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Boomerangs and Bombs: The Zagreb School of Animation and Yugoslavia's Third Way Experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2020

Paul Morton
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Abstract

The Zagreb School of Animation, one of the great achievements of Yugoslav culture, produced hundreds of films from the 1950s to the early 1990s. This paper studies the early development of the Zagreb School and the films that satirized the universal concerns of the post-World War II landscape: industrialization, militarism, environmentalism, nuclear annihilation, and urban alienation, as well as the conforming pressures of commercialization and mass culture. This paper argues that the Zagreb School, which was made up neither of dissidents nor propagandists, breaks many of the stereotypes about artists in the dictatorial states of central and eastern Europe. Its approach to the animation medium is adjacent to the two most important features of Yugoslavia's Third Way experiment: the development of workers’ self-management and a commitment to internationalism. The paper places the Zagreb School in this historical context with a formalist analysis of Boris Kolar's Bumerang (Boomerang, 1962).

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , Spring 2020 , pp. 115 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2020

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Footnotes

Sanja Borčić of Zagreb Film arranged for me to receive hundreds of films currently out of distribution for my research. She also arranged and, in some cases, assisted in several interviews with surviving members of the Zagreb School. Daria Blažević and Nikolina Bogdanović also assisted in interviews. I thank also Vinko Brešan, Tomislav Gregl, Ibrahim Hromalić, and Julia Martinović, all of Zagreb Film. I thank film scholars and researchers who gave me invaluable advice during my work in Zagreb: Nikica Gilić, Darko Masnec, Daniel Rafaelić, Leon Rizmaul, and Hrvoje Turković. I thank also Margit Atenauer, Igor Bezinović, Tomislav Domes, Vesna Dovniković, Bojan Krištofić, Veljko Krulčić, Kristina Nosković, Luka Ostojić, Ivana Pipal, Marijana Rimanić, and Daniel Šuljić. Borivoj Dovnikovć, Joško Marušić, Pavao Štalter, Krešimir Zimonić, and the late Zlatko Bourek and Vatroslav Mimica were wonderful interview subjects. In 2007–2008, I enjoyed a Fulbright fellowship in Hungary, where I researched Pannonia Film. Some of that research appears in this paper. While in Budapest, I received help from Tamás Bőhm, Huba Brückner, Szilvia Fináli, Anna Ida Orosz, Márton Orosz, and Katalin Szlaukó. Kirsten Moana Thompson wrote me a long email concerning the adhesive qualities of paints used in cel animation. Gordana Crnković, Jennifer Bean, and José Alaniz read the dissertation upon which this article is based. Crnković, the chair of my committee, read an early draft of this particular article. My brother David Morton read many drafts. With love always to him and to my mother Joan Morton.

References

1 Ivo Andrić, “Ivo Andric: Banquet Speech,” The Nobel Prize, December 10, 1961, at www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1961/andric/speech/ (accessed January 22, 2020).

2 Surogat (Ersatz). Dušan Vukotić. Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1961.

3 Midhat Ajan Ajanović, Animacija i realizam (Animation and Realism), trans. Mirela Škarica (Zagreb, 2004), 88. The Zagreb School would remain most famous for its high-art cel animation, though its animators would occasionally experiment with stop-motion, linocut, puppetry, and, in the 1980s, computer animation. The Zagreb School would also gain fame for its popular children’s series Profesor Baltazar (Professor Balthazar, Zagreb: Zagreb Film), four seasons of which were produced between 1969 and 1978, after a short film featuring the title character came out in 1967.

4 Gertie the Dinosaur. Winsor McCay. New York: Box Office Attractions Company, 1914; Toy Story. John Lasseter. Emeryville: Pixar Animation Studios, 1995.

5 Tom Gunning, “Animating the Instant: The Secret Symmetry between Animation and Photography,” in Karen Beckman, ed., Animating Film Theory (Durham, 2014), 40. Gunning problematizes the binary between animated and live-action film and offers another definition of animation: “the technical production of motion from the rapid succession of discontinuous frames, shared by all cinematic moving images.” In other words: all film.

6 Paul Wells’s conception of “hyper-realism” in Disney animation is rooted in the understanding that animation by its very nature is not a realistic medium. He posits that the hyper-realism of Disney—its attempt to mimic the formalist techniques of live-action film in animated form, its use of diegetic sound, its acceptance of the “physical laws of the ‘real’ world,” and the “correspondence” of the movement and biology between humans and non-human animals with “the orthodox aspects of human beings and creatures in the ‘real’ world”—provide “the yardstick by which other kinds of animation may be measured for its relative degree of ‘realism.’” Understanding Animation (London, 1998), 25–26. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston discuss the particular stories behind the making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen, Burbank: Walt Disney Productions, 1937) and Bambi (Hand, James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Graham Heid, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, and Norman Wright, Burbank: Walt Disney Productions, 1942) in Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (New York, 1981), 277, 339.

