Hayata Dönüş / Return to Life poster 1949

| International Women's Day 1920 | Fortune 1959 | Ostatni Etap 1948 | Return to Life 1949 | Yaroslav Hunka & Ukraine |

Hayata Dönüş, Turkish poster, circa 1949.

1. Return of Emma

Hayata Dönüş is the title of a Turkish film poster dated circa 1949. It promotes the French film Retour à la vie (Return to Life) released that same year. The following article outlines the present writer's search for information on the film during September 2024, believing it initially to be a Turkish production by Ceylan Film. It was eventually identified as French. The film offers five separate stories over approximately two hours, each concerning a liberated prisoner of war. 

The section of the film highlighted in the Turkish poster is entitled Return of Emma, and is the first story in the film, occupying approximately 18 minutes. The film is accessible below from a Russian web site and presents a brief episode in the life of a middle aged woman (Emma, played by Madame de Revinsky) upon her immediate return to France after a period of imprisonment in the Dachau concentration camp. The segment is painful to watch, and incredibly moving, as family members argue over the emaciated, half-dead body of their Aunt Emma, almost ignoring her as they discuss appropriation of her assets and their own greedy behaviour in illegally dispersing them during the German occupation period.

Retour à la vie, Les Films Marceau, 1949, duration: 115 minutes. French language, English subtitles.

The following two screen shots from the film highlight some elements of the narrative. There is no scene of Emma in the camp, as portrayed in the Turkish poster, though the fact that she was stretchered back home and can barely move or talk is indicative of her extreme treatment by the Germans. The horrors she suffered can only be imagined as one watches the film and the pale, almost entirely silent and motionless Emma.

Emma signing papers to legitimise the illegal action of family members during her incarceration.

Emma resting after the family leaves......

The Return of Emma segment of the film highlights two types of suffering, both during and immediately after the war: (1) for those in the concentration camps, which was horrific and from which recovery was slow and painful; and (2) for those in occupied countries such as France, which in many instances was only a slight inconvenience to normal, everyday life. The film successfully portrays the full gamete of emotions and behaviours surrounding Emma as she "returns to life", from the compassionate to the narcissistic.

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2. The search begins

Q: What film is Hayata Dönüş? The present writer secured the Turkish poster during the early 2000s from the eMoviePoster auction site. Upon seeking to research the film in 2024 the original auction house entry for a film under that name was not located. It is 27 x 41 inches on thin paper, and printed in green and black ink utilising the stone or zinc-plate lithographic process. When purchased it was folded into eight sections and showed evidence of age and usage, such as wear and tears along the folds. As such, it genuinely appeared to date from the immediate post-WWII years (i.e. late 1940s or 1950s).

The poster portrayed a group of women behind bars and men (including soldiers) and women in coats walking in line. This was suggestive of the World War II era concentration camps and post-war refugee crises. Unfortunately, no information on a Turkish film by this name had been located when the present article was commenced early in September 2024. The descriptive and technical information provided by the poster was scant beyond the Turkish title. According to the imprint along the bottom right corner, it was printed by the firm of Kagit ve Basim Işleri A.S. 442331 [Paper and Printing Works].

Lower right section of Turkish poster.

The Paper and Printing Works of Galata, Istanbul, was a prominent Turkish printer which continued to work in the area of film posters through to the 1970s. The words Renkli Türce printed in green along the lower section of the poster translate as Colour Turkish (i.e. the film is in colour and in the Turkish language, or, if foreign, it was overdubbed or presented with Turkish subtitles). Ceylan Film obviously refers to the production house or distribution company.

Google and eMoviePoster.com searches using terms such as: "Hayata Dönüş" "Ceylan Film" 1949 did not provide the answers sought. The majority of references to Ceylan Film concerned those made since the 1990s by Turkish film director and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan (b.1959). However, there were a few brief references to the Ceylan Film company in 1953 and 1977 within a Wikipedia listing of Turkish film production. These included: Gizli Yara (1953) a Romeo and Juliet type lover story; and Ah Bu Sevda (1977) and Memis (1977), both of which appear to be seventies sex romps. None of these related to the aforementioned poster. In addition, a film archive collection in the United States containing material dated prior to 1960 revealed items relating to distribution there of films from "ABC and Ceylan Film." No specific reference to Hayata Dönüş was located amongst any of these searches.

