The Bride

Hacı İlyas migrates with his family from Yozgat to Istanbul. The aim is clear: save money, open a shop in a good district and hold on in the city. Everyone works toward it. The son of Meryem, the daughter in law, falls ill and the doctor says he needs an operation. The operation means money, and money means taking from the shop. The family will not risk it. Meryem is left alone. Lütfi Ö. Akad directs. Hülya Koçyiğit plays Meryem, Kerem Yılmazer her husband Veli, and Ali Şen plays Hacı İlyas, with Aliye Rona and Kamran Usluer in the cast. It is the first of Akad's migration trilogy, followed by Düğün and Diyet. The trilogy is about what becomes of families who move from Anatolia to Istanbul. The conflict at the centre is not money but whose decision it is. Meryem has no say at any stage; the men of the family decide about her son and she only lives with the result. The strength is in the tone. Akad makes nobody a villain; the family behaves that way out of fear and poverty, and the narrative shows it without accusation. The road Meryem takes at the end, beginning to work for her own wage, is among the known instances in Turkish cinema of a woman's turn toward independence. Who it is for: viewers who follow the classics of Turkish cinema and social realist narrative. Who it is not for: it is heavy, it promises nothing, and the print is worn by the shooting conditions of the period.