The Battle of Neretva (1969): Production, Exhibition, Reception, Aesthetics, and Historiography

The Battle of Neretva, directed by Veljko Bulajić is one of the biggest war spectacles produced in Yugoslavia following the famous partisan battle with Axis forces during World War II. The film serves as a useful site from which we can understand the conventions of the Yugoslav war film while its exceptional production and exhibition strategies and reception history signal a critical turning point in the cultural understanding of the war film as a meditator of history. By studying the film’s production, exhibition, and reception, aesthetics, and historiographical significance, and drawing upon original archival documents preserved in the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka/Yugoslav Cinematheque in Belgrade, this paper aims to identify, assess, and expose the layered significance of the film The Battle of Neretva, and to further map out its position within (Yugoslav) film history.

production and exhibition strategies and the reception history of the film, particularly in the case of large-scale spectacle, served as a critical turning point for understanding the role of war films for mediating the country's past, and dictating the cultural and aesthetic standards for producing war films in the future, so much so that we can say there were war films 'before and after' Neretva.
The article is structured in three parts which reflect the three primary ways through which we can assess the significance of the film: production, exhibition, and reception; film aesthetics, and The Battle of Neretva in the history of Yugoslav cinema. My methodology in the first case comprises primary source research (press and newspapers, film journals, exhibition programmes), in the second film analysis (mise-en-scène, editing, sound), and in the third historiographical analysis (mapping out in the first instance the relation between a film and the historical context in which it emerges, and in the second, the relation between different films and filmmakers across time, including direct and indirect influences). The corpus I have used in my research includes 232 archival documents preserved in the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka/Yugoslav Cinematheque in Belgrade drawn from a variety of press and media outlets that reported on the making of the film. The overall aim of my text is to identify, assess, and expose the layered significance of the film The Battle of Neretva, on and off-the-screen, and to further map out its position within (Yugoslav) film history.
Before, during and after: the production, exhibition and reception of the film For the purposes of understanding The Battle of Neretva's production, exhibition, and reception it is useful to briefly articulate the organization and structure of the film industry. After 1945 a nationalized studio system was formed in Yugoslavia. With the young King Petar exiled to Britain the country was now a socialist state under the tutelage of Josip Broz Tito. The state supported the creation of a sophisticated studio system, with a major studio set up in the capital of each of the six new republics, including the central studio Avala Film in Belgrade, Jadran Film in Zagreb, Triglav Film in Ljubljana, Bosna Film in Sarajevo, Lov cen Film in Cetinje, and Vardar Film in Skopje. Championing its own brand of self-management socialism Yugoslavia became a forerunner between East and West and a geo-cultural crossroads between Europe, Africa, and Asia. It was thanks to the studio infrastructure, to the range of facilities, professionals, immense outdoor backlots, and the range of architectural and natural landscapes available for shooting, to lower production costs and the good working relationships that developed with film colleagues across East, West, and the Non-Aligned World as a result of the country's politics that made the Yugoslav film industry so vital domestically and so attractive for co-productions internationally. 1 In international films Yugoslavia served as much a backdrop for the Ancient World, for the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, or as double of the Russian Empire in Anglo-American films when co-productions with the Soviet Union were not possible. Strong partnerships were forged with Italy, France, and West Germany, in China Yugoslav epics were experienced like Hollywood blockbusters in the West, and the Yugoslav film industry made a significant cine-Dravi c, Pavle Vuisi c, Boris Dvornik, Ljubi sa Samard zi c and Spela Rozin on the one hand and Orson Welles, Yul Brunner, Franco Nero, Sergei Bondarchuk, Sylva Coscina, Hardy Krüger, Curd Jürgens, and Anthony Dawson on the other. Furthermore, the subject matter was of historical importance in the cultural memory of the people of Yugoslavia given that Neretva was one of the important offensives for the partisans during World War II which, as many contemporary historians noted, would have a decisive role in shaping 'the outcome of the revolution and the preservation of historical memory in post-war Yugoslavia'. 4 The film employed over 10,000 actual soldiers of the Yugoslav People's Army during filming and in that way the film aimed to bring the national liberation effort closer to the contemporary viewers by including those people who were living representatives of the fruits of the struggle shown in the film. The spectacle around the film grew as the release date drew closer and there was significant attention given to the film abroad.
Newspapers across Yugoslavia, including major papers in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Ljubljana, and Skopje, continuously provided information about the film, from its initial shooting to its theatrical release and the diverse public and critical responses garnered by the film. Two examples demonstrate how the exhibition of the film was developed with the aim of being a local as well as global spectacle. Sarajevo's Ve cernje Novine/Evening News announced that for the premiere of the film a hundred female university students of Philosophy and Philology would be gathered to guide the guests for the premiere of the film. 5 Connecting education and industry allows inter-institutional and cultural endowment to the filmic event.
