The Girl with the Red Scarf

The Girl with the Red Scarf (1977) is one of the most quoted films in Turkish cinema, and it is quoted for a single line: what was love? It was labour. Adapted from a story by Chinghiz Aitmatov, it follows İlyas, a truck driver who comes to a remote village for a dam project and meets Asya. They marry. Then İlyas's life comes apart and Asya has to choose between the man who set her alight and the man who is simply there every day. The courage of the film is that it declines to answer that romantically. It defines love as a behaviour rather than a feeling, and it does so without turning anyone into a villain. İlyas is not a bad man. He is a man who cannot stay. Atıf Yılmaz keeps the camera still and uses framing to hold the distance between Türkan Şoray and Kadir İnanır. The score, and the images of eastern Anatolia in the seventies, form a layer of their own. It runs 86 minutes. Good for: Turkish classics, melodrama, and films that leave you arguing about what love is. Fine with family. Less good for: the picture and sound quality of the period can be demanding now. Do not expect a fast story.