5 Yugoslav Marxist

Humanism and the Films

of Dusan Makavejev
Herbert Eagle

From the time that Dusan Makavejev's films were first seen by
Western audiences in the mid-1960s they have aroused intense interest
and controversy because of their highly imaginative and complex
construction. Makavejev's works, rather than being fictional
narratives in the tradition of the feature film, intertwined several
distinct types of filmic material into a 'collage' consisting of
documentary as well as fictional 'strands' -utilizing previously-made
films (both fiction and documentary) in combination with
documentary, pseudo-documentary and narrative footage filmed by
Makavejev himself. 1 In the tradition of the early Soviet pioneers of
montage, Makavejev sought by his juxtapositions of diverse material
to create a complex network of associations, often jarring and
ambiguous, but always with a probing, 'critical' relationship to the
filmed 'strands' themselves. The strands in Makavejev's films do not
unfold as uninterrupted units, but are constantly intermixed and
intercut with one another, producing multidimensional associations
which constantly challenge the viewer to make sense of what is
transpiring on the screen. Even within the individual strands, the
soundtrack is constantly cross-referencing the film's various materials.
As we shall see, Makavejev's technique is particularly well suited to
social and political analysis and criticism- which has been the major
aspect of Makavejev's films. The director's particular genius lies in
relating individual psychological factors to social and political
behaviour. Makavejev is frequently identified in the West as an
adherent of the theories of the radical Freudian Marxist Wilhelm
Reich, principally on the basis of the only two films he made during the
1970s: WR, or the Mysteries of the Organism and Sweet Movie.

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D. W. Paul (ed.), Politics, Art and Commitment in the East European Cinema
© David W. Paul 1983
132 Film, Aesthetics and Ideology

Makavejev's projections of Reich's views is in part ironic, however,

and must be understood as part of a larger thesis about human
personality, social behaviour and political ideology. 2

MAKA VEJEV'S POLITICAL IDEAS: THE EARLY FILMS

Makavejev's films retain strong sympathy for (and empathy with)

Marxist goals throughout, and his analysis of what has gone wrong with
the Communist revolution (as it is historically embodied in Eastern
Europe) is very close to that of Yugoslavia's influential Marxist
humanist philosophers and social scientists, among them Milovan
Djilas and the scholars associated with the journal Praxis from 1964 to
1974 (including Gajo Petrovic, Svetozar Stojanovic, Mihailo
Markovic, Rudi Supek and Lubomir Tadic). 3 In particular,
Makavejev's films probe the principal dichotomy between liberated
individual consciousness and various forms of alienation and
repression (ideological dogmatism, determinism, institutionalized
rigidity and elitism, thus reflecting very accurately the major concerns
of Yugoslavia's Marxist humanist thinkers, who have declared
themselves against all forms of authoritarianism and domination and
have criticized those institutions of power, authority and socialization
that are by their very nature alienating. The Praxis group turned the
sharp critical insights of Marxism upon the socialist societies of Eastern
Europe themselves, citing Marx's call for 'the merciless critique of all
existing conditions, ... not afraid of its own findings and just as little
afraid of conflict with the powers that be'.
Stojanovic, for example, called for a confrontation ofthe realities of
socialist life in Yugoslavia with the ideals of humanism, in order to
unmask 'newly constructed myths, fetishes, taboos, and sacred tenets'.
The myths that concerned Stojanovic are among those that Makavejev
attacks in his films: the infallibility of the Communist Party and the
certainty of social planning, on the one hand, and the unquestioned
value of commodity production and individual satisfaction, on the
other. 4
Another essential position for the Praxis group is that free creativity
for all individuals is the ultimate aim of a true Marxist programme:
man is a being of praxis and only through creative activity do human
beings realize their uniquely human potentials. As Petrovic puts it:
'There is no praxis without freedom, and there is no humanity without
freedom.' Freedom, for Petrovic, means the ability of human beings to