Publicizing this in national newspapers reflected one step towards the film's proposed cultivation of culture by giving an opportunity to young talent to participate in the country's most prolific event and the international guests attending that event. Likewise, the same newspaper's communication of information about hotels being booked out raises the anticipation for the event and its cultural status within Yugoslavia. The event is portrayed as exclusive and inaccessible (the article writes about high-profile international guests, attendance by invitation only and all of Sarajevo's hotels booked out). 6 Thus the premiere is represented as a phenomenon accessible to the highest delegates of the industry and the country and in doing so creates an aura of participation in an event par excellence. 7 The premiere of the film in Sarajevo was technically and formally envisioned as a spectacle in the way of exhibition. First the city was chosen as the capital of the republic in which the battle took place: the director of Bosna Film Nedo Pare zanin stated in an interview that in the decision resulting from a meeting between Bosna Film, Kinema and Jadran Film was 'for the world premiere to be in Sarajevo because … Sarajevo was the centre of all the events.' 8 Pare zanin further elaborates that their decision included 'practical concerns', namely that of the space and Sarajevo won out, being home to the 'the biggest … and most modern cinema place in Europe with 3100 seats'. 9 This leads to the second point and that is the fact that the technical expectations of the film's production team were pushed to the limit, as a cinema screen was built specially for the premiere in the city's palace that measured 25 Â 11 metres (82 Â 36 feet). 10 For reasons of comprehension it is worth saying that this construction was the biggest screen in the country and is still larger than today's standard IMAX screen. 11 The exhibition strategy pre-figures and in many ways supersedesin terms of size and visionmodern film exhibition's attempt to create spectacle beyond the screen.
Once the time came, the daily bestseller Ve cernje Novosti/Evening News in Belgrade, reporting on the premiere, declared it 'the festival of one film' describing how it lasted five days and included a series of palace screenings, glamourous gatherings, press conferences, luncheons and receptions. 12 The premiere took place symbolically on the 29 th Novemberthe day on which socialist Yugoslavia was founded in 1945, commonly known as the Day of the Republicwith the premiere of the film simultaneously inaugurating the opening of the huge cultural and sports centre Skenderija. 13 With over 1000 international guests in attendance and the premiere broadcast on television, Sarajevo saw an array of screen stars which in addition to the talent from the country included Orson Welles, Yul Brunner, Hardy Krüger, Sylvia Coscina, Anthony Dawson, Sergei Bondarchuk, and Sophia Loren. 14 The premiere also attracted over 300 journalists from the country and abroad, with the Sarajevo daily Oslobodenje/Liberation announcing among others the arrival of Italy's 'most respected film critics' along with the head of Cinecittà Enrico Rossetti and the director of Cannes Favr Le Bret. 15 To this we could add directors Roman Polanski and Louis Malle, poet Desanka Maksimovi c, artist Oton Gliha, distinguished academics Velibor Gligori c and Zivan Milisavac, and sportsmen including chess master Mikhail Botvinnik and footballer Predrag -Daji c. 16 Sarajevo's Ve cernje Novine/Evening News reported, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who was scheduled to attend had to decline due to illness. 17 Most interestingly of all, in addition to the Yugoslav delegation headed by the president Josip Broz Tito representatives of the British and Soviet delegations attended the premiere. 18 Furthermore, on hearing that war veterans from around the world would re-unite in Sarajevo Sir Fitzroy Maclean reported that the premiere would represent 'the most joyous moment for all of us who served in Yugoslavia during the Fourth Offensive.' 19 Furthermore, Pablo Picasso designed the poster for the film which was publicized, especially in Belgrade, in the week leading up to the film's premiere. 20 At the same time the premiere came under fire from journalists for spending money on putting on a 'carnival' in the capital of Bosnia while in neighbouring Banja Luka people were 'freezing in tents' following the earthquake that hit the city some weeks earlier. 21 The director and the producers of the film responded, as, for instance, on Bulaji c's way back from making final cuts to the film in Rome, the Italian producer stated that he 'wishes the proceeds to go to the victims of the earthquake in Banja Luka'. 22 Later the German producers from Munich-based 'Columbia Film' announced that their share of the proceeds would also go to helping the people of Bosnian Krajina. 23 In this way the reaction of the crew in part went to acknowledging if not exactly mending the critical socio-ecological situation near the capital.
