A complex seemingly discombobulated and incomprehensible movie you might think. Initially a few moments into this film had me both enthralled and somewhat confused. But understanding a director of a film has message(s) in the film to be conveyed to a viewer I was drawn in hook line and sinker determined to discover the message(s). My 1971-1974 travels to Yugoslavia and in the Iron Curtain and my focus on Eastern European communist politics as a political scientist drew me to the film like a proletarian to a revolution! Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s into several independent nation states with a penchant for conflict. The cement that held Yugoslavia together crumbled in 1980 with the death of its leader Marshal Tito.
Yugoslavia was one of the more tolerant Iron Curtain countries if in fact it really was inside the Iron Curtain at all but by democratic standards that tolerance may not amount to much more than a hill of beans. Whereas in Yugoslavia I went out pub crawling with the local chief of police in the mountain village of Bled in Slovenia, in Romania a tail and warning not to associate with me was placed on my head by a local police chief.
Extreme prudent morality was enforced in most of Eastern European communist states but Yugoslavia was more progressive with discos, American rock music and some innovative architecture. A heavy inflow of tourists from Scandinavia and Germany along its Adriatic Coast may have given some impetus to “Yugo liberalism”.
Izabela (Eva Ras) is an ebullient and vivacious switchboard operator in Belgrade. Fair to say she has a healthy appetite for carnal activities. She meets “The Turk” Ahmed (Slobodan Aligrude) and in a conventional way falls in love with this quiet and loyal Communist Party member a member of the sanitation forces with a specialty in rat hunting.
The relationship progresses splendidly until Izabela becomes pregnant. Ahmed is delighted hoping she will bear “a little Turkish janissary”. Izabela explodes in anger with this comment declaring herself a slave to Ahmed. Ahmed rapidly descends into depression drinking to the extent he has been found soiled and unconscious in the bushes. He is stopped by Izabela in his suicide attempt to throw himself down a deep well. Izabela pays the unintended price.
There are various “educational talks” throughout the film by a sexologist, criminologist, rat historian and a doctor performing an autopsy lending some fabricated respectability to this offbeat film. Very much like Doctor Everett V. Scott’s role in “Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
Interspersed with the educational “lectures” are patriotic Yugoslav and East German songs lauding communism and films of proletarian masses destroying churches as spreaders of the opiates of the masses. And yes the communist flag is placed upon the base of the mob destroyed church steeple and Lenin’s massive picture replaces the looted icons. Communism the new opiate of the masses?
The message of the film? Propaganda spews but for the average Yugoslav it is meaningless babble. In the Yugoslav communist state there is propaganda about as sophisticated as Peppa the Pig dialogue, crime, misogyny, pettiness, puffed up egos, poor housing conditions and over 60,000,000 rats.
Ahmed the rat hunter can’t eliminate the rats and barely controls them similar to the Yugoslav Communist Party’s inability to quell all opposition to its rule and cultural morals. In a tender and joyous moment, we hear Izabela singing a song of the heart while a patriotic parade can be heard below her flat.
The culture track desired in the Iron Curtain was socialist realism and director Dušan Makavejev’s film conveys the message socialist realism is socialist unreality. Everyday life in Yugoslavia runs contrary to the tenets of socialist realism. Social realism not socialist realism was the hallmark of the Black Wave which began a demise with the Ruling League of Communists holding a session on 27October1969 concluding that certain films had a tendency to be counterrevolutionary and degrading giving rise to the “Years of Lead” in Yugoslav cinema.
You can watch the film on the Criterion Channel which requires a paid subscription to access its films.
RKS Vintage Film Rating 92/100.
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