Family Honour

Rıza feeds a household of five children by hauling water and soda on a cart. There is no money but the house is crowded and cheerful. Then his youngest son Murat is hit by a car in front of his sister Zeynep. She finds the owner of the car and makes a complaint. The car belongs to Oktay, a spoiled young man who counts on his father's money. Rıza tries to settle the matter without a fight. Oktay does not know how to back down, and it reaches as far as Zeynep. Orhan Aksoy directs. The screenplay is by Sadık Şendil, Suphi Tekniker and Orhan Aksoy, and Nahit Ataman produced. Münir Özkul plays Rıza, Adile Naşit his wife and Itır Esen plays Zeynep, with Ayşen Gruda in the cast. The honour of the title is the subject itself. The only capital a poor family holds is its name, and the narrative is built on how that is protected. The first half is comedy and the second hardens. Münir Özkul plays not the comic father here but a man who endures and then stops enduring. It is among the plainest examples of the class narrative of Turkish popular cinema: the rich are untouchable before the law and what the poor hold is only each other. It was shot in Istanbul, around Kumburgaz and Kadıköy. Who it is for: viewers who like the classics of Turkish popular cinema and the films of Münir Özkul. Who it is not for: the melodrama is heavy, the villain is one dimensional, and the ending uses emotional pressure to the end.