2017 - November
RANKING ALL FILMS:
01. The Feast (1967) 4/4
02. The Rhythm of Crime (1981) 4/4
03. Dreaming the Rump (1986) 3.5/4
04. The Third Man (1949) 3.5/4
05. A Holy Place (1990) 3/4
06. The Third Key (1983) 3/4
07. Eagle (1990) 3/4
08. The Man Who Liked Funerals (1989) 3/4
09. Žarki (1970) 3/4
10. The Trek (1968) 3/4
11. The Colonel’s Wife (1972) 3/4
12. The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) 3/4
13. The Visitor (1979) 2.5/4
14. The Convicted (1987) 2.5/4
15. Amanda Knox (2017) 2/4
16. A Murder in a School (1982) 2/4
17. The Third Woman (1997) 2/4
01. The Feast (1967) 4/4
02. The Rhythm of Crime (1981) 4/4
03. Dreaming the Rump (1986) 3.5/4
04. The Third Man (1949) 3.5/4
05. A Holy Place (1990) 3/4
06. The Third Key (1983) 3/4
07. Eagle (1990) 3/4
08. The Man Who Liked Funerals (1989) 3/4
09. Žarki (1970) 3/4
10. The Trek (1968) 3/4
11. The Colonel’s Wife (1972) 3/4
12. The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) 3/4
13. The Visitor (1979) 2.5/4
14. The Convicted (1987) 2.5/4
15. Amanda Knox (2017) 2/4
16. A Murder in a School (1982) 2/4
17. The Third Woman (1997) 2/4
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- DirectorBasil DeardenStarsRoger MooreHildegard NeilAlastair MackenzieHarold Pelham discovers a doppelganger is meddling with his personal and professional life in the aftermath of a car crash.01-11-2017
A doppelgänger is described as an exact double of a living person in appearance and behaviour. Although not unheard of in real life, this notion has been taken to fanciful lengths in literature where it was very quickly accepted as a neat device which lends itself nicely to complexly crafted plots and farcical confusions. Although the word itself wasn't invented until 1796, the idea of doubles has been present in literature and mythology for a very long time be they twins long separated such as in Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors", some kind of supernatural beings such as in Euripides' "Helen", or two people who simply and unexplainedly look-alike such as in Mark Twain's "Prince and the Pauper". The notion, however, escaped horror writers until Edgar Allan Poe (who else) wrote "William Wilson", a short story about a debauched man haunted by his exact double. From here on in, the doppelganger became a staple of horror fiction. Some of the best-known examples include one of the more interesting "The Twilight Zone" episodes, "Mirror Image", "The Dark Half" by Stephen King, and in movies, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "The 6th Day" and to a certain degree Sean Ellis' "The Broken". One could even argue that the famous Jack Finney novel "The Body Snatchers" is a doppelgänger story even though I believe it presses different buttons. The Finney novel plays on our paranoia of others, that they are secretly working on our demise or less maliciously but equally worryingly gossiping about us behind our backs or simply disliking us. It also plays on that feeling everyone gets every once in a while that we don't really know our friends, our family members, or even ourselves. Often suddenly and soberingly, we find out things about people that surprise us and make us rethink our opinions of them. Well, if we didn't know they were a Tory voter who knows, maybe we don't know they're actually pod-based alien life forms out to kill and replace us. A classic doppelgänger story, however, plays on our fear of loss. More specifically, of losing everything we've worked for. Everyone has this burrowing, pressing fear that everything around us, our house, our money, our spouse, etc. could just simply vanish one day. Whether through some sort of a financial crisis, a bad investment, a thoughtless affair, or some such thing, everything we know, love, and are used to could simply disappear from under our feet causing us to plummet into a void of despair. In a doppelgänger story, a stable and usually wealthy man's life is usurped by a double who appears seemingly out of nowhere and begins taking over his life. Suddenly, this man finds himself losing everything to a person no one can distinguish from himself. In that sense, this man, a classic doppelgänger story protagonist, is indeed haunted by himself. Novelist and screenwriter Anthony Armstrong tapped into that idea beautifully with "The Strange Case of Mr Pelham", a novel that is easily if not the best, then certainly the best example of a classic doppelgänger story. All the elements are there, we have the stately and well-adjusted businessman in the form of Mr Harold Pelham, his organised and comfortable existence, and the usurpation of it by the mysterious appearance of an exact double who first acquires a mistress and then begins selling Pelham's company's trade secrets. The novel, at first, presents itself as a mystery with Pelham thinking he might be suffering from some sort of a mental illness only to reveal itself in the second half with a shockingly effective twist. Nowadays, of course, the idea that the audience wouldn't know what is going in immediately is about as ludicrous as making a mystery movie about a doctor named Jekyll. The novel has been adapted three times, twice for television and once as a feature film. The second TV adaptation is a distinctly bleakly funny version directed by none other but Alfred Hitchcock himself. The film version retitled brilliantly as "The Man Who Haunted Himself" is perhaps less memorable but still highly effective. Directed by distinguished British director Basil Dearden it stars Roger Moore in one of his best performances as the charming, likeable Mr Pelham who after a car accident begins to be haunted by a double. The first half of the film is indeed the best with the slow-burn tension becoming increasingly unbearable. It is indeed frustrating watching Pelham slowly lose everything he had and by the midway point, I was well and truly squirming in my seat. The second half is less intriguing but very well done with Pelham, now losing his mind, trying his best to get the better of his doppelgänger. The film ends somewhat unsatisfactorily but entertainingly with a brilliantly shot car chase. "The Man Who Haunted Himself" is no classic but director Basil Dearden achieves such a creepy atmosphere of frustration and tension that the film is indeed unforgettable. The scenes in which Pelham uncovers more and more about his double's impertinent actions and behaviour have an eery quality to them as they evoke that aforementioned fear we all have. You genuinely do start wondering what you'd do if you were in Mr Pelham's shoes and the worst thing about the whole matter is that you just don't know. Through this wondering, one starts to fully identify with the character and I was feeling just as helpless as he by the end of the film. I do wish, however, that the script was tighter with better fleshed out characters but Dearden's stylish and dynamic direction nicely covers for the uneven pace. Coupled with strong performances from the supporting cast especially from Anton Rodgers as Pelham's calm and logical friend Tony, this is a thriller more than worth watching.
3/4 - DirectorDjordje KadijevicStarsJovan Janicijevic-BurdusAnka ZupancDusan JanicijevicIn a Serbian village on Christmas Day in 1943, the Chetniks accept two downed American pilots and give them hospitality. However, finding out that the Germans are looking for pilots, the Chetniks change attitude towards them, disarming and shutting them off, but the pilots were able to escape. Palming off the corpses of two other killed prisoners to the Germans, who have since captured the real pilots, the Chetniks make local people enraged, despite their captain's attempts to cover up this wrongdoing, done on a public holiday.04-11-2017
Propaganda filmmaking is usually associated with totalitarian regimes. The Nazis had Leni Riefenstahl, the Soviets had Mikheil Chiaureli. The goal of these films was to glorify nations, doctrines, and factions. Their scale was usually epic and more often than not they were set in wartime and depicted some sort of grand victory or tragic sacrifice on behalf of the totalitarian party. What evades most people is that such filmmaking is in fact NOT endemic to dictatorships and is actually more present and at times less subtle in American filmmaking. From the romanticised heroism of the Old West in which handsome cowboys slaughter nasty Indians to the cheap and sleazy anti-communist films in which those dastardly Commies try their darnest to undermine the efforts of democracy one could actually argue that most of what we now consider to be 'American cinema' is propaganda. This doesn't mean these films have no aesthetic value or that they are necessarily bad but it does make their politics reprehensible and pushy. Now, in the former Yugoslavia, the mildest of all communist regimes, film was the closest controlled art form and true to form most of them were propaganda pictures. Of course, the most popular type of propaganda was the war epic or the so-called "partisan movie" which glorified the actions of the Communist partisans always portrayed as likeable, clean-cut, witty fellows against the cold, barbarous Nazis. Now, as a subgenre, it is about as hit-and-miss as any other with both excellent and awful examples. The good films were usually the compact, action-based romps such as the films of Hajrudin Krvavac ("The Demolition Squad", "The Bridge", "Walter Defends Sarajevo") and the lesser films were the glorifying bloated, overcooked epics of Veljko Bulajic and his overeager successors ("Kozara", "Battle of Neretva", "Sutjeska"). Outside of the partisan movies, there was little variety as the other films were either poor imitations of foreign films (usually French thrillers), empty-headed comedies, or art films no one watched. So, out of this climate, a knee-jerk movement was born called 'The Yugoslav Black Wave'. The sole aim of this movement was to "pull the other way", so to speak, to portray a bleak, repressed existence that they perceived as reality. Utilising a documentaristic style and a Godard-esque aesthetic they ended up making a slew of depressing, dour, at-times unwatchably experimental films which were in many ways just as bad as the films their creators renounced. Both were in essence propaganda films, unsubtly so, the only difference being that they were propagating different causes. This, in turn, caused an atmosphere on the Yugoslav film scene where films were decried as either "ours" (i.e. for the Communist party) or "theirs" (i.e. Black wave). Based on the label your film was then either released or banned. Djordje Kadijevic, an up-and-coming film director in 1967, is sometimes considered a black wave filmmaker but his films don't snuggly fit into either category. He was certainly not a regime filmmaker as his films never glorified or defended it, but he was not really an anti-regime filmmaker either. In fact, his films rarely ever dealt with the regime as he was more interested in philosophical issues and subjects then political squabbles. His magnificent debut, "The Feast", is too dark, brutal, and uncompromising to be a regime film, but it also never criticises it, comments on it, or even deals with it. He uses black wave techniques but "The Feast" is apolitical and
thus cannot be a black wave movie. As such, in a strongly divided climate, it flopped. In fact, what it is, is a deeply apolitical film which speaks not of one side or the other but of the Serbian people in general. The characters in it wear uniforms of the other side (the Chetnik side) but they might as well be Partisans because Kadijevic makes a strong point that despite the fact they've adorned themselves with uniforms and ranks they're all still regular people underneath with all the flaws of a simple peasant. The film is set during the war but it is not about war but rather the people in a war. How they act, how they abuse power, and how they react to power. It focuses on a small village in Serbia (which in an unassuming way ends up representing Serbia as a whole) under the control of the Chetniks on Christmas Day. The commander of the squad (Janez Vrhovec) has gone to the local town to celebrate leaving sergeant Katic (Jovan Janicijevic), an uncouth, grotesque peasant in charge. Katic, taken by power, imagines himself as a little Napoleon and becomes a larger-than-life figure, commanding everyone in sight, and even delivering justice in an unforgettable sequence in which a young woman (Anka Zupanc) is caught having an affair. His brutal reign is welcomed by the bloodthirsty and easily swayed locals. They speak of Christmas, make the sign of the cross, respectfully bow their heads in church, but then quickly forget about religion and holidays as soon as there's either food to be eaten or a promise of violence. Katic's little kingdom is disrupted when two American airmen crash in the village and his unit rescues them. At first, he welcomes them expecting to get the glory for their safe return to the allies only to change his mind when he hears that the Nazis are after them. He then decides to hand them over and get the glory for their capture but things quickly get chaotic in an almost farcical but never remotely funny way. "The Feast" is a difficult film for anyone who's not from the Balkans to get, but for us "lucky" enough to hail from that mythical place it is painfully on point. All the finest qualities of the Serbian peasant are show from spite, envy, and cowardice to vulgarity, disrespect, and hardheadedness. Any Balkan who doesn't recognise himself in "The Feast" is either a liar or an impostor. However, this film is not merely an allegory. It is a fantastic portrayal of the chaos of war especially in the no man's land, unpatrolled by either the invaders or the defenders. It is also a powerful look at human brutality which is unfortunately universal. The execution is unusually for a debut film downright perfect. Kadijevic as a long-time lover of art (and a noted art historian) has a sharp eye for framing and camera movements. Note how he employs two different techniques for two key scenes of violence. In the aforementioned street justice scene the way he films is a note-perfect example of realism. The hand-held camera runs through the crowd of extras baying for the woman's blood. There are dirty close-ups, out-of-focus shots, jerky movements all brilliantly adding up to an unflinching portrayal of messy, human brutality. Later on in the film, on the orders of Katic, there's an execution carried out by a mysterious, silent Manola (Dusan Janicijevic). He slowly comes out of the fog enveloping the forest where the scene takes place and without a word slits the designated neck while the crowd, rowdy in the previous scene now completely silent and hypnotised by fear, watches. The scene is done from two calculated, elegantly executed shots. One, a static look at Manola approaching his victim, the other a slow dolly zoom towards a horrified onlooker. The effect is an eery, creepy scene of orchestrated, army brutality. The masterful technical execution of the film is down to cinematographer Aleksandar Petkovic who gives the film its memorably unappealing, realistic look. The performances are top-notch as well with Jovan Janicijevic leading the pack with the best performance he's ever given. Janicijevic was a well-known comedian in Yugoslavia but here he is neither funny nor endearing as the supremely grotesque but three-dimensional Katic. You understand his motivations, the way he thinks, but you still profoundly dislike him. Another wonderful performance comes from Bata Zivojinovic as a Chetnik major who tries to strong-arm Katic into handing over the pilots only for his underlings to kill him out of spite. But for all its majestic qualities, "The Feast" has one crucial flaw. Kadijevic's film is at its core apolitical. The Chetniks in the film, as I said earlier, could have just as easily been Partisans but the fact remains that they are in fact Chetniks. The chasm between the two factions is still as strongly divisive as it was in 1967 or 1943 and the fact remains that it is hard, downright impossible, to overlook the fact that all the bad guys in the films are Chetniks. While it wasn't his intention, Kadijevic has made a supremely anti-Chetnik movie, one that is very difficult to watch impartially as you should. It doesn't matter which uniform Katic wears and as such, it shouldn't have been shown. It should have been a uniform in a war, unspecified so as not to distract from the film's actual point. Sadly, that's impossible and "The Feast" often falls victim to the tensions between ours and theirs who don't look past the uniform. One dismiss it as a propaganda film and others embrace it as a propaganda film, both misunderstanding it. That's "The Feast's" cross to bear. A later, perhaps better movie, Krsto Papic's "Handcuffs" dealt with similar subjects (abuse of power and human brutality) in a similar fashion (also portraying a dichotomy between a celebration and violence taking place at the same time) without touching upon the Chetnik/Partisan division and for that reason "Handcuffs" is a more communicable film. Both sides can watch it and like or dislike it for the right reasons while "The Feast" is an easy film to misunderstand. However, if you do "get it" it's a dour, powerful, brutal, unforgettable masterpiece.
