The Threshold of Europe:
Imagining Yugoslavia in Film
To those who have not visited them, the Balkans
are a shadow land of mystery; to those who know them, they become
ever more mysterious... You become, in a sense, a part of the spell,
and of the mystery and glamour of the whole. (...) Intrigue, plot,
mystery, high-courage and daring deeds - the things that are the
soul of true romance are today the soul of the Balkans.
Arthur Douglas Smith, 1907 (Todorova
14)
This 1907 quote in Maria Todorova's now immensely
popular book, Imagining the Balkans (1997), is still valid
today. It testifies to the persistence of the Balkan contradictions
and secrets; the book argues that the myth of the Balkans has not
essentially or drastically changed during the last century. The issue
of the Balkans and their identity as expressed in images, legends,
and fiction-faction forms has been raised during this century by
researchers of many different stripes: military strategists, historians
and politicians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, etc. Regardless
of the approach, the "Balkan problem" always turns out to be sort
of Pandora's box. Once the questions are articulated, they simply
multiply while at the bottom of the "box" remains little hope that
someone might provide definitive answers to the Balkan riddle from
any of the numerous perspectives. Furthermore, the "negative" spotlight
cast over the region at the beginning of the 1990s, due to the raging
Yugoslav wars, revived the historical metaphor of the "Balkan powder
keg," giving so far the richest and fullest meaning to the pejorative
term "balkanization." Now, as in the past, the Balkans remain the
eternal "heart of (European) darkness." Thus, in spite of its growing
importance, interesting profile and hybrid, multiethnic and multicultural
character, the region resists accurate definition, its gloomy secrets
remaining mysteriously veiled.
Nevertheless, the world book market continues
to proliferate with books exploring the topic, either concerned with
the different representations of the Balkans or searching for their
putative essence - their "balkanness" (such as Stoianovich (1994),
Bakic-Hayden (1995), Todorova, Goldsworthy (1998), Norris (1999),
Anzulovic (1999), etc.). Inspired by their research and taking some
of their theses as points of departure, I would like to briefly examine cinematic
representations of the Balkans. In order to make this rather
vast topic manageable, I will mainly explore visions and images provided
from an outsider's perspective - conveniently limiting the
sphere of interest by excluding related issues of eclecticism of
stereotypes, of the ways national cinema perpetuates the models of
world cinema, and of national self-imaging - from the early 1900s
to the 1990s. I will first provide a global theoretical analytical
framework for the topic, and then focus and try to verify the premises
of the case study in question - cinematic images of Serbia and,
in a few cases, of Yugoslavia. While the majority of the films
to be discussed deal with the representation of Serbia and Serbs
in world cinema, some concern other former Yugoslav republics. As
even a string of raging wars could not efface our common history
and cultural heritage, we are allowed in this case to use occasionally
the perplexing notion of Yugoslav/Serbian representations.1
Yugoslavia/Serbia - Balkanism
This paper takes as the possible and probable
basis of the attraction that the Balkans hold for world filmmakers
an alleged essence, "balkanness." This essentialist attitude places
this research within the framework of "Balkanism." Maria Todorova's
inspiring book offers a complex historical, political, and geographic
study of this topic. She discusses the relationship between orientalism
as defined by Edward Said and "Balkanism," and suggests a definition
through analogy as "dealing with the Balkans... a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Balkans"
(Todorova 7). Further, she closely examines the characteristics and
the genesis of this stereotype and identifies three important features
- exotics, ambiguity and Thirdworldization - which are, in my opinion,
most firmly associated with the "glocal" charm that this part of
the world has maintained for centuries, and which deserve to be reconsidered
individually.
Exotics: Exotic is certainly a key word,
describing the region as different, uncanny, magical, or at least
unusual in comparison with the habitual North Atlantic illustrations.
Glocal appeal translates an exotic quality into a series of contradictory
qualifications, such as cultural originality, primitivism, barbarism,
Dionysian spirit, Rousseau's noble savagery, a petrifying obsession
with the past, inherent delay, nationalism, and romance, while each
term lends itself to any form of the wide scope of polarized imaginings.
Ambiguity: The attributes of the Balkans
always entail double, opposed meanings and evaluations, allowing
their image to be endowed with signifying and signified ambivalence.
