Branko Bauer
| Branko Bauer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
18 February 1921 Dubrovnik, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes |
| Died | 11 April 2002 (aged 81) Zagreb, Croatia |
| Occupation | Director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1953–1978 |
Branko Bauer (18 February 1921 – 11 April 2002) was a Croatian film director.
Bauer became interested in cinema as a school boy. In 1949, he began working in the Zagreb-based Jadran Film studio as a documentary filmmaker. His feature debut was the 1953 children's adventure film The Blue Seagull (Sinji galeb) which distinguished his work from then-native Yugoslav productions through vivid visual style and natural acting.
Bauer became one of the most respected directors in Yugoslavia after his third film, the 1956 war thriller Don't Look Back, My Son (Ne okreći se sine; released as Don't Turn Around, Son in the US). The film tells a story about a World War II resistance fighter who escapes a train en route to the Jasenovac concentration camp and returns to Zagreb in an attempt to find his son and join the partisans in the Croatian hinterland. However, he realises that his son is in an Ustaša boarding school and has been brainwashed. The hero manages to escapes the city with his son but throughout their journey he is forced to lie to his son about their actions. The film was loosely based on Carol Reed's thriller Odd Man Out, and its last scene - which inspired the title of the film - was inspired by Disney's film Bambi.
Bauer's next film was the 1957 feature Only People (Samo ljudi), a melodrama influenced by films of Douglas Sirk. The film was a critical flop, mainly because melodrama was not considered a serious genre in 1950s communist Yugoslavia. After that film, Bauer worked for a Macedonian production company and made Three Girls Named Anna (Tri Ane; 1959), a film which is often compared to Umberto D. by Vittorio de Sica. Three Girls Named Anna tells a story of an old man who lives alone believing that his daughter was killed in World War II as a child. Suddenly the man receives information that she could have had survived and is now probably living as an adult in a foster family. The film was not successful at the time, but it is today often considered Bauer's best film. Bauer's next two films were more commercially successful - the 1961 comedy Martin in the Clouds (Martin u oblacima); and the 1962 film Superfluous (Prekobrojna, 1962), which introduced Milena Dravić as a future Yugoslav superstar.
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