The film played in Yugoslavia for three years. By February 1970, just over two months since the premiere, the prestige daily Politika reported that Neretva had been seen by 380,000 people in Belgrade and with a 72 day run represented 'the longest premiere run for a film in the history of cinemas in our capital city'. 24 By March 1971 five million people had seen the film in Yugoslavia. 25 In one city the local University went as far as to organise coaches to bring people from the villages to see the film. 26 In Pri stina, alongside the original version in Serbo-Croatian, the film was re-released after the producers finished synchronization into Albanian. 27 During the exhibition run, particularly in the capitals of each republic, cinema spaces and palace screening venues were decorated with large and decorated posters and live military replicas, such as army tanks and canons from World War II, used in the film. This strategy pre-figures and in many ways outmatches contemporary attempts by auteur spectacles to merge on-screen and off-screen realities through their production and exhibition run, for instance through the work of Christopher Nolan. 28 By putting real-life military replicas against star actors, the filmmakers connected lived experience with cinematic experience. Memory and history were renegotiated in an intricate way, where after going from the actual to the filmic spaces they came back round to the socio-political space in which they originated. 29 Following the film's release, a heated discussion concerning the question of the film's financial and critical success arose and attained national proportions in the headlines. The controversy was provoked by journalist Sreten Petrovi c's article in the Ve cernje Novosti/Evening News where he described the film as a 'financial ruin'. 30 The director, members of the crew, and most significantly the film's various producers and investors all came forward to give their statements. 31 Meanwhile journalists across the country responded to Petrovi c's claims and analysed the latest developments on the controversy as they came in. 32 While the film included significant state capital and contribution from over fifty self-managing companies and banks the producers of the film claimed the investment was not only recuperated and paid back but also that profit was made. 33 Petrovi c and like-minded journalists disavowed these claims and took to examining how (un)successful the financial distribution of the film actually was. 34 While success was guaranteed in one way or another for Neretva's domestic release that success was not yet enough to cover losses. One subsequent development also revealed that the critics may have had a point. In February 1970 a Slovenian newspaper stated that the film had been sold for distribution in 82 countries and a year later Politika reported that the film had only been shown in seven (Yugoslavia, France, West Germany, Italy, Norway, Japan and Bolivia) and was scheduled to start showing in the United States. 35 A similar contradiction could be found in the film's distribution in the United States: on the one hand, the film did have theatrical distribution and, as Zagreb's Ve cernji List/Evening News confirmed, was showing in 7000 cinemas, while, on the other, Belgrade's Ve cernje Novosti/Evening News reported that the American distributor of the film had 'gone bankrupt.' 36 Uncertainties about the film's commercial success dissipated when the film received the Nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 1970.
The whole argument shifted from the film's monetary success to that of the film's cultural success, that is, 'the greater non-monetary value of the Neretva project' for advancing the artistic development of Yugoslav cinema and for promoting Yugoslavia abroad, particularly given its Oscar Nomination. 37 When it comes to the reception among critics the film was honoured with great praise. Italian intellectual Alberto Moravia gave a statement saying that this was 'the only battle to have been won twice. The second time … at the premiere.' 38 In Norway, Oslo's prestige paper Morgenbladet called it 'an exceptionally realistic film' while in Hungary, Budapest's leftist Népszabadság said 'Bulaji c showed his mastery in the ability to connect the film's numerous episodes into a meaningful whole'. 39 As the Oscars emerged on the horizon V. Gerasimov wrote in Moscow's Pravda that the film 'possesses high artistic qualities and is deeply patriotic' and added that 'the Soviet people remember and highly regard the contribution of the people of Yugoslavia to the struggle against the common enemy: fascism.' 40 A year later, in Tunisia Neretva featured as one of the films selected in a celebration of Yugoslav culture. 41 From this we can see that the film attracted as much praise on the grounds of its aesthetics as it did on the grounds of its politics. This praise was far from being divided along East-West ideological lines which dominated the politics of the cold war, but showed far more dynamic flows and contradictions, where Moravia agreed as much with Gerasimov as the Norwegian critics conceded with their Hungarian colleagues.