They make up a rich semantic field, their film image being Barthes'
text for "writing on it or over it," permitting constantly innovative
interpretations. In linguistic terms, the Balkans are a floating
signifier and their "flexible, transitional" non-stipulated character
is visible in many domains, as well as in their two-faced, Janus
positioning. They are frequently referred to as the crossroads or
bridge that connects sharply contrasting entities such as East and
West, North and South, Western and Oriental, Middle European and
Mediterranean, Byzantine and Ottoman. Geographically, they are recognized
as the fringes or "threshold of Europe." Culturally, they are the
highly permissive margin, most certainly an area of ineffaceable
differences used for their construction as a "noble paradise" or
as a "war hell."
Thirdworldization: Finally, Todorova notes
the increasing Thirdworldization of the Balkan image, its oxymoronic
labeling such as the Third world corner of the First world or Old
Continent. Accordingly, the presumed contradiction is structured
through pictures matching those that Robert Stam (1994, 1997) in
his persuasive analyses of Eurocentrism and the Third world recognizes
as the colonial heritage of the Third world expressed into cinematic
ethno-images. Following Stam's rethinking and pushing the analogy
to the extreme, we find on one side the envisioning of the Balkans
by the group in power as the distorted, exaggerated "exotic." This
is mediated by the excessive stereotypes of mainstream films: images
of a "poverty, misery, and garbage" aesthetic in the "superior" North
Atlantic orchestration of primitivism, passion, and menace. On the
other side, emphasizing its cultural and civilizational uniqueness
and fairy tale past provides points of resistance toward marginalization
and pejorative stance (cf. Stam, 1997, 111), allowing for an idealistic
picture of the Balkans to surface.
The idea that diverse imaginings of the Balkans
are part of the long-lasting quest for the Other, a pivotal term
of film theory's semio-psychoanalyses, needs no special proof or
logic. Psychoanalytically, enigmatic images are points in relation
to which the group in power determines its own identity and position.
The Balkans are the Other of the North Atlantic space as seen from
many perspectives: cultural, political, religious, artistic, etc.;
they provide essential guidelines for their identification. However,
the Balkans themselves emerged from the violent civilizational reunion
of Byzantine and Ottoman empires already mutually positioned as the
Other. Through further building them up as the "Other" of the North
Atlantic space, we come to the accumulation and multiplication of
differences organized in many (mis-)conceived images.
Misconceptions of the Balkans are defined by a
range of binary oppositions falling into different categories: religious
(Orthodoxy versus Catholicism or Christianity versus Islam), semi-racial
(dark-skinned Oriental and Mediterranean versus white Anglo-Saxon
protestants and Western Europeans), economic (poverty versus wealth,
decline versus prosperity, and rural versus industrial), ideological
(menacing Communism versus democracy), emotional (excessiveness versus
repressed emotions), sexual (libidinal southerners versus consciously
restrained northerners) or legal (traditional customs versus written
law) (cf. Stam 1997 1).2
Because these qualifications are as equally valid
for the Balkans as a whole as for each individual country, we can
focus on the representational patterns of Serbia/Yugoslavia. The
goal, then, is to trace back and systematize the representations
of Serbia that have circulated in international cinema and to demonstrate
the variety of representational types that wander between two poles:
the romantically positive vs. the brute, ugly negative, which has
tended to be the dominant one. I will show that images of Serbia
belong to three representational patterns, as I have chosen to name
them: romantic, ironic and traditionally historical.
1. The Romantic Pattern
The romantic pattern refers to the image of Serbia
as an idyllic, make-believe place. It is the one that ruled classical
Hollywood; the country joins the Hollywood pastiche scenery album
of romantic places like the Scotland of Brigadoon (1954,
d. Vincent Minelli), or the Shangri La of Lost Horizon (1937,
d. Frank Capra). In this bucolic world, love is the way opposite
cultures are brought together, and the predictable melodrama premised
on fascinating haunted love is rendered more exhilarating by a specifically
regional, unpredictable history.
One of the very first films portraying Serbia
presents a short inventory of the exotic (historical and other) motifs
meriting romantic curiosity and sensationalist attention, which have
since been employed in the broader stereotypical making of the Balkans.
The coronation that legitimized the brutal dynastic succession to
Serbia's throne3 is recorded in the 1904 "protocolar"
reportage, The Coronation of King Peter I, shot by the Englishman
Arnold Muir Wilson. The film is composed of several thematic blocks:
procession, coronation, and travel through Oriental parts of the
country. It is marked by strong local ethnological colors, Turks,
Albanians and highlander populations in a variety of costumes.
