Ples v dežju (Dancing in the Rain). 1961. Yugoslavia. Directed by Boštjan Hladnik. Written by Hladnik and Dominik Smole, adapted from his novel Black Days and a White Day. With Miha Baloh, Rado Nakrst, Duša Počkaj. In Slovene with English subtitles. 100 min.
Boštjan Hladnik is the enfant terrible of the 1960s generation that brought sex, film noir, and the nouvelle vague with a twist to Yugoslavia. Hladnik made his debut film after returning from Paris, where he worked with Claude Chabrol and was a regular at the Cinémathèque Française. Voted the greatest Slovenian film, Dancing in the Rain is a slow-burning, twisted, and sublime portrait of love between young painter Peter (Miha Baloh) and the ideal woman he finds in the bourgeois Lady Maruša (Duša Počkaj, with all the leading-lady charm and heartache of Gloria Swanson). Hladnik’s wondrous visuals bring to life the rainy streets of Ljubljana to life, and the film shows a relationship unfold—and eventually spiral out of control—just as a young couple in the background performs the dance of “ideal” lovers throughout the film. Adapted from the novel Black Days and a White Day by the existentialist writer Dominik Smole, Hladnik’s film injects a high dose of modernism into classical cinema style and—along with the work of Aleksandar Petrović—announces the spectacular arrival of the New Yugoslav Film.