Movie history: Seven Samurai and Casablanca

9:43Max Pearson:Kurosawa also shoots with multiple cameras, so you, the audience, are inserted right into the middle of the action, a revolutionary method of filming. Critics point to the climactic fight between the samurai and bandits as an example.

9:58Sarah Jilani:I don't think it had been used before. Most of the second half of the film was shot with three cameras. Another way of looking at it is, when filming a long scene, if it is done using three cameras, it is very easy to piece together in an edit. What makes this film so extraordinary is a technique which is almost perfection.

10:19Max Pearson:This is the 1972 TV documentary again.

10:22Sarah Jilani:There's almost no finer technique in films today, coupled with a vision which results in his own personal style, his message, if you will. These two don't often come together in a director, you know, particularly in contemporary film. But in him, they coincide almost perfectly.

10:38Max Pearson:But whilst Seven Samurai is later hailed by many film critics as reinventing world cinema, he so doesn't think it's a consideration for his father in 1954.

10:52Sarah Jilani:Films are not made based on something like that. How can filmmakers, painters, authors' work create something that resonates in people's hearts if they are focused on reinvention? Artists should concern themselves with how to make a great artistic work and how to please the people that go to see it. We are not talking about reinventing. We are talking about how to create a good work of art.

11:22Max Pearson:Seven Samurai wins the Silver Lion for Direction at the 1954 Venice Film Festival. It is remade by Hollywood as a western, The Magnificent Seven, in 1960. It influences other directors and movies over the next few decades. The Bollywood classic Shole and Iran's Savalan are cited by the British Film Institute as having been inspired by it.

11:49Max Pearson:Hiso works with his father on several films in later decades, but Seven Samurai remains one of his favorite Kurosawa movies.

12:00Sarah Jilani:While the fight scenes were enjoyable, when the farmers war troubled, the many heartwarming scenes, that's why I find this film enjoyable.

12:09Max Pearson:But Hiso says the legacy of Seven Samurai is for you to decide.

12:16Sarah Jilani:Everyone sees the film in a different way, making use of a good story to create enjoyable scenes which make people happy or move them. That is what is important.

12:27Max Pearson:It is up to the viewer to choose how they feel about the film. In translation, that was Hiso Kurosawa, son of the film director Akira Kurosawa, speaking to Jen Dale about the making of Seven Samurai. Sarah Jelani is a lecturer in the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries at City St. George's University of London. And Sarah is a specialist in Asian, African and Arab cinema. So let's start, Sarah, with Seven Samurai as our jumping off point, if you like. It was made in the 1950s as Japan was recovering and rebuilding after the defeat in the Second World War. So would Kurosawa and other filmmakers in Japan at that time have been, if you like, remaking the idea of Japanese cinema?

13:08Sarah Jilani:Oh, undoubtedly. I mean, war is a very harrowing experience for an entire collective of people. And cinema has never been detached from essentially what society is feeling and thinking. It often becomes a tool of both critiquing and exposing your own conditions in these kinds of situations. But it also becomes incredibly useful for imagining new identities and futures after traumatic events like wars.

13:35Max Pearson:And if we're going to talk about world cinema, the history of world cinema, we can't obviously cover everything. But if we look at world cinema, we have to reference Asian cinema and Bollywood. So if we go back to the 1950s, about the same time as Seven Samurai, would that have been something of a golden age for Indian cinema?

13:51Sarah Jilani:Oh, certainly. Not only was Bollywood on the rise, but it was also getting incredible international distribution. So was something called Indian parallel cinema, which grew alongside Bollywood, but had Italian neorealist influences and dealt with Indian history in the moment. Both of these strands were also surprisingly really popular in Africa at the time before local industries had matured.

14:18Max Pearson:There is a tradition of African cinema as well. Now, I understand that there's a film called Black Girl that was made in 1966 that was particularly important as a major feature film from an African director.

14:31Sarah Jilani:Yes, Black Girl or in the French original La Noire Deux, which actually is a little bit more sinister because it means the Black Girl of, implying belonging, is a 1966 film by a man who's now kind of remembered as the father of African cinema, Ousmane Semben from Senegal.

14:51Max Pearson:And would the success of those films, both from Bollywood and from African directors, they would have been driven by big audiences. Is that correct?

14:59Sarah Jilani:Definitely. Actually, film in many former colonies of Europe was introduced pretty early. It was seen kind of as a propaganda tool. So France, for example, had introduced cinema in Senegal quite early, well before Senegalese independence. And they did like to flood the markets with Bollywood films and Hollywood films. It entertained so-called colonial subjects, but it also did not really relate to their own conditions. So it was a very safe option for French colonial officers in Senegal. And Semben actually recounts growing up watching these kinds of films. He says he loved westerns in particular.

15:41Sarah Jilani:But then he went on to make very different kind of films.

15:44Max Pearson:Hollywood likes to see itself as the center of the cinematic world. But what about audiences and directors in Africa and Asia? Do they see it that way?