4/4 - DirectorDjordje KadijevicStarsSlobodan 'Cica' PerovicJanez VrhovecSeverin BijelicA story of a farmer and his calf, the only survivors of the German WW2 punitive expeditions that passed through their village. While evading before the dangers of war, the farmer develops a deep attachment to his calf and tries to save it at all costs, but it wouldn't be much easier for them even after the liberation day.04-11-2017
After his incredible debut "The Feast" writer/director Djordje Kadijevic set off on another peculiar war movie, "The Trek", inspired by his own wartime memories. Born in 1933, he survived the Second World War first in Belgrade and then as a refuge in various villages, an experience which, presumably, gave him the material for "The Feast", an insular film, set in a single small village which although representing Serbia as a whole on the film's metaphorical plain was too small a stage to portray all the horrors of war. Now, with "The Trek" he takes us on a journey through war-torn Serbia following Cila (Slobodan Perovic), a strange, withdrawn peasant struggling to survive while caring for a calf. On his journey through the merciless winter landscapes, destroyed villages, and broken families, he encounters an array of characters and finds himself embroiled in various situations none of which have a particularly happy ending. This sort of storyline is nothing new in movies and certainly nothing new in literature. It would be easy, though not altogether accurate, to describe "The Trek" as Kadijevic's take on "The Odyssey". However, Cila is no Odysseus. His journey is not voluntary and only begins after his employers are killed by the Nazis while he hides in a toilet. Forced on the run, he still hangs on to the calf entrusted to him, not necessarily out of a sense of duty but more in an effort to retain some semblance of sense or hang on to the last thing in the world he has left besides the clothes on his back. He is no hero either as in most situations he first tries to evade partaking in any action and then if action does take place he usually stands aside and watches waiting for the right moment to escape. Eventually, he finds himself an at first reluctant companion in a woman (Ljerka Drazenovic) whose husband was recently killed. They eventually become lovers but not even that lasts for long. Kadijevic, however, is clearly aware of the connections with "The Odyssey" and thus "The Trek" has a very epic atmosphere to it. Cinematographer Aleksandar Petkovic makes the cold landscapes resemble unfriendly, deadly calm seas with our lead but a small black speck in the vast whiteness. Underscored with the score of wailing human voices, the film looks downright mythological, like something that leapt unbound from the verses of Homer. The main problem with this and all Odyssey-esque films is that what they gain with the large scope provided by their episodic narrative they lose in focus and width. Most of the situations in "The Trek" could have been spawned off into films of their own but in the fast-paced, short-cuts films such as this, they only get a small portion of the runtime enough only for a cursory peek into a potentially potent and powerful story. There's a family of gipsies, for instance, that turns up only three times in the movie but who managed to peak my interest far more than the somewhat colourless Cila. Seemingly always energetic and looking for a fast hustle, they travel with a large bear singing in the face of imminent death in the cold, desolate landscape. I think their trek would have been a lot more interesting than the more conventional one Cila undertakes. This conventionality is "The Trek's" biggest failing, especially seeing how Kadijevic's previous film was so uniquely powerful and largely devoid of cliches. "The Trek", on the other hand, is full of them making the film very predictable and lessening its impact. Also problematic is the main character of Cila. He is altogether too simple and unassuming character for us to get truly involved in his plight. Not helping this impression is the fact that Kadijevic never displays any warmth towards him shooting the film in a strangely distant, cool manner that would make ever David Cronenberg shudder. The result is a film you can only observe and not really participate in. It provokes little emotional involvement or reaction. Never-the-less, as a purely spectatorial film, "The Trek" is actually not as bad as it could have been. The stories Cila finds himself in and the people he meets are quite colourful and interesting and I did find myself looking forward to the next little vignette. The film is decidedly not as brutal as "The Feast", perhaps because all the violence in it is predictable and thus less impactful, but it does manage to portray a sense of mayhem and a feeling of being lost that the final days of war must have had. Even if the plot and characters of the film are not convincing the atmosphere very much is. While nowhere near as good as "The Feast", "The Trek" is a fine example of an Odyssey-esque film. Its episodic nature is detrimental to its overall impact as is its predictabilty but it has a tangible atmosphere of confusion which I am sure comes from Kadijevic's own feelings during the war and as such it is both authentic and well realised making the film interesting even if it doesn't quite hang together.
3/4 - DirectorDjordje KadijevicStarsJovan Janicijevic-BurdusPavle VuisicDragomir Bojanic-GidraIn Vojvodina during the war, a partisan commander Zarki fell into the hands of the local Germans. They bound him in chains and take him from one village to another, torturing him in public so he could tell the names from his movement. Bewildered by his resisting power, the Germans tend to break him down and destroy the pride which is his answer to their torture. Frenzied of powerlessness, they ultimately choose the most horrifying death - they buried him alive in the sand that will cover the last trait of him, but he died victorious: He died for his thing.04-11-2017
"Zarki" begins with a title card stating it was made to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Yugoslav communist revolution but if you thought it would be yet another war epic a la Veljko Bulajic glorifying the heroics of Partisan superhumans you'd be wrong. With "Zarki" director/writer Djordje Kadijevic continues his series of bleak, some would say black wave war films about humanity in war. His characters are not heroic killing machines, propaganda spouting idealists, or cardboard grinning villains but rather regular people caught up in the whirlwind of war. His films are most interesting for their tendency to look beyond the uniform and military insignia. A character might be a Nazi lieutenant but he is still after all only human with all the same desires, flaws, and emotions as a Partisan fighter or a Chetnik. In "Zarki", however, for the first time, there indeed is a hero at its centre or at least someone who could be perceived as a hero. The titular character played wonderfully by Jovan Janicijevic is a captured partisan who absolutely refuses to give up his comrades and remains stony-faced and silent in the face of the torture he's put through. Never-the-less, despite the title, he's not the central character (the film indeed doesn't really have a central character but is more of an ensemble piece) but more of a catalyst of unrest who like a virus brings mayhem into the already shaky unit charged with his interrogation. Even so, in the few scenes of character development, Kadijevic does everything he can to bring Zarki down and make his actions seem less heroic and more plain stubborn. The other characters in "Zarki" include the soldiers, their collaborators, and the local resistance movement trying to assassinate Zarki before he gives them up. Dusan Janicijevic plays the commander of the interrogators who throughout the film remains silent and strangely pensive, looking on from high like the devil himself. His second in command (Dragomir Bojanic) is an overeager local with a sadistic streak who quickly becomes frustrated with Zarki's silence. His assistant (Ljubisa Samardzic), however, is a cowardly peasant who is still, despite his uniform, continually teased and berated by the locals and who quickly starts to waver and lose it like they expected Zarki to. The only one keeping it together is Obrad (Pavle Vujisic), a local collaborator who tries to persuade Zarki to give up some names before they torture all of them out of him. Trying her best not to let that happen is an equally stony-faced and determined leader of the resistance (Eva Ras), unusually a frail-looking woman who despite Obrad's pleas continues to try and kill Zarki. "Zarki" is the only film in Kadijevic's fairly long oeuvre that he's disowned citing poor filming conditions, an amateurish crew, and a general air of negativity stemming from colleague filmmakers in high positions who felt they should be the ones making the film instead of him. He says the film was thus 'incapacitated' but "Zarki" is nowhere near a complete failure. Unlike Kadijevic's previous film, "The Trek", "Zarki" returns to the insular, contained storytelling of his debut "The Feast" and is all the better for it. The small cast of characters and a focused storyline allows the tension to slowly build and it really does. Kadijevic creates a nerve-wracking atmosphere of slow concentration embodied by the unshakable Zarki who barely lets out a gasp let alone information and nicely contrasted by the interrogators slowly cracking under pressure. I found the irony of the torturers breaking down under the torture they're implementing themselves irresistible. Kadijevic's direction is just as good as it was in "The Feast" and his use of black wave techniques (hand-held camera, long takes, almost documentary realism) is still highly effective as is his immaculate framing. Now he also gets a chance to play with colour and the all-encapsulating dirt of the sandy location where the film was shot really adds to the film's gritty atmosphere. The performances are top-notch like in all of Kadijevic's films. Jovan Janicijevic gives a great performance as Zarki with his weathered features and intelligent eyes giving the character its much-needed edge. The stand-out performance, however, comes from Ljubisa Samardzic, an actor best known for playing heroic partisans in the propaganda films of Veljko Bulajic and Hajrudin Krvavac, who is simply excellent as the cowardly Nazi soldier. Now, don't get me wrong, "Zarki" is also far from a perfect film. Even if you didn't know about its troubled shoot you'd be hard-pressed not to notice the poor production values and the slipshod post-production. There are countless scenes in the film containing questionable ADR and several where the filmmakers seemingly forgot to insert sound effects. In the very beginning, we see one of the surrounded Partisan fighters waving his gun but we don't hear his gunshots at all making the scene seem like three overgrown children playing at war which is exactly the atmosphere Kadijevic is trying to evade. Also problematic is the fact that the film seems unfinished. Running at a little under 70 minutes there are very important scenes simply not present in its third act. Characters disappear without explanation and the previously slow-burn plot suddenly speeds up to an effective but sudden conclusion. Never-the-less, "Zarki" is a fascinating picture and had it been done properly could have been a real masterpiece. Still, even with all the flaws it has, the top-notch performances and strong direction prevail and despite what Kadijevic says, "Zarki" is well worth seeing.
