Davitelj protiv davitelja

What makes city a city? What makes it different than a village? Is it the traffic jam? The people who live there? Or is it something else?

According to this movie, the criminals and gangsters define the city. While London has Jack the Ripper, Belgrade has his "davitelj", i.e. the strangler. That's how begins an interesting movie, "Davitelj protiv davitelja" a mix of comedy and horror. It is a story about a guy, flower seller, who turns into a mad man, and commits a series of crimes. Also, we have a police inspector who is trying to stop him. The inspector is getting a lot of help and "help" from a young rock singer and a girl working in a local radio-station. To make the picture complete, there is also a strangler's mother, a character inspired by the Hitchcock's Psycho.

The movie is amusing, I liked it, but people expecting an exceptional movie, like "Ko to tamo peva" or "Maratonci trce pocasni krug", director's earlier works, will be disappointed.

It's amazing! Somewhere between Hitchcock and Kubrick. So good! It's a Serbian gem

Outrageous dark humour in this film noir style horror. The film is at times genuinely scary, while mostly funny and indulging in dark humour all the way. This is a dangerous ground to tread, not only because of the tonal shifts, but because dark humour can easily become repulsive and alienating. But this film did everything right and remained a thoroughly enjoyable experience from beginning to end. I love this film and I find it equally enjoyable every time I watch it. The noir cinematography and that 80s look, as well as the exploration of the dark corners of Belgrade is quite intriguing and works perfectly, as what we used to think was a pleasant and familiar city turned into a dark place with streets and passage ways that give you the creeps, especially when there is a crazed strangler lurking in the shadows. The strangler, by the way is a sympathetic character, and most of his victims are nasty women we don't really care about. In fact, all characters in this film are sympathetic. There is a real sweetness to it all, which stands in sharp contrast with the murders taking place.

Strangler's handling of deadpan, grotesque cruelty and black humour is somewhat similar to the mixture Alex de la Iglesia would perfect in his movies a decade later. The tonal shifts from horror to humour and back again are done well, with only an occasional unevenness, but the film's artificiality (voiceover narration, intertitles, grotesque exaggeration, etc.) may alienate some viewers. Sijan is to be commended for his courage in parodying a genre that has never been too popular with Serbian moviegoers in the first place. Strangler's thematic and stylistic subversiveness was part of the fresh air in Serbian cinema at the time, inspired by the New Wave movement: a wide front of artists and critics based around Belgrade's Student Cultural Center, involved in alternative rock'n'roll, literature, arts and the movies.

The picture was shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the mid-'80s, and I was surprised to meet an American poet there who could recite memorable lines from Strangler a full twenty years later (some of them in Serbian!). It is a testament to this film's lasting power which, unfortunately, remains limited only to Serbian filmgoers since an English-dubbed DVD is still nowhere in sight.

Making fun of one city's urge to become metropolis, at the time that eventually became known as vintage for Belgrade's rock 'n' roll scene whose talented members highly contributed to this Sijan's first big urban movie after two masterpieces placed in rural ("Ko to tamo peva") and small town ("Maratonci...") surroundings.