Variola Vera/Вариола вера (Goran Marković, Yugoslavia, 1982) A low-budget disaster movie sounds like a recipe for disaster itself, but this alarmingly topical film about a smallpox outbreak in a Belgrade hospital works brilliantly because the invisibility of the threat is what maintains the terror. - ThreadSky

marbleicehook.bsky.social • 4 days ago

Variola Vera/Вариола вера
(Goran Marković, Yugoslavia, 1982)

A low-budget disaster movie sounds like a recipe for disaster itself, but this alarmingly topical film about a smallpox outbreak in a Belgrade hospital works brilliantly because the invisibility of the threat is what maintains the terror.

Comments

marbleicehook.bsky.social•4 days ago

When a group of Albanian Muslims returns to Yugoslavia after a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, one of them has unwittingly become infected there, and while he exhibits symptoms quite quickly, doctors are nonplussed as they don't recognise them, what with smallpox having notionally been eradicated.

marbleicehook.bsky.social•4 days ago

Worse, they assume it's an allergic reaction to penicillin, so there's no attempt to isolate the victim until the truth belatedly emerges, by which time it's far too late and the government has no alternative but to order an immediate full-scale lockdown of the hospital, regardless of who's inside.

marbleicehook.bsky.social•4 days ago

Erland Josephson's association with Bergman and Tarkovsky injects instant gravitas, but performances from top to bottom are wholly convincing, the elaborate make-up effects are impressively nasty and Zoran Simjanović's score is genuinely marrow-chilling as it flags up the virus ahead of the doctors.

marbleicehook.bsky.social•4 days ago

The film was inspired by a real-life Belgrade smallpox outbreak in 1972, the last recorded one in Europe before the disease was officially eradicated a few years later – but, as is graphically demonstrated, the virus only needs incubation by one person for it to come roaring back if left unchecked.

annebillson.bsky.social•4 days ago

I had a smallpox vaccination in 1979 (unaware it had already virtually been eradicated) & the spot swelled up into a huge green pus-filled blister (which I regarded with fascination rather than horror) & that's the closest I ever want to get to smallpox, thank you. Would NOT want those all over me.

lemanriley.bsky.social•4 days ago

I watched this a while back in preparation for editing this article. https://www.apparatusjournal.net/index.php/apparatus/article/view/323

marbleicehook.bsky.social•4 days ago

Ooh, thanks for that - I've just opened the whole thing, and it looks fascinating.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply