THE RUNNER / DAVANDEH (1984)

Draw a line from the boys in Vittorio De Sica’s mid-‘40s Neo-Realist classics to Antoine Doinel of François Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS/’59, then on past Ken Loach’s KES/’69 and you could well land on the orphaned urchin in Amir Naderi’s THE RUNNER . . . and not be the poorer for it.  This semi-autobiographical work one of the few mature projects Naderi completed before leaving Post-Shah Revolutionary Iran.  Ten-yr-old Madjid Niroumand is Amiro (Naderi’s alter-ego), a street kid living in a Southern port town of oil refineries and a constant flow of international traffic, freighters, planes, trains, Amiro longs to join.  Yelling for attention when they pass, as if to say take me along or at the least SEE ME!  Odd-jobbing to survive (garbage picking, shoeshines for foreigners, collecting bottles gathered by the tide), then fighting to keep what’s his from older boys.  He gets some help from the local guys he plays fierce competitive games with.  (Stamina his secret weapon.)  But while they have homes/families of some sort, Amiro lives on an abandoned ship with little but magazines for company.  Just for the pictures since he can’t read.  Industrious, honest and determined to improve himself, his serious, square face occasionally breaking into a smile so big you could walk inside it.  And the expected movement  toward self-improvement in the third act doesn’t spoil the film with sentiment and good intentions, but does raise the stakes as Amiro finds a program that teaches him to read those magazines, and to see a way forward beyond his mad dashes in the deadly serious games he plays to win.  Remarkable stuff, acclaimed in its day, now too little seen.

DOUBLE-BILL:  The Criterion disc (and presumably their site) has a double-bill included, WAITING/’74, a five-reeler made a decade earlier by Naderi, also with autobiographical elements, but here in dreamlike code.  Again, a young boy (this one as striking as a fashion model - YA PARIS VOGUE?) living with elderly relatives in a perfectly preserved ancient city with little water.  His daily task to fill a large pressed glass bowl with ice he receives from a mysterious house after finding his way thru a maze of streets.  All mood & texture, where RUNNER is rough & solid, this is poetic poverty and utterly bewitching.