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A janitor/doorman and his family who came to "big city" Istanbul, with the hope to live a better life. With the different characters living in the building, the story evolves around the doorman and his tricky ways to skip work but make some extra cash on the side

Kemal Sunal and Sevil Üstekin in King of the Doormen (1976)

A sympathetic portrayal of a proto-Anatolian Mutt

1970s were intense year for Turkey. Political violence were escalating and class differences were getting more and more sharper. Within the upper class: justice, military, medicine, etc. were putting the pressure on low class (in this movie, the doorman). This movie is a metaphorical perspective to this age. Is this movie fun? Well, it is your average Kemal Sunal comedy.

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King of the Doormen

Kemal Sunal movies have a special place for me. This movie is one of the best and famous Kemal Sunal movies, it&#39;s really great.

The character of Seyit, a janitor of sorts (called &quot;KAPICI&quot; in Turkey, tasked with the maintenance and cleaning of the building, operating the furnaces and fetching groceries etc.) is the main highlight of this movie. His ambitions and behavior is used to portray a class of people in Turkey, many of whom since the early 70s have progressed in the economic ladders in the country, by hook or by crook. These people are also mainly responsible for the rise of the corrupt political establishment in Turkey these past couple of decades. Every other tenant living in the building also represent different socio-economic and political classes in Turkey at the time. The poor gov&#39;t clerk who is unable to make ends meet represents the weakening of the establishment bureaucrats, educated people whose skills in gov&#39;t services are no longer worth a living wage as the changing economic circumstances favor those like Seyit and Übeyit (a loan shark who lives on the top floor of the building) who can make a quick buck, abusing the vulnerabilities of the social/economic order wherever they can. The hierarchy is also represented in the placement of the tenants in the building. The capitalist loan shark is sitting on top with the retired military officer right below followed by the the elected apartment manager (representing politicians), the gov&#39;t clerk and Seyit (a cunning urban-come-lately, opportunistic, exploitative peasant). What makes him likable to a degree is that he endures a lot of crap in order to get what he wants. This is because he&#39;s not only motivated by greed or by pursuit of a more comfortable life, but by some inferiority complex that pushes him to want to be more powerful than those he&#39;s forced to serve. He steals from a lot of the tenants but he also shows some form of (mostly empty gestures) empathy for others who also have it rough, especially the clerk. It&#39;s almost foreshadowing (but more likely inspired by the 70 military coup) that the elected representative is overthrown by the ex-military officer who makes life miserable for Seyit by abusing his power to overwork him but mostly by cutting him out of his exploitative ways and extracurricular income. It&#39;s perhaps not as obvious in the strict sense of the word &quot;coup&quot; but the manager resigns because of the pressure of the tenants to fix things while abandoning him (i.e. democracy) when he needs their support, all the meanwhile the ex-military officer is constantly badgering him to give up power as he finally snaps after an unsuccessful confrontation with an obnoxious and violent tenant. Seyit is shown as horrified at even the possibility of a military takeover. He is forced to wake up early, work hard and lose his exploitative ways and live by the rules which ultimately means he will be stuck in his life as a janitor. So spoilers here, the military takeover starts or accelerates a chain reaction of events at the end of which Seyit, the physical representation of the cunning, illiterate, deceitful lower class of Turkish conservative urban-peasants becomes the majority stake holder in the building with the help of the capitalist loan shark with whom he&#39;s in a symbiotic relationship with. Make no mistake, Seyit is the protagonist of the movie but he&#39;s not the hero. He&#39;s a liar, crook, thief who abuses and exploits his wife and his children to advance his agenda of climbing the socio-economic ladders. The fact that he&#39;s only kept under control temporarily by the military force and that this further emboldens his desire for wealth and power shows the audience the nature of the beast that are disparagingly called the &quot;Anatolian Mutt&quot;, a beast whose mind only works to find ways to exploit and consume, otherwise incapable of producing wealth or beauty in any sense. In this sense, the movie is prophetic in foreseeing the rise of this form of creature and that they would ultimately gain power.

Unfortunately, the doorman factor has disappeared from most places now. He tells how a villager uses his intelligence to extort money from people, and after a while, he buys the flats in the building. This is a good movie where comedy and social life are intertwined. I recommend it. Yes, it may be old, but it is very nice from a sociological perspective. After all, comedy is not something that gets old, right :)
Kemal Sunal has taken his place at the top among Turkish comedians and he still has no intention of losing this to anyone. He has been dead for a long time, but a man like Charli Chaplin is for Turks.

User reviews

King of the Doormen

Sociological allegory

Great

A sympathetic portrayal of a proto-Anatolian Mutt

concierge

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