PORTRAIT OF THE FILM DIRECTOR: KRSTO PAPIĆ

Prewar psychosis: images of the 1930s in Krsto Papić’s The Rat Saviour

This essay explains the period presented in the film The Rat Saviour by Krsto Papić (1930s). It’s a fantasy thriller in which rat-people take over the city. However, using critical and political remarks from the time of the first screenings, the text also depicts the period when the film was made (1970s), a specific period in the history of Croatian and Yugoslav film. Based on Aleksandar Grin’s novel, Papić’s film, it seems so, uses allegorical potentials of the original so as to create an allegory which is specifically filmic, mostly based on the narrative logic of dreams, which was in fact recognized by politicians that assessed the film negatively. However, from a modern viewer’s perspective, although it can be understood as the allegory of the time of its creation (socialist totalitarianism), the film functions as a presentation of universal evil.

Nikica Gilić