15:53Sarah Jilani:Oh, no, I don't think so. I mean, Hollywood does have a global penetration. But, you know, I recall the Korean director of the popular film Parasite recently quipped, oh, the Oscars, that's a provincial awards show. And I laughed at that because it does actually reflect how large the audiences are in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia. Hollywood is a nice to have for a lot of these directors, but ultimately the numbers of audiences you can attract on home soil doesn't really compare. There's a political aspect to their interest and focus on their own audiences as well, though. Film in many parts of Africa and Asia was also part of the project of decolonization.

16:37Sarah Jilani:So they turned to film to reclaim self-representation. This is nothing short of, in a way, reinventing how they're going to see themselves, how they're going to see the role of their new sovereign nation in a post-colonial world. So something Semben actually once said in relation to this is, cinema is our night school. And I love that quote, because he summarizes how film, sure, it's entertainment, and it's going to be about African directors and Asian directors expressing their personal aesthetics, but it's also going to be film and political education for mass audiences at a time when things are changing rapidly, you know, 50s, 60s, mass independences across Africa and Asia.

17:25Max Pearson:That's Sarah Jelani, a lecturer in the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries at City St. George's University of London. Next, we're taking you back 20 years to the release of a film that would break box office records and send thousands into the streets marching for justice. It was a pivotal moment for Indian cinema. Here's Reena Stanton-Sharmer.

17:48Sarah Jilani:It's the India's Republic Day, January 26, 2006, and the film Rangda Pasanti, meaning the colour of yellow, which symbolises sacrifice, is being released. There's a huge buzz in the air. Part of it's down to heartthrob Amir Khan in the lead male role, but there's more to it. RDB, as it's known, is temporarily banned. Then shatters records during its opening week and becomes the highest-earning Hindi film release during its debut. In that clip from the film produced by Roni Skruvala, you hear DJ, played by Amir Khan, declare that there are two ways to live, endure what's happening, or take responsibility to change it.

18:40Sarah Jilani:It was a very new way of storytelling that in a very contemporary scenario, how you can use history as a trigger, how you can use something from the past which comes to affect the present and transform people in the present and perhaps teach them a lesson. This was the first time that the young India woke up to a reality, which they had forgotten. That's Kamlesh Pandey, who wrote the story. But getting it onto the big screen would take sheer determination. He had his script rejected, not once, not twice, but three times. And it would take six years before anyone would say yes to the project. Eventually he teamed up with director Rakesh Onprakash Mehra and got some stardust on board in the form of Amir Khan The actor brought on acclaimed composer A.R.

19:36Sarah Jilani:Rahman for the score and it was then that producers finally thought maybe this could work Even so there were concerns that audiences who are more used to romantic musicals wouldn't be interested My director, Rakesh, he was really concerned because those were the days of Bollywood cinema, which was basically candy floss kind of cinema. I mean, really candy floss in the sense that very romantic, all pink flowers and shooting out of India and hills and mountains and so on. And we had nothing of the sort. So Rakesh asked me, suppose we get lucky and the film gets made, who was going to watch it? because people are watching Candy Floss and we are a very different kind of film.

20:22Sarah Jilani:I said, I don't give a damn, Rakesh. After the film is made and released, even if there is one person, one boy or a girl comes to me and says that, thank you, sir, for Genghendha Thurang Deh Basanti, my job is done. I'm satisfied. Just one person. And that strong faith paid off, turning it into a great success story. The movie's message became a rallying cry to India's youth, sparking discussions about patriotism, political apathy and the power to create change. Moving between the present day and the past, a group of friends act in a historical docudrama about Bhagat Singh during the independence movement, who's widely considered a freedom fighter.

21:07Sarah Jilani:This forces them to confront issues in their own lives around injustice and corruption. One evening, the friends are sat around drinking and chatting when the character Ajay, who's a pilot, challenges them to make a difference. It's easy to be a critic, he says.

21:32Sarah Jilani:You change it if it bothers you so much. It's your country too. Politics join. Police or IS. Join politics, the police, the civil service, change things.

21:53Sarah Jilani:But you won't, because who's going to get their hands dirty cleaning up the house? Most of the film's other cast was relatively unknown, including English actress Alice Patton, who spoke to the BBC in 2006. The lead character is an English woman, a young journalist actually, who heads over to Delhi to make a film about her grandfather's life. He was an officer in pre-independence India. It came about just as a sort of normal audition. I got the script and really loved the story and the character and hadn't done a film yet, so I was quite excited by that. And auditioned very regularly here and then suddenly was whisked off to Bombay for a screen test.

22:33Sarah Jilani:Most of my dialogue is in Hindi. Shooting had finished and the night of the premiere arrived surrounded by excitement. But for Kumlash, it was cut short. He had to dash off early before the screening to take an overnight flight to Paris. As soon as he landed, he got a call from the producer, who was ecstatic and stunned. It had gone down a storm.

23:03Sarah Jilani:It recorded the highest opening day box office for a Hindi film at the time. On the day that it was released, I was invited to a media college and they wanted me to speak to their students. So there was a boy waiting at the gate of the college to escort me inside the hall and there was a picture of me in the afternoon papers. The story was that this film is being released and people are watching, you know, it's supposed to be written by Mr. Kamlesh Pandey. So this boy, he hugged me and says, Thank you, sir, for giving me a round of basanti. I was thrilled. I immediately rang up Rakesh, Rakesh, I got one.

