Cinema
You Love Only Once
Samo jednom se ljubi
Rajko Grlić · 1981
Synopsis
With the war over, the young partisan Tomislav and his comrades Vule and Mirko are put in charge of organising civilian life in a small town near Zagreb. To raise the culture of the masses, theatre artists are sent there from the capital, among them Beba, a pretty dancer of bourgeois origin, with whom Tomislav falls in love at once. Everything separates them, but they quickly marry. Beba's parents arrive from Zagreb without hiding their disgust at the new order, and Tomislav's comrades see his choice as a betrayal.
Context
Released on 4 February 1981, it runs for a hundred and three minutes. The screenplay is by the director and Branko Šömen, on a motif from a story by Ruža Jurković inspired by the diary of a young dancer; the photography is by Tomislav Pinter, the editing by Živka Toplak, the music by Branislav Živković, and the cast includes Miki Manojlović, Vladica Milosavljević and the Swede Erland Josephson. The title is that of a hit song from the early fifties, which Ivo Robić sings in it. Halfway between the political film and the melodrama, it was one of the first to return, after the Black Wave, to the beginnings of the socialist state.
Who it is for
One hundred and three minutes, in Serbo-Croatian. It helps to know what the regime born in 1945 expected of its cadres.
Prizes and reception
Golden Arena for photography at Pula in 1981; the best-known and most esteemed work of its director, who established the Prague generation.
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