damirradic14

Grigori Aleksandrov co-directed some of the best films by Sergei Eisenstein, "Staroye i novoye", "Oktyabr" and "Que viva Mexico!". He was as much talented as Eisenstein, but with much more sense for genre movies, especially comedy. In his films he blended brave formal devices, a genre narration and a humor, and he did it with a great skill. "Tsirk" is an excellent example of Aleksandrov's style. The film is visually expressive, includes some typical modernistic devices, but with populist aim, some scenes are made in Busby Berkeley way, and so on. Also, "Tsirk" is a great propaganda movie and it tells the truth about American racism of those times, using this for glorification of Soviet Union as a tolerant and progressive society. (In fact, regarding racism, Soviet society of that time really was progressive in comparison with the United States.) Final scenes celebrates Lenin, Marx and Stalin in superb artistic way (a long double exposure is fascinating), and the film glorifies not only Soviet Union, but Soviet Russia, too. In fact, Soviet Russia is adored homeland in the film as a result of Stalin's Russian nationalism.

Unfortunately, Leptirica is not so superior film at all. As first, it's actually some kind of horror comedy, maybe even parody of horror genre, but it seems to me that parody was not the intention of author Kadijevich, but some kind of black comedy. Acting is OK for (black) comedy, but if you see this TV-film (in former Yugoslavia term was "tv-drama") as horror, it's pretty bad acting, despite of presence of such distinguished actors as Slobodan Perovich and (very young) Petar Bozhovich. There is no real frightening scenes until the end (which is pretty frightening but narratively unclear), moreover, horror scenes are unintentionally funny. I have some respect for atmosphere of rural province, which is good but not too impressive, and especially for very delicate, ethereal beauty of little known Mirjana Nikolich in title role. I see that most of IMDb users were thrilled with this film in childhood,they have strong emotional bond with it, but actually, when you see it as grown man, quality level of Leptirica is not very high. Djordje Kadijevich has one really very very good movie, but it's Praznik, not Leptirica.