Director: Halit Refig; Writer: Orhan Kemal, Halit Refig, Turgut Özakman; Producer: Recep Ekicigil; Cinematographer: Cetin Gurtop; Cast: Tanju Gürsu, Filiz Akin, Özden Celik, Pervin Par, Cüneyt Arkin, Önder Somer, Sevda Ferdag, Mümtaz Ener, Hüseyin Baradan, Gülbin Eray, Danyal Topatan, Madalet Tibet
Duration: 01:42:09; Aspect Ratio: 1.313:1; Hue: 98.000; Saturation: 0.024; Lightness: 0.277; Volume: 0.071; Cuts per Minute: 11.765
Summary: Birds of Exile (Gurbet Kuşları, 1964) dates from the director’s “social realist” period. It tells the story of the
Bakırcıoğlu family, who had come to İstanbul from Maraş in southeastern Turkey in
order to start a new life. The first scene is set in the well-known Haydarpaşa
train station in İstanbul and depicts the arrival of the family.1 In this
scene, the father, Tahir, introduces viewers to the film’s characters,
addressing the family members one by one: Hatice, the mother, together with her three
sons (Murat, Selim, Kemal), and Fatma, the daughter. “We need to keep each
other in sight,” he warns them. Viewers are also introduced to another important
character, Haybeci (which means “freeloader” in Turkish), whose attempts
to make a living in İstanbul are contrasted with the efforts made by the
Bakırcıoğlu family throughout the film.
The film dwells on the disintegration of the family and its traditional
values in modern urban İstanbul. The father, who is a mechanic, opens a car repair
shop in İstanbul with his two sons. However, when business starts going
downhill, they try to find other ways to cope with the difficulty of life in the
city. The eldest brother Selim, who helps his father in the repair shop, is
led astray by his passion for Despina, the wife of the owner of the
neighboring repair shop. We soon learn that Despina tricked Selim for the sole
purpose of saving her husband’s business; since Selim had spent most of his time
with Despina, the family business eventually went bankrupt. Murat, who is
uninterested in the family business, decides to make a living as a taxi
driver. But soon he too becomes obsessed with another woman, Seval, a club
entertainer. Meanwhile, the youngest brother Kemal studies medicine and tries to
integrate into the modern life of İstanbul.
In the film, Selim and Murat, who are dedicated to the traditional
values of southeast Turkey, play key roles in the destruction of the family. The harder they
try to transpose their traditional notions of honor and the family to İstanbul,
the more villainous they become. It is Kemal who tries to strike a sort of
compromise between modern İstanbul and rural Turkey. In this sense,
although Kemal represents the moral example of the film, his elder brothers represent
the emotional center of the plot.
Birds of Exile was actually based on a stage play titled Ocak (meaning
fireplace, gathering point, and family) by Turgut Özakman. Halit Refiğ
wrote the screenplay with the well-known novelist Orhan Kemal, who is credited
as the author of the dialogues. Although the family in Ocak is from İstanbul, Refiğ transformed the plot into a story of
migration. In this way, the film is not bound to a single location (the
living room) as in the play. Another source of inspiration for the film was
Orhan Kemal’s novel bearing the same title, Birds of Exile; apart from the
title, however, the two works do not share much in common.The film is often compared with Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco
and His Brothers) (Luchino Visconti, 1960). The similarities between the two are striking. Rocco and His Brothers is
about the Parondi family, which migrates from the impoverished Italian south to Milan, and it focuses on five brothers. As
in Birds of Exile, it is a woman, a prostitute called Nadia, who brings about the destruction of the family.
Refiğ was also aware of this comparison, and noted: “Obviously you can find
similarities and a relationship between Birds of Exile and Rocco and His
Brothers [...]. However, it is more important to compare how Visconti and I
conceive the problems of our own respective societies, and identify the
differences.”
turkishcine.ma requires JavaScript.
