Published via Ecency

(source: imdb.com)

The author of this post remembers the very first film review he wrote. The text was a school assignment, given after my classmates and I had been taken to the cinema to watch the film. This happened a very long time ago and, in good conscience, I cannot actually repeat what I wrote. What I do remember is that the film was disappointing to me and this impression did not change after I watched the film again decades later. The subject of my review was Pakleni otok, the 1979 Yugoslav war film directed by Vladimir Tadej, sometimes distributed on international markets under the titles Devil’s Island or Hell’s Island.

The film is based on Osmorica sa drvenog razarača (“The Eighth Men from the Wooden Destroyer”), a 1960 novel by Croatian writer Frane Jurić, dedicated to the exploits of the Yugoslav Partisan Navy in the Second World War. The plot begins on the Dalmatian coast in the autumn of 1943, shortly after the Italian capitulation. German forces are rushing to take control, forcing a large number of civilians to seek the relative safety of the Adriatic islands or Allied-controlled parts of Italy. One group of refugees, together with wounded Partisans, is boarded onto a fishing boat commandeered by the old Captain Bartul (played by Pavle Vuisić). It is set for the island of Vis, and during the voyage, it is to be escorted by a Partisan armed boat commanded by Vice (played by Krunoslav Šarić). Bad weather forces both boats to temporarily anchor at an uninhabited island and wait for the night, when they are to continue their journey without fear of German planes. Unfortunately, smoke from the island is spotted by a German gunboat whose commander (played by Peter Carsten) sends a small detachment led by a sergeant (played by Klaus Löwitsch) to investigate.

Made during the zenith of Partisan films, a war film subgenre specific to Communist Yugoslavia, Devil’s Island was produced with the obvious task of celebrating the contribution of the Partisan Navy to the war effort, in many ways the same as the better-known Partizanska eskadrila celebrated the Partisan Air Force. The inevitable comparison between the two gives a clear advantage to the latter, which was directed by the experienced action-oriented filmmaker Hajrudin Krvavac and filled with spectacle, pyrotechnics, and shameless copying of Star Wars. This film is more generic and made with a much lower budget, with Tadej, who also wrote the script, faithfully employing the clichés of the genre, which also includes the character of US Army Sergeant Taylor (played by Richard Harrison, an American actor who made a career in Italian exploitation cinema), added to the Partisans solely to improve the film’s results on the international markets. Connoisseurs of Partisan films will see many familiar faces, including Slavko Štimac in the role of a young Partisan, as well as German actor Peter Carsten, who plays a no-nonsense German commander who takes his job seriously—unlike Klaus Löwitsch as his arrogant and sadistic subordinate, who turns out to be the ultimate villain in the film. The combination of pathos, melodrama, and occasional moments of levity and humour works in the first half, but when the action actually starts, Tadej shows that it definitely is not his forte. This culminates at the end in a confusing scene of a small Partisan boat suicidally attacking a larger and better-armed German vessel, which shows all the limitations of the budget and the director’s skills. While the acting is mostly solid, the best and most memorable part of the film is the sad theme song written by the famous composer Arsen Dedić and performed in a style common to his native Dalmatia.

RATING: 4/10 (++)