BOOK REVIEWS

Legacy for the future

Hrvoje Turković, 2005: Film: entertainment, genre, style, Zagreb: Hrvatski filmski savez

Film: entertainment, genre, style is the ninth book of the filmologue Hrvoje Turković that, like many of his texts scattered over different magazines, states the lucidity of its author. More than any other, this book reveals the system and purpose in Turković’s apparently random and occasional essays. In many of his texts, sometimes in an essayist and sometimes in highly speculative manner, Turković has tried to polish the definitions of almost everyday terms, those of entertainment, genre, and style. So when Turković writes about the category of entertainment trying to define it, he confronts the reader with notions of entertainment as a spare time phenomenon that greatly coincides with some serious products of different artistic practices. The central part of the book is dedicated to film species and stands out with an all encompassing elaboration of the generic phenomenon, as well as descriptions of particular genres, particularly historical film and drama as »genre above all genres«. The author continues the research of generic phenomenon by posing the crucial question: What are the special features of a particular world out of which genre draws its vitality? Third part of the book is based on the interesting question of style. Critics often use this notion in everyday work as one of the basis for defining and evaluating works. In his explanation of the notion, Turković accepts the theoretical presumption advocating the thesis that style is always connected to defining identity. From the choice of three basically different, but not totally disconnected styles: stylizing, formative, and configurative, he clings to the last one, describing it as the most comprehensive. Second part of the chapter on style is dedicated to styles of individual creators (Belan, Bauer, Babaja, Godard, Lucas), but also the traits of two stylistic periods: classical and modernist.

Petar Krelja