Man Is Not a Bird

1965 movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An older man arrives in an industrial town to oversee work at a copper factory. While in town, he starts sleeping with a hairdresser who also happens to be his landlady. A guy with a moustache, the Yugoslavan Burt Reynolds, also constantly comes to the barber shop for groin thrusting and mild fondling. Meanwhile, a worker at the factory has troubles at home resulting from his adulterous ways.

This, Dusan Makavejev's first movie, is not an entertaining movie at all, and it doesn't make me want to rush out and find any of Dusan Makavejev's other movies like Dusan Makavejev's second movie, or Dusan Makavejev's third movie, or Dusan Makavejev's fourth movie. The dvd box set me up, convincing me that I was about to watch something "antic" and although there were some free-form elements and an almost pseudo-documentary approach that gave the film a different and almost exciting feel, I was kind of bored. I think part of the problem is that I couldn't connect with the politics, the social issues, or the Yugoslavia historical importance. There was a hypnotist in a few scenes with a hypnotist, the truck driver with the moustache (the Burt Reynolds of Yugoslavia), the people working at the mill, a circus, a performance of Beethoven's Ninth right at the factory, but I couldn't figure out how it all connected or what it all added up to. So while the acting and some individual scenes are fine and the gritty style promising, this sub-eighty minute movie almost seemed longer than The Music Man. And there was no Buddy Hackett!