However, the most interesting aspects about the film's theatrical reception remain with the claim to historicity on the one hand and the simultaneous perception of the film as a war and an anti-war film on the other. Writing for a Banja Lukan daily, Limun Papi c called Neretva 'the greatest history lesson', adding that the film will serve as 'the best way to present the four years of war to our youth' in order to remind them of 'the significance of their past'. 42 In Czechoslovakia, the critics went even further, with the headline in the periodical Kino stating that what we have here isnot just a lesson but -'History written with film'. 43 Lidová demokracie similarly praises the film and calls it 'one of the greatest war films in the history of cinema'. While from Papi c's article we see the film praised for authenticity in depicting history, from the examples in Czechoslovak press we see that the film was seen as authentic to the point where it does not merely depict history but is history. While in the former the film is commended for its educational value in the domestic sphere, in the latter it is praised for its cinematic value in the international sphere. It is from the reception that we can appreciate the varying degrees to which critics recognized the film's historical worth and the ways they saw this worth as significant for other spheres of life, including the instruction of young people and the preservation of historical memory. 44 While the statement in Lidová demokracie resonates with many contemporary readings of the film as a war film, both at home and abroad, Bulaji c's statements for Yugoslav press demonstrated that it was also viewed as the opposite: an antiwar film. Bulaji c indicated that the film 'carries within it something else other than the spars of war: the idea of a revolution, of a kind of humanism that is not about two camps going head to head, as in every other war film, but about a battle fought for the wounded … for the saving of human lives.' 45 This offers a contrast to the most common reading of the film as a war spectacle and points to the ways in which the film could be read as more ambiguous in its representation of war. It is this ambiguity that will be examined in the next part of this paper related to aesthetics and it is also this ambiguity that puts the film in touch with the more critical anti-war films made in Yugoslavia, as we will see in the final part of this paper.
Studying the reception is also important for understanding how the film served as a platform for a cultural debate about the nature of propaganda. The word propaganda was used in the press positively and negatively. Limun Papi c exemplifies the former tendency, seeing 'the significance of the film also in its propaganda effect, particularly in the West' going on to add that it would show those who know 'little to nothing' about how the war unfolded in Yugoslavia 'what we had to do to save our country. ' 46 By comparison Sreten Petrovi c typifies the latter, stating 'great is the propaganda power of the publicly written and spoken word which has created not only a cinematic-historical myth from The Battle of Neretva but also a myth about an exceptional financial project'. 47 Propaganda was thus perceived as positive for teaching the international audience about the specificity of the national struggle but negative for reasons of self-mythologization and claim to be a definitive representation of that struggle. What we learn from studying the reception is that contemporary critics recognized the power of the cinematic image but also the power of the word which shaped how the cinematic image was perceived in the public sphere.
By comparison, in the United States the film received press coverage following its production as early as 1967 and continued well into 1971 with its exhibition and reception. In September 1967 Variety published a poster of Neretva. 48 In October 1968, over a year before the film's release, several proclamations were made by Variety: Commonwealth is to be the distributor for the US; a 'three-English language version' is to come alongside 'the four-hour Yugoslav one'; the film has already sold in many countries; and it is called by the same periodical 'the most expensive film ever made in Eastern Europe (outside of the USSR)'. 49 Similar coverage follows during 1969 when the periodical speaks about Tito hosting a banquet for the stars of the film on his island home on Brioni and the coproduction market in Yugoslavia among which Neretva is called its 'Biggest Venture'. 50 Variety covered the film's premiere in Sarajevolabelling it '"Neretva's" mammoth premiere' 51and reviews of the film appeared in the same periodical alongside coverage in The Hollywood Reporter and later in The Los Angeles Times. 52 The publicity provided to the film in leading industry periodicals in the United States also accented the film's appeal in terms of scale and (inter)national significance, well attested by the fact that the hyperbolic style in press coverage, with exceptions of irony, appeared also in the States during the film's production and followed through to and after the premiereattested by Variety to be the global spectacle for which it was presented nationally. However, two interesting developments occur in the American reception of the film. The Veteran Affairs Committee of the city of Tucson with chairman Joan Wagman call the film 'an unadulterated distortion of World War II, a mammoth piece of false propaganda for the self-glorification of Marshall Tito and totally un-American.' 53 Their criticism presented in a May 1970 article of Variety further describes that the move to boycott the film arose with a US air force general attesting to his life and that of other airmen being saved by General Dra za Mihailovi c, Chetnik leader of the royalist Yugoslav Army during World War II who is represented 'as a villain in the film' and as the article's title further suggests: the film 'distorts Chetnik heroics'. 54 In March 1971 the film is called a 'lone … opener' in Denver and its box office reported 'slow'. 55 Despite a certain monopoly of representation, the first case presents us with a challenge to the historical truth the film claims to depict and by extension to represent as a cinematic artifact. The second raises the issue of commercial success as a precondition for an epic foreign-language film released in the United States wishing to obtain a greater audience or press coverage. However, Neretva is reconfirmed as an anomaly, as by this stage it has already gained the status of cultural landmark and all other information, including the returns which would appear essential for a big budget film, became irrelevant.
