the significance of Kiarostami’s works in the development of Iranian film. But as a reader, I wanted more comparison and more linkages to the works of other past and present Iranian filmmakers. Had Elena added one additional chapter that discussed more generally the discourse of Iran film, this elegant retrospective text would have acquired more of a sense of immediacy. The author might have stressed a bit more centrally how Kiarostami’s evocation of parable, his neo-realism, his concern with desire and seduction shaped his idiosyncratic style. He might have also analyzed a bit more thoroughly how Kiarostami’s use of film as a kind of direct discourse about the power of cinema—films about films– has inspired a younger generation of Iranian filmmakers, filmmakers who have captured the imagination of audiences throughout the world.

The question of “who is Abbas Kiarostami?” though provocative, is less interesting than the question of “how has Kiarostami influenced the development of the cinema in Iran?” We will never fully know the secrets of Kiarostami’s persona, but with the publication of The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, Elena has taken us a step closer to understanding Kiarostami’s signal contribution to the development of Iranian as well as world cinema.

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Jasmin Tahmaseb McConatha is a professor cultural and developmental psychology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She has lived in Iran, Europe, and the United States. For the past fifteen years she has conducted research and written extensively on the effects of cultural change and transformation on the life experiences of men and women in middle and later adulthood.

Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity by Edward Dimendberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2004

PHILIPPA GATES

Film noir has provided film criticism with an inexhaustible source of debate over the past three decades as critics have attempted to prove, define, detail, and analyze a corpus of films that shared a common, darker view of American society in the 1940s and 1950s in contrast to classical Hollywood films of the same period. Whether you define it as a mood, style, cycle, movement, or genre, film noir has been explored from a variety of critical perspectives including poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist, and genre criticism. Just as it seemed that there was nothing left to say about film noir, Edward Dimendberg has produced a compelling new study that offers an interesting perspective from which to consider the films that compose the cycle (as he defines it) of film noir—their relationship to the cities in which they are set.

Previous studies have explored film noir’s relationship to the European film movement, German Expressionism, which preceded it and the coming to Hollywood of German filmmakers with their darker, more critical, and highly stylized vision of society. Instead, Dimendberg’s study explores noir’s relationship to other cultural movements, specifically the American metropolitan experience and related cultural influences—architecture, urban space, photography, and mass media. As Dimendberg notes,

Few commentators neglect the significance of the city in films noir, generally explaining the metropolis as a transplantation from crime fiction, a visual motif, a determinant of ambience or mood, or an element of narrative causality, and seldom deviating from the explication of visible detail. More rarely do the travel to the extracinematic precincts of geography, city planning, architectural theory, and urban and cultural history. Though frequently analyzed in relation to political conflicts of postwar America, film noir has often been studied in isolation from the geographic dynamics of the period. (9)

Some studies have explored the idea of space in film noir but Dimendberg moves beyond the question of setting—urban vs. rural, New York City vs. Los Angeles—and, instead, interrogates the relationship of the city space to the narrative, characters, and themes specific to noir through a discussion of the films along with the architecture, urban planning, and changing reality of America’s big cities. His focus in not an abstract or general idea of “the city” and its place in noir but the very representation of New York and Los Angeles—particular shots, angles, and composition—that recur in noir films. Dimendberg