Swiss-German actor Bruno Ganz is popularly identified for two roles – playing the angel in Wings Of Desire and Hitler in Downfall. But I love him in The American Friend and am always keen to discover more of his work in international cinema, particularly in the 70s and 80s. In The White City (1983; aka Dans la ville blanche) was a movie I’d not heard of before and only discovered browsing through the library at the Rarefilmm website. There’s a certain type of Arthouse movie I’m in the mood for at this time of my life and this certainly fit the bill – a slow, languid pace, atmospheric visual style, and an engaging main character that you’re just sort of hanging with. Ganz plays a sailor who disembarks at Lisbon and then decides to stay in a hotel above a bar. Tired of his life on what he describes as “a floating factory”, he begins to walk and wander the city, leaving his job behind without a word, and saving his words for letters that he sends to his lover in Switzerland (Julia Vonderlinn). There’s a poetic spirit to the movie in the words that they send to one another, which they speak out loud in the writing and the reading of. We see the 8mm footage he records of his time, which is intercut into the movie, and then he starts a relationship with the barmaid, Rosa (Teresa Madruga who’s great), which he discloses to his distant love. As Ganz describes to Rosa, all sailors are a little bit crazy, and his odd, chaotic moments as a character are balanced by Ganz’s bemused smile. Such a pleasure to watch the actor’s taunt frame and thinning hair as he plays the flaneur, the urban drifter and explorer; as a performer, Ganz truly was an angel. In The White City also reminded me a little bit of Antonioni’s The Passenger or Akerman’s The Meetings Of Anna, a movie about travelling and temporary spaces, but not as academic or as political as those other movies. Oh, the music composed by Jean-Luc Barbier is heavy on the saxophone, which I was all for and loved the overall vibe it provided. Directed by Alain Tanner, a Swiss director whose others films I now want to see. Available to stream or download on the amazing Rarefilmm website. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 