Un affare di cuore (Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T.) - Dusan Makavejev

inizia col ripescaggio di un cadavere, poi sembra un film leggero, una nouvelle vague jugoslava, divertente, un storia d'amore e di amori.
Izabela fa la telefonista, è una ragazza solare, disinibita, innamorata, quando il fidanzato va a lavorare lontano lei cede alle lusinghe di un compagno di lavoro.
e per quella volta ha la sfortuna di restare incinta.
il fidanzato impazzisce per questa situazione  e il resto lo saprete vedendo il film.
un bellissimo bianco e nero  e una regia da maestro fanno di questo film un piccolo gioiello - Ismaele





…"Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator," is nominally about a switchboard operator who seduces a rat control expert. He eventually does not exactly hurl her into a deep well. The story is told in an improvised style very much like early Godard or Buster Keaton.

But Makavejev pretends that he wants to do more. To tell the tale of the girl and her People's Rodent Control Hero is not enough; a film must inform the masses and be ideologically sound, right? So Makavejev spoofs those deadly dull Russian morality films of the 1940s, where workers triumphed over capitalist-imperialist warmonger and ended the steel shortage while singing labor songs…

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…Structured like a true police drama where we know there has been a killing before we know how or why, the second interlude shows Izabela's body being retrieved from a well while we hear a criminologist, Dr. Zivojin Aleksić, explain the process of cleaning and identifying a corpse. It's a harsh, clinical lecture, and it makes us feel uneasy even though our connection to Izabela is not all that strong as of yet…

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…We find out that the killer who drowns the corpse in the well is not a criminal, but comrade Meho acting out of desperation. Love, it turns out, is stronger than ideology.

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…As Love Affair fatalistically wends its way to the tragic circumstances that bring about its end, Makavejev continually throws in ironic surprises in his collage of found footage that barges in on viewers at crucial strategic moments. Though he fits quite naturally into that late-60s fad of throwing random crap together as an affront to cinematic and cultural tradition, there’s enough substance and imagination offered to overcome the dated frivolity of similar exercises from that era. And at just over an hour in length, this is a Love Affair that doesn’t wear out its welcome or demand excessive concentration from the audience, even with its skewed timeline.

Here’s another aspect of what makes Love Affair a cool old movie – its versatility (and relative lack of copyright-enforcing authorities hovering nearby) as a source for music video material. I found this nice tribute to what Makavejev himself practiced, reconfiguring other people’s material for his own purposes. It’s a homemade mash-up of a Mercury Rev song and scenes from Love Affair – a rather charming combination…

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