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The Master and Margaret Movie Review

The Master and Margaret is a 1972 Serbian film directed by Aleksandar Petrovic and starring Ugo Tognazzi, Bata Zivojinovic and Pavle Vuisic among many others. It’s a surprisingly solid adaptation.

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“Sit down!“

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The devil complicates a writer’s struggle to complete his latest work during the culturally stifled Russian Revolution. Based on a seemingly unfilmable Bulgakov novel, what Petrovic did here needs to be appreciated more. He was one of Serbia’s greatest directors and it’s frustrating that not many people nowadays are even aware of this adaptation, let alone praising it. It’s one of the most underappreciated movies I’ve seen in quite a while.

Let’s first start with the obvious glaring flaw, which is the omission of so many passages from the books that center on the fantastical elements and also Pilate himself. I did appreciate the Pilate sections at least portrayed through stage, but the lack of supernatural elements led to an almost total absence of Margarita, who is just there to be pretty I guess with no meaningful arc to her character whatsoever. Also, the titular romance was badly affected as a result of this.

With that being said, I would much rather get a literary adaptation that focuses on half of the story and adapts it beautifully instead of a movie that adapts everything, but does it all haphazardly. The former was thankfully the case here. The film entirely focuses on the Moscow storyline, but they adapted it so well that I ultimately respected this production.

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This was an Italian-Yugoslav co-production, but the movie was shot in Belgrade and acted as well as directed by a Serbian crew, so I categorize it as such myself. Speaking of the performers, this was an impressive all-star cast that contained so many icons of Serbian cinema and everybody was perfectly cast. Bata Zivojinovic has rarely been better than he was in this crazy, over-the-top, but highly memorable role of Satan’s accomplice.

Pavle Vuisic was just as insane, but even more effective in his wide-eyed facial expressions and many hilarious lines of dialogue. He is the funniest member of this cast by far. Ljuba Tadic was excellent as Pilate and those stage sequences were actually stupendous, though the actor playing Jesus was annoying and odd. Tasko Nacic as Rimsky was so effective and perfectly cast as well while the Italian actors all did a great job with the highlight being Ugo Tognazzi as The Master. He was probably dubbed in Serbian, but the dubbing was so well done here that I did not mind it one bit.

The Master and Margaret also features a solid score by the famous Ennio Morricone, surprisingly strong cinematography throughout and a couple of actually quite inspired shots. The special effects that are there are also pretty good, though again the movie mostly evaded the fantastical elements, which was a shame, but expected given its budgetary constraints.

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The humor here is the highlight. It is similar to the source material, but more skewed to Serbian sensibilities, which to me as a Serbian viewer was a blast to watch. The dialogue was fantastic and all the characters were faithful to their novel counterparts. The themes were also well explored. I just wish that the runtime was longer as one and a half hours for this novel was simply not a good choice, no matter how well they adapted it.