23:44Sarah Jilani:My job is done. I got one. Then there were 200 boys and girls waiting outside the hall of the college, waiting to go inside. and they heard him shout. So they came rushing. What is happening? He said, he is the writer of Rang De Basanti. So they mobbed me, literally mobbed me. And after that, it almost became a kind of routine. Wherever they saw me, the same lines. Thank you, sir, for giving Rang De Basanti. Controversial scenes, including, spoiler, the defence minister being shot, saw the film being temporarily banned on release. But this was overturned after a special screening for government and army officials.

24:28Sarah Jilani:It challenged audiences to step up and shape their country themselves. A viewing at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, known as IIT Mumbai, where students often end up in Silicon Valley in the US, had life-changing consequences. Seven students, they were ready to leave for US for their jobs. They saw the film and they decided not to go to America and work for India. So these boys, they had visas stamped on their passport and they refused to go to America. One particularly moving scene saw the characters marching side by side in a candlelit vigil, protesting against government corruption.

25:12Sarah Jilani:This would go on to inspire real-life demos. Some of the elements of the film, they became very popular imagery. A candle march, which we used in the film for the first time, became a visual metaphor for any protest event. These included marches against the murder of a young woman called Jessica Lahl, following the acquittal of her killer. Public pressure helped push the case to the Delhi High Court, which overturned the verdict and convicted Manu Sharma, sentencing him to life imprisonment in December 2006. News reports commented on how protests, including this one, mirrored that scene from the movie.

25:55Sarah Jilani:These kind of ideas, they are like a flame. For a brief, shiny moment, they have some effect on you. But then there is a daily life. There is a routine that you are following every day. You can't be a rebel every day of your life.

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27:19Max Pearson:Still to come, as the History Hour remains in the cinema this week, the blending of fantasy and fascism in the award-winning Pan's Labyrinth and the somewhat haphazard production of Casablanca.

27:32Sarah Jilani:Well, they did not have an ending. They didn't know whether Ilsa, poor Ingrid Bergman, was going to go off with Laszlo or Rick. It was very much done on the fly and there was a lot of anxiety.

27:45Max Pearson:Before that, though, we head to 1934 and one of the most controversial movies ever made, Triumph of the Will, a propaganda tool for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Jane Wilkinson has been through the BBC archives to find out more. Powerful, seductive, terrifying. Leni Riefenstahl's film of Hitler's 1934 Nuremberg rally, Triumph of the Will. The film's spectacular images glorified, in Hitler's words, the beauty and power of the Third Reich. They brought the filmmaker herself fame and notoriety.

28:24Max Pearson:Yet despite her film's glorification of Hitler, she always denied that she'd set out to make propaganda.

28:30Sarah Jilani:I was not interested in politics, not a little bit. Only how I can make it, that it is not stupid, that it is a little more interesting. That was my desire.

28:41Max Pearson:That's Leni Riefenstahl in one of several interviews with the BBC. Described as Hitler's favourite filmmaker, to some she was an artistic genius. To many others, like film director Owen Leiser, who fled Hitler's Germany as a teenager, She was an apologist and promoter of the Nazi regime.

29:02Sarah Jilani:I was 12 years old when Triumph of the Will was shown on German cinema. I was fascinated and I felt fear. One should not forget when Triumph of the Will was made in 1934, there had already been the boycott of all Jewish shops, lawyers and doctors. They had already been the establishment of certain concentration camps. So somebody who makes a film for this party knows what she is glorifying.

29:39Max Pearson:The young Riefenstahl had been a dancer, but after an injury she turned to films, first starring in them and then in 1932 directing her own feature, The Blue Light. Among her fans was a rising figure in German politics, Adolf Hitler. He commissioned her to make a film of his rally in Nuremberg, an annual showcase for the Nazi party, attended by hundreds of thousands.

30:05Sarah Jilani:I get the order from Hitler to do the picture. And every artist in Germany must do in this time to get order. But I was independent. I was always independent.

30:15Max Pearson:And this independence seems to have caused problems with one of Hitler's closest allies, Joseph Goebbels. According to Riefenstahl, the propaganda minister interfered in her filming of the 1933 rally, and she went straight to the top to complain.

30:31Sarah Jilani:I was coming to Hitler, and he was very kind and friendly. And we go in a little room, Dr Goebbels, Hitler and I. And Hitler asked me what happened. And so I told Hitler, it is too difficult for a girl. I can't do this and the men are jalouse and I have seen that Dr. Goebbels was very white in his face I couldn't understand the whole situation but Hitler says that the men they are stupid you must make it the next year and I told him please I can't do it and so I go home and it's coming a call from the ministerium of Dr. Goebbels and he cried to me what you have done? You speak bad about my people to Hitler?

31:21Sarah Jilani:No, you are a bad girl. You have not to do this. I am the man responsible for this. You have to come to me. And from this moment, it started a very great hate from Dr Goebbels against me.

31:35Max Pearson:The following year, Hitler invited Riefenstahl back to film in Nuremberg, but she claimed that at first she turned down his offer.

