Non-Aligned Spies: Secret Agents in the Yugoslav 1960s Cinema

Abstract

Through an analysis of three films (X-25 javlja/X-25 Reports, František Čáp, 1960; Kota 905/Point 905, Mate Relja, 1960; Abeceda straha/ABC of Fear, Fadil Hadžić, 1961) the article inquires into roles spy movies acquired within the Yugoslav cinema of the 1960s. On the one hand, spy films witness to a process of ‘genre-grafting’ highly symptomatic of the developments in the Yugoslav cinema of the period; on the other hand, however, they also introduce specific problems into this process: with Yugoslavia occupying a nonaligned position in the Cold War context, the metaphor of the ‘Iron Curtain’, largely fuelling the international spy genre of the 1960s, remained inaccessible to Yugoslav spies. Consequently, Yugoslav spy films not only systematically (re)turned to the context of World War II, but also, the ‘enemy within’ became the fundamental neuralgic point of their symbolic strategies. Through the spy’s infiltration, this enemy was then represented in ways which cannot be found in earlier war (partisan) films. The generic structure of the spy film combined with a position of non-alignedness therefore produced specific ideological effects within Yugoslav cinema. Taking film genre theory as its issuing point, this article attempts at offering an insight into this cluster of problems.