Robin Baker
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robinalexbaker.bsky.social
Robin Baker
@robinalexbaker.bsky.social
Film. TV. Archaeology. Pottery. Photography. Novels and short stories. Design. India. London. West Dorset 🌻 🍉
Linktree: https://t.co/YEqJmhdXY0
9/9. Need any more reasons?

You can watch it here www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHW...
Bitter Rice 1949
YouTube video by John Tenaglia
www.youtube.com
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
8/9. The bloody shoot-out in a butchery full of severed animal carcasses.
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
7/9. Best pre-Seven Samurai rain and mud sequence I can think of, with extraordinary shifts in mood and dynamic filming.
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
6/9. The relationships between and solidarity of women.
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
5/9. The scenes of the women rice workers - where the film feels at its most neorealist.
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
4/9. Raf Vallone’s chest hair that I can only assume had its own agent given the exposure it receives.
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
3/9. Top-notch early performance from Vittorio Gassman. Effortlessly cool and handsome in almost every shot - but unspeakably repugnant throughout. And the camera loves him no less than Mangano.
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
2/9. Silvana Mangano in her first starring role. One of those ‘a star is born’ performances - you can’t keep your eyes off her. This is a film that’s very much about sex.
February 16, 2026 at 10:46 PM
4/4. It's time to forgive the fact that he made an infamous promotional film for the Conservative Party (hard, I know), and revisit what made Schlesinger great rather than just good.
February 16, 2026 at 9:37 AM
3/4. And try Schlesinger's Terminus (1961), a 30 min day-in-the-life of Waterloo Station. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx_l...

Aside from his Alan Bennett collaborations, An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1991), the latter part of his career lacked the brilliance of its start.
Terminus (1961)
YouTube video by Dаvіd Вrоmаgе
www.youtube.com
February 16, 2026 at 9:37 AM
2/4. The film (like Schlesinger's career) is underrated. But there's a richness of emotion and characterisation (despite its Swinging Sixties Goes to Dorset vibe) and extraordinary epic sweep that was missing from Vinterberg's 2015 remake.
February 16, 2026 at 9:37 AM
2/2. They're part of the Schlemmer Frame Collection preserved by the Austrian Film Archive www.filmmuseum.at/en/collectio...
February 15, 2026 at 9:53 PM
7/7. Following the war, the Ahwaris' way of life was almost destroyed by Hussein who drained the marshes to deny its use by insurgents (seeking refuge in the Ahwar to escape persecution by the Ba'athist regime) and to punish the Ahwaris. Fortunately, the Ahwar is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
February 14, 2026 at 11:52 AM
6/7. For some reason, I binge-read a series of books about the Ahwaris when I was a teenager. Thesiger’s book is particularly recommended (at least from my distant memory of it).
February 14, 2026 at 11:52 AM
5/7. Rewardingly, the film has the authenticity of an ethnographic film, filmed on location among the Marsh Arabs/Ahwaris, capturing life led on and around the wetlands.
February 14, 2026 at 11:52 AM
4/7. Although the film is not focussed on the war, it is always the backdrop. Moreover, it is about the omnipresence of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
February 14, 2026 at 11:52 AM
3/7. But I preferred this. It sits in a very political context. At the start of the film there’s an extraordinary shot of 2 fighter jets flying across the southern Iraq marshes/Ahwar, announcing the film’s setting during the first Gulf War. Before the jets arrive the image is almost timeless.
February 14, 2026 at 11:52 AM
2/7. On one level, it’s not unlike those gentle Iranian films from the 80s and 90s where kids go on journeys to buy goldfish, bags of rice or to return their schoolfriend’s exercise books.
February 14, 2026 at 11:52 AM
February 9, 2026 at 1:08 PM