Part of the problem here was to know exactly what title the film was released under outside of Turkey, assuming it was a Turkish production. Neither was it known if the film was a documentary or a semi-fictional drama. The large size of the poster suggested a filmic drama. As a result of the failure to find any reference to Hayata Dönüş, it became clear that the film was not a Turkish film, but rather a foreign film released in Turkey by Ceylan Film. If this was the case, then the search needs to take another direction.

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3. A French film?

An English translation of Hayata Dönüş was back to life, or return back to life. This led early in the research process to a 1949 French film titled Retour à la vie (Return to Life). However, the two French posters and brief IMDB description of the film's content did not reflect the imagery displayed in the Turkish poster. As a result. the idea of a Turkish film was initially pursued.

French poster, 1949.

French poster, 1949.

A poster from Yugoslavia was also located, however it merely replicated elements of one of the French posters.

Povratak uzivot, Yugoslavian poster, 19 x 27 inches.

As a result of the lack of discovery of a similarly named Turkish film, a second look at the French film was required. The IMDB synopsis read as follows: Five prisoners, a woman and four men, return to France after WW2. We follow their rocky road to life. It's a movie which consists of five [four] different stories. The revelation that the film comprised a number of stories (4), directors (3) and writers (3), opened the door to the images in the Turkish poster. In addition, the Italian poster was more suggestive of the prisoner of war and refugee elements of the film.

Utorna la vita, Italian poster, 39 x 55 inches, 1950.

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4. Some reviews

* PUNQ (Letterboxd): Post-war scenarios. Mostly of the cruel kind, but there are glimmer of hope in some of them, signalling time will heal the wounds of the hatred created during the course of World War II. Very French in execution and that's a compliment in this production They express themselves verbally and visually of the confused feelings they're dealing with and with such a large ensemble of great talent involved, it was a enlightening, if not somewhat wonderfully depressive experience.

* zappy (Letterboxd): A portmanteau film consisting of five segments with four contributing directors. The unifying theme is five stories of people returning after WWII and the varied experiences they have. There are down moments, but a general feeling that things will improve. Segment 1 (André Cayatte): A chamber piece involving a woman returning from a concentration camp and her relatives. Starring Bernard Blier. Segment 2 (Georges Lampin): Involving a returning soldier who gets a job in a hotel occupied by an all women regiment. Segment 3 (Henri-Georges Clouzot): An escaped German who was involved in torture is sheltered and confronted by a man (Louis Jouvet) who wants to understand what causes someone to do such a thing. Segment 4 (Jean Dréville): A man returns from a POW camp to discover his wife has left him, his apartment with his belongings has been occupied by displaced people, and he has no job. Despite this, things may be looking up. Segment 5 (Jean Dréville): A soldier (Serge Reggiani) returns home with a German bride and discovers the town is antogonistic towards him. Writing credits go primarily to Charles Spaak with Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jean Ferry also contributing. The second segment, set in a hotel taken over by an all women regiment, is probably the weakest. The third segment is the most dramatically intense. The fourth is the sweetest natured and the final segment is skillfully made, but melodramatic with its happy ending.

* Peter von Bagh (Il Cinema Ritrovato): This is the darkest of all the episode films that were the fashion in the late 1940s. The work of four directors, the film’s unity comes from its writer (Charles Spaak, with four out of five stories) and from the pessimism shared by all. Only one of the stories, directed by Georges Lampin, has some lightness, and it happens to be the only irrelevant one. André Cayatte is here at his very best, covering the new deals of property and the cynical financial side of war and its aftermath, and how the brutally selfish behaviour during the Occupation continues in human hearts. The last episode, Jean Dréville’s second one, likewise tells the story of a German wife and it highlights how war has transformed even “normal” people into beasts and moral morons. The most chilling episode comes expectedly from Henri-Georges Clouzot, with Louis Jouvet in the role of a former prisoner who meets his German torturer in a shabby hotel room. It’s a great portrait of a victim who becomes the executor, and of an aged man who seems totally harmless and is a presence not unlike the real life image we got almost 40 years later during the Klaus Barbie trial… If there is a familiar ring to this, it is because so many later films seem to have stolen a cue from this relentless, powerful story, that perhaps reverberates from Clouzot’s first-hand experience: the complicated story of his masterpiece Le Corbeau, and its many interdictions (added with the director being banned from working for several years). Yes, “cruelty was effective,” as the German man says in the film.

