It was part of Stalin’s master plan to have propaganda films produced far from the front lines. Noc nad Belgradom is part of a group of fiction news reels called Boevi kinosbornik No 8 (War Film Collection Nr 8). The story itself is a typical piece of flag-waving propaganda that has nothing to do with historical facts. At that time, Tito and Stalin coordinated their actions very closely, and Yugoslav partisans led an uprising to help the Russians against the German invasion (Operation Barbarossa). The film is a pretty hilarious view of a then inexistent urban partisan underground (which looks very much like the French Resistance). The Germans are caricatured as brutish and simple (or just stupid, to be honest). The film was released in 1942, and after WWII both the film and the patriotic song “Noc nad Belgradom” were very popular. However, following the break with Stalin (1948), the film was all but forbidden (as was the rest of Soviet production from that time), and it finally ended up in the Jugoslovenska kinoteka. The second part of the Kinosbornik is a tankist melodrama Trii tankista (The three tankists). At the very end of Noc nad Belgradom, on the print being shown here in Bologna, there is a teaser for Trii tankista.

Dinko Tucakovic