3/4 - DirectorDjordje KadijevicStarsLjerka DrazenovicSlobodan 'Cica' PerovicDusan JanicijevicSet just before the end of WWI on the abandoned farm in Vojvodina, the story follows the wife of an Austo-Hungarian colonel of a battered battalion who pays him a visit, only to experience the true Empire's decline through the meeting with disillusioned army.05-11-2017
The fourth (and sadly final) in director Djordje Kadijevic's series of bleak war films that deal not with heroes or villains but with people, at first glance, "The Colonel's Wife" stands out from the other three. First of all, it is set during World War I, secondly, it is shot in vibrant, strong colours opposing the black & white "The Feast" and "The Trek" and the earthy grittiness of "Zarki", and thirdly, it contains far more pronounced comedic elements. But upon further inspection, you will see that it is just as bleak, unforgiving, and brutal as the other three and that it's colourful photography and humour serve only to strongly contrast and bring out the underlying darkness. The story follows Eva (Ljerka Drazenovic), the wife of an Austrian colonel (Slobodan Perovic) who unexpectedly comes to visit him at his post deep behind enemy lines in Serbia. It is immediately apparent that this bon vivant lady doesn't belong at the rough army base but the soldiers, fearful of her husband do everything to please her. Their attempts at being courteous and well mannered are funny and even endearing at first but like in all of Kadijevic's films their underlying nastiness and humanity eventually prevail and they are revealed as the animals they are. Namely, the message informing the colonel of his wife's arrival didn't come through in its entirety and he wasn't sure if she was arriving by train or by ship, so he sent two of his men to wait at the train station and he went to the harbour. She arrives by train and is safely brought to the base but he doesn't come back and as time passes and the fact that he's dead becomes obvious the soldiers start dropping their niceties and begin treating the colonel's wife like they would any other woman. "The Colonel's Wife" is profoundly a film of contrasts. Take how it begins and ends, for example. First, we follow Eva's trip to the base with two uncouth soldiers (Dusan Janicijevic & Slobodan Aligrudic) trying their best to appear refined. The sequence is comical, filled with farcical situations and slapstick gags. The film ends, however, with them taking her back to the station. Now, they behave as the pigs they are and the sequence is bleak, dour, and tense. Similarly, every moment of humour is counterpointed by moments of horror. For example, a very funny bit of business with apples is immediately followed by a shot of a man hanged off of a lamppost. Also, the contrast between the soldiers and the lady is constantly played up whether it be with the performances or the costuming (her starched yellow dress vs. their filthy blue uniforms). On the whole, "The Colonel's Wife" is less powerful than "The Feast" or "Zarki", but it is a clever little movie that does carry a certain punch mainly because we grow to care about Eva (mainly through the fine performance from Ljerka Drazenovic). The technical execution is also excellent with marvellous cinematography from Aleksandar Petkovic. Unusually, for most of the movie, Kadijevic uses none of his usual black-wave tricks instead choosing an elegant directing style characterised by smooth camera movements and long shots. Of course, this is all by design and true to the film's nature the black-wave, handheld camera-work and washed-out cinematography come back for the finale to sharply contrast the previous elegance and brightness. "The Colonel's Wife" is a strange movie, an uncomfortable mix of comedy and drama, but I didn't expect any less from Kadijevic whose intelligent approach makes this somewhat curt and simple script work.
3/4 - DirectorDjordje KadijevicStarsDragan JovanovicBranka PujicAleksandar BercekSveto Mesto is based on a literary classic, Nikolai Gogol's 1835 short story, 'Viy'.08-11-2017
After making four exceptional cinematic explorations of humanity in war, Djordje Kadijevic, a director of rare intellectual intensity for the Yugoslav film scene of the time found himself unable to get funding for further projects. After several outbreaks of nationalism in the 1970s, the Yugoslav authorities tightened their previously loose grip on culture and suddenly all the filmmakers whose previous exploits got them one of the many "unwanted" labels such as modernist, experimental, or god forbid, black wave (a Yugoslav film reactionary film movement whose primary goal was to undermine the glorious Communist revolution and portray life in Yugoslavia in an overly bleak, dour manner) found themselves cut off and forced to either change professions, become professors, or go to television. Unusually, television of the time was far laxer than cinema and run not by political figureheads but rather intellectuals, artists, and noted literary and theatrical figures. Kadijevic found himself at home there and created an oeuvre of almost unparalleled quality. It's hard to find a single complete failure among the 12 TV plays he directed (most of which he also wrote) while an almost compulsive need is evident to move borders and limits of what was then considered desirable. The change in medium also coincided with a change in subject matter. Kadijevic abandoned his hopes to make the final instalment in his war series, "The End of War" and shifted his focus to horror stories, or as he prefers to term them, fantasies. After a groundbreaking TV serial of four horror TV plays (one of which was directed by Branko Plesa) one of which, "The She-Butterfly", is still firmly ingrained in the collective mind of an entire generation as the most terrifying film ever made, Kadijevic became rightly known as the father of the Serbian horror film, a genre still sadly unexplored. I say sadly because storytelling is a large part of the Serbian (Eastern, really) tradition and we've always been prone to coming up with horror stories and various, inventive monsters. In fact, a little-known fact here, the vampire is a creature of Serbian origin. And yet, our cinema consists of very few horror films, most of which are either despicable over-indulgencies ("A Serbian Film"), childish flops ("A Full Moon Over Belgrade"), or films that use horror elements to paint different pictures ("The Enemy"). Thus, "A Holy Place", Djordje Kadijevic's first feature film since 1972 could conceivably be called the first pure Yugoslav cinematic horror film. While certain others used elements and techniques of the genre such as Nikola Tanhofer's "It Was Not in Vain", Goran Markovic's "Smallpox" and "Deja vu", and Krsto Papic's "The Rat Saviour" , "A Holy Place" is the first Yugoslav film to fully embrace the genre and go not for social commentary, psychology, or fairy tale fantasy but for scares, chills, and goosebumps. In fact, it jumps headfirst into the genre with such eagerness and enthusiasm that it's a credit to the rich imagination and technical inventiveness of Djordje Kadijevic that it emerges as a fully rounded and genuinely effective horror film. Drenched in gothic atmosphere and photographed like a German expressionist film it tells the tale of Toma (Dragan Jovanovic), a young priest sent to the manor of the local landowner, master Zupanski (Aleksandar Bercek), to read the last rights to his beloved daughter Katarina (Branka Pujic) for three nights in a remote, crumbling chapel. When he gets there, however, in true gothic fashion he realises that Katarina is the woman whose image had been haunting his nightmares and that she was far from the pure, angelic image of goodness her grieving father would like to portray her as. After hearing a few real horror stories about her, such as how she seduced and then drove to insanity one of the family servants (Predrag Miletic), he goes to the chapel where he's locked in for the night. Then while reading the last rights, her corpse wakes up, rises, and begins seducing and gauding him for some nefarious and devilish reason. Interestingly, the storyline in "A Holy Place" doesn't hinge on whether Toma will be able to triumph over evil or not, in fact, Toma is not an active protagonist, at all. The film, as a whole, hinges entirely on the atmosphere it creates and its creepy, disturbing imagery. The plot is barely fleshed out beyond the most basic premise and none of the characters really does anything to affect its progression towards an open-ended and intentionally unsatisfying climax. But Kadijevic turns this possible weakness into a strength as he uses the film's irritating vagueness as an atmosphere building tool. The deeply unsettling effect "A Holy Place" has on its audience comes largely from the fact that you never fully grasp what is happening or why. Kadijevic certainly never explains it instead he crafts the film out of strange, almost hallucinatory events, flashbacks, and non-sequiturs bound loosely by a plot we know exists but cannot see. The effect is sort of like watching a classic horror film from the perspective of a minor character who doesn't know all the facts and due to the twists of fate never gets to learn them. Had "A Holy Place" been made by some Hollywood hack, its conclusion would have merely been a catalyst for the real plot which would have doubtlessly focused on some proactive fellow investigating the strange events recorded here and ultimately getting to the bottom of them. Kadijevic, however, is a far better filmmaker than that and his choice to only show us what happened and never explain how or why is what makes "A Holy Place" stick in your mind. However, there's more technique to it than that. First of all, there's Kadijevic's wonderfully sparse and realistic script based loosely on Nikolai Gogol's short story "Viy". Secondly, there's an eery, cool, electronic score by Lazar Ristovski that highlights and underlines the aforementioned chilling atmosphere build by Kadijevic's insistence on a slow, deliberate pace. Thirdly, and most importantly, there's the incredible cinematography accomplished by Aleksandar Petkovic. With deep, dark shadows, striking key lights, and disturbing but not distracting use of dutch angles, his work here can easily stand shoulder to shoulder with the best looking horror films of world cinema. Other than German expressionism, I was also reminded of some of the best work by Italian horror masters such as Mario Bava whose "Black Sunday" also purports to be based on "Viy". There's also a taste of Hammer thrown in there for good measure and the infernal Katarina could have just as easily been played by Ingrid Pitt or Barbara Steele. However, Branka Pujic does such an excellent (and quite terrifying) job in the part that I think she outshines both of those horror divas (the good-looking but untalented Pitt certainly). As for the other performances, there's more of a range in quality here than in other Kadijevic films where the cast was usually excellent across the board. Aleksandar Bercek is as top-notch as ever as the grieving and mysteriously sinister father and so is Danilo Lazovic as the servant in charge of keeping an eye on Toma but the rest of the cast is less stellar. Mira Banjac does an enthusiastic job as a scary old hag and she has the right looks for the part but the way a key scene I won't spoil is shot does her no favours and incites more laughs than scares. Maja Sabljic, as another servant whom Katarina tried to seduce, seems cold and distant in the part as if she's not really on board with the whole horror thing. She seems almost resistant to go for it like Bercek and Pujic do. Most problematic, however, is the casting of Dragan Jovanovic in the lead. He tries, but he is no match for Bercek, Pujic, and Lazovic who easily act him off the screen. When you do pay attention to him, however, he cuts a far too comical a figure to truly be an effective part in what is essentially a tragedy. With his wild hair, strange delivery, and grimace-prone face, it's hard to take him seriously let alone care about his character or his eventual fate. Kadijevic's previous collaborators such as Petar Bozovic, Milan Mihajlovic, or Dusan Janicijevic could have done a better job but they were all already too old for the part. Even Dragan Bjelogrlic fared better in a later and far worse horror film "A Full Moon Over Belgrade". Meanwhile, Dragan Jovanovic made a name for himself in the area in which he truly belongs, comedy. Never-the-less, "A Holy Place" is a surprisingly effective and well-made horror film. Even when compared to the far more experienced output of say Italy or America it holds up. There are plenty of creepy, unsettling moments in it and the overwhelmingly bleak and dour atmosphere is incredibly powerful. Far from perfect, but in many ways, exceptional.
