cinema trust Parviz Nouri in Etemad Musht newspaper: I have many good memories of Dariush Mehrjooi, my dear friend; But these two memories have a different attraction for me and they will never be forgotten from my mind, even though I have described them before, they are associated with Dariush’s name again.
Mehrjooi and Kurosawa
Khosro Shakibaei told me that after “Hamon” an invitation came from the Japanese Cinema Center and they invited us to Japan, a group of us went to Japan together with director Dariush Mehrjooi. The hospitality of the Japanese was wonderful; The best hotel was planned for us and with the best Japanese food, but with a major problem that we had to pick up the food with two sticks (instead of a spoon) and put it in our mouths.
These did not bother me much; The main inconvenience of our relationship with the director of cinema and in fact the master of Japanese cinema Akira Kurosawa, we sat with him in the introduction meeting to talk about Iranian cinema in particular and then about “Hamun”, none of us knew the language and were confused and confused. We were sitting and looking at Kurosawa until the moment when Mehrjooi started talking to Kurosawa in English and he really saved us. That is, it saved our reputation. He then explained to us that Kurosawa is very optimistic about Iran’s current cinema and has seen many Iranian films and felt that talented young people have appeared in the cinema scene who were able to make films with strong social content. Mehrjooi said about Kurosawa’s works from the time of “Seven Samurai” and the film that actually made Japanese cinema universal. Kurosawa himself preferred “living” more and said: In this film, there were people who discovered the meaning and concept of life through themselves, and in the eyes of others, they appeared as extraordinary people. (Of course, these were translated for us by Mehrjooi) An important sentence that we still haven’t forgotten was that Shakibai here took out a paper from his pocket and read from it; If someone tries alone to deal with the evils and filth of society, he will inevitably end up destroying himself. Khosro Shakibaei – whose memory is with us – said: Mehrjooi’s presence there was an honor and gave us a special prestige.
A friend in the movie
And another memory is that on one of the days, which I think was towards the end of working on the movie “Mr. Hollow”, the cameraman Hoshang Bharlo (an old colleague and friend of Shafiq Bande, who was also a good photographer) said he wanted to take a picture of me. Of course, I didn’t know why he suddenly came to this exchange to have a souvenir photo of me! He came to our house with his camera and equipment and took pictures. When Mr. Hollow was ready to show, once Mehrjooi and several times Baharlu told me with a smile that you should definitely go see the movie. I was afraid of insisting to see the movie. I said to myself, is it not a bad movie and they are looking for a solution to silence the critics? But Baharlu and Mehrjooi were talking with laughter and jokes. So what happened?
Out of curiosity, I went to one of the cinemas showing the film, which was Capri Cinema, and carefully looked at the film. As the story progressed, I didn’t see anything special in it until I reached the scene where Ali Nasiryan, i.e. Mr. Hollow, entered that room in the cafe behind the castle (where Fakhri Khorosh, the female character of the story) worked, after going through many doors. The close-up of Nasiryan came against Khorosh. I noticed my own photo; The same photo that Bharlo took insistently in our house. Along with my photo, a photo of Omar Sharif was pasted on the wall of the infamous Qesa woman’s room. I laughed at this joke at first, but when I got to know more about its meaning and its use in that house, little by little the effects of some kind of revenge and retaliation appeared in me. From then on, I started thinking and planning.
It has been a long time since that incident until I decided to make “Hakim Bashi”. The film was a story of a sandcastle in a remote village, where the simple people there were surrounded by sandcastle and astrolabe, and their work was untied. I had a scene where a young woman came and had a problem; Her problem was, of course, that an urban youth, naughty and unscrupulous in the style of Persian films at that time, had deceived her and ran away, and now the woman wanted to find that young man. Ramal asked the woman for the photo of this young man to put on Ramal, and when the woman gave him the photo, we saw Mehrjooi’s photo in a large close-up image.
After seeing me, Mehrjooi said: Watch my next film. I told him, let’s not repeat this joke, and that was it, and several years passed and his memory went into oblivion, and instead, our relationship became stronger, and finally he asked me and my wife to play the main roles in the movie “Tehran, Tehran Days of Acquaintance” with him. to do
I said these things and suddenly I felt that I miss him; What a terrible fate and what a terrible end. I never thought a talent like him would leave us alone. However, I still can’t believe that it is no longer between us. He is always with me everywhere and at all times and at all times.