7 I would point specifically to the first part of The Reluctant Dragon (Alfred Werker, Hamilton Luske, Jack Cutting, Ub Iwerks, and Jack Kinney, Burbank: Walt Disney Productions, 1941), which offers a behind-the-scenes journey inside the Walt Disney Studios, at the end of which Walt Disney himself appears as the primary intelligence, a friendly avuncular figure as well as a giant of industry. (This opening sequence was directed by Werker.)

8 Statement of the artists of the Zagreb Studio: Borivoj Dovnikovic, Aleksandar Marks, Ante Zaninovic, Dusan Vukotic, Zlatko Grgic, Vladimir Jutrisa, and Nedeljko Dragic. Animations: Zagreb, New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Program, January 8, 1968-January 21, 1968. Emphasis mine throughout.

9 This particular definition of limited animation comes from Michael Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age (New York, 2003), 394.

10 Ajanović, Animacija i realizam, 88.

11 William Moritz, “Narrative Strategies for Resistance and Protest in Eastern European Animation,” in Jayne Pilling, ed., A Reader in Animation Studies (Bloomington, Ind., 1998), 38.

12 Laura Pontieri, Soviet Animation and the Thaw of the 1960s: Not Only for Children (London, 2012), 65–69.

13 Keith Leslie Johnson, Jan Švankmajer (Urbana, 2017), 96.

14 David MacFadyen, Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges: Russian Animated Film since World War Two (Montreal, 2005), 31.

15 Recent English-language scholarship has mostly consisted of capsule histories, including Sanja Bahun, “Croatian Animation, Then and Now: Creating Sparks or Just a Little Bit of Smoke?” KinoKultura, special issue 11 (May 2011), at www.kinokultura.com/specials/11/bahun.shtml (accessed March 5, 2020), as well as chapters in Amid Amidi, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation (San Francisco, 2006), 184–85; and Giannalberto Bendazzi, Animation: A World History, vol. 2, The Birth of a Style—The Three Markets (Boca Raton, 2016), 68–71, 262–73.

16 The Zagreb School auteur Borivoj Dovniković said that he and his colleagues were free to say anything they wanted to as long as they didn’t criticize Tito. “But why would we? We loved Tito.” Interview, Zagreb, assisted by Nikolina Bogdanović, August 2014. Dovniković, as well as Vatroslav Mimica and Pavao Štalter, all said there were no films they wanted to make but couldn’t due to governmental censorship. Borivoj Dovniković, interview, Zagreb, assisted by Daria Blažević, February 2017; Vatroslav Mimica, interview, Zagreb, assisted by Sanja Borčić, March 2017; Pavao Štalter, interview, Zagreb, assisted by Sanja Borčić, March 2017. Nedeljko Dragić, an auteur who came to prominence in the late 1960s and 70s, claimed that he had more freedom to make the films he wanted to make in Yugoslavia than his American counterparts had in the United States. “Linija riječi: Razgovor s Nedeljkom Dragićem” (The Word Line: A Dialogue with Nedeljko Dragić), interview by Midhat Ajan Ajanović, in Midhat Ajan Ajanović, ed., Čovjek i linija: Monografska studija o djelu filmskog animatora, karikaturista i autora stripa Nedeljka Dragi ć a (The Man and the Line: Monographic Study of the Work of Animator, Cartoonist and Comics Author Nedeljko Dragić), trans. Nikolina Jovanović (Zagreb, 2014), 411. Although animators in other parts of the region have also downplayed problems of censorship in interviews, upsetting certain notions held by western journalists, there are a few exceptional cases in which films were either prevented from being made or were outright banned after they were finished. In Hungary, Marcell Jankovics said he was prohibited from making a film about a statue that absorbs all the resources of a town. Marcell Jankovics, interview, Budapest, assisted by Szilvia Fináli, February 2008. Andrei Khrzhanovskii’s Stekl ianna ia garmonika (The Glass Harmonica, Moscow: Soiuzmult΄fil΄m, 1968) was banned by Soviet censors from the time of its completion in 1968 until 1986. Pontieri, Soviet Animation and the Thaw of the 1960s, 167. The Estonian animator Priit Pärn, who describes himself as a “political protester” but not a “dissident,” relates a detailed story about the censorship that faced his film Kolmnurk (The Triangle, Tallinn: Tallinnfilm, 1982), which eventually resulted in his agreement to cut one and a half seconds. Paul Morton, “Priit Pärn, Estonia’s Animator-General,” The Baltic Times, April 26, 2006, www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/15209/ (accessed January 24, 2020). That I could not locate a single moment in Yugoslavia in which an animated film was either prohibited from being made due to its perceived political message or banned after its production suggests that the freedom the Zagreb School animators enjoyed was unique.

