SILVER

[RAGBAR] [رگبار]
With brash stylistic exuberance, this first feature from Bahram Beyzaie helped usher in the Iranian New Wave. When he takes a job as a schoolteacher in a new neighborhood, the hapless intellectual Mr. Hekmati (Parviz Fannizadeh) finds that he is a fish out of water. Shot in luminous monochrome and edited with quicksilver invention, DOWNPOUR, which has been painstakingly restored from the only known surviving print, captures with puckish humor and great tenderness the cultural conflicts coursing through Iran at a pivotal historical moment. (Note courtesy of Janus Films.) DIR/SCR Bahram Beyzaie; PROD Barbod Taheri. Iran, 1972, b&w, 128 min. In Persian with English subtitles. NOT RATED