3/4 - DirectorZoran TadicStarsIvica VidovicFabijan SovagovicBozidarka FrajtAfter moving to a new neighborhood, a mysterious man starts introducing his landlord to the hobby of collecting crime statistics.10-11-2017
"The Rhythm of Crime" begins as it will proceed, unassumingly. A man returns home from work on a bike and another man approaches him. The first man is Ivica (Ivica Vidovic), a high school teacher, the other man is Fabijan (Fabijan Sovagovic), a retiree looking for a room to rent. Ivica isn't planning to rent out a room, especially considering the fact that the house he's living in will be demolished in a few months but Fabijan is insistent and eventually Ivica agrees. When pressed for a reason why he wants to rent a room in a condemned street, Fabijan cites sentimentality. At first, he is the perfect tenant, rarely heard, even less seen. Then, one day, Ivica walks into his room and finds it covered in papers and charts. Fabijan, bemused by Ivica's stunned reaction, explains that his hobby is statistics, more specifically crime statistics. He reads the newspapers every day, keeps his ear to the ground, and keeps detailed records of all crimes committed in this part of Zagreb. His charts are so specific and comprehensive that he is able to claim with absolute authority that members of the underground, for instance, tend to mostly kill people on early spring mornings, while intellectuals prefer to do it late in the winter nights. But he can go even further, he says that housewives tend to get mugged in the summer, usually by noon, while the aforementioned members of the underground beat their wives in June. Using highly developed systems, he has been able to create a stunningly precise chart of all criminal activities in Zagreb. However, after a while, these charts started presenting a rhythm, akin to a musical beat only more uneven, that never-the-less keeps repeating itself. Fabijan informs the suspicious Ivica, that by following this rhythm he is now able to predict all crime in Zagreb. Ivica laughs his claims off as simple fantasies of an idle old man, but Fabijan offers to demonstrate his claims. With absolute precision he predicts first a fight in a local bar, then a theft in Ivica's school. Ivica himself now gets drawn into Fabijan's hobby against his girlfriend Zdenka's (Bozidarka Frajt) advice. Then something goes wrong. A murder occurs three weeks early. Ivica suggests Fabijan might have miscalculated, but Fabijan knows better. Shaken and deeply worried he explains to Ivica that the system has been disrupted, the rhythm broken and that when something like that happens all hell might break loose and now something must be done to return the rhythm to normal. But what? Statistically speaking, Fabijan says, the solution is simple. The rhythm must be sped up, i.e. the crime rate must go up. After informing him of this, Fabijan starts acting strangely, more reclusive than usual, he stays away from Ivica and often goes for long walks in the night. Zdenka, worried and thinking realistically, suspects that Fabijan is insane and planning to kill Ivica, but Ivica finds that he strangely doesn't mind. Fully convinced by Fabijan's theories, he realises that for rhythm to be reinstated he must die and that if he doesn't mayhem will rule. Director Zoran Tadic is often called the Croatian Hitchcock, but this, his most famous and highly acclaimed film, only proves that while he might have been influenced by the British master his own sensibilities are closer to those of Claude Chabrol. Had Hitchcock made "The Rhythm of Crime" he would have put the question of is Fabijan insane or not at the centre of the film. Here that conceit is barely even discussed. Tadic's film, instead, is a supreme socio-philosophical study of systems that we as a civilisation wholly depend on. We've built our entire existence around such systems and "The Rhythm of Crime" presents the possibility of one such system failing. The film is based on a short story by Pavao Pavlicic called "The Good Spirit of Zagreb" and that is, in fact, what Fabijan (and later Ivica) is. He is here to save the city he loves and help restore balance in the face of mayhem, but what will happen when one day the spirit is not there or the mayhem becomes too great for one such good soul to prevent? A lot of films have been, with the luxury of hindsight, proclaimed as prophetic, but "The Rhythm of Crime" might actually deserve that moniker. Fabijan explains to Ivica that great crimes (in this case a murder) occur when several rhythms overlap. A break in the system would surely cause many such rhythms to conjoin and in that case what happens? In the film, such an event is referred to only as mayhem, but one can easily deduce that what Fabijan means by that is some sort of Darwinian lawlessness the supreme example of which is war. Like all introspective films made in Yugoslavia in the 80s, "The Rhythm of Crime" has a palpable atmosphere of indistinct foreboding. Some more poetic people would say that artistic souls such as writers, directors, and actors must have sensed that something bad was coming, sort of like Fabijan sensing a break in the system. It would be simplistic to say that the Yugoslavian war only happened because good spirits weren't around to prevent it, but in a symbolic sense their death, embodied in the eventual demolishing of Ivica's house in the finale, certainly didn't help. Even if you don't see "The Rhythm of Crime" as a prophetic movie its powerful, raw, suggestive nature is irresistibly potent. Shot on a shoestring budget, between friends in existing locations, the film has a documentaristic feel that certainly increases the uneasy atmosphere punctuated by a slow, deliberate pace that incites a hypnotised concentration in the viewer. I have seen it suggested somewhere that due to the ludicrously low budget, Tadic invented a sort of Dogma 97 before Dogma 97, but I don't think that's remotely true. Such a suggestion greatly diminishes the artistry of his film which must be credited. Namely, there are far too many brilliant cinematographical manipulations here that would surely displease the dogmatic Lars Von Trier and Tomas Vinteberg. Cinematographer Goran Trbuljak gives the film an eery look that evokes a Caravaggioesque chiaroscuro far better than any other film I've ever seen. Deep, deep shadows are broken only by rays of light emanating from desk lamps and windows obscured by tree branches. Tadic and Trbuljak use these conditions to great effect such as in what is probably the best scene in the film. Towards the end, Fabijan informs Ivica, who's now come to peace with his fate, that the rhythm will be re-established and invites him to come and see it done. The audience is now unsure whether Fabijan will kill Ivica or something else will happen and Trbuljak brilliantly plays on that feeling with his lighting scheme. Ivica's face displaying a resigned expression is at the forefront of the shot, fully lit. His intentions and feelings are evident to the audience. Fabijan, however, is farther away, his face completely obscured by deep shadows. As his voice is completely flat and his words enigmatic, only his facial expressions could inform us of his plans but we are denied this knowledge. We will have to wait until the finale to find out what happens. Tadic proves himself to be a great filmmaker here more than just through his technique. He has wisely realised that he shouldn't spend his budget on grandstanding or scenes of violence and mayhem but rather on good actors. Although all other roles are played by (and charmingly credited to) friends and passers-by, the three key roles were given to probably the finest Croatian actors of the time. Ivica Vidovic is a wonderful audience surrogate but also more than that. Even though that's his character's overall purpose he creates a three-dimensional person with his thoughtful demeanour and heartfelt delivery. Bozidarka Frajt is also excellent as the voice of reason and the motivation provider for Ivica to accept his fate. Still, despite their excellent efforts, no one can stop Fabijan Sovagovic from stealing the film as the compassionate, odd, and immensely likeable Fabijan. In conclusion, I have no criticism to make against "The Rhythm of Crime". Yugoslavia had an unusually strong film scene for an Eastern Block country and this is without a doubt one of the very best films it has ever produced. A powerful, unmitigated masterpiece it will draw you into its unsettlingly calm and concentrated atmosphere with likeable, realistic characters and an engaging, interesting storyline, and if you have any knowledge of the horrors to come, the ending will sadden you and give you goosebumps. Meanwhile, the film manages to be wholly unassuming and understated without any Nouvelle Vague style experimentations or grand speeches. It will simply and slowly crawl under you skin unobserved and stay there for a long, long time.
4/4 - DirectorBranko IvandaStarsZlatko VitezMiodrag KrivokapicMustafa NadarevicZlatko Kovac, a provincial professor, gets the job in the big city's school, only to find out that his red-employment is not random. Professor Toth, the man he replaced, has died under the strange circumstances. Kovac meets a variety of strange people in his school's collective, and it was not long before they came up with the new body. However, the police is unable to solve the case, but he takes the matter into his own hands and setting a trap for a murderer on a school manifestation.12-11-2017
Pavao Pavlicic is probably the most important person in Yugoslav genre literature as one of the few representatives of the thriller. Despite an ever-growing popularity of foreign thriller writers such as Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Edgar Wallace and their subsequent film adaptations Yugoslavia bred very few imitators. This is partly because the party politics of the time preferred to promote an image of a crime-free, happy Yugoslavia and partly because despite its popularity such literature was scoffed at and described using such derogatory terms as low or pulp literature. Consequently, the Yugoslav literary figures chose to rather follow in the footsteps of Ivo Andric and Miroslav Krleza and write "serious fiction" usually with historical or philosophical leanings. Meanwhile, the film scene was dominated by war-themed action films and farcical comedies but a few thrillers did sneak by. The first representative of the genre was Zivorad Mitrovic whose "The Last Track", a very good thriller/drama about smugglers was the first such movie in Yugoslav cinema. Next up was his 1967 imitation of German krimis "The Knife" which actually bettered the originals and then his 1969 pseudo-Giallo with an apt mouthful title "Murder Committed in a Sly and Cruel Manner and Out of Low Motives". Another excellent Yugo-thriller was Miomir Stamenkovic's bleak "Some Other Woman", but the finest representative of the genre was Zoran Tadic, the only Yugoslav filmmaker who dedicated his entire career to thrillers and whose name brings us back to Pavao Pavlicic. With his taut, easy-to-read thrillers, Pavlicic quickly rose to become one of Yugoslavia's most highly read authors, in fact, his books became impossible to rent from libraries as they were always out. He also quickly became the prime expert on the genre with his insightful introductions to almost a hundred novels published by "Crime" (a monthly genre-themed publication) and then his exquisite book "Everything I Know About the Crime Genre". Pavlicic, ever prolific, then turned to film writing and became Tadic's constant collaborator writing all of his feature films and two out of three episodes of the war drama "The Unconquered City" Tadic directed. Besides working with Tadic, Pavlicic also wrote a fair number of TV plays, worked in an unclear capacity on Petar Krelja's 1990 film "Stela" and wrote the scripts to two war dramas "Vukovar Comes Home" and "The Trip on the Dark Side". There are two other adaptations of Pavlicic's novels, one being the 2008 mini-series "The Sad Rich Man" and the other being Branko Ivanda's 1982 film "A Murder in a School" based on Pavlicic's novel "The Fog Machine", a strange character study with only a cursory mystery plot which, unusually for Pavlicic, is sidelined and thinly sketched out. The film adaptation sought to change that and according to the changed title "A Murder in a School" focus entirely on the mystery. I only wonder in that case why the filmmakers didn't pick the stronger, more plot-driven "The Artificial Eagle". Instead, by stripping down all of its social and psychological commentary, the filmmakers exposed all of the novel's weaknesses and made a fairly thin thriller, hard to get involved with due to its underdeveloped plot and impossible to figure out due to a desperate lack of clues. Fortunately, the plot is so predictable and obvious that I was able to guess the killer's identity making any kind of detective work on my part obsolete. Also sadly underused is the school setting as the film chooses to focus only on a handful of characters including our hero, Zlatko (Zlatko Vitez), a newly employed teacher at a prestigious Zagreb school, his love interest (Koraljka Hrs), and a leering PE teacher (Miodrag Krivokapic). Other characters do show up from time to time such as the wacky headmaster (Fabijan Sovagovic) and Zlatko's wisecracking neighbour (Mustafa Nadarevic) but they inexplicably play no part in the plot whatsoever besides padding out the runtime. The aforementioned plot concerns the mysterious death of Zlatko's predecessor, professor Toth (Dragutin Klobucar), and the subsequent murder of a strange man (Zvonimir Zoricic) whose body is discovered in the school by Zlatko who launches a personal investigation after he finds out that he was hand-picked to replace Toth by the man himself whom Zlatko claims he didn't know. The main problem with the plot is that its, as described above, barely fleshed out. This is somewhat explained in the end which features a darkly comic twist but it doesn't help the fact that for the past 90 minutes we not so much followed a plot as a sequence of events happening seemingly at random. We are never given a reason to care for either Zlatko or his plight and most devastatingly we don't care for the mystery as we're never given enough clues to solve it. "The Fog Machine" was a bad choice for adaptation as it was a strange novel that didn't really work itself but its form-bending plot was covered up to a point by good writing and character development. However, the poor script is somewhat improved upon by an excellent execution. Although not on par with Zoran Tadic, Branko Ivanda's direction is slick, smooth, and atmospheric and greatly helped by excellent cinematography from Ivica Rajkovic. The performances are fine as well even though the actors weren't given much to work with. Zlatko is a distinctly uninteresting lead character as he's meant to be limiting actor Zlatko Vitez's range but he does a good job. The best of all is, of course, the fabulous Fabijan Sovagovic who managed to evoke a smile from me everytime he was on screen. The film's sole exceptional feature is the score from Alfi Kabiljo, Yugoslavia's greatest film composer, which could easily stand shoulder to shoulder with any Hollywood thriller score. Utilising a simple melody his seductive music enwinds the film giving a chilling edge even to scenes that don't appear to be sinister. But despite its fine executing the preposterous and thin main plot fails to engage the audience and as such this thriller can't be deemed as anything other than a flop which is a shame since it was made by an obviously talented cast and crew and had at its disposal one of the best settings for a genre exercise. A school.
