An Approach to the Modernist Tradition: Zrinko Ogresta’s Washed Out and Its Polish Literary Source

| among many contacts and similarities between croatian and Polish cinematic and literary modernism, it is quite interesting to note that zrinko ogresta adapted the writings of marek Hłasko in his feature film Washed Out ( Isprani ). The comparison of ogresta’s film to the literary source, The Eighth Day of the Week ( Ósmy dzień tygodnia ), before any extensive discussions of wider context, should ascertain the answer to a more elementary question — how close is the story of ogresta’s film to its Polish literary inspiration?


Introduction
Polish and croatian literary, cinematic and other cultural relations are relatively rich considering often different historical paths and destinies of the two nations1.after the WW ii, for instance, with Poland trapped in the Soviet sphere of influence and yugoslavia escaping it by the end of 1940s, there have been various connections and some significant exchange in literature, cinema and elsewhere.Polish director andrzej Wajda, already considered one of the leading european film artists, has worked in yugoslavia, most prominently as the director of a feature film Siberian Lady Macbeth (Sibirska ledi Magbet)2, a grim story based on a Russian literary classic more than the popular opera, with mostly Serbian actors placed in often quite expressive settings and cinematic spaces representing an interesting vision of Russian province3.Since it was well received, and awarded at Pula film festival for photography and acting4, Wajda's film is also a part of croatian cultural heritage, with visual panache encouraging us to read it in the modernist key.The level of rhetorical flourishes in lighting, framing or scenery usually correlates to the characters' emotions, quite comparably to orson Welles' cinematic approach to Shakespeare's Macbeth from the 1948 film (or, for that matter, to Kurosawa's japanese cultural translation of Shakespeare in Throne of Blood)5.
more central to the croatian cultural memory in the 21st century, the Polish film star daniel olbrychski played the lead in lordan zafranović's modernist wartime melodrama The Fall of Italy6 and appeared in an important supporting role of the president in vinko Brešan's What a country! as late as 20187. in the same era, the protagonists of widely acclaimed Paweł Pawlikowski's 1 maciej czerwiński and damir agičić, Poljsko-hrvatske veze kroz stoljeća.Povijest, kultura, književnost (zagreb: Srednja europa, 2018). 2 Sibirska ledi Magbet, directed by andrzej Wajda (avala,1962), https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21y4ie.He also directed an international coproduction Gates to paradise, directed by andrzej Wajda (avala, 1968).3 Shakespeare's Macbeth was, obviously, the original inspiration for these later works.
olivera marković and ljuba Tadić played main roles in the Belgrade's avala production.occasionally, the film is listed online as a yugoslav-Polish coproduction, but both copies of the film available (a Serbian-made dvd with original credits and the international version online with english credits) point only to the avala production.4 Taking place in croatia, this was a yugoslav festival, until the break-up of yugoslavia.5 Macbeth, directed by orson Welles (Republic, 1948), https://vimeo.com/536537743; Throne of Blood, directed by akira Kurosawa (Toho, 1957), https://mubi.com/films/throne-of-blood.6 Pad Italije, directed by lordan zafranović (jadran film, HRT, 1981).7 Koja je ovo država!, directed by vinko Brešan (interfilm, zilion, orka film).The film was co-produced by croatian, Serbian and Polish companies.
historical melodrama Cold War8 briefly visit yugoslavia and spend some time in croatian coastal city of Split (croatian actors -dražen Šivak and Slavko Sobin -play the policemen and speak croatian).The local mediterranean atmosphere in this segment of Cold War seems to be essential for underscoring the development of the film's central characters.naturally, cultural links between the countries usually extend far beyond cinema.The election of Slavic Pope john Paul ii, for instance, was recognized among croatian catholics as a significant event, a harbor of change (later confirmed with the Pope's role in croatia's independence)9 and the Polish oppositional movements in the 1980s, strongly represented by the Solidarność union, reverberated in croatian and yugoslav popular culture as well.The later a cultural event takes place in the history of socialist yugoslavia, the more likely it is to have vastly different influence and different meaning for different parts of this complex country, a (dominantly South Slavic) socialist federal republic.
