BLOCKBUSTERS

Croatian Blockbusters

Is there a Croatian film blockbuster? The problem in Croatia is that there is no strong market. Distributors do not recognize Croatian film as particularly attractive merchandise, because the profit from Hollywood hits is higher and easier. If directors and producers were not so persistent —because it matters to them to present their work to public — many Croatian productions would never make it into the cinemas. Croatian film in the recent period is characterized by sleepers. How the War Started on My Island (1996), top grossing Croatian film in the past 15 years (around 350,000 viewers), is actually a television production made outside the film industry, and such a response surprised not only the authors, but also the distributor (Kinematografi Zagreb). Another typical sleeper is the film by Dalibor Matanić The Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside. Vinko Brešan’s film Marshal Tito’s Spirit (1999) may be considered the only blockbuster of recent Croatian cinema. Advertised as the new film by the author of hit-comedy How the War Started on My Island, Marshal Tito’s spirit had a ten times bigger budget (around €1 million).
Blockbusters were more common in ex Yugoslavia, where the common market guaranteed much larger number of movie goers. Sometimes the regional orientation prevented some films that were very popular in certain parts of the country to accomplish the same success in the rest of Yugoslavia (Krešo Golik’s Those Who Sing Think no Ill (1970) is the top grossing film of all times in Zagreb — with more than 220,000 viewers — but in Belgrade, Sarajevo, and even in Rijeka and Split, the success was moderate. But, there were films that knew how to make use of a great number of cinema theaters that were at disposal. The most spectacular among them was Battle on Neretva by Veljko Bulajić (1969), planned to be a blockbuster (’super spectacle’), made in collaboration of the biggest producing companies and distributors in ex Yugoslavia, and two foreign co-producers, with famous actors, whose commissions were then estimated at $12 million (today probably around 50 million), and attracted more than 2 million viewers (part of it on so called school screenings). A total opposition to partisan spectacle were low budget Serbian comedies of the 1980s like Lion in the Heart (1981) or Žika’s Dinasty (1985); the predecessor of both is Shared Apartment by Dragutin Dobričanin (1960), that used aggressive advertising and wide distribution to make up for the lack of real attractions on the screen.
In contrast with present-day situation, Croatian film was more interesting to the audiences during Yugoslavian period. Some characteristics of a blockbuster may be recognized in the film The Pine Tree in the Mountain (1971); the success of his debuting film When You Hear the Bell (1969) inspired Antun Vrdoljak to conceptualize his second film as a kind of sequel (making a franchise is typical for blockbusters), with a similar subject matter (vignettes form the war in Banija), but also with a more pronounced exploitational elements (humor, action, sex). The film was extraordinarily well received not only in Croatia (around 300,000 viewers), but also in other Yugoslavian republics. The golden era of Croatian cinematography, when the awareness of attracting the audience was more pronounced, starts with the film Occupation in 26 Pictures by Lordan Zafranović (1978), and the trend is continued with films Honeymoon by Nikola Babić (1983) as well as You Only Love Once by Rajko Grlić (1981), differing only in the fact that the second was more strategically ingenious, because the stars were Serbian actors Miki Manojlović and Vladica Milosavljević, so it attracted more viewers in the whole Yugoslavia.
Why are viewers currently avoiding Croatian films? The problem is not the quality of production, but the problem is that the major group of movie goers is not exploited: most movie goers are aged between 15 and 25, and they consider Croatian film to be too serious and unattractive; and Croatian filmmakers do not aim their work at this group of audience.
ANALITICAL CONTENTS: The concept of blockbuster; Serbian hits and Croatian sleepers, Blockbusters of Ex-Yugoslavia; The role of Croatian production within Ex-Yugoslavia’s market; Why the Croatian audience avoids Croatian films?

Nenad Polimac