Examining the film's production context and exhibition strategies demonstrated the ways in which the film complicated the traditional production model in Yugoslavia, particularly in the case of the war film. Our survey of exhibition also showed the ways in which the film's producers sought to stage the film's premiere as a local and global eventa representation which resonated in the film's coverage in American press as welland to target a broad spectrum of different audiencespublic, political, and artistic alikewho, in the case of the premiere, were otherwise never likely to meet in the same space. Studying the reception of the film revealed the range and diversity of readings the film attracted from all corners of the public realm at home and abroad. It showed how one film served as a site for mediating the historical memory of the war on and off the screen as well as discussing the cultural significance of spectacle, the historical and future development of Yugoslav cinema, the geo-cultural position of Yugoslavia on the world scene, the definitions of genre, and the nature of propaganda. In showing the diametrically different and frequently opposing ways in which contemporary viewers read the film this analysis aims to enrich our understanding of the film and its cultural significance in Yugoslavia. The contemporary reception also stands in direct contrast to more recent analyses of the film which have frequently reduced it to its ideological dimension and altogether lacked exhibition and reception analysis. 56 What makes an epic: the aesthetics of the Battle of Neretva It is useful to turn at this point to study the audio-visual and narratorial composition of The Battle of Neretva, namely its aesthetics, as this is the primary site from which we can identify the dominant ways the film makes and unmakes nationalcultural myths about war. I study the film's employment of partisan iconography, multi-perspective narratives, and its ambiguous representation of religion.
The film integrates partisan iconography through character ethos, interpersonal relationships, costumes and décor, and music. The ideals of brotherhood and unity that were at the heart of post-war Yugoslav socialism are depicted through the national liberation effort of World War II that gave meaning to the ideals. The ethos shown is one of togetherness exhibited by a diverse set of characters in the film. The importance of individual commitment and methodical determination on the one hand is embodied in the officer played by Velimir Bata Zivojinovi c (perhaps the most recognizable talent of the war film), whose intense sense of integrity, personal will and collaborative spirit enable him to build and lead the partisan group through the field of war. Brotherhood is reconciled with sisterhood on the other hand through the platonic relationship of the two ensigns, played by Ljubi sa Samard zi c and Silvya Coscina. At the same time cultural and national ties are transcended as explicated in the gradual journey of the Italian officer Captain Riva, played by Franco Nero, from antagonism and indifference to closer affiliation with the partisans as he turns to their side. Keeping his own personal ethos that differs from his countrymen Captain Riva envisions a different kind of Italy. 57 Sergei Bondarchuk gives a fiery performance as the artillery commander Martin who from his cannons pushes the frontline with his battalion. As a major director of international war epics who just completed his 7-hour Tolstoian saga War and Peace (1966) Bondarchuk's presence endows The Battle of Neretva with intertextual significance in portraying the struggle of a people faced by war.
The employment of costume and the organization of spatial décor in the film contribute to the partisan iconography. The characters explicitly wear green to brown guerrilla uniforms, they brandish MP40-style submachine guns, carry caps and emblems with the red five-sided partisan star, and some even carry the flag of socialist Yugoslavia, also embroidered with the partisan star. While these modes of dress and props explicitly embody a partisan iconography of brotherhood and unity the film also employs dress and prop more implicitly to express the spirit of the national liberation struggle. The crowds of Yugoslav refugees who accompany the partisan fighters on their offensive wear civilian clothes, covered by black shrouds, they carry blankets, push their carts carrying their livelihood, bear their children, and they tend to the gravely wounded on stretchers. Using pedestrian and dilapidated costumes to literally dress the crowds of refugees creates a sense of ordinariness mixed with suffering. By coupling these costumes with those of the partisans, in shared physical spaces, heightened by the shared gestures of understanding and affection (particularly with the protection of the most wounded, civilians and soldiers alike) the film visually aligns the two groups, making civilians, though they do not wear explicit partisan symbols or costumes, a significant part of the national liberation struggle and the partisan iconography that demonstrates that struggle. Moreover, they frequently occupy one and the same space, with the concentration of spatial décorbeds made closely together, with no room in-between, characters lying across one anotherindicating the dependency of characters on each other and thus a commonality expressed across physical as well as social lines.