17 Veljko Krulčić said that at most their status as Party members, along with their success at the Academy Awards, helped them secure funding from the state, but that it did not interfere with their choice of subject matter. Veljko Krulčić, interview, Zagreb, assisted by Daria Blažević, March 2017.

18 The Zagreb School sometimes explored domestic themes, but they were still best-known for pursuing more universal subject matter. An American critic, encountering the Zagreb School films for the first time in the early 1970s, wrote, “A screening of animated films by Zagreb Film studio is a bit like watching a series of New Yorker cartoons come to life to act out subtle visual statements on the human condition.” John W. English, “‘Z’ Stands for Zagreb: Also for Animation,” Journal of the University Film Association 24, n. 3 (1972): 48.

19 Zlatko Matetić, “Zagrebačka škola crtanog filma realnost mašte,” in Zlatko Sudović, ed., Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, Uspjesi i nedoumice: Izbor i bibliografija važnijih napisa o crtanim filmovima zagrebačke škole objavljenih u domaćem tisku 1951–1972 (Zagreb, 1978), 131. Most animated films produced in the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union at the time included dialogue, but a lack of dialogue was common to animation elsewhere in the region, particularly in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. The reason for the strategy is not always obvious. The Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics, influenced by Federico Fellini and Ken Russell, was particularly interested in the power of physical expression. Jankovics, interview. His colleague István Orosz said the strategy was encouraged by managers of their studio Pannonia Film in Budapest for more practical reasons, so that the films could attract foreign audiences, particularly at animation film festivals. István Orosz, interview, Budakeszi, assisted by Anna Ida Orosz, March 2008.

20 Vatroslav Mimica, “Razgovor sa Vatroslavom Mimicom: Zabeleženo na magnetofonu,” interview by Žika Bogdanović, in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 142.

21 There were several attempts to describe workers’ self-management throughout Yugoslavia’s history. One that might be particularly relevant here comes from Rudi Supek: “One of the essential characteristics of the humanist model of organization is that it does not separate man as producer from man as consumer, does not divide human existence into ‘working time’ and ‘leisure time,’ does not consider man to be one being with regard to his work capabilities and another with regard to his needs for enjoyment. What is more, the humanist conception of organization focuses its interest on ‘man with needs,’ human needs, and above all human social needs. . .” “Organization as an Intermediary Between the Individual and Society,” in Branko Horvat, Mihailo Marković, Rudi Supek, and Helen Kramer, eds., Self-governing Socialism: A Reader, vol. 2, Sociology and Politics Economics, trans. Helen Kramer (White Plains, 1976), 57.

22 Madigan Fichter, “Yugoslav Protest: Student Rebellion in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo in 1968,” Slavic Review 75, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 99–121.

23 The intellectuals, among them Rudi Supek, mentioned in note 19 above, were known collectively as the Praxis Group. They published a multi-lingual journal called Praxis, with articles in English, French, German, and Serbo-Croatian, all issues of which are available at www.marxists.org/subject/praxis/index.htm (accessed January 24, 2020).

24 Sabrina Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005 (Bloomington, Ind., 2005), 1; 4–5.

25 Bumerang (Boomerang). Boris Kolar. Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1962.

26 Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898–1928 (Chicago, 1993), 153.

27 There had been attempts since the early 1920s by several different filmmakers to produce animated films in Zagreb, all described in detail by Ranko Munitić in Zlatko Sudović, ed., Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 1, Pedeset godina crtanog filma u hrvatskoj, almanah 1922–1972 (Zagreb, 1978), 20–72.

28 Veliki miting (The Great Meeting). Walter Neugebauer and Norbert Neugebauer. Zagreb: Redakcije Kerempuh, 1951. Walter Neugebauer and Norbert Neugebauer’s Svi na izbore (Let’s All Go to the Polls, Zagreb: Direkcija za Hrvatsku, 1945) was a simple work of cut-out animation and an advertisement for voting. Munitić, Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 1, 66–71.

