Review of In the White City (1983) by Alan S — 16 Oct 2012

Ever been a tourist and thought of just staying where you are? This moody and reflective movie by Swiss director Alain Tanner captures this feeling for us all enticingly. The film has not had the showings it conspicuously deserves. It draws us in to contemplate what might happen if we simply stopped doing what we've always just done? And the haunting sense of authenticity is heightened using cuts of super-8 movie clips (as representations of a filmic mimicry of the pulse, taste and feel of life as it is lived on the edge).

Bruno Ganz (long before his Hitler portrayal) simply gets of the boat on which he was an engineer and loses himself and us in the sounds and sights of a foreign land. Lisbon evocatively unfurls before us in realistically plausible super-8 snatches as Ganz's character becomes enveloped in the flavour and mystery of a poor quarter of the city. Hopelessly drunk and plaintively playing his harmonica through the minutes and hours spent in his hotel room commanded by its dripping tap, the character posts film home to his wife in clinical Switzerland. Time and place are punctuated by escapes into drink, romance whilst the character clutches at every moment's freshness and tracing the lines of a web of ordinariness which is so easy to experience voyeuristically.The clock in the hotel symbolically goes backwards. Maybe there are times when perhaps we need to go back in order to move forward. This haunting film.