Dragon's Return

In a small mountain village in the Tatras, a potter nicknamed Dragon is falsely accused and loses his wife, his home and his freedom. Years later he returns to the village he was born in and, at real risk to himself, saves a herd of cattle trapped by a forest fire in the hills. Even that does not change how the villagers look at him; the film sits in a place where heroism convinces nobody. Eduard Grečner took the story from Dobroslav Chrobák’s 1943 novella and built it as a ballad of love and hatred. The cinematographer Vincent Rosinec looks at the texture of things rather than at dramatic moments, and the black and white leans on symbol rather than realism. Ilja Zeljenka’s experimental score is one of its most discussed elements. It counts among the main works of the Slovak wing of the Czechoslovak new wave.