Cecile B. de Mille's commercial instinct registered
the territory of Yugoslavia on Hollywood's world map. In his first
two films, Unafraid (1915) and The Captive (1915),
he used the mountain principality of Montenegro, at the outskirts
of Europe, as the scene for a heartbreaking love affair. It is vividly
illustrated in the following description of his second film The
Captive:
Again the setting is Montenegro, and again
the heroine falls in love with the enemy, though here the dramatic
tension is increased. Sonya, (Blanche Sweet) at first dominates the
captive Turkish soldiers (Muhammad Hussein - House Peters), then
submits. He comes to her rescue in defiance of his own countrymen;
and in finding each other, both have to sacrifice everything. (...)
As expected, "love conquers all," but at what price? (Le Giornate 15)
Similarly, Erich von Stroheim, the Hollywood
cynic, displaced his version of Franz Lehar's operetta Merry
Widow (1923) from habitual Marsovia to Monte Blanco, even
through the name frankly alluding to Montenegro as that fanciful
but troublesome kingdom.
Three screen adaptations of Anthony Hope's "yarn" Prisoner
of Zenda (1894) form a nodal point of celluloid imagining of
the Balkans and especially Serbia (1937, d. John Cromwell; 1952,
d. Richard Thorpe; 1979, d. Richard Quine).4 The imagined
principality of Ruritania in the 1880s only partially corresponds
to the Serbia of the time. Vesna Goldsworthy deduces from the confusing
geographical indications that Ruritania "could hardly be further
south-east than Bohemia," or simply like Stoker's Transylvania
in Dracula, "it is a land 'beyond the forest.'" However,
"it nevertheless became one of the most widely used symbols of
the archetypal Balkan land" (Goldsworthy 46). Due to historical
allusions, the evoked dynastic, melodramatic adventure and drama
of errors are more specifically, and more easily, identified as
the barely disguised turbulent Serbian monarchial chronicle.5 Hope
and his epigones initiate the lasting common mistake associated
with a region later to be popularly codified in Agatha Christie's
novel The Secret of Chimneys (1925). The dangerous, anarchistic
country of Herzoslovakia, clearly the combination of Herzegovina
and Czechoslovakia, finally substantiates the claim that Hope,
like Balkan principalities and monarchies, are, in fact, countries
"in between", neither/nor or either/or the Balkans and Central
Europe.6
The same error is revived half a century later
in Dusan Makavejev's comedy Manifesto (1988) about an unnamed
Balkan/Central European country in the 1920s, where the inhabitants'
ethnically suggestive sonorous names, such as Svetlana Vargas, Lily
Sacher, and Dr. Lombrosow, simultaneously underline the director's
typical self-reflexiveness. The film is loosely based on Emil Zola's
short story For a Night of Love, and the narrative boils
with assassinations, sexual liberation, revolution, and repression.
The aura of Balkan mystery is also magnified in
the first version of Cat People (1942, d. Jacques Tourneur),
which connects with the region in two ways: first, through the esoteric
heroine of Serbian origin, Irena (Simone Simon) who has a Russian
family name "Dubrovna," and secondly, by utilizing a narrative based
on a variation of a Balkan legend about werewolves. Irene initiates
a line of cursed Balkan beauties, a combination of Slavic sacrificing
self-destructiveness and erotic, sensuous southern/even half gypsy
women that inspire passion trimmed with death. In these embellished
imaginings, the region becomes a rediscovered Arcadia that magically
celebrates the wish fulfilling principle. An imaginary "Paradise
Lost" with the charm of its own, it enacts a nostalgic return to
the unbound, endowing films with a Dionysian joie de vivre.
2. The Ironic Pattern
The ironic pattern is recognizable in narratives
that do not explicitly deal with, or mention, but rather peripherally
imply Serbia/Yugoslavia as a semi-developed, godforsaken, impoverished
or economically backwards Third World state. Its set of enchanting
marginal differences now becomes the source of comic occurrences
exploited in narratives to display casual contempt. In the early
1950s, with hopeless attempts to reshape the country's identity through
never achieved modernization and Westernization, Yugoslavia became,
in the eyes of the developed world, synonymous with cheap tourist
resorts, economic decline, and industrial products of poor quality.
Alas, the stereotype has hardly changed, appearing today in a myriad
of jokes ranging from sporadic sarcasm to comic relief.
