After scanning the original negative in 2K, digital restoration was done by Pishgamane Cinemaye Arya in 2014 with funding by the National Film Archive of Iran. A new negative was produced and approved by the film’s director.
Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Scorsese (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (A Simple Event: the Birth of Iranian New Wave Cinema) with e-subtitles in English and earphone translation in Italian, 3 July 2015
Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue and website): "There are other films about men and cows (The Cow and I, for one) but unlike The Cow they can hardly be called love stories, nor are they works that so powerfully explore madness, solitude and obsession as this film does. This milestone of Iranian New Wave cinema tells the story of a poor villager (played by stage actor Ezzatolah Entezami in one of Iranian cinema’s greatest performances) whose only source of joy and livelihood is his cow, which provides milk for the village. (Not surprisingly, when the film came out, the milk was viewed by the left as symbolic of oil). One night the cow is mysteriously killed and that’s when the madness, or rather transformation, begins."
"A filmmaker who has reinvented his approach to cinema in every decade since the 1960s, Mehrjui can move from the sombre tone of a Salinger adaptation, to a hilarious comedy of sorts. From humble beginnings he went on to study philosophy at UCLA and upon his return to Iran was assigned to direct a James Bond-type thriller which had nothing to do with his authorial ambitions."
"It was his second film, The Cow, based on short stories by Marxist psychiatrist Gholam-Hossein Saedi, which served as his breakthrough. “While making The Cow I had no idea what effects it would have on the history of Iranian cinema”, says Mehrjui, “it was more a reaction on my part to the trend of the totally commercial and somehow vulgar film industry dominating that period. I always wanted to make a film in a village with rustic spaces, especially after seeing Au hasard Balthazar and Los olvidados”."
"Promptly banned from export, one of Mehrjui’s French friends smuggled a print out to the Venice Film Festival, where it was shown without subtitles and became one of the first films of the Iranian cinema given international appraisal. Poignantly wrapped in layers of religion and leftist politics (two major forces of the 1979 revolution), The Cow came under the spotlight more than a decade later, when Ayatollah Khomeini identified it as an example of good cinema, in opposition to the many ‘corrupting films’ from the Pahlavi era." (Ehsan Khoshbakht)
AA: A tale of a man so devoted to his cow, essential for the entire village, that when the cow dies, nobody dares to tell him the truth, but he guesses it anyway, and turns (mentally) into the cow himself. A tale of a society in a state of madness. A tale of backwardness and dishonesty so deep that it is hard to face. A tale of the vicious circle of lying: one lie begets another, and lying keeps getting worse. There is an important parallel motif of harassing and bullying village fools. There are three thieves, the Boulouris, constantly looking for a chance to strike at night and steal livestock.
A simple and realistic approach to a weird tale. The milieux and the weathered faces look true. There are ellipses in the narrative.
The music is interesting and original, performed on native instruments apparently.
The cinematography is stark.
The DCP is bright and clean. There was a digital freeze of some three minutes in the middle.
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