The She-Butterfly (1973)

 

Director: Đorđe Kadijević

Screenplay: Đorđe Kadijević

Based on the short story by Milovan Glišić

Cast: Mirjana Nikolic as Radojka; Petar Bozovic as Strahinja; Slobodan 'Cica' Perovic as Zivan 'Dusman'; Vasja Stankovic as Kmet; Aleksandar Stojkovic as Purko; Tanasije Uzunovic as Pop; Ivan Djurdjevic as Sredoje; Bogoljub Petrovic as Ceba

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #179

 

You're worse than a bunch of kids, hunting Vulkodlaks.

Today we have a made-for-TV horror film from the former Yugoslavia, directed by Serbian director Đorđe Kadijević, based on a story by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić. That explains, among cultural details I read into, this film's tone immensely, which did feel like a short story in adaptation form. Glišić, a varied figure in the work he did during his life from 1847-1908, has been described as Serbia's equivalent of Nikolai Gogol. This is an enticing comparison for me as a huge admirer of Gogol's, the Russian writer who could vary between gothic tales to stories of village life, Glišić in very basic reading of his life as enticing as someone, from the perspective of a Serbian directing a 19th century Serbian story with this adaptation, who could adapt folklore but was also someone who started in satirical newspapers, and was a realist chronicling peasant and working class people.

It does also suggest, expecting a straight forward horror film, why a lot of The She-Butterfly has a deliberately humorous edge, and emphasises a lot of its length on the humdrum life of a rural village. The tale's outline, that a vampiric figure Sava Savanović has killed at least four millers at the same watermill in the village, belies how so much horror literature is actually about human drama that happens to be invaded by the unnatural. That, prevented from marrying the beautiful daughter of a farmer, because the father has a bias against his poverty, the male protagonist initially wishing to leave the village decides to take over the watermill on request of the villagers for additional money. The horror intertwined between this narrative.

Director Đorđe Kadijević, whilst dealing with a very supernatural story, films most of The She-Butterfly vary naturalistically, the location looking like a village of the past before cinema even existing, tranquil and idyllic barring that, surrounded by woodland, this environment is still one in this world full of supernatural figures, where at night at the watermill a figure will come to attack the miller constantly whilst they are isolated and alone in the dark, always scooping up grounded flour and letting it fall out of its hands before each kill. Sava Savanović, if you do not presume is not just a name given to the vampire "vulkodlak", is actually the most famous vampire figure of Serbian culture, a figure that was said to live in an old wooden mill on the Rogačica River, who was said to kill and drink the blood of millers. Why I am unsure still, but it is a fascinating piece of cultural knowledge to have gained from trying to learn what this Serbian horror film does differently from others in folklore. The significance of this figure is that, when the actual mill collapsed in 2012, the municipal authorities issued a public health warning, whether with a humorous edge or not, that Savanović was wandering around looking for a new home¹.

In knowledge of the source material's author, the tone made far more sense and becomes rewarding. Sava is still prominent and the lore is still taken seriously in regards to a snapshot of peasant life, including a detail for Slavic vampires, evoked here beautifully, that they could appear as butterflies, based on symbolism of butterflies as departing souls as, even when the villages find a vampire's grave and put a stake through the coffin lid into the heart, they have to catch the white butterfly that flies out of the staked hole immediately. The film is also for large parts of its length, only around an hour, not horror. Large portions of taken by plot point such as the attempt by the lead just to be able to marry his love, even if it means helping her flee her father's farm. The comedic side is also prominent, because the older male villagers who make up most of the cast bumble about considerably, such as trying to learn about Sava Savanović from an old woman only for one of them to have to continually shout at her because she is half deaf. One of the highlights of the film in fact, far from an anti-religious caricature but a lightly mocking view of an authorities figure, is how the Christian priest among those villagers is such a pushover, especially when he is drunk, a figure I would not be surprised is adapted from Milovan Glišić's original text, and in mind to his work in satirical writing.

The She-Butterfly, whilst a one-off TV movie, feels like an episode of a larger series on Serbian folktales that should have been, as this does have a horror tale twist and that, whilst you could see it coming, the real interest is as a campfire tale told in cinema, causing me to wish a large scale series of Serbian/Yugoslavian tales had existed in this style. Director Đorđe Kadijević was prolific in television and theatrical cinema, but a parallel world suggested however a great large scale project would have been compelling.

The irritance, which is going to be felt whenever I tackle an obscure production, is that I wrote this review having to search for The She-Butterfly, and that my knowledge of cinema from former Yugoslavian countries is frankly anaemic, with a sense that it is made non-existence by total ignorance. My knowledge of The She-Butterfly (and other horror films from countries like Serbian and Croatia) came from the fact, on a site called Letterboxd, a Serbian cineaste saw a list of mine trying to locate horror films from around the world and rightly schooled me when there was a complete lack of films from the various countries that were part of Yugoslavia. This does emphasis the problematic dominance of English-language cinema in general, in how whilst those films should not be dogmatised and are great, trying to even find a Serbian horror film like this which, at less than an hour long and is completely accessible, should have been a hell of a lot more easier to locate. If more people talk about it, like I am, one would hope that it also acts as an act of cultural exchange just from the little this film covers.

 

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1) Reference HERE