Branko Bauer

Branko Bauer ( February 18, 1921 in Dubrovnik - April 11, 2002 in Zagreb ) was a Yugoslav film director . He is considered a leading figure in narrative film in Yugoslavia in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Life

Bauer was already interested in film as a schoolboy. During the Second World War he also visited the cinemas in Zagreb, which were very popular with the Nazi occupiers . Together with his father, Čedomir Bauer, he hid their Jewish tenant Ljerka Freiberger 1942, the Ustasha . In 1992, Yad Vashem recognized father and son as Righteous Among the Nations .

In 1949 he began working as a documentary filmmaker in the Zagreb studio of Jadran Film . His feature film debut was the children's adventure film The Blue Seagull (Sinji galeb) from 1953. He became an important director in the country in the 1950s, but in the following decade could not understand the swing to the auteur film . Although he also made two modernist films, they were unsuccessful. As a result, he could no longer find funding for new films. He then turned to television.

In the 1970s he directed the miniseries The Farm in Small Swamp , a war drama from Vojvodina .

Selected Works

Don't look back my son

Bauer's third film made him one of the most respected directors in Yugoslavia. The war thriller from 1956 Don't look back, my son ("Ne okreći se sine", in the American version: Don't Turn Around, Son ) tells of a resistance fighter from World War II who got off a train on the way to the Jasenovac concentration camp can escape. He returns to Zagreb to find his son and to join the partisans in the Croatian hinterland. However, he has to realize that his son was re-educated as a Ustaša in a boarding school. The hero manages to escape the city with his son, but throughout his journey he is forced to lie to his son about their deeds. The film was inspired by Carol Reed's 1947 thriller Outcast . The final scene that gave the film its name quotes the Disney film Bambi . Bauer won the award of the 3rd Yugoslavia Film Festival. Don't look back, my son is still considered to be one of the best films about the Second World War - “with individualized protagonists, realistic situations and a suggestive atmosphere”.

Three girls named Anna

His next film was called Nur Menschen ("Samo ljudi") and was a melodrama from 1957, heavily influenced by Douglas Sirk . The film flopped, mainly because the criticism in communist Yugoslavia of the 1950s did not see melodrama as a serious genre. After this film, Bauer worked for a Macedonian production company and shot Three Girls named Anna ("Tri Ane"; 1959), influenced by Italian neorealism and sometimes compared to Umberto D. von Vittorio de Sica . The film tells the story of an old man who lives alone and believes his daughter was killed as a child during World War II. Suddenly, the man receives news that she may have survived and is now believed to be an adult in a foster family. Bauer's edgy, authentic portrayal of post-war poverty and the lower classes was not welcomed by the establishment. The film was never shown in cinemas, but is now often viewed as Bauer's "forgotten masterpiece", his best film.

Bauer's subsequent films were more commercially successful - the 1961 comedy Martin above the clouds ( Martin u oblacima ) and the 1962 film One Too Many ( Prekobrojna , 1962), which introduced Milena Dravić as the future Yugoslav film star.

Face to face

Probably the best known of Bauer's films is Face to Face ("Licem u lice"), a 1963 feature film that is considered to be Yugoslavia's first political film. It tells the story of a rebellious worker who challenges a manager at a Communist Party meeting at a large construction company. Although the film was originally viewed as controversial due to its political orientation, it eventually received support from well-known Communist officials as well. This was seen by filmmakers as a green light for more open portrayals of socially controversial issues. For Serbian director Živojin Pavlović , Face to Face was "the most important film ever made in Yugoslavia."

criticism

In the 1950s and 1960s, Bauer was considered a master of Yugoslav cinema and received respect and recognition from both the government and his colleagues. Although his films did not question the regime, the prevailing value system in these films was portrayed as "old-fashioned" and "bourgeois". Instead of the usual glorification of youth and revolution, his films often dealt with the classic middle class, decent and working people. His typical heroes made the right moral choices based not on ideology but on personal ethos. The contemporary Croatian filmmaker Hrvoje Hribar described it this way: "Bauer had a feel for the blind spot of communist ideology, so he placed his films in a place that was as close as possible and yet least influential." In the late 1960s and 1970s, Bauer was pushed off the screen with the rise of auteur films.

In the late 1970s, his works were rediscovered by young critics as a kind of Yugoslav version of old Hollywood masters. The Slovenian film historian Stojan Pelko wrote in the encyclopedia of the British Film Institute about Russian and Eastern European cinema: "Bauer was to Yugoslav critics what Hawks and Ford were to French New Wave critics." In the following decade there was a fundamental reassessment of his oeuvre. In a survey of critics from the late 1990s among the greatest Croatian film directors, Bauer came second behind Krešo Golik .

Filmography (director)

• 1953: The blue seagull ( Sinji galeb )
• 1955: Millions on the island ( Milijuni na otoku )
• 1956: Don't look back, my son ( Ne okreći se sine )
• 1957: Only People ( Samo ljudi )
• 1959: Three girls named Anna ( Tri Ane )
• 1961: Martin above the clouds ( Martin u oblacima )
• 1962: one too many ( Prekobrojna )
• 1963: Face to Face ( Licem u lice )
• 1964: Nikoletina Bursać
• 1965: Arrive and stay ( Doći i ostati )
• 1967: The fourth fellow traveler ( Četvrti suputnik )
• 1975: The farm in the small swamp ( Salaš u Malom Rita )
• 1978: Boško Buha

Award

• Nagrada Vladimir Nazor for Lifetime Achievement (1980)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pravednici i njihove životne priče , May 24, 2009, accessed on March 18, 2018
2. ↑ U Ovči je 1973. počelo snimanje serije “Salaš u Malom Ritu” , February 29, 2016, accessed on March 20, 2018
3. ↑ 66th Pulls film festival , accessed November 12, 2018
4. ↑ ^{a b} ljudi , in: Vijenac , edition 331, 23 November 2006
5. ^ Between Subversion and Critique , in: East European Film Bulletin, Issue 44, August 2014
6. ↑ Univerzalne vrijednosti klasičnog autora , in: Vijenac , issue 333, December 21, 2006

Web links

• Branko Bauer in the Internet Movie Database (English)