ANTE BABAJA (1927-2010) (II)

Stylized world of film: short fiction films by Ante Babaja

This essay analyzes six early short subjects by Ante Babaja. These films are important in order to understand Babaja’s feature-length classics because the elements of style that are to mark the director’s later work can be discerned already here. In almost all of his short films Babaja ridicules human and social flaws strongly and experiments with means of expression typical of film. The result of this are overly stylized films in which music plays an important role. Some of those films, such as Justice (1962), are today considered classics of the Croatian short-length film. The director’s tendency to make adaptations of literary works evident in this film will remain present also later in his work, through cooperation with Slavko Kolar and Slobodan Novak. Collaborators like Božidar Violić and Tomislav Pinter, with whom he started to work while shooting these short films, will greatly contribute to the quality of some of his feature-length films. The short form also served him as a platform to experiment with procedures he would bring to perfection in his later works.

Vladimir Šeput