Having that in mind, it seems significant to notice that, when the rockgroup azra from zagreb sang about Poland in 1981 (Poljska u mom srcu / Poland in my heart), this was most certainly understood in the light of oppositional ideology of rock music in general, with the precise meaning in the context of yugoslav society that, at least on the surface, might have seemed more harmonious than Poland at the time, free of Poland-style conflicts."Poland never / never gave a collaborator" ("Poljska nije nikad / nije nikad dala kvislinga"), sings the author/singer Branimir johhny Štulić in this song10, and the politically poignant verses point to the resistance to authorities as such, even to the communist and socialist authorities.naturally, the role of rock-music in modernist cinema is also significant -for instance several films by Wim Wenders11, antonioni's Blow Up and Zabriskie Point, or godard's Sympathy for the Devil use rock. in this context, the croatian cinema and the subversive rock music can be regarded as parts of the complex oppositional tendencies within the socialist cultural complex.
The mention of the Polish national Pope in the same azra song ("Papa Wojtyła") very neatly conforms with the interpretation of subversive and coun- tercultural nature of Poland's imagery in yugoslav (and croatian) rock-con-text12, particularly when we take into consideration how fresh the Polish political turmoil has been in the minds of the listeners of this popular group.The subversive nature of azra's music is also suggested by other songs from the same album Sunčana strana ulice (The Sunny Side of the Street).azra is, for instance, singing about "kurvini sinovi" (sons of the bitches), fellatio (in the song Fa-fa-fa), in one song even appealing ironically for the mercy of the yugoslav authorities "nemoj po glavi druže plavi" ("don't hit me on the head, comrade policeman").

Towards cinematic modernism -the role of literature
in the context of adaptation of modernist literature in croatia, directors such as ante Babaja or antun vrdoljak are mentioned most frequently.Babaja directed cinematic adaptations of Slobodan novak's dense modernist prose, while vrdoljak adapted equally challenging literary works of modernist classics miroslav Krleža and Ranko marinković.However, the adaptations of actual works of literature are not even necessary for this discussion, because the spirit and the poetics evident in the literary modernism seems to have permeated the cinema as well.For instance, if we look into the problem from the perspec-12 azra was subversive in yugoslavia, but even more so for post-yugoslav croatia.Štulić never came to terms with the politics after the break-up of yugoslavia, leaving zagreb for netherlands.tive of similarities, relations and connections of croatian and Polish culture, we might remember that one of the founding works of Babaja's oeuvre, short allegorical film The Mirror13, bares striking resemblance with only a fraction more recent Roman Polański's work Two Men and a Wardrobe14. in The Mirror, a man tries to travel safely with a large mirror through the city, which proves to be practically impossible because of the unpredictable nature of life in a city, as well as the hostility of some of its residents.The mirror reflects the city and the sky, irritating its people.The role of a man carrying a mirror to the society (perhaps he stands for an artist in general) is to be persecuted and tortured in this allegory.Polański's short classic has a very similar allegorical structure, but also a very similar iconography.instead of the mirror we have a wardrobe, but the mirror is also present, a vital part of this symbolic object and the entire allegorical structure of the film.
The two anti-heroes emerge from the sea in the beginning of Polański's film, trying to travel across the city, but they get molested and beaten instead, only to return to the sea in the end, beaten and defeated15. it is not very likely that Polański had seen Babaja's film -their similarities may be regarded as the translation of general modernist (existentialist, allegorical) poetics and philosophy into cinema, the medium that, generally speaking, lagged behind the literature or even the theater of the era in the quest for the modern expression.it is probably interesting to note that Babaja has worked on the script for The Mirror with Ranko marinković, a modernist literary giant who, although not credited, has heavily reworked the script written by the writer vjekoslav Kaleb16, whose prose often exhibited modernist traits as well.
post-yugoslav cinema.even marek Hłasko himself attempted collaboration with an accomplished Polish director aleksander Ford, adapting for cinema the same novella as ogresta worked with decades later (The Eighth Day of the Week)18. it is no wonder that one of the most acclaimed films of the croatian 1990s, zrinko ogresta's Washed Out (Isprani) from 1995 also fits very well in this discussion and tradition.often presented as a representative and seminal film of the 1990s long after its cinema-run, for instance in the Tv shows commemorating the past19, Washed Out also marks the true start of one of the most important modernist-oriented careers in croatia's post-yugoslav cinematic mainstream (although Washed Out is ogresta's second feature film and his debut Fragments from 1991 had actually been quite well received in its own rank).
