Another Sky

Elias Canetti and "The Voices of Marrakesh"

This British film has a certain significance for German literary history because the writer Elias Canetti (1905-1994) was present during the filming in Morocco as a guest of the film producer Aymer Maxwell.

The author processed his experiences in Marrakesh in his travel report "Die Stimmen von Marrakesch / The Voices of Marrakesh", which was published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 1968. Following in the footsteps of his Jewish roots and with a close eye for the dignity of the people in Morocco, who often live in abject poverty, he inspired numerous readers. This work became the first major sales success for the author, who was already over 60 years old at the time, and made him well-known in German-speaking countries.

The son of Spanish-Jewish parents, who had only learned German as his fourth language, had already published a number of things in the previous decades. His enigmatic novel "Die Blendung / The Blinding" was published in 1936, his sociological mammoth work "Masse und Macht / Mass and Power" in 1960, and in between a few plays such as "Hochzeit / Wedding". But none of these extraordinary works were able to gain acceptance for the author. This only happened gradually afterwards in the 1970s and culminated in the best-selling successes of his autobiographical works "Die gerettete Zunge / The Saved Tongue" (1979) and "Die Fackel im Ohr / The Torch in the Ear" (1982). In between, Elias Canetti was honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981.

The film, whose creation Canetti was able to follow, was considered lost until 2007 and is said to be characterized by wonderful shots of the Moroccan landscapes.

"Another Sky" is practically a lost film. Hardly shown when completed in 1954 (the producer, who had commissioned the film with a budget of 25,000 British pounds, died immediately after it was completed), it establishes Lambert as a genuine auteur -- who never made another film. I can think of only two other such cases, Charles Laughton, with the amazing "Night of the Hunter," and Leonard Kastle, with the equally stunning "Honeymoon Killers." Clearly none of these three men had the will (or interest, or nerve?) to continue on the arduous road, but all three had a marked sense of the poetic possibilities of cinema. What's striking in all three cases is that this poetic sensibility is not at the expense of strong story-telling. Personally, I think "Night of the Hunter" -- despite its high reputation -- can never really be rated high enough -- its achievement is so uniquely rich. (It seems that most IMDb users look at it as a superior thriller -- hardly, in my opinion, its great strength.) "Honeymoon Killers," too, is a great deal more than a ripping yarn -- but I digress. "Another Sky" deserves to be seen: the strange and magnetic pull of Morocco -- so often and lovingly evoked by Paul Bowles -- is shown here in all its strange destructiveness. Beautiful performances by a mostly unknown cast (though the villain of the piece is played by Catherine Lacey, whose immortality is assured through her playing of the "nun" in Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes," here seen 20 years later and much the worse for wear), including many non-professional Moroccans. An interesting and haunting music score, as well, European orchestral music (it reminds me of Peggy Glanville-Hicks's music) as scoring, alternating with a good deal of Moroccan indigenous music. A hidden treasure, brought to light and lovingly restored by Facets Video (who claim to have removed over a million imperfections in the print! it does look very fine). Extras of not much interest.