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect about the film's representation of an ethos of commonality is that this ethos is also expressed across enemy lines, primarily through music. The song 'Padaj Silo i Nepravdo' ('Fall ye Force and Injustice') sung by the husky partisan Sumadinac played by Stole Arandelovi c represents a moment which unites for one instant the partisans and their German and Axis counterparts in a moment of remembrance and awe. Andrea Gelardi stresses well that unlike many war films it is this moment that estranges, rather than fuels, the participants from the conflict by reminding them of the microcosmic nature of the battlefield and the immensity of life beyond it. Gelardi reminds us that the scene perpetuates a homesickness of existential proportions that distances the characters from the moment of conflict rather than integrating them into the heart of it, thereby unconventionally disrupting the cinematic narrative of war. 58 Though the film may be interpreted as using partisan iconography to make a myth about war, this kind of 'choral' disruption is key for unmaking that myth by suspending if not obliterating the line between friend and foe. 59 Brotherhood and unity are expressed on the macro-level of the film's aesthetics as the visual interconnectedness of the filmic characters in internal connected spaces of battle and external disconnected spaces of battle. In the first the characters rely on one another and carry one another, both literally and figuratively, through moments of hardship. In the second lands to be conquered by the exodus, exhibited through suffering and movement of people across insurmountable geography, displays their joint struggle. The aerial photography, wide landscape and extreme long shots capture the scale of the movement and map out the struggle in relation to the landscape while the more intimate close-ups capture the details of the movement and position the struggle in relation to more basic needs, such as food, shelter, and medical care. The representations of suffering as intensely personal and affectively collective, exodus as a war with geography as much as necessity, and resistance as a means of defence against totality creates a language of melodrama that is entirely present in the film, perhaps one that is most centrally evident through the partisan aesthetics, but which is equally counteracted by the multiperspective narratives which move melodrama from the representation of monologue to one of dialogue.
Multi-perspective narratives unusually integrate the stories of diverse individuals and groups, from the partisans to the Nazis, Italians, Usta se and Chetniks. While on the one hand the multiple perspectives offer a point of unity for the partisan collective this integration breaks with the traditional partisan portrayal of the enemy. This is most clearly exhibited through the characters of Orson Welles and Franco Nero: Welles's Chetnik commander has more character than similar figures in other films and Nero's arc of surrender to the partisans and simultaneous connection with his people fighting on the opposite side makes him estranged from the field of battle. 60 The significant detail to which the film goes to examine the inner workings of each of the represented groups creates a kind of dramaturgical mosaic which bring out the differences as well as the similarities between these groups. While melodrama is certainly ingrained within the film's aesthetics, a sense of ordinariness also emerges from looking at the psychology of the characters. The representation of an all-pervasive sense of death across the different groups, including the partisans, acts as a critical point of disruption to the cinematic narrative of war. Instead of vitality attributed to a morally superior group we see destruction and decay subsume friend and foe alike. In this way the film enables us to see again the ordinariness of the people involved in the conflictit reminds of their shared mortalityand thus brings us a step closer to an accurate comprehension of the reality of war.
Finally, and most strikingly, the film presents an ambiguous view of religion that is not entirely conducive to socialism. It is worth comparing two scenes in the filmthe scene of the Chetnik leader's address to his army and the scene of the choral disruption with the song 'Padaj Silo i Nepravdo'in order to demonstrate how this presentation is achieved. In the first, we can see the entrance to a Church when the leader of the Chetniks speaks to his soldiers. The leader appears towering and despotic in foreground and the priests appear quiet and complacent in the background. In the second, the bells of a Church ring alongside the song when the partisans are victorious against the Axis. Soldiers, civilians and wounded alike appear in foreground, expressing sobriety and joy despite visible pain through body language or shedding tears through expression. While the backdrop of the Church behind the Chetnik Nazi collaborator appears unobtrusive and silent, in a sudden and unexpected shift, the bells emerge with the partisans to signify that God is with the people in the struggle. The representation of the Church, and religion per se, is thus more ambiguous than first meets the eye. The presence of this kind of representationlike the choral disruption that connects enemies and estranges the participants from the conflictin the most lucrative of war epics shows us how Yugoslav cinema, even in its most popular forms, contained lateral engagement with subjects which were sensitive if not rejected in the socialist cultural imaginary. 61 The Battle of Neretva in the history of Yugoslav cinema Critical representations of the national liberation struggle and the history of the Second World War form an important part of Yugoslav cinema heritage. It is worth tracing some of these representations historically in more detail so that we can better understand and situate the significance of The Battle of Neretva within that heritage.
