In focus
Films by Lordan Zafranović
Lordan Zafranović (born in
Maslinica on the island Šolta, Croatia, in 1944) began
creating his, in Croatian terms, quantitatively extremely
rich opus (fifty amateur and professional theatrical and
TV films) in 1961, in Cine-club Split. In five years that
he has spent there, his poetics developed from a ’fluid’,
melancholic, neo-romantic existentialism (for example,
in The Story, 1963; The Diary, 1964) into
a more harsh, manipulative existentialist variation that
included transparent eccentricity and absurdism along with
an inclination towards a more open treatment of sexuality
and naturalistic, grotesque ’roughness’ (The Concert,
1965; Rainy /Innocent Saturday/, 1965).
The later
orientation would dominate in the long, professional phase
of his work on short films (and middlemeter) among which
stood out the middlemeter trilogy Waltz /My First Dance/ (1970), Ava
Maria /My First Inebriety/ (1971), and Nightmare (1972).
In 1973 he would integrate this trilogy in the motion picture A
Chronicle of a Crime, which won a prize at the Chicago
festival. This period reflected certain Zafranović’s qualities
that would characterize his whole future filmmaking: extremely
weak treatment of the narrative-dramaturgic-characterisation
layer of the work, while on the other side, he displays
a significant talent for creating stylistic atmosphere.
On the thematic level, he was preoccupied with the manifestations
and the nature of evil in man, which regularly included,
seldom very explicit, treatment of sex and violence, in
other words, the archetypal motives of Eros and Thanatos.
Zafranović graduated film direction in 1971
at the Film Academy (FAMU) in Prague in the class of the
American Academy Award winner Elmar Klos. During his studies
he also produced his first long feature Sunday (1969).
In 1975, he started his consistent work on long features.
His motion picture opus can be divided in the two basic
groups: existential, metaphysical, erotic films and historical-political
films. The first group consists of Matthias’ Martyrdom,
1975; Angel’s
Bite, 1983/84; Haloa — Whores’ Holyday, 1988; Lacrimosa
/The Vengeance is Mine/, 1995; furthermore, we
could also include here his two earlier films Sunday and A
Chronicle of a Crime. The second group includes the
films Occupation
in 26 Pictures, 1978; The Fall of Italy,
1981; and Evening Bells, 1986.
The first group
consists of films that combine existentialist, meditative,
metaphysical-eschatological elements and the poetics
of the so called soft porns, while the second group
deals with the period of the World War II. Films of
the later group, although they were dominated by the
’practical’ political problematic, still inherited
erotic motives prominent in the films of the earlier
period. However, the poetics of aestheticized sex,
violence and grotesque, along with serious problems
with the film narration and characterisation structure
are characteristic of both periods. In terms of quality,
his existential-metaphysical-erotic movies are rather
average, while the historical-political trilogy rises above
average, especially Evening Bells (story about the
destiny of a communist, an intellectual revolutionary and
his family, encompassing the period from 1926 till 1948).
This one is probably the best of his works, in which he
has mastered the fragmentary-elliptic narrative layer,
and has skilfully managed to articulate and distinguish
characters while tuning down his directorial-stylistic
intrusions thus creating a very impressive atmosphere.
Furthermore, most of the characters are positive figures
displaying warm emotions, which is quite unusual for often
misanthropically oriented Zafranović.
A synthesis of Zafranović’s existentially
metaphysical and historically political opus was his long
documentary The
Twilight of the Century /L. Z. Last Will/ (1993)
that mechanically and pretentiously combines scenes from
the period of the rise and rule of nazi-fascism, i. e.
the Ustasha movement in Croatia, scenes from the trial
to the Ustasha minister Andrija Artuković in Zagreb,
clips from Zafranović’s previous movies, and scenes of
the author himself ’wisely’ explaining the nature of
film art and evil in man.
Lordan Zafranović is the author
very much marked by the so-called Mediterranean circle,
and his opus naturally connects to those of Fellini,
Visconti, Pasolini and Bertolucci. They share a similar
climate, similar ambiance, similar inclination to display
existential emptiness, erotic, decadent, grotesque, violent.
Formula Eros plus Thanatos particularly links Zafranović
to Pasolini and Bertolucci, with whom he also shares
the interest in political films. With later in mind,
we might also enlarge this list by adding Liliana Cavani
and her Night
Guard, and, of course, Visconti’s Twillight of Gods,
while The Garden of Finzi-Contini by Vittorio De
Sica and Fellini’s Armacord do not share the above
mentioned characteristics.
Within Croatian cinema, Vatroslav
Mimica, also of Mediterranean origin (and Dalmatian) could
be said to be Zafranović’s kinsman since much of his work
deals with (warlike and universal) evil, and also uses
existentially meditative approach and the so-called aestheticized
style with significant influences of the elements of naturalism
and grotesque; the later qualities link Zafranović to yet
another Dalmatian (Islander) — Ante Babaja. However, one
must emphasize that both Mimica and Babaja were quite superior
to Zafranović. Within the region of Yugoslavia, Zafranović’s
closest kinsman was Montenegrin Živko Nikolić, who shared
Zafranović’s Mediterranean ambiance, erotic and violent
motives, ecentricity and narrative ’skill’.
Lordan Zafranović is a distinctive figure in Croatian
cinema without whome this milieu would be if not poorer
than certainly much more sterile. He was the first, and
so far the only Croatian filmmaker who systematically exploited
erotic and violence then, while on the other hand, reckoning
with Ustasha history and the ghosts of racism, he was actually
following the path of the New Testament and its moral about
the thorn in somebody else’s eye that becomes a log in
our own. Lordan Zafranović certainly does not belong to
the creatively most important Croatian film authors, nevertheless,
his poetics has intriguing and encouraging elements, while
his opus surely includes two anthological works (Afternoon
/The Gun/; Evening Bells)
that make his presence on the map of Croatian film history
quite unavoidable. Damir Radić |