A typical example of minimalist degradation in
punch lines is related to the only Yugoslav car model produced for
export. The Yugo - its nickname, a shortened form of Yugoslavia,
also means "southerner" - is a low budget, highly unreliable car
like the Russian Lada and East German Trabant. In the film Die
Hard with a Vengeance (1995, d. John McTiernan), Bruce Willis
furiously exits the Yugo during the peak of a chase on the middle
of a bridge in New York City, commenting on its poor quality and
snatching the first available Mercedes. However, spectators who notice
that he has left the golden bar on the back seat of Yugo might reach
different conclusions about the car's and the country's (hidden)
qualities.
Other sub-themes such as tourism or economic immigration
in search of "daily bread" are of no better faith. The latter is
a colorful thematic obsession of filmmakers of Yugoslav provenance
like Steve Tesich, the scriptwriter for Four Friends (1981,
d. Arthur Penn). The Bildungs-film deals with the coming
to maturity of a boy of Yugoslav origin. Danilo's (Craig Wasson)
journey to adulthood meanders between the American sixties, traumas
of Vietnam, work in the steel mills of East Chicago and the patriarchal
customs of the "old country" cherished by his hardworking, homesick
father who dances "kolo" with his compatriots. Like Kazan's America (1963),
this film is an unforgettable account of cultural clash, confirming
the high price of the second generation's assimilation and acculturation.
A vast number of examples confirm that the downplayed
role of Yugoslavia in this mode is hugely deceptive (tourism: Murder
in the Orient Express/1974, d. Sidney Lumet; Evil Under the
Sun/1982, d. Guy Hamilton; Il Carniere/The Hunter's Bag/1997,
d. Maurizio Zaccaro; Yugo: Dragnet/1987, d. Tom Mankiewicz; The
Crow/1994, d. Alex Proyas; Backfire/1994, d. A. Dean
Bell; Drowning Mona/2000, d. Nick Gomez; emigration: Broken
English/1997, d. Gregor Nicholas).
3. The Traditional Historical Pattern
The traditional historical mode covers a wide
range of stories connected with the history of Serbia/Yugoslavia,
popularly identified as a "Balkan powder keg" that regularly explodes
every fifty years or so, proving the repetitive circular pattern
of Balkan history. In spite of my personal wish to decontaminate
this paper of excessive politics, one cannot escape the film perception
of Serbia/Yugoslavia being strongly molded by local history, as well
as by the official attitudes of the respective countries where the
films are made. Until 1999, Yugoslavia's war delineated a symbolic,
closed circle in time and space that can be described as from Sarajevo
1914 to Sarajevo 1992 and that has inspired the wild fantasies of
directors to chronicle these historical events.
The year 1914 has become a primary landmark in
historical epics, such as in De Mayerling a Sarajevo (1940,
d. Max Ophüls) and Ultimatum (1938, d. R. Wiene, R.
Siodmac). The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that led
to the outbreak of World War I is seen as both an admirable fanatic
gesture against oppression and as the ironic, even stupid end of
an epoch regarded with nostalgia, undoubtedly done by Serbian conspirators.
The confounded history of World War II in Yugoslavia
- simultaneously the fight against the Germans, civil war, and socialist
revolution - is mirrored in films concerned with either flimsy, illegal
operations behind enemy lines (Operation Cross Eagles/1969,
d. Richard Conte; The Secret Invasion/1964, d. Roger Corman; Bomb
at 10:10/1966, d. Charles Damic), or with the relations between
the patriotic anti-communist Chetniks and the revolutionary yet equally
patriotic communist Partisans and their international supporters.
The American film The Chetniks (1942, d. Louis King) is a
routine guerilla war story, portraying the Chetnik leader (Philip
Dorn) as a devoted family man, a combination of Pancho Villa and
Robin Hood. As the film plays out archetypal characters against a
photogenic background, the simple substitution of geographic names
would allow this film to be about a war anywhere in the world. The
British film Chetniks (1943, d. Sergei Noblandov) begins
in the same way, but as Great Britain transferred support to the
Partisans, who became the "freedom fighters" while the Chetniks became
a terrorist band, the film was re-edited and re-titled Undercover,
thus moving to the opposite ideological pole.
