Technically a French film, but you’d never know, Tony Gatlif’s 1993 film Latcho Drom (which translates as ‘Safe Journey’) is an enthralling Cinemascope panorama tracing the thousand-year passage of the gypsies from India to Western Europe via Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. There’s no dialogue or conventional narrative: everything is told in songs and dances appropriate to the relevant country, presumably performed by musicians steeped in the right tradition.
(I say “presumably” because I don’t know, but the presence of Taraf de Haïdouks in the Romanian scenes – which someone’s uploaded to YouTube here – prove that Gatlif knew what he was doing, especially given that this film was made 14 years ago when they were far less internationally renowned than they are now. I think this film played a major part in building their current reputation)
The only subtitles cover the song lyrics, which – as one might expect – deal with the theme of being an outcast in whatever society one happens to be in (ancient India, Nazi Germany, Ceauşescu’s Romania), but these explicit themes very much play second fiddle to the vivid sense of place, colour, composition and rhythm adorning more or less every shot. It’s an exhilarating piece of work.
This film needs the best presentation it can get (there are loads of YouTube clips, but they’re not a patch on what’s playing in the background as I write this), but thankfully the Australian DVD (Madman) is up to scratch – it’s got a flawless print and transfer and lively soundtrack (it only seems to be plain stereo, not the advertised Dolby 5.1, but I can live with that), and the subtitles are infrequent enough for me not to mind them being yellow. It was also going cheap enough for me to risk an blind purchase (I’m reviewing Gatlif’s latest, Transylvania, and wanted some context), and I’m very glad I did.