29 Zagrebačka škola crtanog filma, episode 3, directed by Zoran Tadić, written by Nenad Pata (Zagreb, 1991), DVD not officially released, provided directly to the author by Zagreb Film, 27 min. Borivoj Dovniković notes in the documentary that among the rudimentary mistakes the animators made was drawing the backgrounds for their films before they drew and animated their characters, an approach that made their work more difficult than necessary. It is easier for animators to fit a background to characters than characters to backgrounds.

30 Ive Mihovilović, “Kerempuhov crtani film,” in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 22. I was not able to find any corroboration for this story from any living animator of the Zagreb School, nor could I find any animation scholars who could say the story was likely true. The Zagreb School auteur Pavao Štalter said that he and his colleague Zlatko Bourek were still trying to create special adhesive paints for cel animation in the late 1950s. Štalter, interview. Whether true or not, that the author of the article felt the need to tell such a story speaks directly to the significance of Veliki Miting at the time.

31 V.S. “Doršava prvi domaći crtani film,” in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 25–26.

32 Munitić, Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 1, 94.

33 Začarani dvorac u Dudincima (The Haunted Castle in Dudince). Vukotić, Zagreb: Duga Film, 1952.

34 Hrvoje Turković, “Mala rekapitulacija razvitka crtanog filma u Zagrebu,” in Život izmišljotina: Ogledi o animiranom filmu (Zagreb, 2012), 155.

35 Turković, “Animirani film u Hrvatskoj—kronologija (1922–2014),” www.academia.edu/30271256/Animirani_film_u_Hrvatskoj_kronologija_1922-2014 (accessed January 27, 2020).

36 Nestašni robot (The Disobedient Robot). Vukotić, Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1956.

37 Gerald McBoing-Boing. Robert Cannon. Burbank: United Productions of America, 1950; Rooty Toot Toot. John Hubley, Burbank: United Productions of America, 1951.

38 Dušan Vukotić, “Koncepcije i želje našeg crtanog filma” (The Concepts and Aspirations of Our Animated Films), in Radimir Pavićević and Dragi Savićević, eds., Dušan Vukotić: Zaboravljeni vizionar (Dušan Vukotić: The Forgotten Visionary), trans. Ana Janković Čikos and Tomislav Petrić (Zagreb, 2014), 241.

39 Vukotić, “Koncepcije i želje našeg crtanog filma,” 242.

40 Ibid., 244–45.

41 Zolotaia antilopa (The Golden Antelope). Lev Atamanov. Moscow: Soiuzmult΄fil΄m, 1954.

42 Vukotić, “Koncepcije i želje našeg crtanog filma,” 245.

43 Vukotić, “Jugoslovenska škola crtanog filma” (The Yugoslav School of Animation), in Dušan Vukotić: Zaboravljeni vizionar, 246–47. Cycles were of course used in almost all cel animation the world over. Although cycles could serve as a cost-cutting measure, they often served creative functions as well. Kristin Thompson notes how cycles could be used to prolong time. “Implications of the Cel Animation Technique,” in Teresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath, eds., The Cinematic Apparatus (New York, 1980), 117. I will note later on in this paper how cycles are used for dramatic effect as well as to make an ideological point in Bumerang.

44 Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons, 429; Pontieri, Soviet Animation and the Thaw of the 1960s, 78–79; Frederik L. Schodt, The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution (Berkeley, 2007), 153.

45 Munitić, Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 1, 168; Tisu ću jedan crtež (One Thousand and One Drawings). Vukotić, Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1960.

46 The film, for instance, depicts music recorded via pre-synchronization, so-called Mickey-Mousing, a method that had been developed at Disney some thirty years before. Backgrounds are drawn after the characters are animated, not before. The studio has a large number of inbetweeners, artists who draw the phases of movements in between key frames. There are also some cultural similarities. As at Disney, women are largely relegated to the roles of inkers and painters.

47 Mimica, interview, March 2017.

48 Although the term “anti-Disney” emerged around this time to describe the Zagreb School and several other movements whose films actively resisted the Disney hegemon, such a phrase suggests that the Zagreb School was reacting to or rebelling against Disney. Not every animator felt this way. Although debatable, it may also be accurate to say that they were acting towards their own particular, amorphous goal. Dovniković said he prefers the term “non-Disney.” Dovniković, interview, August 2014.

49 Na Livadi (On the Meadow). Nikola Kostelac. Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1957; Happy-End. Vatroslav Mimica. Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1958; Piccolo. Vukotić, Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1959; Zbog jednog tanjura (All Because of a Plate). Kostelac. Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1959.

