Cinema
Koncert
Branko Belan · 1954
Synopsis
Zagreb, in the spring of 1945, just after the liberation. Students from a cultural society try in vain to persuade Ema, a neglected and dejected piano teacher, to play at their celebration. Memories flood back to her: on 28 June 1914, the day of the Sarajevo assassination, she is twelve years old and already plays very well, thanks to Mr Pjaskovski, an instrument dealer whose house her mother cleans; then come Colonel Glojzner, his wife Beata, their daughter Greta, and the years.
Context
The novelist Vladan Desnica wrote the screenplay from a synopsis by the director, and the version that was shot departs from it considerably. Produced by Jadran film and photographed by Oktavijan Miletić, the film frames within the present of 1945 four chronological flashbacks, one in Austria-Hungary, two in royal Yugoslavia, the last under the Ustasha State, which gives it the look of a fresco. This unusual construction and its pessimism about the fate of the individual led to it being underrated on its release; it only became a classic a quarter of a century later.
Who it is for
Ninety minutes in Croatian, told in flashbacks. It helps to know the successive regimes of Croatia between 1914 and 1945.
Prizes and reception
Voted in 1999 the seventh best Croatian film by the country's critics, and regarded today as one of the high points of that cinema.
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