Too many fans seem to be blown away

Overrated

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This is not only a great little movie, but also a great time-capsule of late-'60s Yugoslavia (a nation since destroyed by way of violent imperialist intervention). A young Hungarian woman and an older, Serbian man enter into a relationship under the internationalist, multi-ethnic, mid-twentieth century culture of communist Yugoslavia. This work contains scenes of beautiful, deeply moving, intimacy and sexuality. The contradictions of this culture are made plain within the movie by reference to scenes from a Russian revolutionary film by Dziga Vertoz: Committed communist masses dismantle an old Cathedral- their cause is clearly popular and democratic, yet it is intolerant of an institution that has itself embodied intolerance for millennia. "Revolutionary", "scientific" humanity remains constellated within a dialectic of resentment. Ultimately, human frailty destroys both the Hungarian and the Serbian. Misunderstanding and jealousy cause the lovers to turn on, and destroy, each other within the the terms set forth by this "revolutionary" society. Progress creates the illusion of enlightenment. But ultimately it is human nature that decides our fate. This outlook ultimately qualifies writer-director Dusan Makavejev as a philosophical reactionary, albeit an exceptionally creative one.

"It's been two months since I've been with a man – and that's a long time for a Hungarian woman." – Eva Ras, professional HungarianAnd then Aligrudic mentions that his colleagues at work constantly make jokes about easy Hungarian women. I wouldn't be surprised if Eva had suggested this part for the dialogue. Not that she is proud of her heritage as much as her whoritage.A scandalous film at the time, features for the first time a nude actress in a YU movie, and I mean completely nude – and in lots of scenes. The only reasons any sane person would want to check out this laughably pretentious "art" film are: the time-machine factor of watching an old YU movie (the nostalgic factor), and of course the opportunity to see what Eva looked like half a century ago – and in the nude. And there sure is a lot to see; she had a great body, especially the boobs. There is so much nudity in this 60s flick that some western censors wanted to play this in sex theaters.It turns out that Aligrudic didn't kill Eva intentionally but sort of accidentally bumped her into the well after she'd been literally flinging herself onto him for a while in what is a tremendously stupid scene. A totally idiotic "plot-twist" that sort of neatly wraps up this pointless art-crowd mediocrity written/directed by an overrated "artiste" who undoubtedly knelt in front of his Bunuel and Fellini posters for years before finally getting a chance from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to do his own crap. (Is that why there are totally irrelevant scenes with Marxist imagery? You bet.) It was quite obvious that Aligrudic "killed" Eva, but this never was meant to be a whodunit. It's more of a hudinit – a phony magic act intended to sell random themes meshed together as art.Aligrudic falls into an alco-depression when he finds out that Eva is pregnant – and that she doesn't want the kid. And who could blame her? The kid is either from Aligrudic or Ljuba Moljac; either way she loses. I mean, have you seen Aligrudic's real son? He is a carbon copy of the actor; a top-tier Serb politician, a corrupt liar, a former member of the country's ruling Far Right party called DSS. I have personally seen that man stumble around Vracar (downtown Belgrade) in a half-drunken stupor, which has a kind of poetic irony to it. (His party is infamous for its barfly "intellectuals".) Did Eva get pregnant from Moljac or from Aligrudic? Did Aligrudic find out that the kid may not be his? We don't know the answer to any of that, because the director is far more concerned with urgent matters – such as giving the viewer a history of the European grey rat, and a "reminder" that "even Rembrandt drew the sexual act". Somehow all of this is connected to rats and sex. Yes, rats have lots of sex, "one rat-pair produces 1000 in a mere year", we are told. And this connects to Eva's life and murder how exactly?There are many art-fart BS scenes in this vague movie. Scenes and sub-themes are thrown in almost randomly, and the viewer – afraid that he might embarrass himself that he didn't "understand" the movie's point – has no option but to conclude how good the movie was, despite being confused by it, and despite maybe not even liking it. THAT is how wannabe "art" films function: they BLACKMAIL the easily bullied viewer into declaring the movie a success. It's peer pressure, that's all it is, just like on a school playground.Eva Ras is tailor-made for these kinds of indefinable, plot-free, weird-for-the-sake-of-it roles, because she doesn't have to act in the literal sense of the word. Her breasts do the talking in this kind of a film, while her synchronized mouth and the irrelevant stuff that comes out of it is subjected to a supporting role. The director is more concerned with throwing in stories about rats and Rembrandt, or speeches by college professors – whose mere presence somehow isn't supposed to make this movie more stupid than it already is. The director isn't really interested in characterization. We don't really find out that much about them. Maybe Eva and her boyfriends are a metaphor for rats? Look, give me a break, I'm doing my best with the guesses. Eva's trademark moronic and insincere smile somehow suits these kinds of superficial-character portrayals. Give her a role in a proper movie with proper characters, and she is lost; she has no clue how to play them so usually she ends up reciting the lines like a robot. She's a bad actress.The only reason I didn't give this nonsense less than a 4/10 is because it has that nostalgia factor that I spoke of. If I'd seen this back when it was released, I would have found it insufferably dull – aside from the nude scenes. Don't kid yourselves; there is no plot here to speak of. This is the type of director who is much more concerned with international notoriety and respect, with getting nominated for dumb awards at dumb European film festivals than providing the viewer with a proper finished product. Which one of you thought that watching Eva prepare and serve a meal was exciting to watch? Did anyone experience spontaneous cinematic orgasms from watching a boiler being installed in a bathroom? I assume you've prepared meals yourselves, right? Perhaps you even had the amazing privilege of watching the installation of a boiler, and in even more detail! Those are all irrelevant nonsensicalities we get from film-makers too lazy or incompetent to get down and dirty and create a story worthy of the big screen. Lars von Trier, yes, that means you too.