2/4 - DirectorZoran TadicStarsBozidar AlicVedrana MedjimorecFranjo MajeticA young couple have settled in a new flat. Soon somebody begins watching them and they receive great amounts of money from an unknown sender.12-11-2017
After the excellent "The Rhythm of Crime", director Zoran Tadic continued his fruitful working relationship with writer Pavao Pavlicic and they crafted another metaphysical thriller born out of sociopolitical paranoia, "The Third Key". Swerving between Kafkaesque horror and the mystery genre, "The Third Key" plays out like an eerily similar precursor to Michael Haneke's masterpiece "Hidden" and focuses on a newlywed couple, Zvonko (Bozidar Alic) and Dunja (Vedrana Medjimorec), who move into a new apartement in an effort to escape their former troubles. Namely, Zvonko is a former alcoholic who drowned his insecurities regarding the fact that his wife is older than him and that he stole her away from her past boyfriend. But, now they've decided to start anew and beside their lack of money, the two seem happy and peaceful. But just like in Tadic's previous film, trouble comes unassumingly and in an unexpected form. While in "The Rhythm of Crime", the disrupting factor (the old man Fabijan) at first seemed sinister only to turn out to be benevolent, the disrupting factor in "The Third Key" is almost heralded as a saving miracle by our protagonists. A wad of cash in a white envelope arrives unsigned addressed to the both of them at the very moment they need it the most. But when the envelopes keep coming and coming without any explanations they bring disruption in the home of the newlyweds. Coupled with a mysterious disappearance of their third house key, strange break-ins during which nothing goes missing, and shadowy figures who seem to be following them, Zvonko and Dunja's marriage slowly breaks-up under the strain of the undefined but undeniably sinister threat. The big problem with "The Third Key" is that unlike Haneke's "Hidden" it never transports the paranoia our characters are experiencing onto the audience. All the best paranoia thrillers do precisely that as all of their's goal is to make the viewer look at the people 'round them with mistrust. Remember that scene in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in which Donald Sutherland is walking down the streets of San Francisco and all those people seem to be looking at him strangely. Remember how watching that scene (and the rest of the film) you spent most of it scanning the extras wondering which one of them was an alien and which one was human? Remember how you mistrusted every single character in "All the President's Men", even the supposedly good ones and how for a long time after leaving the theatre you found it hard to take anyone at face value? Finally, the effect Haneke's "Hidden" had on me was to strip away the feeling of safety I felt in my own home, giving me the impression that there is no hiding from the past that will come and get you no matter where and who you are. "The Third Key" never achieves such an effect mostly because it never seems clear on what this fear our characters are feeling is meant to suggest. It is obviously like in "The Rhythm of Crime" caused by the failures of the socialist system, we can see that in the multiple scenes in which our characters comment on the growing crime rates, power cuts, and the scenes in which they themselves try to play the system usually to acquire flats. But none of this is metaphorized in the image of a white envelope full of money. If anything, their empty piggy bank is metaphor enough. So if that's so, then what do the envelopes signify? I spent most of the film trying to figure it out but to no avail. Then I stopped searching for meaning in the film and started looking at it like a straightforward character study and it began to work. I discarded my notions of social commentary and accepted the film as an attempt by Tadic to portray how a marriage breaks under a strain, any strain. The reason the film works is that the characters are incredibly well fleshed out and believable. Pavlicic continues to display a wonderful knack for writing them and realistic dialogue which when put in the mouths of top-notch actors really comes alive, and Alic and Medjimorec are wonderful. Neither of them resorts to overacting and give surprisingly natural performances in a cinema overrun with theatrical scenery chewing. Another Tadic regular that shines here is cinematographer Goran Trbuljak. He again gives the film a moody, noirish chiaroscuro look while overall looking better in black and white (colour washes away the hard contrast) works wonderfully to accentuate the evergrowing frustration and fear our characters are feeling. In conclusion, thriller is not a spectator sport. A great film of that genre must engage the audience to the extent they begin feeling all the emotions (usually paranoia, fear, frustration etc.) the protagonists are feeling too. "The Third Key" fails at this conceit but because of well-drawn characters, terrific performances, and great cinematography, it is still an intriguing, entertaining, and interesting watch. Not on par with "The Rhythm of Crime", but not a flop either.
3/4 - DirectorZoran TadicStarsRade SerbedzijaFabijan SovagovicIva MarjanovicValent is a night shift worker who can barely feed his family. To add the insult to injury, every night he must pass near the butcher's shop with meat products he can't afford. But one night the shop is a scene of a gangland shooting. Valent picks up the bag full of money and a gun, and his life changes.14-11-2017
Valent (Rade Serbedzija) is a steelworker who lives in a dilapidated house on the outskirts of Zagreb with his loving wife Ljuba (Iva Marjanovic ) and his two sons (Vedran Psenicnik and Mario Vuk). Since he is the only breadwinner in the house they barely make ends meet with the fear of being thrown out of their house or starving to death constantly looming over their heads. And yet they don't give up their dreams. Ljuba constantly dreams of redecorating the home, the older son dreams of being a sportsman, and Valent, every night when returning from work regularly stops at the window of the local butcher shop and longingly stares at all the salacious cuts of meat, the thighs, the frankenfurters, the sausages, and especially a top quality rump proudly exhibited at the very front of the window. Valent's repetitive and squalorful existence is rudely interrupted by a gunshot. One night while longing for that piece of rump, he witnesses a shooting. The killers run away but leave behind a bag full of cash and a gun. Valent, in desperate throws of poverty, grabs the cash and the gun and runs away but overcome with his conflicting morality hides the money and doesn't say anything to anyone. The money rests there, in the shed, and Valent doesn't dare spend any of it partly because he fears that he'll be blamed for the killing and partly because his conscience doesn't allow it. Then, one day, the local butcher, a seemingly friendly and unassuming old man nicknamed Laci (Fabijan Sovagovic) starts acting strangely friendly towards Valent whom he saw on the night of the murder. He starts bringing him gifts, buying him drinks, offering him the best cuts of meat. Laci says his gregariousness is simply out of neighbourly kindness but Valent suspects he is onto him. "Dreaming of the Rump" is the culmination of Zoran Tadic's socially critical films. While his previous endeavours "The Rhythm of Crime" and "The Third Key" criticised life in Yugoslavia in a metaphorical, roundabout manner, "Dreaming of the Rump" comes right out and shows it. Shot in an uncharacteristically (for Tadic) documentaristic fashion, "Dreaming of the Rump" borders on becoming a black wave film with its unflinching portrayals of the life of a poor steelworker and his family, but thankfully Tadic is too good a director to allow his films to be purely reactionary and here he addresses (among others) universal themes. The script by Pavao Pavlicic is also head-and-shoulders above the usual (mostly ad-libbed anyway) scripts of the typical black wave films. Serbedzija's Valent is a three-dimensional character, quiet, tough, diligent, but with adorned with a certain poetic quality that allows him to imagine his salvation in a piece of meat. Pavlicic is working out of his comfort zone here. His novels and scripts are usually set among intellectuals such as teachers, writers, journalist and express their metaphors through clever uses of the supernatural. But he is above all else a great writer and a master of the genre and it's worth noting that a lesser screenwriter would have certainly written a typically black wave script full of blatant attacks on the system and subplots so bleak and hopeless that they balance on the borders of self-parody. "Dreaming of the Rump", however, is an engaging study of morality and poverty and their correlation through the eyes of a three-dimensional character whose realistic, dreary setting merely provides the motivation for our lead's actions rather than becoming the film's focal point. Never-the-less, it is worth noting that Tadic's anti-Yugoslav views are becoming more and more obvious from this point onwards and will culminate in his last movie, "The Third Woman". Another aspect of the film that could have easily failed is its execution. "Dreaming of the Rump" constantly walks a thin line between realism and pathos without ever becoming pathetic, melodramatic, or operatic as black wave films tended to. Not that there weren't many opportunities for the film to do so. There is a lengthy scene in which Valent drunkenly monologues to his two equally drunk friends on his poverty and the now almost mythologised rump. But instead of taking refuge in drama and playing the speech for tears, Serbedzija and Tadic go the other way and make the scene the film's comic relief complete with drunken singing and the three men falling constantly over each other. Other than in this scene, Valent rarely shows any kind of explosive emotions and the cliche black wave scene in which the hero angrily shouts his political views is thankfully missing. Also not present is another staple of the black wave genre in which the lead cries alone in a room. As mentioned, Serbedzija is sensational as Valent, giving one of the finest performances he's ever given in his long and rich career. Fabijan Sovagovic is equally as good although he doesn't have as nuanced as a character to play with. Laci is sadly underdeveloped as a character but does get an unforgettable final shot in which Serbedzija and him exchange looks through a window and Sovagovic, the brilliant actor that he is, tells us more about Laci with that single look than Pavlicic could have with a thousand words. That is not to say that Pavlicic's dialogue here is any worse than in his previous screenwriting endeavours. On the contrary, his realistic and strikingly believable dialogue fits these working-class characters even better than it does his typical intellectuals. The other behind-the-scenes member of the Zoran Tadic repertory company, cinematographer Goran Trbuljak (one of the very best in Yugoslavia) also continues to amaze with his atmospheric lighting and creative camera movements. The murder sequence in which he gets to use his beloved chiaroscuro technique is undoubtedly the best in the film and perfectly counterpointed with Alfi Kabiljo's synth score which again proves my belief that he was the best film composer in Yugoslavia. Of course, all of their brilliant work is a crown on Zoran Tadic's head because what is a director's job if not picking the cream of the crop as his collaborators and then quietly leading them to do their best work. "Dreaming of the Rump" is an effective crime story but what will draw you in and make you want to go back and see it again is the complex morality struggle Valent experiences. Tadic guides us through it with the dexterity of a great director and without any of the heavyhandedness and blatancy present in black wave films. In the well-executed climax, Pavlicic and he potently move the morality issue from Valent onto his best friend Zeljac (Ljubo Zecevic) proving the universality and timelessness of the film's story.
3.5/4 - DirectorZoran TadicStarsRade SerbedzijaIvo GregurevicMira FurlanUpon his release from prison, a convict kidnaps the judge, the public prosecutor and three more people with the help of his inmate on conditional release, and takes them to his uncle's farm in an abandoned village. The duo has different plans of what to do with the captives.14-11-2017
Thriller never really took off as a genre in Yugoslavian cinema. The few such films that were made were either copies of eurothrillers (such as Zivorad Mitrovic's "The Knife") or war films told using a thriller form (such as Miomir Stamenkovic's "The Trap for a General"). Consequently, most (if not all) of them are naive, predictable, and full of cliches because despite a rich distribution of foreign genre movies in the country at the time filmmakers stumbled around in the dark like blind men feeling their way around a genre they behaved as if they'd invented. This is why director Zoran Tadic and his screenwriter (and prolific genre novelist) Pavao Pavlicic are such significant figures. They were the first that seemed to know the genre tradition behind them and they made films that continued upon it rather than trying to reinvent it. Their debut "The Rhythm of Crime" would have been deemed highly modern in even the most thriller-drowned country and "The Third Key", their second film, pre-empted Michael Haneke's "Cache" with its plot of a couple haunted by mysterious and ultimately unexplained letters. With Pavlicic's skilful manipulation of genre elements and Tadic's atmospheric direction, the twosome became a force to be reckoned with not only in their own country but internationally as their films set a high standard for this critic's expectations. This is why "The Condemned", their fourth film is such a bitter disappointment. Coming along like fate's revenge for their previous success, it falls into every pitfall their earlier films were exceptional for missing. Acting as if it's the first hostage film ever made it goes over every cliche imaginable to tell a story of an innocently imprisoned man, Rade (Rade Serbedzija), deciding to take vengeance on the corrupt system that indicted him by kidnapping the judge, prosecutor, and key witness from his trial and taking them to a remote village where he keeps them captive until his ransom demands are met. The story progresses fully as expected with the judge's daughter (Sonja Savic) and her boyfriend (Djordje Rapajic) being kidnapped along with the judge for no better reason than so the filmmakers could utilise more cliches. Playing out like an amalgamation of every hostage film you've ever seen we get the judge (Jovan Licina) being a heart patient, the prosecutor (Mira Furlan) getting a sudden case of Stockholm syndrome, Rade and his accomplice (Ivo Gregurevic) falling out, and a quirky policeman (Boris Buzancic) who's after them enlisting the help of his retired colleague (Fabijan Sovagovic). The film goes through every possible scenario we've seen hundreds of times before with such glee you'd think it had invented it. As I outlined earlier, this is nothing strange in Yugoslav genre films but it is strange for the duo of Tadic and Pavlicic who really should know better. Of course, this being their film they pepper in a fair amount of anti-party politics. Now, all three of their previous films featured strong criticisms of the Yugoslav political system, but they had a knack of doing it in a smart, understated manner, without ever going into the patheticisms and melodrama that were the distinguishing characteristics of the reactionary black wave movement. With "The Condemned" they crafted a film so heavyhanded and ultimately silly that it verges on self-parody. Our lead character keeps going on and on about how the system is corrupt and how he was thrown in prison only because he went against the political grain with all the pathetic operaticism that Pavlicic wisely avoided in the vastly better "Dreaming of the Rump". Even the judge, in a moment so melodramatic it made all Mexican soap opera actors jealous, concedes that "It was all politics! It was all politics!". Never-the-less, although he claims the system is corrupt he takes it out on a few small fries instead of taking it out on the factory owners or even politicians who allegedly set him up. The story here is obviously just a vehicle for Tadic's and Pavlicic's political agenda. Still, these are two masters of their profession and "The Condemned" is far from all bad. Tadic's direction is still as keen and atmospheric as ever and Pavlicic's knack for writing great, believable dialogue has not subsided, although his sense for three-dimensional characters most definitely has. Rade, our main villain or hero depending on how you choose to see him, is a very flat character with only the merest sense of any emotions or complexities. The hostages, meanwhile, aren't even that remaining as they are in Rade's eyes only identifiable by the roles they played in his demise. One is a judge, the other a prosecutor, the third a witness etc. All their characteristics fit the description with the judge being a wise, fat, old man, the prosecutor a deceptive character, and the false witness a duplicitous snake. Never-the-less, the actors are excellent with Rade Serbedzija putting all of his acting might and somehow making his cardboardy character if not come fully alive than at least show signs of some sort of existence. The best of all, however, is Boris Buzancic who doesn't even bother with characterisation and goes for the laughs playing the police inspector. Fabijan Sovagovic sadly doesn't get to do anything until the very end and even then his role is only written as a deus-ex-machina and lacks any character or fleshiness to it. He plays the key part in one of the most forced and laughable finales I have ever seen in my years as a film viewer which is again surprising coming from Tadic and Pavlicic whose previous films all had highly effective and clever endings. Even Alfi Kabiljo, easily the greatest Yugoslav film composer, fails miserably here with a painfully out-of-place synth score that sounds like it was composed for a bad straight-to-video comedy. Another big minus for the film is that it is the only film Tadic ever made not photographed by the brilliant Goran Trbuljak. Replacing him is Dragan Ruljancic, a competent but undistinguished cinematographer whose work is decent but hardly either atmospheric or particularly interesting. Now, if you've never seen a hostage film, I suppose "The Condemned" could be quite entertaining. It has several exciting scenarios and the situations the characters find themselves in are relatably frightening, but let's not pretend here, it is a woefully unoriginal and consequently dull thriller that occasionally and jarringly turns into a political statement now and then. If you happen to catch it on TV late at night you won't be bored but it is not a movie to go out of your way to see.