* Gareth's Movie Diary [blog], 28 September 2012: 1949, France, directed by André Cayatte, Georges Lampin, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jean Dréville. Though all of the episodes in this omnibus film came from the pen of Charles Spaak, the tone varies a good deal in the hands of four different directors (Jean Dréville directed the final two segments). The stories all deal with the return of imprisoned French men and women after the war, and while the initial narration suggests that we're about to see only the negative experiences that accompanied repatriation, that's not entirely true - one of the segments is very light in tone, and two others end very much on an upbeat note. The film was not a box office success, and while the list of hit portmanteau films is not exactly lengthy to start with, one suspects that this film was a little too close to recent experience for many viewers. Even in some of the lighter sequences, Spaak inserts numerous small, even throwaway, observations about the nature of life in France just after the war. There are the fake ration coupons, the people keen to burnish their image as members of the resistance (it's of note when a character does not immediately mention his service, as though such self-effacement was uncommon, and perhaps a sign of more genuine participation), the almost absurd efforts of petty officialdom to recuperate the released prisoners for the nation's self-image, and the constant reflection on who did or did not collaborate and to what degree, with Spaak casting aspersions on the near-ubiquitous comités d'épuration of the immediate post-war period. Clouzot's segment, the third, is by some way the film's strongest sequence, pushing both characters and audience to reflect on the nature, and perhaps the banality, of evil, and posing the question of how one might behave in extreme circumstances. Set in a hotel that accommodates those not yet able to return to their actual homes, the film, featuring Louis Jouvet, gives a vivid sense of the way in which many returnees felt caught between worlds, no longer in their original homes and yet desperate to start new lives if not quite to resume old ones. Spaak treats that theme with a good deal more humour in the fourth segment, in which a returnee finds his apartment has been requisitioned for the benefit of a puffed-up minor resistant. The only sequence that rivals Clouzot's in intensity is the first, a true chamber piece centered on a woman forced to deal with the property shenanigans her relatives have indulged in during her enforced absence. It's a brutally cynical segment, excoriating the idea of the noble France left behind. In the end, the primary unifying thread is that of performance -- each segment has a very strong lead actor. Bernard Blier anchors the opener, with barely anything to act against in the film's most powerful scene since he's talking to a mute, virtually immobile invalid; it's among the strongest work I've seen from the actor. Louis Jouvet is predictably magnetic, and multi-layered, as the embittered interrogator forced to confront his own contradictions in Clouzot's lacerating section, and Serge Reggiani, playing a rather more pleasant character than is often the case, is also fine in the final segment even if the piece itself is far too neat. François Périer and the popular (and to me unfamiliar) actor Noël Noël feature in the lighter segments, and they convey rather well the way in which entirely ordinary, good-humoured men are confronted by the strangest of circumstances both during their imprisonment and on their return home.

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5. References

Retour à la vie, IMDB [database], no date.

Return à la vie - Cayatte, Lampin, Clouzot, Dréville (1949), mon cinéma à moi [blog], 8 May 2016.

Return à la vie, MUBI [ database], no date.

Retour à la vie, UniFrance [database], no date.

Return to Life [Italian poster], eMoviePoster.com, 27 December 2011.

Turkish Cinema, Directorate General of Press & Information, no date.

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| International Women's Day 1920 | Fortune 1959 | Ostatni Etap 1948 | Return to Life 1949 | Yaroslav Hunka & Ukraine |

Last updated: 15 September 2024

Michael Organ, Australia