STUDIES AND RESEARCHES — FROM THE HISTORY OF CROATIAN FILM

H-8... — now and then

The author explains the historical and aesthetic context of the film H-8.... The twentieth Croatian long feature after World War II, H-8... was the second long feature by the distinguished cameraman Nikola Tanhofer. Intermediary references to music and journalism were partly motivated by cooperation with screen players — the renowned journalist Tomislav Butorac, and Zvonimir Berković, a graduate of the Academy of Dramatic Arts who also played the violin, and later on became director. In Pula, the film won all major awards, and although it did not influence Croatian cinema, it did draw much attention abroad. The author attempts to contextualize the film in respect to possible western (American, French, Italian), and eastern (Soviet) poetic models. It presented a relative novelty in Croatian production due to its contemporary thematic (the collision of a bus and a truck on the highway) treated with characters of urban profiles. In the 1950s, in cinema and culture in general, realism was greatly valued, and usually understood as the presentation of ordinary »little« people. Some critics thought that Tanhofer’s film was populated with unusual people; however, the author of this study, after careful analysis, came to the conclusion that the characters represented a probable statistical average to be found among passengers travelling on a bus from Zagreb to Belgrade. One of the film’s themes was family — driver Prača was a role model of a good-natured and calm father and worker, a soldier was taking a leave of absence because he has gotten a son, clerk Vukelić’s children dedicated him a song on the radio; on the other hand, the Swiss guy should have been seriously suspicious of his young wife’s faithfulness, journalists Vodopija and Boris were probably hiding the emptiness of their personal lives, the doctor was trying to take his family away from an unpleasant affair, while Jakupčev’s family was obviously traumatised by the father’s and husband’s weakness in dealing with the pressure from his relatives. However, in this film, contrary to possible socialist-realist role models, the sins of the past were corrigible, and »escapes« impossible, so that we could talk about familiarity with French poetic realism, particularly visible in the ethics of the fateful boomerang of inexcusable guilt, although the core of the problem lay precisely in the family, that is to say, male-female relations (student Alma was recovering from a harmful relationship with a professor, but the journalist who was seducing her scared her away with his overly rough »masculine« approach. Although it was not dealing with controversial subjects, H-8... could be considered a deeply subversive film, mainly because after the accident, all the families were destroyed except those whose family life was already agonizing (the Jakupčevs, the actor’s and the Swiss guy’s family). Furthermore, as Vivo Kraal, a film historian noticed, even the fact that coincidence was of crucial importance for the resolution of the film could be considered potentially subversive, with a metaphysical dimension of pessimism, because those who died were predominantly the good and noble ones — Alma, the driver who had always been straight, the soldier excited by the birth of his son, worried single father (truck driver) who wanted to commit himself to his son after a sinful past... An American film with a similar thematic would have definitely built (»single out«) a solid hero, who in this case could have been the ambitious journalist Boris, but since Tanhofer did not choose the main character, there was obviously no need for a strong antagonist, i.e. villain. Therefore, the First and the Second speaker (united in the narrator) and the person who had caused the accident, although invisible, were of crucial importance for the film, and could be considered as a variant of a typical protagonist — antagonist relationship. Just like in French poetic realism films, evil was an unstoppable force, and people did not seem to be the masters of their lives. Luckily, this subversive quality was not recognized at the time the film was made because at first glance it might have seemed that H-8... was featuring an economy on the rise. Still, Tanager’s film did contain modernist and auto-referential elements. When he was talking about reporting about the little people from the market, journalist Vodopija was expressing the aesthetic creed that could have been assigned to this movie, moreover, three of the film’s characters were involved in art (actor, Alma, and the piano player that saw her off). On the other hand, Alma paraphrased the basic constructive principle of the film; after journalist Boris had criticized Bach’s fugues as being a »mess« of numerous melodies, she instructed him about the secrets of this musical genre consisting of several motives intertwining, striving toward the same goal, just as the passengers on the bus were traveling toward the same station. The impression of realism might have been attained by a certain degree of fragmentation (which was also confirmed by the literary theoretician Solar), so that in this sense H-8... was definitely realistic, in the manner of Robert Rossellini and his film Paisa (1946) where he represented the liberation of Italy in World War II, with the structure of an omnibus consisting of six stories, repeatedly introducing new characters, places and situations. It is also interesting that the author of the study considers that Branko Belan’s Concert pays tribute to neorealism. In new Hollywood, realistic fragmentation is present in films by Robert Altman Nashville (1975) and Short Cuts (1993), but the phenomenon of omnibuses and similar »mosaic« films was particularly frequent in the 1950s. In what manner did Tanhofer’s film, frequently singled out as one of the most successful Croatian films of all times, profile these numerous characters on the layout of careful realistic construction? The narrative context was clearly signalled in the beginning (the problem of the forthcoming accident) so that characters were constantly shifting positions and engaging in hardly describable interrelations. While the beginning reminded more of conventions of American narrative film, later narrator’s interventions (his striking unreliability), ill-omened beautiful song Bon voyage by Dragutin Savin (sang by Gabi Novak), scenes of »phantom« connotations of driving through the rain refined denoted sententiousness of characters and poetic fatalism of the film’s relationship with destiny and evil. The author of the study further explains the »peripheral« goals of the plot that seemed less important in comparison to the crash, goals such as seduction of the girl or improvement of family relations, the function of these goals being the development of viewers’ participation in film (that is to say, in respect to the characters). All denoted mechanisms were skilfully shaped by the director’s hand, the varying of rhythm and numerous rhetorical effects were giving the impression of unity despite fragmentation; in other words, the richness of impression despite the obvious basic sensation of the theme of the crash. In the conclusion of the study, the author points out that Nikola Tanhofer’s film H-8... conducted an original assimilation of the elements of former (neo)realist tendencies of European film, elements of dynamic American narrative film, and the elements of pretentious and pessimistic French dialogue film. Associations to the Yugoslav film circle in this Croatian film classic have reduced to what unavoidably pertained to the characters from a certain environment (and most of the characters seemed to be from Croatia) — the language, names, and some discrete denotations of social life facts. At the end of the text he places the »Note about the actors« in which he explains the choice of actors for the film (Mia Oremović, Marijan Lovrić, Antun Nalis...) and the former relation of film and theatre, with facts about their previous and later careers.

Ante Peterlić