There were a series of films produced in Yugoslavia during the three decades before Neretva which dealt with representations of the Independent State of Croatia. Branko Bauer's seminal work Don't Look Back, My Son (1956) shows the journey of a partisan father who escapes from a train headed for the concentration camp Jasenovac. On arriving in Zagreb and finding his young son indoctrinated by fascist ideology the father must find a way to get his son back and to get them both out of the city before they are discovered by the regime's police. The film raises the question of personal responsibility and moral action under a totalitarian regime and is one of the first post-war films to address the genocide perpetrated against Serbs, Jews, and Roma in the Independent State of Croatia. While the former is an issue already addressed just two years after the war, in This Nation Will Live (Nikola Popovi c, 1947), Bauer's treatment is much more subtle and visually refined, placing suggestion before exposition. A film which takes the issue of ideological difference even further is The Ninth Circle (France Stiglic, 1960): a film about the love between a Croatian boy and a Jewish girl he marries on the eve of the Holocaust. Infusing fear and claustrophobia even into the 'open' spaces where life goes on, the film shows the importance of spiritual survival in the face of a system that, while dehumanizing the body, sets to destroy the spirit. Beyond the effect of internal division Stiglic's film shows that even impossible borders can be crossed by the person daring to step out of ideology.
In contrast The Alphabet of Fear (Fadil Had zi c, 1961) retains the thematic intensity of the previous works but is wrier in tone and surprisingly jazz-flavoured in delivery. A beautiful student girl Vera works as a maid named Katica in the family of a high-ranking fascist collaborator in order to gather undercover information for the partisans. Set within the confines of the apartment home and its surrounding chiaroscuro-lit hallways the film is more psychological in terms of framing. It depicts the war through its absence. It also shows the more complex nature of personal collaboration with(in) a totalitarian regime. The daughter is shown as the firmest believer in the Usta se's ideology, for the father collaboration appears a case of opportunism and a personal ambition to maintain professional status, for the mother it is about social status, while the younger daughter appears completely oblivious to the outside world and is good friends with Katica. However, the film does not in any way diminish their closeness with the regime as the family keeps a portrait of Ante Pavelic and holds social gatherings with the local fascist and Nazi elite. All these films reveal different sides of the war, but they remain connected in showing the living conditions and socio-political mentalities existing in the Independent State of Croatia. The Battle of Neretva integrates the portrayal of the Usta se into its narrative. While that portrayal is not as critical as in the previous films it is important because it weaves what existed in public and cultural consciousness into the meta-narrative of World War II Yugoslavia.
In the history of Yugoslav cinema there are also a number of films that deal with the representations of Chetniks. Representations that explicitly deal with the role of Chetniks in World War II can be found in the films of -Dorde Kadijevi c, such as The Feast (1967) and The Trek (1968). Mostly minimalist in composition, rural in setting, and exploring the subtle intrusion of modern warfare on traditional peasant communities, Kadijevi c's work offers an insight into the role different Chetnik factions had in the lives of small communities. By contrast we see an expression of the resurgence of war trauma in contemporary Yugoslav spaces in Vojislav Kokan Rakonjac's work, specifically his film Before the Truth (1968), which in highly innovative avant-garde fashion relays the psychological impact of a chance meeting between two people, a former Chetnik and Partisan, in urban Belgrade. Both filmmakers provide the cultural context in which the role of Chetniks in Yugoslav history was examined through film retrospectively (Kadijevi c) and contemporarily (Rakonjac). Bulaji c's film is a part of this cultural context, integrating the perspective of Chetniks into its meta-treatise of Yugoslav history.
The representation of partisans in Yugoslav cinema was perhaps the most common since the end of World War II. While the term partisan film is reserved for a group of highly stylized popular epics unique to Yugoslav war film, partisans were represented in Yugoslav cinema in often the most diverse and even conflicting ways, transcending countless directors, genres, and styles, and even going beyond the sphere of popular culture to break into the realm of avant-garde and experimental cinema. Neretva borrows as much from past productions as it sets the standards for future productions about partisans. When it comes to past productions, the film owes much to the romantic realist tradition, dramaturgical developments, and the school of political critique. Romantic realism marks the form of the first post-war film Slavica (Vjekoslav Afri c, 1947) and stretches to films from the early 1960s such as Stepenice hrabrosti (Oto Dene s, 1961), which highly romanticize the partisan struggle for national liberation and often posit partisans as figures for adoration. The film also owes much to the dramaturgical developments in earlier partisan films, particularly the innovations displayed in Fadil Had zi c's films Desant na Drvar (1963) and Konjuh planinom (1966). The films thematize crucial operations of the war, with the former focusing, like Neretva, on one of the seven offensives undertaken by the partisans against the Axis. However, they are more significant for developing the mosaic dramaturgy which interweaves the stories of a variety of different characters and maps out the spatial structure and temporal progression of the offensives into one meaningful whole. This kind of composition also forms the backbone of Neretva's aesthetics, as examined earlier in this paper. Political critique met aesthetic innovation in its most radical form in the work of Zivojin Pavlovi c, mostly explicitly through his masterpiece The Ambush (1969) but also found in The Awakening of the Rats (1967) and When I am Dead and Pale (1968). Pavlovi c focused on characters on the margins of society. He fostered means of cinematic expression and is particularly striking for his portrayal of death and moral, as well as physical, decay. He also deconstructed the delusions of ideology, showing the internal strife between partisans and the type of corruption that developed after the war, where those who did not see the battlefield took advantage of governmental positions while some of the real idealists were shunned, if not killed. While Neretva is conservative in its ideology, the film's focus on the pervasiveness of suffering and death puts it in touch with the more critical cinematic representations of Yugoslav partisans.
