Is It Possible to Speak of Partisan Film As a Genre?

Films about partisan struggles during the WWII were produced constantly in the period of socialist Yugoslavia. Since this period was relatively long and since it has seen numerous shifts in political, social and aesthetic contexts, but also shifts in stylistic conventions and forms of expression, many very different films were produced. Considering this fact, text questions the possibility of speaking of Yugoslavian partisan film as a consistent genre. Analysis of most important feature films dealing with partisan subjects shows that Yugoslavian partisan films are in general too heterogeneous to be linked by anything other than their content, the partisan struggle itself. Group of films, standing out from the rest, are the action spectacles from the 70ies (the period of the so-called “red wave”, beginning with Battle of Neretva by VeljkO Bulajić), arguably stylistically coherent enough to be defined as a genre. The comparative analysis of American westerns and these Yugoslavian partisan films – with the help of Will Wright’s structural method – points out to strong structural analogies between these two seemingly very different genres, but also to a structural consistency of partisan films themselves. The author concludes by pointing out certain topical specifics of partisan films which make them (especially) relevant for our times.

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