During "peaceful" interludes, Serbia is seen as
a dangerous spy nest, an unknown place behind the Iron Curtain where
human life is cheap, as in the film Masque of Dimitrios (1947,
d. Jean Negulesco), inspired by Eric Amber's novel (1939). The genre
hybrid of a thriller and Balkan "travelogue" tells the story of a
curious journalist (Peter Lorre) who travels throughout the Balkans
investigating the alleged death of Dimitrios (Zacharay Scott), a
mysterious Greek spy and notorious "ladies' man." Retracing Dimitrios'
last voyage takes the journalist to Belgrade, which looks suspiciously
like Budapest, and where people have Czech names and the local language
is an unclear soft Slavic whisper. The episode in Belgrade, recounting
the corruption of a small government clerk (Steven Geray), accommodates
many Balkan images such as macho gambling in smoky coffee houses,
desirable but unfaithful wives, and the betrayal of military secrets.
In fact, it seems like a concentration of all of the typical motifs,
crystallized collective images of the Balkans where accuracy is of
no importance to an audience that does not know much about the topic.
Yugoslavia is also the setting of a breathtaking
section of From Russia with Love (1963, d. Terence Young),
a film from Ian Fleming's Bond series. The Orient Express, en route
through Yugoslavia, stops in Zagreb and in Belgrade, which look more
Russian than Balkan. During brief stops in a murky, military atmosphere,
the Russian agent manages to get onto the train but does not accomplish
his sinister mission. The idea is to emphasize Yugoslavia as the
"hole" in the Iron Curtain, enabling the loosening of the Eastern
Block Grip. Also, Bond's thinking "On whose side is Tito?" clearly
alludes to Tito's habits of running shady businesses and being the
political "servant of two masters."
In the 1990s, Yugoslavia as a real war zone emerged
as an interesting and profitable film topic for the cinematic revisiting
of history. Again, the new image is barely distinguishable from the
old. The Bosnian agony became the equivalent of Third world anguish
in Europe and is frequently spoken of in different ways. The hunger
in Bosnia is mentioned with blissful indifference during courteous
dinner table chit-chat, as in Home for the Holidays (1995,
d. Jody Foster) or in Kika (1993, d. Pedro Almodovar) where
Somalia and Sarajevo are indicatively linked in one sentence.7
Frequently, the Bosnian war provides a convenient
background for the stunning display of the skills of almighty protagonists.
In the introductory part of The Rock (1996, d. Michael Bay),
emotionless Serbian anarchists hide a deadly chemical weapon in a
child's toy sent to a Bosnian refugee camp. A highly professional
Nicholas Cage prevents the disaster, instantaneously establishing
himself as the hero who will save the world and survive until the
end of the film.
In narratives which focus on the war, directors
are, for the most part, reluctant to take sides or make political
judgments. Instead, they prefer to focus on human suffering in general,
blaming destiny, ghosts of the past, or at least all warring parties.
A symptom of the irresolvable, eternal conflict is popularly diagnosed
in Manchevski's Before the Rain (1994) by the doctor, Sasa
(Meto Jovanovski), who reaches the profound conclusion that "War
is like a virus." Similarly, concrete or metaphorical explanations
in their distinctive ways neutralize the political or ideological
aspects of the conflict, promoting the fatalistic conception of the
war as Balkan destiny. The vengeance-seeking character of The
Peacemaker (1997, d. Mimi Leder) eventually explains that he
"is Serb, Croat, and Muslim," managing to reject the nationalistic
basis of the war. Dusan (Marcel Lures) is a desperate man who has
lost everything and is ready to commit sheer lunacy - to plant an
atomic bomb in the heart of New York. After the "last minute rescue,"
the audience is ironically left to wonder who the peacemaker is after
all - the UN, the USA or someone else.
Other "balanced" or neutrally made films include
the almost religious melodrama The Savior (1998, d. Predrag
Gaga Antonijevic) or a Miss Saigon-like story Welcome to Sarajevo (1997,
d. Michael Winterbottom). Both portray the cathartic experience of
a foreigner who finally finds a new meaning of life in the war-torn
country. A classical description is made of the set of familiar clichés
otherwise known from the political thrillers about Third World crises,
including The Year of Living Dangerously (1983, d. Peter
Weir), Under Fire (1983, d. Roger Spottiswood), and The
Killing Fields (1984, d. Roland Joffe). In the most outstanding
example, The Savior, the narrative develops through a chain
of sacrifices made, ending with St. Christopher (alias Joshua Rose/Dennis
Quaid), who comes from the West, saves the victimized population,
speaks about the ultimate importance of human life,8 suppresses
politicization, and condemns war in general. By the end of the millennium,
harsh reality merges the chronotope of fiction with the reality of
its Balkan counterparts. The films are larger than life, but the
reality of Yugoslav war proves stronger than its cinematic versions.