31:44Sarah Jilani:And now it was a very dramatic dialogue between him and me. He said, Leni, why do you not want to make the film? I said, you remember what I have had for trouble. I can't do it. He said, but this year it will be good. You are an artist and I don't want that the party make a stupid film. It is only possible that you make the film as an artist.

32:05Max Pearson:Riefenstahl was persuaded and in September 1934, she began work with a crew of around 170. The set included a sunken camera pit and a motorised aerial platform. Over four days, scenes of the military marches, speeches and parades were shot from dramatic angles. Long focus lenses recorded close-ups of the crowds, while cameras filmed from moving cars. It was pioneering.

32:35Sarah Jilani:All was improvisation, yes? I have had only one idea. It was the first time it was done. I think everything must be moving. If you remember the beginning of the film.

32:48Max Pearson:She's talking about the opening scene, Hitler's plane flying through the clouds into Nuremberg.

32:55Sarah Jilani:Hitler's coming on the fight, he's going to the hotel. Everything, the buildings, that was moving and to do this was new and so my cameraman took roller skates to make this with roller skates moving and that gives it life and later in my cutting room it was the most difficult work in my life and I was 18 hours day and night to think always what I can do that it is interesting

33:23Max Pearson:it took Riefenstahl seven months to edit the two-hour film the result was triumph of the will a title apparently suggested by Hitler. In 1972, the BBC's Keith Dewhurst asked Riefenstahl about their relationship. What was Hitler like to talk to?

33:41Sarah Jilani:Oh, look, I wasn't afraid. He was very natural. He had spoken like another person to me and only about my work. So it was not difficult to speak with him. He had never spoken about things that I don't understand. and natural in this time he was for me a very important person and I was proud that he had such confidence to me.

34:07Max Pearson:But the film was deeply controversial. While some admired the artistry, it was also condemned as glorifying a regime that would go on to be responsible for millions of deaths and for portraying a genocidal dictator as a godlike saviour. Here's the academic George Steiner who escaped the Holocaust. Speaking in 1992.

34:29Sarah Jilani:Leni Riefenstahl is totally at home, at home in what she's doing and projecting and admiring, at home in Nazism.

34:39Max Pearson:Riefenstahl not only admired, not only flattered, but captured and gave back to them

34:45Sarah Jilani:the very nasty magic of their own image of themselves. She was an eye that was both a mirror of the horror and a creator of its veneer.

34:59Max Pearson:The criticism was put to Riefenstahl by Dennis Chewy on the BBC in 1976. There was one critic who said that this film could never have been made by anyone not fanatically at one with the events depicted. And another critic called it a hymn of praise to Groot's strength and mindless hysteria.

35:16Sarah Jilani:That is the opinion of critic people. They have this opinion, but this has nothing to do with the truth.

35:22Max Pearson:Well, many people seem to keep this opinion after the war.

35:25Sarah Jilani:Look, the people have never asked me, the journalists have never asked me, never, what is my private life? They only ask the same question, always the same, because it was written in headlines. It was interesting to sell it.

35:38Max Pearson:After the war, Riefenstahl was arrested by the Allies and faced several denazification investigations. And although she was never a Nazi Party member or charged with war crimes, she was found to be a fellow traveller. In other words, a sympathiser. Her film career was effectively at an end. Do you regret it now, the triumph of the world?

35:59Sarah Jilani:In one way, naturally, because I have suffered through this film so much that I have lost my work after the war. Because triumph of the world was a dark cloud about my person. In other way, if I have made the film, it was very interesting to make it as an artist. Very interesting.

36:20Max Pearson:That was the filmmaker Lenny Riefenstahl, director of one of the most controversial propaganda movies ever made, Triumph of the Will. Jane Wilkinson was our guide through the archives. The Second World War provided the backdrop to many movies which have left their mark on the history of cinema. Among them, Casablanca. It premiered on the 26th of November 1942. It went on to become one of the most recognisable and quoted films ever made in Hollywood. It was written by the screenwriting brothers Julius and Philip Epstein. Leslie Epstein was Julius's son. He died last year, but as another example of the importance of oral history, he had told Louis Harnett O'Mara in 2024 about the challenges involved in the making of an all-time classic.

37:08Max Pearson:It's the golden age of American moviemaking, and two young writers, brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, are hard at work on their latest movie. They're approaching the last day of shooting, but there's just one problem.

37:21Sarah Jilani:Well, they did not have an ending.

37:22Max Pearson:The climax of the drama rests on a moral dilemma faced by the heroine in the final scene.

37:27Sarah Jilani:They didn't know whether Ilsa, poor Ingrid Bergman, was going to go off with Laszlo or Rick. It was very much done on the fly, and there was a lot of anxiety in Jack Warner. The head of the film studio.

37:41Max Pearson:He was tearing his hair out and there were tremendous conferences with everybody. That's Leslie Epstein, the son of Philip and nephew of Julius. And the title of the movie they're struggling to finish is Casablanca. So with just a couple of days filming remaining, the question is, how did the Epstein brothers pull off the iconic ending to this World War II romantic drama? Julius and Philip Epstein, often known as Julie and Phil, were identical twins born in 1909 to Polish Jewish immigrants.

