Anti-Stalinist Horror Film
Đorđe Kadijević’s Leptirica
By Charlie Bertsch
Among the vast number of vampire films made since the early days of cinema, Đorđe Kadijević’s 1973 film Leptirica stands out.
Although Leptirica ( “She-butterfly”) terrified many of the people who first saw it on Yugoslavian television – heart attacks were reported – it’s not likely to scare contemporary audiences who have grown numb to horror.
Nor does it demonstrate technical innovations that make Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr so memorable.
And it certainly can’t compare with the production design of a big-budget Hollywood picture like Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Leptirica impresses, not despite its limitations, but because of them. Kadijević’s low-budget filmmaking imparts an aura of authenticity akin to amateur pornography. The blood is obviously fake, yet it feels more visceral as a consequence.
But the film’s biggest claim to fame is that it reclaims the heritage of the Balkans, where vampire stories originated, reversing the cultural appropriation that has underpinned vampire stories since the early nineteenth century.
Instead of showing how a supernatural creature from the superstitious East threatens the West, Leptirica takes place entirely in an isolated location far removed from geopolitical concerns.
This difference is significant considering how consistent the motif of the Eastern menace has been in vampire stories for the last two centuries.
The historical remoteness communicated by a long journey into Transylvania gives way to a terror of the proximate.
Leptirica adapts the great Serbian writer Milovan Glišić’s 1880 story After Ninety Years, which tells the tale of Sava Savanović, a legendary eighteenth-century vampire who supposedly haunted a rural mill in the village of Zarožje.
In the film, after another miller is brutally killed, men of the village convince Strahinja, an impoverished young man, to take the job. Strahinja wants to marry Radojka, the beautiful daughter – or possibly ward – of Živan, a curmudgeonly man who refuses to hand her over to a pauper.
After Strahinja manages to survive the vampire’s attack, the villagers help him find Sava’s grave and drive a hawthorn stake through his coffin. Then they encourage him to make Radojka his bride, regardless of what Živan says.
The men all get hammered, celebrating the ceremony scheduled for the following day. But when they wake up from their stupor, neither Strahinja nor Radojka can be found.
As the audience already knows, however, when Strahinja snuck into the room where his bride-to-be’s chamber for some pre-nuptial sex, she turned into a werewolf-like vampire and attacked him.
In an earlier scene, the lovelorn shepherdess is excited by the strange sound identified with Sava. Radojka writhes with desire, much like Ellen Hutter does in Robert Eggers’ impressive 2024 remake of Nosferatu.
Although Živan guards her virtue zealously, it has already been compromised by the pull of the supernatural.
When the villagers discover Strahinja’s lifeless body in a field, a small butterfly is perched on his face, fluttering its wings.
This symbol of metamorphosis recurs in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film Silence of the Lambs and Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ 2024 film Heretic, among other texts.
It also reminds us of something the previous miller says to Živan at the beginning of the film, when he spies Radojka walking with her flock and declares that she resembles a she-butterfly.
Despite its differences from the vast majority of modern vampire stories, Leptirica shares their concern with the corruption of innocent women.
But the policing of female sexuality is such a crucial component of famous films like Dracula and Nosferatu that it almost feels like an afterthought in Kadijević’s film.
In interviews, the director explained that he only turned to horror because his association with the Black Wave movement of dissident Yugoslavian directors had made it impossible for him to make a traditional film.
Instead, he turned to a supposedly throwaway genre and made a picture to be broadcast on television rather than shown in theatres since censorship was less extreme there.
While the people of Zarožje seem friendly enough, aside from Živan, they are not portrayed very favourably.
The village’s bumbling Orthodox priest reinforces negative stereotypes about the clergy that circulated in the Communist lands of Eastern Europe.
In short, these are people who live in the dark, with the prospect of enlightenment far away.
Given the Black Wave filmmakers’ interest in subtly highlighting the willful ignorance and inefficiency of the Communist Party functionaries who shaped life in Yugoslavia, Leptirica is a plausibly deniable political allegory.
But despite encouraging audiences to laugh at the villagers’ bumbling attempt to find and destroy Sava, Kadijević doesn’t want us to mock their beliefs.
The film takes it for granted that vampires are a fact of life.
At the same time, Leptirica takes pains to avoid the romanticisation that plagues most Western vampire narratives.
Because most scenes are shot outdoors, in bright summer sunlight, the contrast to Eggers’ histrionically dark Nosferatu is also evident on a visual level.
In places like Zarožje, evil doesn’t need props.
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Screenshot courtesy of Đorđe Kadijević. All rights reserved.