While it is important to situate Neretva within the cinematic and cultural landscape in which it emerged, it is also important to remember that the film directly impacted the production of future war films in the country. The most direct example that followed was Sutjeska (Stipe Deli c, 1973), an epic directed by Stipe Deli c, Bulaji c's assistant director on Neretva. Sutjeska many ways modelled itself on Neretva's aesthetics, all-star (inter)national cast, and transnational production model. Shortly thereafter, U zi cka republika/The Republic of U zice ( Zivorad ' Zika' Mitrovi c, 1974) was to follow. Besides their formal similarities, the films also indicatively built upon one another by each dealing with one of the seven strategic offensives of the partisans against the Axis. While the previous parts of the paper focused on the study of the film and the ways in which it was made, shown, and understood by its contemporaries, this part aimed to give the reader a sense of the cinematic and cultural landscape by which the film was shaped and which in turn shaped that landscape. In other words, if up to this point, we looked at the history of the film as an artifact, here we looked at the historiography of the film as an artifact in a landscape of artifacts. The aim is to stimulate more critical engagement with Yugoslav cinema and in this case apply it to the study of partisan film.

Conclusion
While scholars have frequently offered a reductive reading of The Battle of Neretva, this article aimed to show the textual and contextual significance of an epic war film that deservesand initially garneredmore critical attention than first meets the eye. It also sought to demonstrate the overlaps, nuances, and contradictions in the theatrical release of the film, from its exceptionally devised premiere to its distribution across the country to its final journey abroad. While in many ways it succeeded by figures (seeing the number of viewers in centres such as Belgrade), it also caused some of its buyers to go bankrupt. While investors chuckled and the argument over figures raged, the currency value itself changed, thus complicating the matter. Then the most interesting discourse emerged: a public debate about the nature of the cultural value of a film, one that even with such significant investment, not to mention a range of investors behind it, was found to be 'worth more than its monetary return'. This may change how we think about what constitutes the mainstream and how we determine value in an industry seemingly driven by capital interest but one where the value after all, to borrow Marxist terminology, transcends its 'material base'.
It is ironic that what many have called a clearly socialist epic attracted such a diversity of audiences, including festival connoisseurs and big distributors from the East and the West, respected actors and infamous directors by way of Welles and Bondarchuk, critical readings among the country's intellectuals, critics, journalists, and filmmakersincluding those who made the film, most often represented in the press by Bulaji c himself, a debate about the social, economic and ecological status of a republic hit by an earthquake and the ethics of putting on a premiere near that disaster zone. For a film where veterans came and three different representatives of the Allied powers met again to discuss their victory, we can write this off all too hastily as propaganda, but this would be completely missing the point. We also may begin to imagine the role of a film like The Battle of Neretva played aesthetically and culturally in gathering many of the big powers in fierce opposition during those days known as 'the Cold War' and having them sit down in a neutral zone and recall their joint successes but even this reading may be limited.
Instead, this research aims to bring the reader to appreciate the layers of meaning and indeed contradiction that went into the film and that which surrounded it as an event for five years, complicating our understanding of what should have been one of the straight fires of Yugoslav partisan filmmaking. Maybe that straight fire was reserved for Sutjeska but Neretva will remain a hybrid, a paradox. This essay has tried to unpack that paradox in the hopes of showing to the readers what really went into the production of one of socialist Yugoslavia's biggest films. This will hopefully demystify some of the subject matter and historical context and open the way for appreciating the heritage of one of the most important European cinemas of the twentieth century. A debate continues about the film today following the country's formal dissolution and the question arises: to whom does the film belong? For some, it is a Croatian picture, 62 for others Bosnian, 63 and for others, most recently, Slovenian. 64 Maybe even that debate, which Bulaji c himself unwittingly entered, missed the point and we can see now that Neretva is much more that which it always wanted to be: a Yugoslav film.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television