38:08Sarah Jilani:They grew up in the Lower East Side in New York. They fought their way through their neighborhood. They were tough guys.

38:13Max Pearson:Despite this, the pair made it to Pennsylvania State University, where they excelled academically and athletically.

38:19Sarah Jilani:Julie and Phil were boxers for Penn State. They took political science courses and journalism and so forth, and they came out of Penn State and were struggling to make a living.

38:30Max Pearson:And like many Americans trying to get by in the Great Depression, they found themselves working undesirable jobs.

38:36Sarah Jilani:They went on stage. I mean, I understand that my father was the second half of a horse's ass.

38:42Max Pearson:And with a stage credit to their name, the pair set their sights on Hollywood. Technical innovations meant increasing numbers of films now contained speech and music. Cheap movie tickets were snapped up by a cash-strapped clientele, and cinemas swelled with audiences captivated by men with strong jaws delivering wisecrack lines to luckless women. Hollywood's golden age was in full swing.

39:05Sarah Jilani:And what Julie did, he went out there alone. He rented a little bungalow in the valley and he would write a treatment every single day.

39:13Max Pearson:As well as story outlines, or treatments as they're known in the business, Julius also ghost wrote scenes for his friend Jerry Wald, a radio columnist turned Hollywood producer.

39:23Sarah Jilani:Wald would get in his car, race out to Julie in the valley. Julie would hand them the lines. Wald would come back to the script conference in Burbank

39:32Max Pearson:and they would say, Jerry, you're a genius. Julius was eventually offered a writing job at Warner Brothers in 1935 and after a successful collaboration on a Broadway play with his brother, Philip soon joined him. It wasn't until 1942 that the twins were assigned to write their career-defining film, Casablanca.

39:51Sarah Jilani:There was a script reader and to her lasting credit, she's the one who noticed it and brought it to Warner. I know that it was on December 8th of 41, the day after Pearl Harbor, that Warner signed it and they called for the Epstein's and it was underway.

40:08Max Pearson:For roughly$400 ,000 in today's money, the screenwrites for a stage play originally titled Everybody Comes to Rick's were bought. Though the title needed work, the basic story outline was...

40:21Sarah Jilani:A bitter and broken-hearted American starts to run a cafe in Casablanca.

40:26Max Pearson:A Moroccan city occupied by the French who were under Nazi rule in 1941.

40:31Sarah Jilani:And in the course of the film, he helps the man who got the woman who broke his heart escape to America with that woman that he could have reclaimed for himself but did not.

40:43Max Pearson:Rick, the owner of the cafe, greets Czechoslovak resistance leader Victor Laszlo and discovers that his wife, Ilsa Lund, is the same woman who left him without explanation in Paris hours before Nazi troops stormed the city. Rick must wrestle with his conscience. Does he help Ilse, the woman he loves, flee Morocco with her husband Victor? Or give them up to German Major Strasser? Jack Warner asked the Epsteins to adapt the initial play and Michael Curtiz to direct it. Meanwhile, the producer secured Hollywood heartthrob Humphrey Bogart as Rick and Ingrid Bergman for Ilse. I mean, Ingrid Bergman,

41:19Sarah Jilani:God, were that light on her at the end at the airport. Has there ever been a more beautiful portrait of a woman in film?

41:28Max Pearson:The cast was soon confirmed, but production was far from straightforward. The Epsteins still have much of that old New York fighting spirit, a fact that made their relationship with their boss turbulent.

41:38Sarah Jilani:Everybody at the studio was supposed to come in in the morning at nine o 'clock. Julie and Phil would saunter in after lunch. And Warner would have fits and he called them into his office and said, who do you think you are? Bank presidents come into work at nine. University presidents come in at nine. What do you think you're doing? And Julie or Phil said to him, fine, Jack, then have a bank president finish the script.

42:04Max Pearson:Casablanca was no exception to the rule. After making a start on what would become one of the most famous screenplays of all time, Julius and Philip took a break. They flew to Washington, D.C. to work on something completely different. And in their absence, writers Casey Robinson and Howard Koch also contributed to the script.

42:22Sarah Jilani:When they got back to Hollywood, Koch had also been working on it. And they basically tore up what he had done and just launched in. Now, there were other people who contributed to it. That line, is that my heart beating or the German guns? You can have that line. Frank, for your thoughts, I'm happy to have Casey Robinson get the credit for those things.

42:44Max Pearson:As filming rapidly drew to a close, the twins have one more vital scene to write. The ending. The final act of Casablanca hinges on Ilse's moral conundrum. Does she leave Victor to be with Rick, the man she still loves? Or does she stay loyal to Victor, a heroic resistance leader whose fight against the Nazis is of global importance? I just sometimes wonder if it's worth all this. You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die. Racking their brains for an answer, Julius and Phil decided to break for the afternoon and took a long drive through Los Angeles.

43:21Sarah Jilani:And here's the true story. Julie and Phil are riding down Sunset Boulevard and they come to the red light at Beverly Glen in Sunset.

43:31Max Pearson:The twins have written and rewritten this final scene a dozen times already. They had to eliminate the film's antagonist, Major Strasser. And the hero, Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart, must make a sacrifice in order to facilitate Ilse and Victor's escape from Casablanca.