ogresta's 1995 film credits the stories of Polish existentialist writer marek Hłasko as an "inspiration" ("nadahnuto novelama mareka Hłaska"; ogresta, 1995; 0:07)20, without any further elaboration and clarification in the film.it is usually left at that -the information that Hłasko inspired ogresta is present in local (croatian) cinematic community, but is not elaborated upon.The article on the film in the Cinema Lexicon for instance21, a book published when ogresta had already become one of the leading croatian filmmakers, does not even mention Hłasko's work as any sort of inspiration -so little awareness of the Polish writer's importance is present in croatian cultural tradition22.Film scholar Tomislav Šakić is probably the only one to point to the precise literary 18 Ósmy dzień tygodnia, directed by aleksander Ford (Studio, ccc-film, 1958), https:// www.cda.pl/video/953558144. 19 TV kalendar, 201619 TV kalendar, -20. 06. 201619 TV kalendar, ., accessed december 10, 2022, video, , video,  source of Washed Out in his article originally written about ogresta's oeuvre for an international online source in 201123.

Ogresta's plot
So -how close is ogresta's classical film to this classic of Polish literature, swiftly translated and published in zagreb during his short lifetime?if we look at the beginning -right after the opening credits -the connoisseurs of Hłasko's work might have a distinct déjà vu feeling.The beginning is directly adapted from the beginning of Hłasko's novella, or short novel, Ósmy dzień tygodnia (The Eighth Day of the Week, 1957)24, written at the era the existentialist early films of Babaja and Polański were conceived, and literature in yugoslavia, just like many other european countries, was brimming with ennui and serious existentialist concerns (Slobodan novak, Slavko mihalić, antun Šoljan, oskar davičo…).The names of the characters in Washed Out are typical for local, croatian surroundings, completely different from the book.Hłasko's agnieszka was transformed into jagoda, Piotrek became zlatko, grzegorz turned into Tukša, zawadzki into ivo, while jagoda's mother and father remained without the name in the film as well. in the beginning of the film a young soldier zlatko (josip Kučan) and a girl jagoda (Katarina Bistrović-darvaš) are cuddling in a dreary natural environment: the boy is making sexual advances, the girl is unwilling to participate and makes him stop.zlatko is unhappy, jagoda explains that she could not deal with intercourse in a public space, where people may see them.zlatko expresses his frustration that she actually shares -eventually asking him to provide any room available.He offers to ask his friend Kuga for a room, not stirring her enthusiasm, but she agrees with it nevertheless.everything described so far, including the dialog, is a direct and faithful adaptation of the Polish source material (or rather -its 1960 croatian translation) into 1990s life in zagreb.and the same can be said for the majority of the following scenes.one exception from this rule is the next scene, where the older factory worker Đuka talks with his younger colleague Tukša (Filip Šovagović), who is jagoda's brother.Đuka is rather calmly confronting Tukša with the consequences of an affair with his wife.They both speak in a very articulate, non-realistic vernacular, although Đuka swears while painting the grim future of Tukša's future life.Tukša's vernacular is even more artificial than Đuka's, but it is important to notice that the character of Đuka is one of the most prominent addition to the story adapted from Hłasko's novella.The next scene, however, marks the return to the literary story.jagoda goes home; she passes by the workers, one of whom whistles at her while other shout sexually provocative suggestions.This, apparently common catcalling practice is also adapted faithfully from the book.Finally, she arrives to a shabby flat next to the railway station.The father (mustafa nadarević) asks her about her day calmly, while the mother (Božidarka Frait), bed-ridden just like the mother in Hłasko's novella, starts the confrontation, suspecting that jagoda was consorting with a boy.Hoping to do some studying, jagoda goes to the kitchen.However, she immediately returns to apologize to the mother, who nevertheless continues the verbal confrontation.When jagoda retreats to the kitchen, the father comes and starts the conversation.He talks of his fishing trip plans; he fears they will fall apart, since everything changes in life.just like in the book, the daughter advises him about the better place for fishing, so jagoda recommends fishing in Rakitje (near zagreb).
