Blue Rain screenplay

The Blue Rain screenplay is the unfinished center of a proposed art-film project and a practical pretext for Kemal’s frequent visits to the Keskin family. Feridun writes it for Füsun, who believes in the script and urges Kemal to support it; Kemal, however, privately judges it harshly even as he performs confidence in its prospects. The screenplay’s significance lies in this double function: it promises Füsun a film role while helping Kemal sustain his place in her household, but its development becomes a sequence of rewrites and delays rather than a production.

Commission and Promise

Toward the end of November, after Füsun had coaxed him for a long time, Feridun completed the final draft. After supper, on the landing at the top of the stairs and under Füsun’s frowning gaze, he formally handed the typescript to Kemal, asking for a decision from him as prospective producer. Füsun pressed Kemal to read carefully, saying that she believed in the screenplay and trusted him. Kemal answered with an emphatic promise of support and declared the film made. The exchange establishes the project’s stakes for Füsun: she wants both the art-film ambition and the chance to star in it.

The proposed film also serves a purpose beyond its stated artistic aims. Kemal and the Keskin family discuss it discreetly because Füsun fears Tarık might object to her becoming a film star and obstruct her plans. Kemal regards the art film as a convincing reason to visit the family four times a week, concealing the real purpose of his appearances. Aunt Nesibe already understands that purpose. The screenplay therefore gives the household a public, practical subject to discuss while allowing Kemal to continue a private attachment that cannot be openly acknowledged.

Kemal’s Reading of the Script

The screenplay is titled Blue Rain, but Kemal finds nothing in it that suggests awareness of Füsun, himself, their romance, or their story. He has come to respect Feridun’s intelligence and knowledge of film, including his sharp criticism of Turkish filmmakers who imitate Western art cinema and lapse into artificiality, moralism, melodrama, vulgarity, or commercial populism. Reading the draft, Kemal is vexed to find what he considers those same failings in Feridun’s work. He reflects that the longing for art, like the longing for love, can blind a person and obscure what is already known.

Three proposed appearances in which Füsun’s character would be nude intensify Kemal’s disapproval. They are included for commercial reasons, and he judges them arty, insipid, and gratuitous. His confidence in the project, he admits, had always been a pose; after reading the scenes, he becomes more opposed to the script than he imagines Tarık would have been. Yet Kemal does not tell Füsun and Feridun what he thinks. Instead, he praises the screenplay lavishly and says that, as producer, he is ready to begin tryouts for actors and technicians. He even mocks his own zeal in order to make the performance of confidence seem more credible. His reaction exposes the gap between the project’s promise and his actual judgment, while his decision to keep it alive preserves the arrangement that brings him back to the family.

Censorship and Rewriting

The project’s progress depends on a censorship system that can delay a film before shooting begins. In the first phase, the screenplay must be submitted for approval of its subject and scenes. As with other work requiring state permission, the process involves a complicated bureaucracy of permits and bribery, alongside agents who offer to guide applicants. During the spring of 1977, Kemal and Feridun sit smoking in the offices of Lemon Films and consider which agent to approach for Blue Rain. The screenplay’s artistic ambition must therefore pass through a process shaped by official scrutiny and informal intermediaries.

One possible intermediary is Demir the Typewriter, a well-liked Istanbul Greek and former boxer whose method is to rewrite scripts on his own typewriter and in his distinctive style. He is known for making screenplays acceptable to censors by softening sharp divisions and critical statements, and by adding reassuring references to the flag, the nation, Atatürk, and Allah. His revisions also temper extreme or vulgar passages by restoring what he calls the innocent charm of everyday life. Even large companies that regularly bribe the censorship board entrust him with scripts, including ones without obviously unsuitable material, because they value the lyrical, childlike quality he brings to them.

Kemal, Feridun, and Füsun visit Demir at his home in Kurtuluş after learning how much his work contributed to films that had affected them the previous summer. In a room marked by the ticking of an enormous wall clock, they see the old Remington that made his reputation and the project files stacked between the kebab and fruit he has laid out. Demir offers to recast their screenplay if he likes it, but warns that his workload means the process will take time. His twin daughters, seated at the dining table and reading scripts their father has not yet reached, have become even better than he is at preparing screenplays for approval. One of them later returns the version rewritten specially for Füsun, with admiring words about its European art-film quality. By then, three more months have passed. Füsun responds to the delay with pouts and occasional sharp words, while Kemal reminds her that Feridun’s own work has been slow as well.

Delay and the Unfulfilled Film

The repeated revisions prevent the project from reaching production. Füsun tells Kemal that Feridun is so dissatisfied with Demir’s rewrite that he is doing it over again, and asks Kemal to urge him not to take too long. She wants the film of hers to begin. Kemal agrees, but three weeks later she recognizes that shooting is still months away: the censors are slow and suspicious, and the screenplay has not yet reached an acceptable form. At this point, the film remains a promise rather than a completed plan.

The delay is visible in the contrast between Füsun’s artistic work and the stalled screenplay. She sometimes tells Kemal that she has not been able to paint for several days; when the film disappoints her, she leads him into the back room to discuss it. On one visit she has finished painting a crow and is slowly working on a sparrow. She also says that she would like to go to Paris to look at museum pictures. Her paintings continue to advance while the film does not, making her frustration concrete rather than merely professional. The screenplay’s failure to move forward begins to affect the mood in which she works and speaks about her ambitions.

As the art-film project remains suspended, Füsun tells Kemal that Muzaffer Bey has offered her a role at the Pelür Bar and emphasizes that it is a serious offer. The possibility arrives before Feridun’s film has even begun shooting. Kemal warns her to be careful around the men there, while she replies that Feridun is careful and that they both take the offer seriously. The scene leaves Blue Rain as an unrealized route to Füsun’s screen career, set against another opportunity that has emerged during its delays. In the evidence presented, the screenplay’s outcome is not a finished film but an extended, uncertain process that binds Kemal to the family and keeps Füsun waiting.