43:46Sarah Jilani:And their top is down in their car, and they're sitting at the red light, and they look at each other. They knew that Strasser had a gun and that Bogart was going to shoot him, and they simultaneously say to each other, round up the usual suspects. And by the time they went through the tunnel and got to Burbank, they had the ending.

44:08Max Pearson:It's a miracle, it seems, that the film came together the way it did, with countless lines written in the pressure of the moment that sound as though they've existed forever.

44:16Sarah Jilani:Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks in a mine.

44:21Max Pearson:And pitch-perfect wartime messaging at a time when it was still unclear if the Allied forces would prevail.

44:27Sarah Jilani:The movie ends with a triumph of social consciousness, duty. she'll go off to a man she doesn't love, but that duty and patriotism means that she has to.

44:39Max Pearson:But what, in the end, was their secret to the making of a masterpiece?

44:43Sarah Jilani:It's the triumph of the studio system, the factory system. The lighting guy was no genius, Bogart is no genius, but the level of sheer competence came together in a way that I think exemplified this wonderful period in Hollywood where they didn't take themselves so seriously, and then every now and then it would spell out something that would last.

45:08Max Pearson:And how it has lasted. The late Leslie Epstein was speaking to Louis Harnett-Omara from Embra Productions in 2024 about the making of the Hollywood classic Casablanca. Our final feature film of this week is a story about a fairy tale, but it's probably not one you'd tell your children. It intertwines the world of a child's fantasy with the backdrop of the brutality of Franco's fascist Spain in the aftermath of the country's civil war. It's a movie that took the world by storm in 2006, as Tim O 'Callaghan discovers. In a dark time, when hope was bleak, there lived a young girl whose only escape was in a legend that wanted her back.

46:00Max Pearson:That's the trailer for the Spanish-language film Pan's Labyrinth, which was written, produced and directed by the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. The film tells the story of an 11-year-old girl, Ophelia, who meets fairies, a thorn and other mythical creatures in an abandoned labyrinth, a type of maze, on a quest to achieve immortality and return as Princess Moana of the underworld. The title of the film refers to the Greek and Roman god Pan, who was a fawn, a mythical creature with the legs and horns of a goat, but the torso of a man. Although del Toro has said the fawn in this story isn't meant to be that mythical deity.

46:42Sarah Jilani:I think it was a very powerful moment. By the end of it, Guillermo actually came to me with script in hand and asked me, do you want to be my Ophelia? It was such a special moment that I will forever remember.

46:56Max Pearson:Ivana Baquero played Ophelia when she was just 11 years old.

47:04Max Pearson:Pan's Labyrinth was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. It received a 22-minute standing ovation, a record for the prestigious festival. It then went on to win Oscars, BAFTAs and Goyas, Spain's highest film accolade. Ivana's first memories of the film are the audition process, when she was selected out of around a thousand potential Ophelias.

47:28Sarah Jilani:I had to travel to Madrid for it. I was from Barcelona. So that was already in and of itself kind of an adventure, having to go to a different city to audition in person with the casting director. I had to go through a couple of rounds and then I remember at a particular part in the process, they called my parents and they asked them to not change my look. They said, don't cut her hair, don't change anything about her appearance, and we'd like to have her come once again. I think it was like the second or the third round to Madrid.

48:02Max Pearson:Ivana had learnt her scenes and was ready, but when she arrived, it was a bit of a disaster. They wanted her to perform something completely different. I'm an 11-year-old kid and Guillermo del Toro's in the room.

48:15Sarah Jilani:I remember his wife was in the room. There were a bunch of people and they looked at the ones I had and they're like, oh, no, it's these ones that we want you to read for. So do you think you can memorize them in like 10 minutes in the other room? And I was like, yeah, of course, no problem at all. So I memorized an extra 12 pages and then I went into the room and I delivered the scenes. It was very emotional. I think everyone connected in that moment.

48:47Max Pearson:Having been cast, Ivana began working on the role almost straight away with Guillermo del Toro.

48:53Sarah Jilani:I had to do a lot of preparing for this role because I had to understand the depth of it and the suffering behind the symbol war in Spain and what a child in war must have felt like. So we had a lot of rehearsals and so I was exposed to all of it. There was nothing that was hidden from me or that they tiptoed around me in that regard.

49:15Max Pearson:The film is hard-hitting and at times violent, with scenes featuring Ophelia's stepfather, the fascist Captain Vidal, hunting down and torturing communist guerrilla fighters. Guillermo del Toro told the BBC in 2006 why he chose to set the film in 1944 Spain.

49:32Sarah Jilani:Because the movie is about choice. It's essentially about the power of choice, even if it's executed by, or especially if it's executed by an 11-year-old kid. Fascism is the removal of that choice, you know, the absolute nullification of personality, you know, and I thought it was very important to show a masculine world of basically destruction and a very feminine world of creation clashing.

50:02Max Pearson:The film is set at a remote house in Woodland and it was mostly filmed on location in the mountains outside Madrid.

