Les mille et une mains (1973) User Reviews

A colorful and important but heavy-handed Morrocan drama

[Lilarcor87 · 21 May 2013]

In this FESPACO award winner we get to see the hand-weaving and dyeing industry and the hard labor that goes with it, including the use of child labor. The family eats from the same bowl and listens to the radio which has an interview with someone who got away from Morocco. Then we are shown the great contrast this kind of life is to the ones of rich people in Casablanca. Weaved items are everywhere in the big palace of a house which becomes important towards the end of the movie.

The movie loves quick zooms in and out, which is mostly a bit distracting but sometimes work to great effect, for example one scene where it zooms out from a road to reveal a great hill and a road further up in the landscape. Unfortunately all the playing on the contrast of rich and poor gets a bit much and heavy-handed for my liking and while the storyline doesn't go too crazy i.e something like Iñárritu's films, it does feel one-sided and forced.

Hitchcock, Tarantino and Kenneth Anger meet with Bruce Conner in this down to earth new wave realism flick

[mrdonleone · 4/10 · 7 September 2022]

All movie long you're waiting for a promise which was given at the very beginning of this flick, which happens sometimes in movies going slow at first and then ending up in a culmination of violence and gore underlined with shock as are for instance Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill vol 1; yet this movie here which seems to have borrowed many of its effects from great avant-garde masters such as Kenneth Anger and Bruce Conner before its being really does not deliver in its ending. As with a good Alfred Hitchcock-movie like Vertigo and Saboteur you expect these random events to lead somewhere; here, however, there is no such thing as the so-called 'twist' seems to take place out of image and quite some people appear without major function to the story such as a mad person who ultimately adds nothing to the film but humor -which one would accept if not only that his ultimate demise was unasked for-. In total, a disappointing film that has nothing to offer but the beautiful images of the wonders of Morocco -but a plane ticket to the country is worth its money whereas the entrance price to see this movie does not-.

Moroccan Masterpiece Which Affects & Demands Solidarity!

[samxxxul · 8/10 · 20 June 2020]

With his debut "A Thousand and One Hands", Morrocan filmmaker Souheil Ben-Barka, who has always been the little man's advocate in film, plunges into the milieu of the economic divide. The social concern is described from the perspective of the absurd and the have-nots. The story in Souheil Ben-Barka's debut is all knitted around an insane old man who goes from a Kafkaesque absurdity to the next social humiliation. It is absurd, but it is only the beginning of the almost surreal, but unfortunately all too realistic questioning the cultural hybridity. Souheil Ben-Barka has used Eastmancolor to drape the film in a dramatic spectrum of hues. The colors here play a corresponding, though not exactly equivalent in few scenes especially in the bourgeoisie set up. Overall, i think that "Les mille et une mains" is a Moroccan cinematic jewel worthy of recognition and should be among the world's finest world films. The expressionistic undertone of beauty that lingers in our minds really makes this film unforgettable. I'd recommend this for fans of Souleymane Cisse's Baara, Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh, Yimou Zhang's Ju DOU, Carlos Mayolo and Luis Ospina's The Vampires of Poverty.