I t was in early 1943 when German gen- erals began, on Hitler’s personal orders, to implement the Weiss plan for the de- struction of partisan units. Pressured by a far superior enemy, the partisans, with their General Sta and 4,500 wounded or suering from typhoid, found themselves surrounded in the valley of the River Ner- etva. Only one bridge remained, on the oth- er side of which strong enemy forces were waiting. Tito ordered the demolishing of the bridge. The surprised enemy shifted their forces to the other side, predicting that the partisans would attempt a suicid- al breakthrough. However, over the course of just one night, the partisans built a tem- porary bridge beside the demolished one and crossed to the other side, where they clashed with Yugoslav Royalist Chetniks… Probably the most expensive lm cre- ation of the former Yugoslavia, Veljko Bula- jić’s The Battle of Neretva was shot over a year and a half, with the tremendous eort of the entire country. Shooting was initially postponed due to an earthquake in Skop- je, then also due to economic reforms, so the rst clapperboard fell on 25 th October 1967, and the premiere – which was attend- ed, alongside the cast and director, by Tito, So a Loren, Omar Sharif and many others – was held at the Skenderija in Sarajevska Street on 29 th November 1969. To commemorate the 50 th anniversary of this lm’s premiere, an exhibition entitled ‘The Road to Freedom must be Clean’, de- signed by Maja Medić, opened in the Film Gallery of the Belgrade Cultural Centre. The majority of the photographs on show at the exhibition belong to the Cinematheque Yugoslav Film Archives, with a few coming from the archives of press agency Tanjug and one sourced from the Borba archives, while the exhibition itself is divided into three segments. “In the rst part are close-up shots of the lead actors, or scenes from the lm. Con- tinuing on from them are overall shots, pre- sented with the desire for visitors to at least partially feel that magni cence and the hith- erto unsurpassed number of extras for a lm from this region. The nal section includes photos from behind-the-scenes, which pres- ent the work of the director with the cast and preparations prior to shooting. A spe- cial segment is a wall featuring newspaper articles, which is an attempt to familiarise visitors with the atmosphere and boister- ous reactions after the lm’s premiere, both in domestic and foreign media,” says exhi- bition author Maja Medić, adding that vis- itors can also see a replica of the poster that Picasso designed for the English ver- sion of the lm. “When a lm that illustrates an histor-
ical event is treated in a way that implies many years of preparation, then we get the impression that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia wanted this lm to succeed and for its success to extend be- yond borders, which the top production also achieved. Here I don’t only mean the nom- ination for an American Academy Award, but also the incredible number of viewers who’ve watched this lm beyond the bor- ders of Yugoslavia. Even today you’ll still often nd this lm, which belongs among the ranks of world classics, in specialised DVD shops around the world,”saysYugoslav Cinematheque Director Jugoslav Pantelić. And it was a Yugoslav lm in every sense, with the participation of the Yugo-
slav National Army, more than 10,000 sol- diers as extras, military equipment... All of that contributed to it being a specta- cle. But also in terms of the budget. It o - cially stood at $4.5 million, a fabulous sum for the conditions of the then Yugoslavia. However, when we add to that the “free” participation of the military, as accurate- ly calculated by some foreign producers, we reach a total of $12 million, which was incomprehensible for Yugoslav conditions at that time. Pantelić adds that this super spectacle succeeded in what was extreme- ly important to the then state – for a signif- icant battle from World War II to be seen beyond the borders of Yugoslavia “The local audience was satis ed, and the mere presence of major stars made this one of the world’s biggest productions that year. And it came fromYugoslavia,”he con- cludes. Film critic Miroljub Stojanović says that this lm is still extremely important today, recalling an interesting statement given by director Bulajić in 2010. “I’ll quote Bulajić -“I was and remain a fully pro-regime director. Marshal Tito per- sonally stood behind me and my lms, each of which cost as much as 17 Yugoslav lms. And As privileged As I was, I am also proud of that, because I brought repute and mon- ey to my homeland of Yugoslavia and to my people.”The Battle of Neretva is a lm that deserved a much better status than the reputation that remains. The lm has its own merits and faults, but it bothers me personally that even at the time of its ap- pearance, with a few venerable and critical views of its values and aws, it was viewed as a prototype of what the regime want- ed. This lm was and remains a spectacle of world rank according to all of its attrib- utes and it is in this sense that it should be approached,” concludes Stojanović. For the English version of the lm, the musical contribution was provided by fa- mous composer Bernard Hermann and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, while one of the original posters was created by Pab- lo Picasso. This famous Spanish artist made only two lm posters in his career, one for Buñuel’s 1929 lm An Andalusian Dog and the other for the Battle of Neretva. It is inter- esting that the painter didn’t seek any fees, with his only request being that he receive 12 bottles of the best wine from Yugoslavia. The lm included world stars of the time Yul Brynner and Orson Welles, Fran- co Nero, Hardy Kruger, Sergei Bondarchuk, Sylva Koscina, Curt Jurgens, Oleg Vidov and Anthony Dawson. Our local actors in the cast included: Milena Dravić, Ljubiša Samardžić, Velimir Bata Živojinović, Boris Dvornik and many others.
YUL BRYNNER & ORSON WELLES
In addition to numerous controversies, this cine- matographic achievement is accompanied by va- rious interesting facts, from the fact that, for the purposes of the film, four specially constructed vi- llages were destroyed, but also a fortress, while the bridge over the River Neretva was mined twi- ce. However, not a single shot of the scene of the bridge’s destruction was included in the final cut of the film, because the blast of the mine raised huge clouds of dust. This scene was later filmed in a stu- dio using models. It is interesting that Orson Welles and Curt Jurgens hadn’t spoken for 15 years due to a single alterca- tion, but they were reconciled by Bulajić during the making of this film. Orson Welles, who received threatening letters in America after being offered the role of a Chetnik in this film, had to repeat the scene in which he “fell dead” as many as 11 times, and all because one of the extras kept looking into the camera each time. This was the first and only shared film of Yul Brynner and Orson Welles. Brynner played parti- san Vladimir Smirnov, aka Vlada Rus, while Welles played a Chetnik commander. Both actors died on the same day, 10th October 1985. One of the authentic fighters from the Neretva was invited to the film’s premiere, but he respon- ded to director Veljko Bulajić saying: “Thanks, I was at the premiere. I’m not coming to the repeat.” Boris Dvornik, Petar Kralj and Kole Angelovski acted for free, because they were hired as then Yugoslav National Army members serving the- ir military service. “That falls under our military duty,” said Boris Dvornik, speaking to media at the time of shooting. It was simultaneously reported in the newspapers that Bata Živojinović and Ljubiša Samardžić recei- ved the highest earnings ever paid to local actors in a domestic film. Some 600 people from the Požarevac area were hired to play Chetnik fighters, and they were paid a fee for six months just because they let their hair and beards grow during that period.
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