GORILLA BATHES AT NOON Tribute to Dusan Makavejev: Genuine Revolutionary

For his first film in five years, Dusan Makavejev returns to the themes that made him famous in the 60’s and early 70’s. Gorilla Bathes at Noon is immensely likable and could well restore Makavejev to prominence. Set in Berlin, the film centers on a Russian army officer left behind when the whole of his unit deserts. The climax of this blockbuster is a marvelously over-the-top scene in which Stalin flies into defeated Berlin to be ecstatically greeted by troops from all the Allies. Makavejev intercuts this old footage with a surprisingly poignant sequence shot in contemporary Berlin in which a gigantic statue of Lenin is decapitated by East German workers. This kind of juxtaposition is Makavejev, the ironic Political commentator, at his best -David Stratton, Variety