THE PRICE OF A TOWN (Öåíàòà íà ãðàäîò)
Movie from: 1970
Duration: 85 minutes
Director: Ljubisha Georgievski
Screenplay: Simon Drakul
Leading Roles: Silvia Badescu, Jurie Darie, Dragomir Felba, Aco Jovanovski, Dragi Kostovski - Amfi, Aco Stefanovski, Petar Stojkovski - Babec
Content: A town in Macedonia is under German occupation. The end of the war is very near. In these last days of occupation
the inhabitants of the town release some Russian and Italian soldiers. The German commanding officer demands that the citizens deliver the
liberated prisoners, blackmailing them by mining the town. But the love, which the commanding officer feels towards the high-school student
named Elena, is an obstacle to his executing this crime. He demands the girl be a ransom for the town. Elena's father, who is a priest in
the town, sacrificing both his daughter and himself, marries the German officer and his daughter. The partisans enter the town and they
kill the - just married - couple exactly at the moment when for the first time on Elena's face one can notice that the German officer
becomes her favorite.
Resume: Essay text:
Two years after "The Republic in the Flames" had been released, Ljubisha Georgievski was engaged to direct "The Price of a Town" based on
Simon Drakul's screenplay. It treats its subject with no conformity in approach. The screenplay treats an event from the end of the war,
keeping the epic base of the theme as its primary structure. The film consists of sequences, related by their emotional intensity, which
owe their expressions to the same mythical source. The story of the beautiful Helen, on which the screenplay was based, the myth about
cursed beauty, and many other myths, are skillfully placed in the dimension of a new possible experience of their primordial existence.
The choice of Ohrid as their location reinforces the conviction of this dramatic base. It all begins when the local population helps two
lorries of prisoners of war to get free and join the partisans. For revenge the German captain, commanding officer of the town, orders the
citizens to deliver the prisoners or he will destroy the town with mines. The order is beyond the citizens' power and understanding but
they are connected with to their town with a strong mythical chain, which tightens around their necks. It is obvious that the captain
himself is convinced of the absurdity of the order. Making use of the ominous situation he challenges the mythical forces buried there.
Because of this the mechanism of the mythical performance becomes a severe judge having a group of hostages tied in a net and drowned in
the lake as the first victims, not saving even the beautiful Helen, nor the commanding officer. The performances are rather homogeneous in
respect of the expression, as well as their relationship to the characters. The cast included some Romanian names like Jurie Darie and
Silvia Badesku; among the homespun ones were Dragomir Felba, Aco Stefanovski, Petar Stojanovski-Babec, Darko Damevski, Kiril Cortoshev,
Nada Geshovska, Ljubisha Trajkovski, Aco Jovanovski, Vukan Dinevski etc. Branko Mihailovski's photography is just another visual tractate
accompanying the thematic values of the screenplay and mediating the mythical beauty of the space with the strictness of icon painting. Yet,
the highest level of stylization was achieved in Nikola Lazarevski’s art direction. The music composed by Kiril Makedonski is dominated by
the ballad mood, thus contributing to the somewhat neglected poetic motive of the theme.
Sources: Macedonian Cinema Information Center and Cinemateque of Macedonia.
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