50:09Sarah Jilani:I really discovered my passion for acting and for being on a set. It was a massive learning curve, that's for sure, because I had to learn how to conduct myself on a set. And I was surrounded by these amazing actors, which in and of itself was quite intimidating for such a young girl. You want it to step up your game so that the other actors could do their job and could shine. And then obviously, needless to stay, working with Guillermo was a master class in acting. He leaves nothing to chance. He always knows exactly what he wants. Everything's already been pre-planned a million times. And if he doesn't get the exact shot that he's envisioned, he will literally retake that 20 times if need be.

50:57Max Pearson:Do you remember any notes that he gave you?

51:01Sarah Jilani:He gave me a bunch of tips. I remember we had a thing for Ophelia where whenever she sees something for the first time that causes her curiosity, in Spanish we say perrito. He would say, do the dog. And the dog meant for us to sort of move your head side to side, kind of like a dog who is seeing something for the first time. A piece of great advice he gave me is an actor's most important scenes are the very first one in a movie, because that's a first impression, and the very last one in the movie for them, because that's the lasting impression that the audience is going to stay with.

51:43Max Pearson:And the lasting impression for audiences was great. But it wasn't just Ivana's acting and the story that impressed people. The film's use of special effects and elaborate costumes were big hits.

51:55Sarah Jilani:A lot of it was not physically there for me to see. For example, the fairies. Most of the time I had to imagine the fairies, or at best there were golf balls. These guys, the CGI crew, they had these golf balls on a stick and they would sort of move them around pretending they were the fairies.

52:17Max Pearson:The film has an ambiguous ending, and for Ivana her interpretation of it has changed throughout her life.

52:24Sarah Jilani:The doors are so wide open for anyone to choose their experience watching the movie and their path. And you can do so many readings into it, even just the end. There's so many things that are left for the audience to fill in those spaces. And I think that's what's so magical about this movie. And the thing is, like, full disclosure, there is no answer.

52:50Max Pearson:How proud are you that you're a part of this film? but also how proud are you that this was a Spanish language film that did so well around the world and has such a legacy?

53:00Sarah Jilani:I mean, you couldn't be prouder as an actor to be a part of something so unique and that has had such a lasting effect and that at the end of the day is a cult movie. I mean, when people ask me, you know, does it bother you that they still sometimes call you, you know, the child from Pants Labyrinth, the little girl from Pants Labyrinth and that people still ask you about it and approach you about it. I'm like, are you kidding? It's an honour. It's opened so many doors for me. Why would I turn my back on it? I'm nothing but proud of it.

53:34Max Pearson:That was Ivana Baquero talking to Timo Carahan about starring in the Spanish-language film Pan's Labyrinth when she was just 11 years old. Our final story from the past this week shifts the focus away from cinema but onto a group of women who perhaps should feature in a film of their own one day. This is our sporting witness. We're going back to 2002 and the very first women's Six Nations rugby championships. In 2023, Laura Jones spoke to one of the star players of the French team who would crown her glittering career by taking home the championship trophy. It's March 2002 and Nathalie Amiel is about to play for France, knowing it will be her last season after a glittering career.

54:21Sarah Jilani:Winning a Six Nations tournament is almost better than winning the European Cup against Italy. It's the holy grail, the top of the basket. It's the best you can do in European rugby.

54:34Max Pearson:Natalie grew up in the southern French countryside in the quiet village of Kapistan, where they were crazy about rugby.

54:42Sarah Jilani:I live in a village where we live and breathe rugby, and we discuss rugby on a daily basis. rugby is a big part of my village in fact on weekends when the french national team lost we would take out the football never the rugby ball that should tell you how people in the

54:58Max Pearson:village feel rugby definitely wasn't seen as a sport for women though but that changed for a young natalie in 1982 when her mom saw an advert in the local newspaper no no there was no visibility

55:13Sarah Jilani:of women. It was a newspaper article recruiting female players who wanted to try rugby in Narbonne that encouraged me to go into this sport. At the time, I thought women were not allowed to play rugby. I remember my first time there because I was turning 12 the next day, and they didn't want me because I was only 12. I was too young. My mom asked them to let me train anyway, to give it a tried to see if I liked it or not. After that go, they told me, we're keeping you. Never mind the age, we'll adapt.

55:49Max Pearson:So, Natalie was playing rugby at the age of 12, in two teams, one with Narbonne women, and the other with boys in her village. And she loved it. She was allowed to do things she wouldn't normally get away with.

56:03Sarah Jilani:Everything that was prohibited at school, shoving, falling on the ground, heckling, fighting for the ball, all these things that I did on a daily basis with my brothers. I loved everything. There wasn't anything that I didn't like. It was rugby as a whole that worked perfectly for me, for my character. I did judo and I learned how to fall and stand back up immediately, being tackled, standing up again, tackled and keep getting up. I rarely stayed on the ground.

56:33Max Pearson:In 1986, after just a few years playing rugby, Nathalie was selected to play for the French women's national team and travel abroad. She was still just a teenager.

56:45Sarah Jilani:I was a bit young, so I didn't understand at first what was happening to me. The year before, they'd refused me because of my age. So being able to do them after, I didn't really know where it was taking me. Honestly, at 15 years old, you don't imagine yourself playing in the French national team with adults. It was during our first game against Great Britain that I realised the privilege that I had to be able to play at this level. I was only 15. I was in London. It was my first big trip, my first game.

