Law of the Border (Lutfi Akad, 1966)

The restored print of Lutfi Akad’s The Law of the Border starts by emphasizing the remaining flaws and shortcomings, noting that “the poor state of preservation of the only source available for restoration has irreversibly hindered the quality of the final outcome.” While no one should argue this benefits the film, the ragged quality of the viewing experience does rather accord with the scrappy nature of the underlying narrative, adding to a sense of authentic sociological engagement channeled through energetically genre-hugging set-ups (as has been pointed out, one might choose to engage with it as a displaced western, although that could be more limiting than helpful). The movie’s basic opposition is between a group of poor villagers who make their living by smuggling across the Syrian border, and the firm but sympathetic law enforcer who tries to shut them down without putting them in jail, brokering a deal for them to become sharecroppers (the term used in the subtitles) on a rich man’s land, and helping to persuade them to accommodate a school. Further conflicts erupt between outlaws, the details of which weren’t always entirely clear to me at least, but this generally functions as daring, almost poetic fragmentation (the movie has enough raw narrative material to fuel something of epic length, but dispenses with it all in barely more than 75 minutes). Much of what’s depicted seems almost divorced from any recognizable time and place, but the very clearly contemporary affect of the teacher in particular emphasizes that this isn’t some kind of romantic primitivism, but rather a simple function of poverty and deprivation: seen today, the film’s social charge is heavily retrospectively enhanced by the subsequent extraordinary life history of its star Yilmaz Guney. Overall, the film can’t be classed as a masterpiece, but it elicits a deep sense of respect.