Oldal 455 [455]
OCR
Visualizations of “Hooligans”. A Bulgarian Film of the 1960s but not in the sense of the ideology. Even her outlook and gestures are polysemantic—her femininity is emphasized through the choice for this character of the delicate actress Ilka Zafirova (Fig. 6). ‘The gifted, smart and good young girl, easily rejected and stigmatized by the regime as “hooligan”, was designed as a character who could uncover the false morality and challenge the system with her behavior. The richness of her character gave the nickname She-Wolf additional meanings—liberty and strength. For the role Valchanov chose the student from the Vissh institut za teatralno izkustvo (‘High School for Theatre Art’) Ilka Zafirova, who personally had problems with the authorities because of her nonconforming behavior and way of dressing. So Valchanov could rely on her instinct and spontaneity for playing the role. The music in the film served several purposes. In important scenes Ana sings contemporary songs (Italian ballad, rock and jazz as for example songs of Rita Pavone, etc.), defined by the regime as decadent. The music allows getting into the emotions of her character and expresses the impulse of Ana to spirituality and nobility. In the same way the music, with its references to the social and cultural “West”, was to evoke certain emotions in the audience, criticizing albeit indirectly the narrow norm of the restrictive regime. Though the main clash between the director Kondov and the educator Kirilov followed a true conflict in the school between director Grancharov and some teachers and educators, in the film it was symbolically raised as conflict between the constructive power/will and the destructive one, between humanity (Kondov) and regression of humanity (Kirilov) (Fig. 7). The battle between them was polarizing; the main protagonists did not experience a character development in the course of the film. The depth of the conflict is visualized through dialogues and the composition of the dynamic film scenes. Significantly, in this contradictory “duel”, the young educator Kirilov, just graduated from university—who as a “product of the new system” should bear the ideas of communism but in fact supported violence—embodied ruthlessness and the formal-bureaucratic pupil-teacher relationship. Personification of the brutal, aggressive careerist, the negative protagonist Kirilov was in the final version of the film complemented by another, also negative, character, the figure of the sports teacher—weak, a non-person “meek, faceless and spineless” (Andreykov 1965: 42)—and also young, a product of the new socialist society (Fig. 8). In the scenes of the “comrades court” in the LES, the stress is on showing its problematic nature, how it evokes feelings not only of guilt but of humiliation and can lead to encapsulation of the self (Fig. 9). ‘The critique of state politics to isolate the LES is visualized through the symbolism of the fence. In the film, Kondov fights for respect for the students, for the destruction of the fence. The demolition of the fence is one of the many visual allegories in the film. These scenes give an optimistic end to the film; not only direct 453
