偶然的生活 (1969)

One of the best films from the entire '60s. A small masterpiece, almost unknown because it was Petrlic's first and only film he ever did before he went on teaching and writing about Cinema in Zagreb as a professor. I watched this film the other night at Zagreb Film Festival for the first time in my life, and went completely crazy about it. It's Chabrol, Godard, Bresson, Cassavetes, Lester, Pannebaker... in a quiet, subtle, almost childish situations and resolutions within it, but yet it's incredibly clever, true to life, warm. It's "off-beat" completely, which is strange considering the year of the film (no one in former Yugoslavia did a similar film to this date). It's like a Jarmusch film, but 15 years before Stranger Than Paradise.

Two friends are wandering in Zagreb, chasing girls, go to shows, at the river, working together, laughing, fighting. Nothing happens really story-wised, but every second something happens between the people in the scene, with jazz, or piano, or city traffic, or complete silence in the background. Some sort of inner magic just goes from one scene into the other and the ending is hilariously unexpected, human and innocent. Very touching film about young urban people with a loving dose of the old Zagreb's spirit, back in the days that seems much simpler, but it really was completely the same as today or as anywhere else for that matter, under condition of a good feeling.