TRAGEDY OF A SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR
Yugoslavia, 1967, 79 minutes, Black and white.
Eva Ras, Slobodan Aligrudic.
Directed by Dusan Makavejev.
Dusan Makavejev was one of the principal film directors at world level from the former Yugoslavia. He began his directing career in the 1950s and was to continue into the 1990s. He was interested in storytelling but also in ideology and especially in abstract reflection on ideologies and philosophy. This was particularly clear in some of his films of the 1970s including his controversial W.R. Mysteries of the Organism. He made few films from the 1980s but they all had controversial aspects including Montenegro 1981, Manifesto 1988 and Gorilla Bathes at Noon in 1993.
However, in the mid-1980s he went to Australia to direct a film which he wrote, The Coca- Cola Kid, starring Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi and a strong Australia supporting cast.
Tragedy of a Switchboard Operator is very much a film of the 1960s, reminiscent of the black and white and small-budget films made in Czechoslovakia by such directors as Milos Forman (The Fireman’s Ball). Some of those directors migrated to the United States. Makavejev remained in Yugoslavia.
While this is a story of a switchboard operator, her relationships, her work, life in communist Yugoslavia, Makavejev introduces some abstract conversations from two academics, a sexologist and a criminologist – bringing an over-seriousness to the light tone of the narrative.
1. The various titles of the film and their appropriateness? The impact of the film as humane? A Yugoslav film - any particular characteristics noticeable, style, interests?
2. The experimental nature of the film, black and white photography, music, city atmosphere and locations? The importance of the editing and the structure of bringing the two strands together? The importance of visual puns?
3. The basic love story add audience response to it? The irony of its ending? Response to the happiness, intimacy, good fortune? Response to the change, the decline In love? How conventional a love story? Different approaches because of the European background, humour, other dimensions to this human story?
4. Audience response to the initial lectures, the details of sexology and the way these were presented? Criminology? The serious tone, the entry of the government? How real did this seem? How ironic as punctuating the love story?
5. The skill of the structure of the film and the intertwining of the two strands? The puzzle, the shifting of emphases? The comment of the lecture on the story and behaviour? The way that time was used, the atmosphere of timelessness? The disappointment of the audience to find out that the lecture was about the outcome of the love story?
6. How well drawn the characters of Isabella and Ahmed? Ordinary characters, doing ordinary things even banal things? Yet the tenderness of their love?
7. The highlighting of fate, fortune or whatever guides people's lives? A benign providence or haphazard Luck and Chance?
8. The character of the postman, the evil entering the film? The pregnancy, drinking? The change of tone and atmosphere?
9. Audience response to the impact of the murder ? In the light of the love story and of the lectures? Sanity and madness? Motivation?
10. How much insight into human nature did the murder situation give? Why was it called a tragedy?
