In Dusan Makavejev's marvelous resurrection of "a good old movie," the first Serbian talkie is unearthed as a
relic of both absurd naiveté and vanished simplicity in the shifting times of Belgrade circa 1968. The auteur
behind the 1942 Innocence Unprotected, made semi-clandestinely under Nazi rule, was strongman Dragoljub
Aleksic, who pockmarked the movie's floss-thin narrative -- a poor orphan is forced by her stepmother to give in
to the advances of a Slavic Snidely Whiplash, though her heart belongs to a muscle-flexing daredevil (played by
guess who) -- with leaden camera setups, mismatching eyelines and, natch, a myriad of Aleksic's acrobatics.
Cut to 26 years later, with Aleksic still bending iron bars with his teeth and mulling over a particularly
daring stunt as Makavejev huddles surviving members of cast and crew (including leading lady Ana Milosavljevic
and histrionic villainess Vera Jovanovic) for contemporary reflection. To Makavejev, the technical gaucherie of
the old film is virtually inseparable from its rudimentary notions of good trumping evil, the optimism ludicrously
at odds with the nation's 1942 situation. His color tinting and splicing of grainy stock footage into the
fictional flow work as commentary on the nation's history as much as on its pop culture -- when the forlorn heroine
gazes out the window and gasps, Makavejev cuts to grisly views of invading German tanks, burnings buildings
and strewn bodies. Outdated concepts of innocence are the targets of the picture's ruminations, almost cruelly
foregrounded during the aged Jovanovic's ludicrous, top-hated wriggling routine, yet Makavejev's affectionate
approach sidesteps derision. In the end, Aleksic's movie, far from being laughed off as "camp," has come off as a
heroic reminder of a national innocence not only unprotected but, for better or worse, irretrievably lost.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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