The King of the Street Cleaners

Apti sweeps the streets of the neighbourhood: a man who harms nobody, up early, pushing his cart. He is in love with Hacer, who goes out to clean houses in the same district, and he has no money and no courage to speak. Hasan, the municipal inspector, wants her too; he uses the authority he holds as a means of pressure on the traders and the sweeper, and nobody in the neighbourhood can refuse him. Then Apti walks by mistake into a nightclub, and that evening everything changes. Zeki Ökten directs. Kemal Sunal plays Apti and Şener Şen plays Hasan, with Ayşen Gruda, İlyas Salman and Erdal Özyağcılar in the cast. It is among the best known of the films the two leads made together, and their opposition is the engine: one takes shelter in the rules, the other has no rules at all. The subject is power. The inspector holds no great authority; he uses the small authority he has to the limit, and the film shows what that means in a neighbourhood. Zeki Ökten is known as a social realist director and this comedy sits on the same ground; the class relations of the district stand plainly inside the narrative. Its lines became widely known in Turkey and the film has been shown regularly on television. The second half steps outside the comic mould and the tone hardens. Who it is for: viewers who like the comedies of Turkish popular cinema and the films of Kemal Sunal and Şener Şen. Who it is not for: the humour is of its time, the woman stays inside a type, and the print is worn.