What I enjoyed most about this inexplicable Yugoslavian film was the source of pleasure in watching a movie filmed on grainy, imprecise celluloid stock. Every scene hums with that lovely old-fashioned atmosphere of maddeningly strenuous traditional film-making. We can sense the boom mikes, the film reel, the guys with big, uncomfortable headphones, and the director with a big vision that frustrates him by communication breakdown, as the outcome of his film is a bewilderingly ambiguous celluloid mishmash of sex, young lovers, totalitarian Yugoslavia, and nonlinear narrative structure.And as such, it is a joy! It splurges and has fun! In one hour and nine minutes, its main thread, concerning a Hungarian switchboard operator who meets and falls in love with a Muslim who soon moves into her apartment much to the jealous chagrin of an imposing postal worker, intruding some touching intercuts of archive footage that give impressions of lives ensnared in totalitarian society, a brief history of how the gray rat infested Europe, and a sexologist in his study talking about the history of sex. Even the central train of thought is deconstructed into ambiguity as, seemingly at the same time, the police are investigating the drowning of a young woman.Director Dusan Makavejev seems to have simply made a multi-faceted montage of Yugoslavia and reflections based on its time, 1967. In spite of its self-indulgence, as was a common limitation of progressive European art-house films of the time, it is very enjoyable.

That European cinema did things differently in the 1960s is not in doubt, as even directors from little-renowned cinematic cultures such as Yugoslavia delighted in new-found freedom. On one hand, "Switchboard Operator" is a simple tale of love, betrayal and tragedy in Belgrade, and as such captures some touching details about trapped lives in a totalitarian society. However, director Dusan Makavejev, clearly under the influence of Godard, adopts an offhand approach to his narrative, and introduces extraneous material at tangents to the main story. Most of this stuff is fascinating, particularly when he uses archive footage of Yugoslav history. Less successful are the interjections of two tedious academics, a sexologist and a criminologist, whose stern pronouncements jar against the film's capricious tone. Nonetheless, this is invigorating film-making which reaches into some strange regions. Despite an economical running time of 69 minutes, the film even finds time for a brief history of how the grey rat infested Europe!