2.5/4 - DirectorZoran TadicStarsIvica VidovicGordana GadzicVlatko DulicFilip lives in the small town of Samobor, which is near Zagreb. He works in the local library as a librarian. Even though he moved to the small town many years ago, he still misses the bustle of life in Zagreb. However, his boring routine is interrupted by the arrival of a new library manager, the pretty Elza. Soon, however, a series of strange deaths happen.15-11-2017
"The Man Who Liked Funerals" is the fifth film by thriller master Zoran Tadic, also known as "The Croatian Hitchcock", and the first one not written by novelist Pavao Pavlicic. Pavlicic's enviable knowledge of the genre made Tadic's films stand out in the crowd of usually naive and juvenile Yugoslav genre films as the only ones who were not only aware of the tradition of the genre but also made a conscious effort to contribute to it. While, say, Zivorad Mitrovic was off trying to adapt the German Krimi style to the Yugoslav market in "The Knife", Tadic and Pavlicic made truly modern, innovative, and smart subversions of the cliche genre forms with their metaphysical thrillers "The Rhythm of Crime" and "The Third Key" before inverting of Yugoslavia's most popular genres, the social drama, and turning it into a unique morality play in "Dreaming of the Rump". Their fourth film, the rather clumsy and cliched thriller with shades of western, "The Condemned", didn't really work but any filmmakers with such an enviable past records can afford to make a mistake or two. Coming into "The Man Who Liked Funerals", I had a lot of trepidations due to the lack of Pavlicic's name on the credits. It was his vast understanding of the genre that enabled him to subvert and experiment with it so dexterously and I doubted that debutant screenwriter Dubravko Jelacic-Buzimski, otherwise a fairly well-known novelist himself, possessed the same amount of knowledge or know-how. Also notable was Pavlicic's keen ear for believable dialogue and proclivity towards complex characterisations that made Tadic's films far more than simple genre exercises. Above all else was, however, his ability to seamlessly blend philosophy, sociology, and psychology into a movie with a thriller engine and not flood it with pretentions. I have to say I was only partly right in doubting "The Man Who Liked Funerals", a film that admittedly would have been far better had it been written by Pavlicic but never-the-less a very well made and fairly interesting curiosity in Tadic's oeuvre. The titular man who liked funerals is our lead Filip (Ivica Vidovic), a lonely librarian in a quaint village that resembles an Agatha Christian false haven more than a typical Croatian backwood. He is a typical character for a Zoran Tadic film, an introverted, withdrawn intellectual who spends the entire film evading taking action but action never-the-less ends up taking him. His fondness for attending funerals probably comes from his loneliness, a need to feel a part of the strange community he's found himself in through a cruel twist of misfortune. Luckily for him, the village is not short of them recently as a strange series of deaths begins occurring. First, an experienced mountain climber (Tomislav Lipljin) tumbles off a small hill. Then, a long time town drunk (Fabijan Sovagovic) drowns in the shallow end of the river he swam in all the time. Finally, a sleazy politician from Zagreb (Rade Serbedzija) shows up dead in his hotel room. All of this attracts the interests of an investigator (Vlatko Dulic), a mysterious, bearded individual who spends the entire film in the background, lurking, listening, watching. Filip is not particularly interested in the developments but can't escape them and he soon starts gathering clues against his own will through a series of town gossips. Whether it's from the overly friendly town innkeeper (Zvonimir Torjanac) or a chatty local cleaner (Marija Aleksic), he will soon know everything there is to know about the deaths and possibly more. But his attention is elsewhere as he falls in love with the library's new manager, a film-noir-style beauty Elza (Gordana Gadzic) who was the former lover of the recently killed politician. "The Man Who Liked Funerals" sets itself up as a thriller, but doesn't end up playing out as one. Despite Tadic seemingly making a big deal of the murders they are only a minor contrivance used to expose and paint a portrait of the life in this strange little village. In a similar fashion (but very different manner) as David Lynch would later use the murders in "Twin Peaks" to create some truly bizarre individuals so does Tadic use the disruption caused by the murders to focus on several caricatures of the kind of people you meet in a small village where everyone basically lives in each other's pockets. In the middle of these thinly drawn but quite amusing intimate vignettes there's the burgeoning love story between Filip and Elza that is the film's best written section. They seem and behave like real people and for that reason we empathise with their troubled relationship. However, what Jelacic-Buzimski's script fails to do is wrap the three naratives up in a satisfying whole. Each of the film's three focuses (the murders, the villagers, the romance) seems to play out on its own accord, with its own rules, style, and pace and never the three do meet. Each is well executed in its own right, the murders are cleverly done and well shot, the little comic vignettes are truly funny, and the romance is engaging, but besides the fact they are all taking place in the same location there's really no reason given why they all need to be in the same movie. I kept hoping for the film's finale to tie up the loose ends but to no avail. Not that the film has an open ending, because unlike the previous four of Tadic's films, it doesn't. The ending is quite finate, with the killer caught, and the mystery solved, but the film never answers the basic question of what it all meant. Why should have I cared? What did I get in return for my 90 minutes? "The Rhythm of Crime" was a fascinating rumination on a failing system and how to save it, "The Third Key" focused on a strained marriage, and "Dreaming of the Rump" examined the conflict between poverty and morality. Even the otherwise forgettable "The Convicted" had a strongly-put political point to it. "The Man Who Liked Funerals" seems to want to be a Simenon-esque satire on small villages but unlike Simenon's, Jelacic-Buzimski's writing is not sharp, clever, or funny enough to create an entire world and then make light of it. Instead, the film ends up feeling disconnected and a little disappointingly pointless. That is not to say, however, that "The Man Who Liked Funerals" is devoid of interest, far from it. It is, first of all, expertly executed. Tadic's direction is as good as ever and with the return of his brilliant cinematographer Goran Trbuljak back in shape after a brief rough patch on "The Condemned". The performances are simply marvellous with Ivica Vidovic spearheading the film with a thoughtful, quiet, but surprisingly relatable performance as the depressed Filip. Gordana Gadzic, too, is simply superb as a typically unassuming Tadic femme fatale. The supporting cast is top notch too with two of the finest Yugoslav actors, Rade Serbedzija and Fabijan Sovagovic giving lively, three-dimensional performances in small but memorable parts. The writing is as outlined above creaky and fails to tie up all the loose ends but on the small scale, Jelacic-Buzimski manages to write a few funny scenes and quite a few profoundly touching ones such as an unusually tender, sad moment that takes place between Filip and a would-be actress (Vanja Matujec) who's just failed another audition. All in all, "The Man Who Liked Funerals" fails to present a convincing whole but its parts are well done and the film ends up being an entertaining and at times touching curiosity in Zoran Tadic's filmography.
3/4 - DirectorZoran TadicStarsVlatko DulicIvica VidovicZdenko JelcicBirthday party for Radovan Orlak is interrupted when his friends hear the news of his suicide. Four of them start their own investigation and decide to punish all people that could have been responsible for his death.15-11-2017
They were school friends, a rowing team. Vlado, Kreso, Milan, and Drazen on the rows with their friend, the charming and likeable Eagle as the coxswain, that is until someone suggested he might be too heavy and they replaced him. Ever since that day, everything has been going wrong for Eagle. He got stuck in a series of steadily worsening jobs, a loveless marriage, and his four friends felt strangely responsible. And out of that responsibility, a friendship was born that survived into their 40s. When the film begins we meet Vlado (Vlatko Dulic), Kreso (Ivica Vidovic), Milan (Zdenko Jelcic), and Drazen (Bozidar Oreskovic) together in an apartment, drinking, waiting for Eagle to show up so they can celebrate his birthday. But he is late. As they sit around they remember times long past with their words echoing with sentiment and sadness that only remembrances of one's youth can evoke. Then a phone call comes. Eagle has just thrown himself from the roof of a building into certain death. As they learn of his most recent string of bad luck, his firing, his divorce, and ultimately his eviction from the apartment whence he jumped the foursome is aware he doubtlessly committed suicide, but they are also in no doubt that someone is responsible. Then, out of the same sense of guilt, they've felt since school days and a misplaced understanding of justice they take it into their own hands to avenge their friend's death by punishing those who did him wrong. They demolish the house of his ex-boss who fired him, the shop of his former landlord who evicted him and beat up the moneylender he had great debts to. But on their quest to right wrongs, the foursome discover that they themselves are not blameless and as they begin to see how naive and ludicrous their little project truly is, they also begin to comprehend that at some point they will have to close the circle by delivering justice unto themselves. "Eagle" is an existentialist thriller from the two greatest Yugoslavian masters of the genre, director Zoran Tadic and writer Pavao Pavlicic. Their back catalogue of artful form-bending genre films such as "The Rhythm of Crime" and "Dreaming of the Rump" is so impressive it easily overshadows some of their lesser projects such as the cliche-ridden "The Condemned". In relations to those films, "Eagle" falls somewhere in between. It is too plodding and rushed to be a truly great movie but it has a certain profundity and honest sentimentality that makes it hard to dismiss. Of course, Pavlicic and Tadic are strongest when they're together as has been proven by Branko Ivanda's "A Murder in a School", the sole attempt by another director to film a Pavlicic novel and a resounding failure. "Eagle" is based on another Pavlicic novel, "The Artificial Eagle", and I don't know any other Yugoslav director who could have handled such heady, potent material with such grace and lightness. The wonderful thing about Tadic's films (or at least one of the many wonderful things) is that despite their heavy philosophical and psychological content they never feel pretentious or difficult. They are imminently watchable, entertaining, and atmospheric and "Eagle" is no different. Tadic's direction here is flawless as he slowly but surely builds a spooky atmosphere of regret and sentimentality through classic but by-Tadic-rejuvenated thriller methods. Helped by masterful cinematographer Goran Trbuljak he envelopes Zagreb, the film's setting, into a thick, all-covering fog sometimes reducing the image of his characters to mere outlines of people. Also top-notch are the performances from the four leads down to the briefest cameos. However, strangely, it is the script that trips the film up somewhat. Although all the usual elements of Pavlicic's writing are present, the believable dialogues, the social commentary, the complex moral and philosophical questions, he seems to struggle with pacing and characters here, two aspects he had never had problems with before. In fact, the script has a strangely rushed feel to it, as if he only had time to draw up one draft before shooting began. Pacing-wise, the film has a dullingly plodding rhythm without that usual logical elegance we have come to associate with Tadic's films. Never-the-less, this problem is covered up to a point with a clever gimmick of having all four of the leads take turns in narrating the story one after the other. This metaphorical handing over of the narrative torch is unexpectedly well executed and the natural dynamicity of such a format covers for some of the pace's shortcomings. What proves more problematic and almost kills the film is the issue of characters, or rather the distinction between them. Uncommonly for such a character-based film none of the leads are fleshed out. We know their names, their social situations, but that's about it. They are so similar and indistinct they started to merge in my mind and other than by their faces I had a tough time telling them apart. They speak the same way, behave the same way, and seem to live the same way and not even the truly excellent performances from the four leads managed to satisfyingly resolve this basic, screenwriting issue. More distinction among the four of them would have been the film's saving grace. Not that "Eagle" fails, it merely stumbles. Despite its problematic script the basic ideas from the novel persist and coupled with the excellent execution give birth to a fascinating examination of friendship, justice, and ultimately guilt as only the Tadic/Pavlicic duo could give us. "Eagle" might have heralded a return to form for Tadic who had tried to dabble with plainer, flatter material in such films as "The Condemned" or "The Man Who Liked Funerals", but sadly the idiotic and needless Croatian War interrupted that and "Eagle" became Tadic's penultimate film. Had "Eagle" had more time and money it could have been a masterpiece and imagine what other masterpieces Tadic and Pavlicic could have cooked up for us had their rise not been rudely interrupted by the storm of war. But what ifs won't get us anywhere and what we have with "Eagle" is a flawed but intelligent and intriguing film, a near miss as only a genius (or in this case two of them) can make. Most filmmakers dream of being able to miss like this.
