Accidental Life

Accidental Life (1969)

Slučajni život

Two friends try to tear out their lives from the clutches of idle. An existential study of ordinary lives led by two alienated urban white collar workers, Accidental Life was the only feature film of Ante Peterlić, Croatian film theorist and film critic. The film received mediocre reviews and went largely unnoticed after its release, but has been reevaluated decades later as one of the best Croatian films ever made.

Date of release
1969-07-22
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 6m
Genres
Drama
Director
Ante Peterlić

Casting

Interesting facts

Accidental Life is a 1969 Yugoslav drama film directed by Ante Peterlić, starring Dragutin Klobučar, Ivo Serdar, Ana Karić and Zvonimir Rogoz.

Background and production

By the time Ante Peterlić set out to direct Accidental Life, his debut feature film, he was already well known as a prominent young film critic, and a professor of film theory at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. In the 1960s he directed his first short TV drama, and was active as an assistant director in several feature films and documentaries, working also as a script doctor.

The role of Stanko was initially intended for Zvonimir Črnko, but he was busy shooting a TV series, so Peterlić opted for Dragutin Klobučar. However, he felt that Klobučar was better suited for the character of Filip, the more introverted protagonist, so Stanko's role ultimately went to Ivo Serdar.

Due to budget constraints, the film was shot quickly, with a small crew. Peterlić likened the near-amateur filming conditions to those prevalent in the French New Wave, his main influence at the time. Still, he saw Accidental Life as a work that, rather than being a New Wave film per se, projected a New-Wave-like atmosphere by "striving to tell the truth about its times and about my generation by using a more modern way of storytelling".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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