57:17Max Pearson:At the time, Natalie says women's rugby was definitely not taken very seriously.

57:23Sarah Jilani:There was the French Federation of Men's Rugby and the French Federation of Women's Rugby. Two completely separate federations. We weren't really accepted. Even more, we weren't tolerated.

57:36Max Pearson:After her young start, playing internationally aged just 15, Nathalie became an integral part of the France team for more than a decade, winning the Five Nations once and the European Championships four times.

57:50Sarah Jilani:I played flanker, scrum half, centre and a bit of fly half. I played all positions a bit, come to think of it. At the end of my career, I enjoyed being the centre or eighth. We managed the game, we managed the ball. When you have a bit of experience, you master that a bit better than when you're young.

58:11Max Pearson:The women's rugby teams of England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Spain and Wales were set to have their own six nations in 2001. Natalie had been playing internationally for 15 years and France were doing well.

58:25Sarah Jilani:I was captain twice for two world championships. My role was mostly to be an example, to be a unifier in the game and the engagement of players on the field.

58:34Max Pearson:But in February 2001, events outside of the rugby team's control put the brakes on both the women's and the men's competition, thanks to the highly infectious foot and mouth disease outbreak across the UK, as reported on the BBC. foot and mouth outbreak. No international rugby in Cardiff this weekend. The Irish team won't travel to play Wales and England's forthcoming match in Ireland is in real doubt. The whole Six Nations programme faces huge disruption.

59:01Sarah Jilani:We were worried because we were told it might not happen. So we were impatiently waiting to know if we were really going to do it or be able to do it.

59:12Max Pearson:Finally, the tournament happened properly in 2002, the very first women's Six Nations, and France were on top form. The team was well regarded.

59:23Sarah Jilani:Winning in France when you're a women's team is not enough. The show was there and the victories too. We checked both boxes. So the team was popular because we gave a good performance. We were really happy because we wanted to reunite and live a beautiful collective story. We sensed we could do something that year which wasn't true the years before.

59:45Max Pearson:France were the ones to beat. Here's Naomi Thomas from the Welsh side speaking to the BBC. They're an aggressive side. They perform pretty much like the men, quite forward-orientated.

59:58Sarah Jilani:Hopefully our pack will match up to that.

1:00:02Max Pearson:But Wales didn't stand a chance against France and neither did any of the other teams. They beat each and every one.

1:00:10Sarah Jilani:We played rugby à la French. We counter-attacked, taking risks that succeeded. a la French indeed, playing against the play of our adversaries. We had finally won a major title, the Six Nations tournament. There were a lot of people in the stadium, it was in Milan in France. My family was there and it was something I could share with them. It was a good omen for the world championship which was coming up in Barcelona.

1:00:38Max Pearson:So this was not only an important moment in women's rugby history, but also Nathalie Amiel's last season of her career.

1:00:48Sarah Jilani:For me, it was my last game in the Six Nations tournament because I stopped playing rugby that season. It was special. Even if you try to forget, there was always someone to remind you. Also on the last game, they had the bad idea of getting my oldest son to bring me the ball for the game. So in terms of emotions, it was huge. It took me until halftime before I was able to feel back in the game. I had my son, Quentin, who was then three and a half years old. I was tired of running, preparing myself physically, using up my family time. It waited on me more and more. I was not physically tired, but I was mentally tired.

1:01:26Sarah Jilani:If you combine work, family, rugby, training, from the end of July to the end of June every year, those are long days.

1:01:37Max Pearson:Natalie still thinks there's a long way to go in the journey for equality between the men's and the women's rugby game.

1:01:45Sarah Jilani:It lasted for my whole career. It's still ongoing and it will probably last a long time. We were first accepted because the previous president, Albert Ferraz, said we have to keep these female players because later they will be mothers, teachers, sports teachers and they will more likely bring their child to play rugby than football. That's how we were considered.

1:02:10Max Pearson:Nathalie Amiel is now a rugby coach, still living in Capistan in the south of France. She believes she was very lucky to be part of the growth of women's rugby.

1:02:19Sarah Jilani:I was privileged to have the skills at a time when women's rugby needed them. I don't necessarily look back on it. I'm privileged, I participated and met incredible people. but I don't really look back on things. I mostly look forward, not what happened in the past.

1:02:37Max Pearson:Nathalie Amiel, star of French women's rugby for more than 15 years, she was speaking to Laura Jones. And that's where we have to turn up the lights and leave the world of cinema and sport, which has been the focus of our first-hand stories from the past this week. We'll be casting the net wide, Norway, India, Cyprus and Mauritius, when the History Hour returns next week. So until then, this is Max Pearson. from all of us here. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

1:03:03Sarah Jilani:Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. We weren't going to ask permission. We were just going to do it. It was such an amazing feeling. It was incredible.

1:03:13Max Pearson:He started to write a story about how he came up with the idea for the red and yellow cars.

1:03:19Sarah Jilani:I got to go. We cried a bit. We laughed a bit. It was wonderful. There's a magic during those moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history. Sporting Witness. Subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:03:58Max Pearson:their shocking investigations. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.