The next short scene is in a pub, where Tukša's friend leaves with a flower salesgirl (who seems also to be a prostitute), strays from the events in the book. in the very next scene however, Washed Out is again directly mirroring the plot from the novella.jagoda speaks with ivo (ivo gregurević), the refugee living with her family -he talks about fixing his motorcycle, and beating up his unfaithful wife.jagoda says that he talks constantly about this but never leaves to find his wife in another town.This is again directly adapted from Hłasko, in story, dialogues, characterization… ivo explains his views on men and women, talking about his war comrade who was cheated on, and went over the combat lines to brutalize and kill his wife.after that, jagoda reminisces alone in the kitchen, just like agnieszka in the book, later stopping the father from leaving to search for her brother.The dialogues are, again, directly adapted from the croatian translation of Hłasko.jagoda's short encounter with Tukša's friend and the flowers vendor is ogresta's addition to the story, but when the girl meets her brother, the dialogue is, again, directly adapted (edited, shortened) from the book.There are differences, naturally, for instance in the motif of the hat that Tukša gives to jagoda, but these differences are very rare.
The next scene of Washed Out shows the conversation in which zlatko talks to jagoda about his childhood memory, when he saw some squirrels.They discuss their relationship and his memory of imprisonment, and everything is again directly adapted from the book.The difference is that, whereas in novella the local thugs confront them as they are leaving, in the film they come while the couple is still relaxing.This is the first really significant divergence from the book.ogresta's hero subdues the thugs and, after the heroic victory, girls decision to distance herself is not depicted as violently and as strong-mindedly (as opposed to agnieszka, jagoda does not hit the boy, she just calmly goes on her way).The next scene, back home is again the return to the faithful adaptation of the story and (shortened and adapted) dialogues from Hłasko, with a discussion of their life: father talks extensively, mother only chips in the acerbic comments.again, as in the book, father sends the heroine to talk to the subtenant.jagoda and ivo discuss his marital situation again.The speaker from the radio talks about a tiger Bruno who ran away from the zoo (this motif is ogresta's addition in this scene).ivo takes jagoda on his motorbike to look for Tukša, just like in the book, and then she continues her search with the taxi driver.
it is useful to note that the taxi driver does not warn jagoda about the locale where she is going to, and as a character he is an old acquaintance, but these are minor and welcome differences from the book.The dialog with Tukša (again, directly adapted from the book), where he admits political transgressions, is resolved with an armed confrontation at the bar, this time in accordance with Hłasko's vision25.The next scene, with the young couple finally going to make love in a friend's flat also plays out precisely like in the novella, with the friend forgetting to leave the premises, so jagoda can observe closely a naked women asleep in the friend's bed.The main difference from the novella is the radio repeating the news about Bruno the escaped tiger roaming the city.When they go to zlatko's place to make love, it does not work but to an extent differently from the book -this time the hero lives in the army barracks, and it was not the heroine's decision to stop before they went very far.The soldiers guarding the barracks interrupt them26.
Returning home, jagoda meets the subtenant ivo (again, as in the book).She goes to a pub, accidentally meets Tukša again and again asks him to come home.Since he refuses her appeals to stop drinking, she breaks the glass in his hand.His reaction and their dialogue is again faithful to the book. in the next scene, in the morning, the father is disappointed because the rain is stopping him from going fishing, which he was looking forward to from his first scene in the film and in the book.The conversation with ivo and Tukša, again, correspond to the book.next, jagoda and zlatko roam the city similarly to the novella, without dialogue, and they end up at some sort of ruin, where jagoda aggressively seeks intercourse and then asks the boy to shoot her, effectively chasing him away.
The visual motif of the hat dripping color in the rain is invented for the film, but when jagoda returns home she witnesses her father's aggression, his words taken from the novella.after that, instead of the novella's scene where the heroine picks-up a man in the bar for her first sexual experience, there is a chaste and romantic scene where jagoda roams the city in the night and sees the tiger Bruno mentioned on the radio.Then the story picks up on the trajectory set by the book again and jagoda meets zlatko who waits for her with the key to an apartment.She tells him the same lie from the book about another man that she supposedly loves, making him leave, just like Piotrek from the book.again, like in the book, jagoda meets her brother, who lost the married woman he was waiting for the entire time.jagoda takes him to the same secluded spot where she went with zlatko and explains Tukša how life works and why he should commit suicide.She leaves him with the gun but he runs after her, as she obviously expected him to.jagoda is satisfied to be liberated, to have a "shitty freedom" ("posrana sloboda"), just like the heroine of the book.Finally, the subtenant presents her wife Branka whom he now trusts, but jagoda recognizes her, just like in the book, as a naked lady from the earlier scene.Branka is a proven adulteress, and her husband is naïve and inferior, regardless of how confident he is of his manhood and patriarchal dominance.