3/4 - DirectorCarol ReedStarsOrson WellesJoseph CottenAlida ValliPulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.16-11-2017
There is a case to be made that even if a movie is a classic it doesn't necessarily mean the film is perfect or beyond reproach. Never the less, there is a certain timidity among film critics, essayists, or even regular viewers that prohibits them from expressing their true opinions. Perhaps it is born out of a fear of being called amateurs, idiots, and worse or it is due to a certain kind of conformism which makes them discard integrity for the sake of wallowing in the warmth of a majority. Although there have been, in the relatively short history of film criticism, a few brave souls unafraid of stepping forth into the line of fire (like the much-maligned Pauline Kael), the idiotic fear of saying the wrong thing about a highly regarded film persists. And yet many classics are flawed. "Blade Runner" is glacial and uninvolving, the first half of "The Bride of Frankenstein" is unbearably unfunny, and "Psycho" has that unnecessary psychiatrist scene in the end which ruins both the film's pace and sense of mystery. Hell, the most iconic version of "Dracula", the 1931 Lugosi/Browning movie is not even a good film. Hopelessly stilted, rushed, and full of goofy, atmosphere killing comic relief it comes across as dated and stodgy. But they are still classic films whether because they were groundbreakers, pioneers, or just plain influential on filmmakers who went on to make better films. The word classic is not synonymous with the word masterpiece and indeed there are many masterpieces that haven't (yet) reached the status of a classic. Michele Soavi's "Dellamorte Dellamore", James B. Harris' "Cop", or even David Cronenberg's "Crash" which despite its initial controversy seems to have been sadly forgotten by the general public. In the case of Carol Reed's "The Third Man", we have a doubtless classic, an influential and innovative entry into an already flooded genre, that is indeed flawed. It is not, however, as flawed as "Dracula" or even "Blade Runner", but it is never-the-less not as perfect as its reputation would suggest. Most of the film's issues lie on the shoulders of Carol Reed, an overrated director who constantly grappled with the tonal shifts in the scripts of his collaborator Graham Greene with whom he'd made "The Fallen Idol" and would go on to make "Our Man in Havana". Similarly to the latter film, "The Third Man" shifts somewhat awkwardly between surreal comedy and straight noir. Reed has no feel for comedy and those moments often end up feeling jarring and artificial compared to the smoother thriller elements which Reed executes well. Hitchcock, on the other hand, had no such issues and he directed "The Third Man" he could have doubtlessly made the film work without hiccups. Green's script is not to blame for these bumps on the road as it has well written dialogue and is quite witty. It is, however, to blame for the film's other problem which is its curiously plodding pace. Most of Green's scripts have this issue which is, actually, quite common among novelists turned screenwriters who write their scripts in the same rhythm they would write a novel, chapter stops and all. So instead of each of the film's scenes flowing neatly into the next, here each scene is presented in the manner you would in a play or a novel, with beginnings, middles, and ends independently of the scene that precedes or follows it. Consequently the pace has a distractingly jerky feel. Interestingly, these issues are most apparent in the film's first hour which follows Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American novelist who arrives in Vienna at the invitation of his best friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to discover Harry's dead. Vowing to find his killer, Holly sets off on an investigation which makes a dramatic shift after the one hour mark when Harry shows up alive and well to reveal himself as the villain of the piece and not the victim. This twist is so iconic and brilliant that most first time viewers assume we're told it from the start. Sort of like the identity of Rosebud in "Citizen Kane", everyone knows it. One of the reasons why the twist is so effective, however, is that it comes right at the moment at which the film starts becoming outright boring. Holly's investigation aided by Harry's ex-girlfriend Anna (Alida Valli) and constantly interrupted by British Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) just takes too damn long. Due to the aforementioned jerky pace the hour-long investigation starts to drag after about thirty minutes. Consisting mostly of people repeating the same facts (yes, we know there was a third man present when Harry "died") or constantly running into the same people, a truly great director (like Hitchcock) could have condensed it into a tight, pacy 40 minutes. The second half of the film is so notably improved one almost wants to believe the false rumour that Welles himself directed it. The pace quickens, the atmosphere thickens, and the stakes rise and with them so does our involvement. The jarring humour quickly disappears and is replaced with a palpable sense of tension, pressure, and deep, deep sadness which Carol Reed feels more at home with. The almost 20-minutes long climax beginning with a marvellously moody sequence in which Calloway sets a trap for Lime and ending with the legendary shot of Holly emerging from the darkness of the Viennese sewers (followed by a brilliantly downbeat coda) is the film's sole claim to perfection. In fact, the only problem with the second half is the ham-fisted manner in which Green attempts to make the charming and charismatic Harry as despicable as possible. Somehow, the sight of all the poor, poor children dying as a result of Harry's actions comes across less effective and more like a failed attempt at demonisation to appease the censors. Still, if I were to rewatch "The Third Man" again, I'd skip the first hour and go straight into the brilliant second half. Still, even if you do watch the whole thing, it's not difficult to see why "The Third Man" is a classic. First of all, the cinematography is one of the finest ever committed to film. Robert Krasker's dark, atmospheric chiaroscuro brings back the memories (in the best way possible) of Fritz Lang's full-on masterpiece "M". Every shot from the very first (of split Vienna) to the very last (of Holly, alone) can be hung on the walls of any of the world's finest galleries and take away the breath of even the most demanding art critic with its grandeur and moodiness. Even Reed's silly insistence on dutch angles (which distractingly and unnecessarily represent the crooked morality of post-war Vienna clearly evident through the actions of the characters) can't take away from Krasker's genius. Then there's the involving and twisty plot which will at first keep you guessing and then throw you for a loop. Even if you do know the twist it is still surprising, which is a mark of a well-written mystery. Finally, there's the excellent acting from the leads. Joseph Cotton does a great job of portraying the alcoholic American writer torn between morality and loyalty, Alida Valli is stunning and tragic as the damsel in a similar quary (though their chemistry leaves a lot to be desired for), and Trevor Howard makes for a highly believable moral compass, steely and stern but not without a certain humanity. It is still, of course, Orson Welles who steals the show with his 10-minute performance as Harry Lime. Discarding all the rules from the "How to Play a Villain" rulebook he distinguishes Harry from all the other film noir baddies with his trademark charm, good-humour, and surprising lightness that make Lime not only memorable but also distinctly creepy. Despite appearing only three times in the whole film, it is Harry Lime that'll stay with you when the film is done. "The Third Man" has a lot of flaws (most of them down to Carol Reed), but in this case the good does outweigh the bad. Even despite the jarring tonal shifts, jerky plot progression, and lack of chemistry between Cotton and Vali, I still love watching "The Third Man". I love letting the thick atmosphere engulf me and draw me into the stunningly photographed, seedy world of post-war mayhem. I love watching Orson Welles give the finest performance he's ever given, and I love his final moment in the film. "The Third Man" is not perfect, it's not the best film noir ever made, nor is it a masterpiece, but it is a classic and that moniker is in this case well deserved.
3.5/4 - DirectorZoran TadicStarsEna BegovicVedran MlikotaFilip SovagovicReporter Hela Martinic returns home from Australia to wartime Zagreb, only to find herself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Vera Kralj.19-11-2017
"The Third Man" is one of those classic films that are almost universally adored. While I don't question the vast influence it's had on cinema, I do think it is a flawed movie mostly due to its overrated director Carol Reed. Reed has no feel for comedy and thus Graham Greene's constant tonal shifting between comedy and serious noir is executed with jarring awkwardness. The film also has a distinctly jerky plot progression the blame for which I place on Greene's shoulders. Most novelists turned screenwriters write their scripts in the same rhythm they would write a novel, chapter stops and all. So instead of each of the film's scenes flowing neatly into the next, here each scene is presented in the manner you would in a play or a novel, with beginnings, middles, and ends independently of the scene that precedes or follows it. However, whilst no masterpiece "The Third Man" is a great movie in which the good well outweighs the bad. Firstly, there's the brilliant cinematography by Robert Krasker which can be paralleled by only a handful of other films. "The Third Man" also boasts wonderful performances from Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, and most notably Orson Welles whose charming and light performance as the villainous Harry Lime is indelibly memorable. While the direction could be bettered, none of these elements can and thus it seems to me pointless to remake "The Third Man", which is perhaps why no one's tried. No one, that is, except for Zoran Tadic, Yugoslavia's only thriller filmmaker and a great one at that. While Tadic is undoubtedly a better director than Carol Reed, there was no chance he could replicate or improve upon any other aspect of the 1949 original, thus his rather meekish remake can only be seen as a sentimental tribute to a beloved film. Entitled "The Third Woman", Tadic's final movie makes only minor aesthetic changes to the original mostly replicating it shot-for-shot much in the way Gus Van Sant would replicate "Psycho" only a year later. Now, Tadic's film is not as idiotic as Van Sant's largely because he does improve upon some of the flaws of the original, but he also makes a lot of mistakes all of his own along the way and eventually fails to distinguish his film from the original enough to warrant its existence. The biggest change from the original is (as clearly stated by the title) that the three lead roles are gender-flipped. Thus American journalist Holly Martins becomes Croatian ex-pat Hela Martinic (Ena Begovic), the villainous Harry Lime becomes the equally nasty Vera Kralj (Alma Prica), and both of their's love interest Anna Schmidt becomes Antun (Vedran Mlikota). However, the roles they play in the plot are exactly the same and so is the way in which it unravels itself making the change merely aesthetic. Nothing is made of the characters' new genders and so we can, like the filmmakers themselves, simply forget about them. So, the plot is the same. Hela Martinic, a born Croat returns to Zagreb after years of absence to visit her old friend Vera Kralj only to discover her beloved city torn up by the winds of war. There are daily air raids, casualties, and general mayhem but like the gender flip, little is made of this change. The plot plays out exactly the same as when it was set in post-war Vienna. Hela discovers Vera died in a car accident recently but finds the witnesses' statements clash with the official version of events. There was a mysterious, unidentified third woman present at the scene. Hela sets off to find out who murdered Vera with the help of Vera's ex-boyfriend Antun only to discover Vera's not actually dead and is actually a criminal mastermind. Also involved is a stern police inspector named Herceg (Filip Sovagovic) who seems to exist only to create problems for Hela and Antun. Zoran Tadic and his usual collaborator, writer Pavao Pavlicic make the story flow better without the previously jerky pace and manage to correctly replicate the noirish atmosphere of the original, mostly due to the excellent (though not nearly as good as Krasker's) cinematography by Goran Trbuljak. But the plaudits stop there. Despite their good work, "The Third Woman" suffers from bad acting, questionable politics, and the failure to live up to the original in any aspect other than the improved directing. While the talented Ms Begovic makes for a likeable lead almost everyone else's performances are distractingly bad. Filip Sovagovic is not half the actor his brilliant father Fabijan Sovagovic was. He plays the diligent policeman as an uncouth brute without any of the good humour or humanity Trevor Howard brought to the part. Alma Prica's performance is similarly lacking Orson Welles' human touch as she has none of his charm or lightness. Instead of trying to either imitate Welles' highly original performance or make the part her own she plays Vera as a very typical villain without any subtlety or substance. The most egregious, however, is the appaling performance by the utterly uncharismatic Vedran Mlikota in the role of the love interest. He plows through his lines like a steamroller with the presence of a wooden wardrobe and without any emotion or attempt at it. His performance is so bad I kept wondering if Tadic found him wandering the streets of Zagreb and hired him out of pity. I haven't seen such a terrible performance since the films of Zvonimir Maycug. I won't get into political analysis of "The Third Woman" here but suffice to say that like most 90s Croatian films it gets bogged down in Croatian propaganda which whether you agree with it or not is utterly unnecessary in a remake of "The Third Man". Finally, the film's failure is also contributed to by the general clumsiness of the adaptation with its badly (and often directly) translated dialogue and scenes transported into badly unfitting locations. Most disastrously the film crumbles under its political aspirations as it tries to glorify Zagreb as some sort of heroic city full of good people which is the direct opposite setting of "The Third Man" that put its twisty plot in the amoral underbelly of post-war Vienna. The story, however, just doesn't gel with the clean-cut image the film tries to portray of Zagreb and the lack of a seedy atmosphere or surreal humour makes some of the film's scenes feel out of place and jarring. For instance, the scene in which an angry mob led by a child chases our protagonists through the streets made sense in the warped logic of "The Third Man", but in the more straightforward, realistic, and whitewashed world of "The Third Woman" that scene ends up feeling like a non-sequitur. Finally, the film drudges to a close where we find a confusing and pointless change (the only one which truly impacts the plot) which pretty much devalues the entirety of the film or our involvement with its characters. It also deprives the finale (and the film) of its most emotionally impactful moment. I don't know why Zoran Tadic felt the need to make this film. His incredible talent has obviously not left him but perhaps his senses have. "The Third Woman" has no place in the world as it's not different enough to distinguish itself from the original or good enough to improve on it or bad enough to enrage anyone. It is simply a grotesque curiosity only for the most curious and Zoran Tadic completists like me. Lacking any real merits it is a sad note on which to end a brilliant career.