Back to the Future
The systemization provided here is just one way
of opening the Balkan Pandora's box with cautious vigilance, limited
interest and unlimited pretentiousness. Conceptualizing the Balkan
and Serbian issues is regularly carried out, as in this case, through
the reflection of and comparison with the North Atlantic region.
From this process emerge attributes like ethnocentricity, mythomania,
romance, a small dosage of Europeanism, populism, barbarity, chauvinistic
contempt, the pagan experience of history, in a word: Heaven and
the Apocalypse.
Thus, the rich charm of Serbia and the Balkans
lies in their being a rather amorphous other, epitomizing eternal
longing and offering juxtaposed options frequently existing within
the same narrative. The disentangling of this Gordian knot of popular
prejudices and romanticization, romantic exaltation and poorly hidden
contempt remains, fortunately, for the most part an unachievable
task. The polyvalent nature of Serbia's appeal rests on its intangible
nature. It is translated into modes which differ in focusing profoundly
on one aspect of bucolic beauty, economic collapse or historical
turmoil while also entailing a genre shift from melodrama (The
Captive, Cat People) to action (Die Hard, The
Peacemaker) or historical like The Chetniks.
On the basis of the array of stereotypes, one
can argue that the cinematic representation of Serbia is far from
being uniquely and systematically negative, as some might claim.
International cinema does not carry on the premeditated plan of labeling
a nation as negative, villainous, executing a politically profiled
plot, but rather we are dealing with the uncritical repetition of
existing stereotypes prompted by actual reality, as seen most recently
in the films Beautiful People (1999, d. Jasmin Dizdar) or Diplomatic
Siege (1999, d. Gustav Graef Marion). The next test that might
confirm or undermine this proposed loose schemata would be an analysis
of films recycling the "factitious" NATO bombing into cinematic fiction.
History repeats itself and the cinematic images will return in future
attitudes and events.
Notes
1 The option of letting this paper belong
to the domain of "Serbism" or "Yugoslavism," a domain not yet defined
but logically supposed to exist "dealing with Serbia or Yugoslavia
etc." would be more accurate but too preposterous. So let us concentrate
on the Balkans, which Serbia is definitely part of or, even more,
the concentrated, crystallized image of: its core part.
2 Further appropriation of Stam's conception
of the Third World to the Balkans is as a European Third World.
3 In fact, one of the first films about
Serbia recounting this unconventional historical event is Les
actualités turques. Pathe's False journal: Assassinat
de la famille royale de Serbie (1903, d. Lucien Nonguent) carefully
and imaginatively reconstructs, with all of the hair-raising details,
the Coup of May 1903 that scandalized the world and stirred the imagination
of the French producer. The royal couple of the Obrenovic dynasty
was brutally assassinated by conspirators; and their dead bodies
covered with blood were thrown from the main balcony onto the street.
This cruel episode, shot in the style of "cloak and dagger" or "blood
and power," could have been considered customary for medieval times,
definitely unthinkable for the Europe at the beginning of this century
but obviously real and possible for Serbia.
4 There is also a comic book version of
the novel, Disney's Mickey and his Double.
5 Even more transparent is the character
of Regent of Carpathia in Terence Rattigan's play The Sleeping
Prince (1954), allegedly inspired by the historical figure of
the Serbian King Milan (1868-1889). The play was turned into a film
in 1957 and became Laurence Olivier's The Prince and the Showgirl,
where Olivier in the role of the Regent even physically strongly
resembles the Serbian monarch.
6 Also in Hitchcock's film The
Lady Vanishes (1938), based on Ethel Lina White's novel The
Wheel Spins (1936), the train departs from an unnamed Balkan
country resembling a Central European principality overshadowed
by the looming Third Reich.
7 The same type of conversation appears
in Helen Fieldings' Diary of Bridget Jones (1999), in the
scene in the luxurious countryside hotel, and will probably remain
in the screen adaptation now being shot.
8 As it is said in the Bible and later cited
in many films, such as Schindler's List (d. Steven Spielberg,
1994), to save the life of one man is like saving humanity.
References
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Goldsworthy, Vesna. Inventing Ruritania:
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University Press, 1998.
Iordanova, Dina. "Balkan Film Representations
since 1989: the quest for admissibility.” Historical Journal
of Film, Radio and Television 18.2 (1998).
Stam, Robert. Tropical Multiculturalism:
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