50 Sagren ška koža. Le Peau de Chagrin, Vlado Kristl and Ivo Vrbanić. Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1960).

51 Don Kihot (Don Quixote). Kristl. Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1961.

52 Chuck Jones, “An Interview with Chuck Jones,” interview by Michael Barrier and Bill Spicer, in Maureen Furniss, ed., Chuck Jones: Conversations (Jackson, 2005), 27. The Zagreb School’s tendency for experimentation did not please everyone. Writing in 1959, Fadil Hadžić commended the Zagreb School for following the lead of animators in the United States, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and France, who had themselves followed “anti-Disney tendencies,” but claimed that Zagreb School films, comparatively, lacked quality. He called Happy-End, in particular, “incomprehensible to the public and critics.” “Od Disneya do Gopa: Mala revolucija u crtanom filma,” in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 94–95.

53 Aleksandar Marks, “8 Autora i 15 pitanja: Anketa o domaćem crtanom filmu,” interview by Tomislav Butorac, in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 102–3.

54 Vukotić, “The Yugoslav School of Animation,” 248.

55 Boris Kolar, “8 Autora i 15 pitanja: Anketa o domaćem crtanom filmu,” interview by Tomislav Butorac, in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 104.

56 Kolar, “Neke teze o našem animaranom filmu,” in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 150–52. Kolar co-wrote the scenario of Piccolo with Vukotić. His name does not appear in the credits for Na livadi.

57 Perpetuo i mobile, ltd. (Perpetum and Mobile). Mimica. Zagreb Zagreb Film, 1961. Despite the film’s evident similarities to Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (Hollywood: United Artists, 1936), Mimica says he preferred Buster Keaton. Mimica, interview, March 2017.

58 Chelovek s kino-apparatom (Man with a Movie Camera). Dziga Vertov. Moscow: Vufku, 1929.

59 Dziga Vertov, “We: Variant of a Manifesto,” in Annette Michelson, ed., Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, trans. Kevin O’Brien (Berkeley, 1984), 7.

60 Mimica, “Razmišljanja o filmskoj umjetnosti,” in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 160–61. His essay speaks directly to ideas of animation developed by several abstract animators in Germany in the 1920s, including Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann (who also directed several “city symphonies”), and Oskar Fischinger. Emphasis in the original.

61 Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Stanley Kubrick. Los Angeles: Hawk Films, 1964.

62 A memo sent by the Yugoslav ambassador to Brazil showed sympathy for President Joao Goão Gulbert’s policy, which called for both the denuclearization (or neutralization) of Cuba and respect for Cuba’s autonomy. “Telegram from Yugoslav Embassy in Rio de Janeiro (Barišić) to Yugoslav Foreign Ministry,” Wilson Center Digital Archive: International History Declassified, October 26, 1962, digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115461 (accessed January 27, 2020).

63 Na livadi also contains narrative elements that were similar to a notable film made in the west. Norman McLaren’s stop-motion Neighbours (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1952), like Na livadi, tells the story of two people whose fight over a flower escalates into extreme violence. Kostelac would claim that he and his team hadn’t seen Neighbours until they finished production on Na livadi. “The interesting thing is that some of the shots, some of the ideas are exactly the same as in my film.” Quoted by Nenad Pata, A Life of Animated Fantasy, ed. Krešo Jugec, trans. Andrijana Hewitt (Zagreb, 1984), 38.

64 Pauline Kael, “Bonnie and Clyde,” in Sanford Schwartz, ed., The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael (New York, 2011), 172.

65 UPA’s director-designer Bill Hurz noted, “Excessive curvilinearity could be said to be vulgar, because it’s the epitome of the crumpled, the doughty, the schlumpen, the inelegant.” Quoted by Amidi, Cartoon Modern, 9. (Emphasis in the original.) There are, of course, several instances at UPA and other studios in which filmmakers working with limited animation techniques and also mastered the power of the curvilinear line.

66 Munitić, “Suprotne obale,” in Zagrebački krug crtanog filma, vol. 3, 170–174.

67 Koncert za mašinsku pušku (Concert for Sub-machine Gun). Vukotić, Zagreb: Zagreb Film, 1958.

68 Amad, Paula, “From God’s-eye to Camera-eye: Aerial Photography’s Post-humanist and Neo-humanist Visions of the World,” History of Photography 36, no. 1 (February 2012): 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Amad, “From God’s eye to Camera-eye,” 71.

70 Amad, “From God’s-eye to Camera-eye,” 74–75.