THE COW ****

Sometimes the great masterpieces of world cinema sneak in and then out of our field of vision and indeed our consciousness before we have time to recognise them. This was certainly true of Dariush Mehrjui's Iranian film "The Cow" which he made in 1969. A lot of people know it by reputation yet few have seen it. (It was initially banned by the Iranian government and had to be smuggled out of the country). It's a folk-tale, primitive not just in its setting but in its style of telling which will be familiar, nevertheless, to those who know Italian neo-realist cinema or perhaps the early films of Michael Cacoyannis.

The thin plot involves the death of a beloved cow belonging to Mash Hassan and of the villagers initial attempts to hide the death from him and, while an intensely visual work, was originally based on a play. The world it presents is, of course, alien to those of us in the West; a world that is simplistic, at times savage and even surreal. This is truly a world apart. In some respects this is a great tragic-comedy, the story of a man, magnificently played by the great Iranian actor Ezzatolah Entezami, so devoted to his beloved cow that he not only refuses to believe she's dead but that he himself has become the animal. In fact, this could easily have come from the pen of Kafka or Ionesco and its neglect these past 50 years is positively shameful.