The 1950 box office success of the musical melodrama\u00a0Sharmsar<\/em>\u00a0(later distributed as\u00a0Ashamed<\/em>) marked a turning point in the history of Iranian cinema. It made lead actress Esmat Baboli\u2014as Delkash, already a celebrated singer\u2014the country\u2019s first true screen star. Domestic film production, entirely fallow from 1935 to late 1948 due to censorship pressures and lack of financing, blossomed quantitatively, so to speak, with an average of 20 feature films released annually over the proceeding decade and a half. In 1963, Tehran\u2019s University of the Arts unveiled a well-resourced film division that would professionalize filmmaking in the nation in years to come. By 1965, the capital boasted 72 movie houses, with nearly 200 more around the rest of the country. The previous year had seen the release of the first Iranian film to be screened at international film festivals:\u00a0Night of the Hunchback\u00a0<\/em>(Shab-e Ghouzi<\/em>). Its director, Farokh Ghafari, was already a central link in the French-Iranian Film Connection.<\/p>\n Ghafari, born in Tehran in 1922, relocated to Belgium in the early 1930s with his diplomat father and then studied literature and theater at the University of Grenoble, in the foothills of the French Alps, where his love for cinema was first sparked. In the 1940s, he moved to Paris and into the heart of its vibrant cinephilic milieu, hired as an assistant by Henri Langlois, cofounder and director of the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Fran\u00e7aise. There, in a small screening room, the greatest and rarest films from around the globe were shown, typically three a night, at 6:30, 8:30, and 10:30. Most shows were packed to the limit, with young film lovers cramming the floor in front of the first row of seats, as Langlois was known for not repeating films\u2014many of which he possessed the only copy of in France, if not the world\u2014for years. In 1938, the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que had been one of the founding constituents of the\u00a0International Federation of Film Archives<\/a>, for which Ghafari would serve as executive secretary.<\/p>\n At home again for a couple years, he led the drive to establish a cinema department within the national historical museum; the National Iranian Film Center, envisaged as the country\u2019s version of the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que, opened in December 1949, screening foreign films, new and classic.\u00a0Along with fellow filmmakers\u00a0Ebrahim Golestan<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Fereydoun Rahnema<\/a>, he organized the country\u2019s first cinema festivals, focusing on British movies in 1950 and French ones the following year. Using the pseudonym M. Mobarak, he wrote film criticism for multiple left-wing periodicals.<\/p>\n Returning to Paris for much of the 1950s, he contributed articles on the history of Iranian film to\u00a0Positif<\/em>, one of\u00a0France\u2019s, and Europe\u2019s, most important cinema journals. Ghafari moved back full-time to Iran late in the decade and began to make films. After the neorealist\u00a0South of the City\u00a0<\/em>(Jonub-e Shahr<\/a><\/em>, 1958) and the now hard-to-find comedy\u00a0Who\u2019s the Bride\u00a0<\/em>(Arus Kodum-e<\/em>, 1959), described variously as \u201csatirical\u201d and \u201cpurely commercial,\u201d came the original, distinctive\u00a0Night of the Hunchback<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Set in the present but hardly wedded to it, the film\u2019s story is based on one of the older and more pivotal tales from\u00a0One Thousand and One Nights<\/em>. Ghafari\u2019s film, despite lacking some of the benefits of professionalism in its performances and editing, is a visual marvel of black-(often very black)-and-white cinematography and craftily minimalist production design, as well as a deeply intriguing exploration of the interweavings of the ageless and the modern, the realistic and the fantastical, the Persian and the Western. Distinctive, as well, was how it contrasted with the national film landscape amid which it opened.\u00a0G\u00f6n\u00fcl D\u00f6nmez<\/a>\u2013Colin describes<\/a>\u00a0the character of the era\u2019s quantitative blossoming:<\/p>\n In the atmosphere of increased political repression following the coup d\u2019\u00e9tat of 1953, which overthrew the democratically elected prime minister, Dr Mohammad Mosaddeq, the Shah\u2019s cultural policies grew lenient to Indian-style song and dance films, one-dimensional melodramas modelled on Egyptian or Turkish trends and the Persianized versions of the popular movies of the West. . . . What came to be known as\u00a0film farsi\u00a0<\/em>exploited the woman\u2019s body liberally with or without narrative justification. Party-girl\/prostitute\/cabaret-singer-dancer films dominated the screen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ghafari\u2019s film is very far from all of this, and it assumed a place as the very first feature-length example of Iranian art cinema.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Hunchback\u2019s Tale,\u201d one of the major framing stories in\u00a0One Thousand and One Nights<\/em>, in some languages is given a descriptive title that translates as \u201cWho Killed the Hunchback?\u201d\u2014the vital question is not who did it, but who will hang for having their erroneous confession believed. The focus shifts a bit in Ghafari\u2019s hands, to a macabre, madcap game of Hide the Corpse (and also Prop the Corpse Up, Give It a Makeover, and Dance with It). At the narrative level, it\u2019s a dark farce in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s\u00a0The Trouble with Harry<\/em>\u00a0(1955) or, to bow to the ageless,\u00a0Weekend at Bernie\u2019s<\/em>.<\/p>\n The evocation of Hitchcock seems more than accidental. Ghafari, with his intensive film education in Paris and as one of the leading film collectors in Iran, was obviously well-versed in the oeuvres of world cinema\u2019s leading lights, and his screenplay incorporates a quintessential Hitchcockian MacGuffin\u2014a plot-driving device irrelevant to the story\u2019s true concerns. Other detectable references include\u00a0Ugetsu Monogatari\u00a0<\/em>(1953), the folkloric ghost story that was among the first wave of Japanese films to make an impact on the film festival circuit; early Federico Fellini films such as\u00a0The White Sheik<\/em>\u00a0(1952) and\u00a0La Strada<\/em>\u00a0(1954); late Orson Welles films such as\u00a0Othello\u00a0<\/em>(1951),\u00a0Touch of Evil\u00a0<\/em>(1958), and\u00a0The Trial\u00a0<\/em>(1962); and\u2014with one Hollywood-branded character\u2014Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s epochal\u00a0Breathless\u00a0<\/em>(\u00c0 bout de souffle<\/em>, 1960).<\/p>\n Ghafari\u2019s film is intimate and idiosyncratic, but he was simultaneously working with elements of cosmopolitan style that transcend borders no less than do the tricks and tropes of commercial practice. At home,\u00a0Night of the Hunchback<\/em>\u00a0was a commercial failure. In turn, the traces of this groundbreaking film can be seen in domestic and diasporic works with now little hope of Iranian release as disparate as Jafar Panahi\u2019s masterpiece\u00a0Crimson Gold<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2003) and Ana Lily Amirpour\u2019s\u00a0A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/em>\u00a0(2014).<\/p>\n As a director, Ghafari completed only one more feature film\u2014The Falconet<\/em>\u00a0(Zanburak<\/a><\/em>, 1975), a picaresque road movie based on Iranian folktales and classical narrative modes, again playing with interwoven times and tones. He had a successful career behind the scenes as a cultural administrator, organizer of the Shiraz Arts Festival, and producer of documentaries for national television. Traveling abroad when the Revolution took place, Ghafari never returned to Iran. He eventually settled in Paris, where he died in 2006.<\/p>\n Night of the Hunchback\u00a0<\/em>(Shab-e Ghouzi<\/em>, 1964)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tehranbureau.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Night-of-the-Hunchback-Ghafari-Mannequin-No-Sepia.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tehranbureau.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Night-of-the-Hunchback-Painted-Torso-1024x570.jpg\")
\n