Živojin Pavlović – the underbelly of Yugoslavian society in cinema

During the 1960s and 1970s, when modernism, new vawes, „black“ tendencies and similar occurencies were present throughout international cinema, several Yugoslav directors depicted the lowest strata of the society, often concentrating on the most unhappy people in Yugoslavia. This „new cinema“ and „black wave“ was concentrated in Serbia, but it was a much broader trend in Yugoslavia. Films of Dušan Makavejev, Aleksandar Petrović, Želimir Žilnik, Lazar Stojanović, Krsto Papić, Bato Čengić, Ante Babaja and other prominent directors sometimes danced on the verge of censorship, often playing the fiddle with the nerves of politicians used for violin strings. And even the more mainstream directors, such as Veljko Bulajić or Vatroslav Mimica, sometimes participated in this trend.Živojin Pavlović, a cynical intelectual with deep concern with the ugly and suffering productively from fascination with the sweaty, passion and neurosis driven body as a part of the human experience, was one of the best and most provocative film directors in this respect and probably one of the greatest artists in the history of Yugoslav cinema. His post 2nd world war provincial Serbia in „Zaseda“ (The Ambush) was a powerful indictment of socialist idealism, „Kad budem mrtav i beo“ (When I am dead and gone) married nascent pop-culture scene with the ravages of poverty on the souls of people living outside the center of the society, but it is perhaps „Buđenje pacova“ (The Rats Woke Up) where all this really shines. The bad, the ugly and the miserable got its most poignant and most intriguing portrait in this portrait of contemporary Belgrade. The hero of the film Bamberg (magnificently played by ever a little bit innebriate Slavko Perović), one of the leaders who messed up their careers by being sympathetic to Joseph Stalin, lives on the verge of society, showing us how Belgrade looks when we enter the lives of small, marginal people.