Getting Lost in the Waves of Bosphorus

Is it worth your time?

If you have a soft spot for old-school romantic dramas that feel like they were pulled from a dusty archive, yeah, watch it. It’s for the folks who like staring at streets from decades ago and watching people just talk. If you need explosions or a tight, fast-moving plot, you’ll probably be checking your watch every ten minutes. It’s a slow burn that doesn’t always know where it’s going.

Selim is a journalist, which mostly means he spends a lot of time looking intense while holding a notepad. Eleni is running a fancy barbershop in Peran, and honestly, the set design for that shop is the best thing in the whole flick. I found myself wishing we spent more time in the chairs and less time in the crowded cafes.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of In the Waves of Bosphorus (1934) through its definitive frames.

There is this one moment where they are walking near the water and the lighting is just… weird. It looks like the sun is having a fight with a cloud, and the camera lingers on them for so long that I started wondering if the projectionist fell asleep. But somehow, it works. It feels like a real date where you’ve run out of things to say.

Odd bits and pieces

• The background extras in the market scenes are doing some truly bizarre things. One guy is just aggressively eating a piece of fruit for like three minutes.
• The dialogue is flowery, maybe a bit too much, like they read a book of poems right before filming.
• I kept thinking about how this compares to something like The Sea Lion, which had a lot more salt in its air, whereas this is all perfume and newspaper ink.

The chemistry is hit or miss. Sometimes it’s electric, and other times they look like they’re waiting for the bus together. It’s not a perfect movie, not by a long shot. But there’s a sincerity here that you don't see in modern stuff. It’s not trying to be a blockbuster or a masterpiece. It’s just trying to be a story about two people in a city that’s changing faster than they are.

I left the screen feeling a little bit like I’d just had a long, slightly confusing conversation with a stranger. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. 🌊