2/4 - DirectorRod BlackhurstBrian McGinnStarsAmanda KnoxMeredith KercherRaffaele SollecitoAmerican exchange student Amanda Knox is charged with the 2007 death of another student in Italy.24-11-2017
Meredith Kercher was a stranger in a strange land, a college student bedazzled by the picturesque beauties of Italy, the country that inspired and produced more works of art than any other. The country of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Puccini, Rossini, and if I'm allowed to add Argento, Fellini, Antonioni... Kercher, a beautiful, young, carefree girl was spending a year there as a foreign student and hoped to look on her time there as the best year of her life. But things wouldn't play out quite that way. On November 1st, Meredith Kercher would be brutally murdered by person or persons unknown in the house she shared with three others. However, a promising young life cut short won't be remembered by the public as a tragedy but rather as a cause celebre, a juicy news story, a scoop in which Kercher would be looked on as a cursory participant but which would make a celebrity out of the woman accused of her murder. Her 20-year old roommate, the blonde American Amanda Knox, became an overnight sensation when she was accused, alongside her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, of murdering Kercher. Remanded, imprisoned, tried, her face adorned the front pages of newspapers worldwide for years as she went through the drama of being convicted twice and then having the conviction overturned twice. As the journalists focused on Knox, the all-American killer, the real tragedy of a young woman brutally murdered became obfuscated, twisted, and even forgotten for the sake of a great headline. Everyone knew of Knox, but not many knew Kercher's name and even fewer cared. Even the most basic issue of whether Knox was guilty or not became irrelevant. If you were to scour the pages upon pages written about her you would be forgiven for assuming her to be some sort of singer, actress, or Kim Kardashian wanna-be because these so-called journalists focused more on her previous sexcapades, drug use, and what she wore to court today than on the evidence presented. Consequently, like everything in the internet age we sadly live in today, the public became sharply split between those who fervently believe her to be guilty and equally fired up groupies who seem intent on portraying Knox as a latter-day saint. And then there were the few of those in between struggling to get to the truth not for Knox's sake but for the sake of acquiring justice for Meredith Kercher. Even though the case is 10 years old, the relentless public interest hasn't ceased and now we get a Netflix documentary on the subject. Although undoubtedly superbly made, it betrays its biggest failing in its title. Instead of being called, say, "The Murder in Perugia" or "The Death of Meredith Kercher", it's called "Amanda Knox". Now, I don't mind the idea of telling the story through Knox's visage but the film actively seeks to portray her as some sort of a modern martyr while mentioning Kercher only cursorily. She is never described beyond being British, only one video of her is ever shown, and the most we get to know about her is that she was killed and not by Knox. I am sorry for what happened to Amanda Knox, the admittedly hurried and slapshot investigation resulted in a probably innocent person spending almost four years in prison, but her's is not the tragic story here. After four years of hell, she's back in her family's arms and the film ends with her happy, dancing around her comfortable, middle-class house free of all charges. Meredith Kercher will never dance again. It seems to me quite idiotic and myopic to portray Amanda Knox as the story's victim. Meanwhile, the filmmakers continually point accusing fingers towards the sensationalist press for turning Knox into an unwilling celebrity while they do the same thing themselves. The film's only goal is to whitewash and victimise Knox while ignoring the plight of Meredith Kercher and her family and the facts that the murder was never satisfactorily solved and that Raffaele Sollecito went through the same ordeal as Knox and is just as much a "victim" as she is. By being myopically focused on Amanda Knox, the film fails to be either objective or comprehensive and as such will only be enjoyed by Knox groupies. For those of us who are interested in the facts, the film presents a nice illustrated overview of the events but with certain omissions and without any real depth. Like I've already said it is technically well made with top-notch graphics, excellent use of archive footage, and interesting interviewees and it is never boring but besides these bells and whistles you'll actually get more information from the Wikipedia page correctly titled "Murder of Meredith Kercher". In conclusion, I have to say that while I was entertained by "Amanda Knox" I found the filmmakers' choice to focus only on her plight and to portray her as some sort of martyr honestly abhorrent. I'm not even sure Knox is as much of a victim as she claims to be. Sure the investigation was mishandled and shoddy, but quite a lot of the blame lies on Knox who lied to the police about several crucial facts and even went so far as to accuse an innocent man herself. Also, she was never maliciously targeted by the police who was neither corrupt nor as incompetent as the filmmakers try to portray them as being. She merely found herself caught up over her head in an honest quest for the truth that got tangled up in obfuscations created partly by Knox and partly by over-eager journalists inaccurately portraying her as some sort of a drugged-up sexpot. She's not a victim but merely collateral damage. But whatever your opinion on that matter is, the fact remains that the only real victim, in this case, is Meredith Kercher whose tragic death became a cause celebre centred around Knox. The film ends on what is supposedly a happy note with Knox celebrating her acquittal without taking a moment to reflect on the fact that we're still not sure about what happened in the picturesque town of Perugia on the night of November 1st, 2007 when a young woman lost her life.
2/4 - DirectorGiulio ParadisiStarsMel FerrerGlenn FordLance HenriksenThe soul of a young girl with telekinetic powers and her mother become the prize in a battle between good ETs and evil ETs.26-11-2017
We open on a vast desert plain, a sandy horizon as far as the eye can see. Above it, a shining dawn arises as a solitary old man watches it intently. Then, like a sinister shadow born out of the hopeful dawn arises a black-clad shape, inhumanly elongated and disfigured by the trickery of the light. The old man rises to face it and as a powerful sandstorm rages around them the shape approaches and reveals itself to be far smaller than it originally seemed. Then it removes its cloak and we see its face, the disfigured visage of a blonde child. The shape then disappears and through the clearing storm, walks the old man towards the newly broken dawn. No, this is not a description of a scene from Kenneth Anger's "Lucifer Rising" or Donald Cammell's "The Argument". It's the opening of Giulio Paradisi's "The Visitor", the strangest Italian horror film ever made which probably makes it by extension the strangest non-experimental film ever made in general. With its unintelligible plot, insane visuals, and head-spinning editing, "The Visitor" more than qualifies for that significant moniker. The old man who walked through the storm turns out to be one Jerzy Colsowicz (John Huston), an enigmatic character who runs some sort of a kindergarten for special children. As his colleague, a blonde-haired hippy space Jesus (Franco Nero) explains to these children they were all born from the seed of Zatteen, an interplanetary Satan figure who was defeated by Yahweh, an interplanetary God figure, but whose spirit (or something) survived on Earth and continues to breed evil children with superpowers (or something). Jerzy and Jesus' mission is to collect all these children and exorcise the spirit of Zatteen from them and, for some reason, cut all of their hair off. Jerzy informs Jesus that the last of these children is called Katy Collins (Paige Conner) and is living in Atlanta, Georgia. We meet 8-year old Katy just as she sabotages a basketball game between Atlanta and San Francisco by making the hoop explode. She is blonde, has an icy-cold demeanour, and wears Robert Mitchum-size sunglasses, but only inside or at night. She lives with her mother Barbara (Joanne Nail) who's unaware of her daughter's nature and powers, and Barbara's boyfriend Raymond (Lance Henriksen) who is actually an agent of a secret cult aiming to continue the seed of Zatteen (or something) run by Jerzy's counterpart, the equally old but decidedly less enigmatic Dr Walker (Mel Ferrer). Barbara is highly important to them as she is the only woman on Earth currently carrying the gene of Zatteen (but is for some reason unaffected by it herself). However, she refuses to marry Raymond or have any more children forcing the cult to take desperate measures such as paralysing her by shooting her in the spine. What effect this is meant to have I don't know but it gets dogged policeman Jake Durham (Glenn Ford) on their tail, that is until he is killed off after about 10 minutes in an extravagant sequence involving cars, explosions, and one ferocious owl. Meanwhile, Jerzy arrives in Atlanta (supposedly for the first time despite speaking throughout in a perfect American accent) with an army of bald people and sets up some sort of a space portal on top of a skyscraper. He also pretends to be Katy's babysitter and spends time playing video games with her. As you can glean from this description the plot fails to ever truly make sense and wanders aimlessly through several plotlines each more confusing than the other. In fact, "The Visitor" doesn't really have a format. It is more of a series of sequences operating on music video logic (if it looks cool, do it) loosely bound by a "Bad Seed" rip-off plot. However, it is its absolute refusal to conform to any sort of standard, plot, or format that makes it so damn fascinating. In fact, it's a film best described as hypnotically weird. Throughout its 108-minute runtime (around 20 minutes too long) I was transfixed to the screen, barely blinking, struggling to take in Paradisi's madcap vision in its entirety. I guffawed at its inconsistencies, marvelled at its visuals, and admittedly had a few decent chills along the way. Italian horror has always been about style over substance but "The Visitor" takes that to almost fetishistic levels. There are several sequences in this film that seem to have cut together by some sort of a malfunctioning randomiser. One montage sequence cuts between a tense operation in which a group of surgeons fight for the life of our main character and Katy's gymnastics class. Another one has Katy physically flinging a group of young boys trying to sexually assault her over an ice rink while Jerzy descends an impossibly long staircase over and over again. And if that's not enough there are numerous scenes which resemble an Elton John music video more than a proper movie. Look at all those shots of Jerzy walking around a rooftop while shadows of his bald army dance on white screens, or the scenes in which Raymond is being briefed by the cult whose members are so in synch they always move their heads at the precise same time. Increasing the surreal atmosphere of the film is Paradisi's proclivity for crash zooms, Franco Micalizzi jarringly inappropriate electronic score, and some truly baffling casting choices. I've already mentioned John Huston as the kindly (but quite creepy) old man and Franco Nero as Jesus Christ, but this film also boasts completely gratuitous appearances from Shelley Winters as a tough housekeeper, Sam Peckinpah as Barbara's obstetrician ex-husband, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as himself. Of course, all of this makes "The Visitor" insanely entertaining but the question remains, does it work? Well, that entirely depends on what it was going for. It works in the sense that it kept me in my seat all the way through staring intently at the screen partly out of disbelief and partly out of genuine interest. It doesn't work as a high-minded horror film mainly because it is impossible for anyone to get any idea of what the hell it's trying to tell us. However, when you strip away all the glitz and glitter of its madcap insanity, "The Visitor" does offer quite a few fairly effective horror sequences. Nothing to rank with the best in the genre but effective never-the-less. It also boasts excellent cinematography by Ennio Guarnieri and surprisingly earnest performances from its bemused cast. "The Visitor" is a delightfully strange movie-going experience that I will surely come back to whenever in a mood for a mind screw, a laugh, or just something to remind me what the word absurd means. It is a hypnotically psychedelic rollercoaster that doesn't give a damn for screenwriting conventions, plot development, or common sense. It does what "Lifeforce" would do 6 years later but does it in the wilder, weirder Italian way. And by god, we definitely need films like this from time to time. If you're ever in a mood to be baffled and entertained at the same time by something resembling a reader's digest version of a pretentious man's acid trip then "The Visitor's" your film.
2.5/4