The changes and origins
What is the reason for the omission of the scene where jagoda would for the first time sleep with a man (randomly chosen in a bar)?That might have something to do with the issue of morality and freedoms of expression in the 1990s.after the yugoslav times, when sexually explicit scenes were actually becoming rather frequent in the 1970s and 1980s (in the works of lordan zafranović, Rajko grlić or emir Kusturica, not to speak of the really transgressive directors, such as nikola Babić and Boštjan Hladnik, or the underground work of zvonimir maycug), croatian culture of the 1990s tended to rebuild itself into a puritan, chaste structure based on the traditional Roman-catholic morality, with wide ranging consequences for future generations27.Similar cultural shifts might also explain zlatko's fighting skills in the scene with the thugs.a croatian soldier was supposed to have some traditional masculine features in the dominant culture of this period.
as for other changes -giving a face and a voice to Đuka, Tukša's mistress' husband, or showing Tukša's friend interacting with the flower vendor (or making the cab driver an old friend of Tukša) -we may say that this primarily serves the cause of cinematic narration.all this is making the world of the film more full and richly constructed, carved-out by developing the supporting characters, in the tradition of the classical dramaturgy.visual motifs -the tiger Bruno in the street, the hat that does not withstand the rain -naturally, try to make the film more cinematic, visual.This means giving the visual symbols the role that words and sentences have in literature.
So, putting the similarities and differences together, we can clearly see that ogresta's film is a faithful literary adaptation, although the source is only vaguely listed in the film.The roll-out credits Polish embassy as first on the list of thanks that are very common in the end credits of films, suggesting some official channels being consulted prior to putting this particular script into motion.So, when talking about the book Ósmy dzień… critics and authors can add ogresta's adaptation to aleksander Ford's film (from 1958!) to show the lasting influence of the book.also, in addition to the direct links to novella Ósmy dzień …, one can say, naturally that can be compared to other stories from the Ósmy dzień … collection;28 in addition to the general air of gloom and doom in the post-war Poland: all of the stories from the book can be described as a poetic vision of poverty, despair and aimless existence in the early socialist period in Poland (which ogresta translates in the despair of war-torn and poverty stricken country).But, there are also motifs present in ogresta's ur-text and his film as well -voyeuristic characters29 for instance.another motif typical for yugoslav and croatian popular culture is that of a couple without appropriate housing, necessary for living and love-making30, which is essential both for the PlS.2023.13.08 | s. 12 z 17 novella Ósmy dzień … and for Washed Out31.The motif of workers' overalls32 is definitively reminiscent of Washed Out, where they are represented in one of the least convincing scenes of the film, giving the air of intellectual-existentialist instead of a working-class character -both for Đuka and for Tukša33.and, as is expected, there is a motif of a drunk34, important in the main novella of the book, as well as ogresta's film (Tukša and many minor characters and background characters).
in addition to the motifs, the dialogs of ogresta's Washed Out may remind us of the dialogues from translation of entire Hłasko's book of stories -well written, occasionally poetic and of elaborately structured sentences, often alluding to the listless mood of the protagonists.naturally, this approach to dialogues and characters can be reminiscent of French poetic realism, the films of marcel carne, julien duvivier (and even jean Renoir), with beautiful and artificial dialogues written by superb literary stylists, such as the once highly popular poet jacques Prévert, or the scriptwriting duo of aurenche and Bost.But French sources of croatian cinematic modernism are a vast and different topic altogether.no 34, 2019, 148-54.
film inspired byHłasko -Suburbs (OF IBIS)from 1972, making the Polish writer more important for croatian and yugoslav culture than it would seem at the first glance.For zafranović's filmography see his personal site "lordan zafranović", accessed december 9, 2022, http://www.lordanzafranovic.com/hrv_filmografija.html).