Production centers all over former Yugoslavia tried to get their hands on
the director who took away the award in Pula from the renowned Giuseppe De
Santis (H-8 beat the favored film Cesta duga godinu dana).

Nikola Tanhofer’s directing career is one of the strangest in the Croatian
film history. He was one of the most talented cinematographers of the 1940s and
the first half of the 1950s. Suggestive scenes of partisans from Kalnik in the
film Zastava are a result of his own talent rather that the director
Marjanović’s; in the film Ciguli Miguli
cinematographic style is much more impressive than the directing. When he
decided to change his line of work and he did it masterfully: his directorial
debut Nije bilo uzalud, at the time an extremely popular film in
theaters, was a skillfully directed combination of a thriller, a love story, and
a socially conscious story, (a doctor resists the backwardness of a small
provincial town). In addition it was shot on attractive locations (Kopački
rit), and above all it introduced the public to the two actors, Mira Nikolić
and Antun Vrdoljak, who later became very popular.

His next directing job was an even greater success: H-8 introduced
ordinary every-day life as a topic in Croatian cinema, and the fact that this
film evoked the theme of an authentic car accident and had no other ambitions
defended it against threats from the all-present socialist regime. The film did
have some hidden ambitions but co-screenwriter Zvonimir Berković
introduced the motif of the main character’s fatal destiny so discretely that
even theologically educated critics could hardly notice them. Tanhofer’s
direction of this film was masterful, and he succeeded in creating about twenty
convincing characters. Additionally impressive was the fact that he did all of
this within a cinematic atmosphere whose main characteristic up to that time was
to have the actors stand in front of the camera and recite.

Production centers all over former Yugoslavia tried to get their hands on the
director who took away the award in Pula from the renowned Giuseppe De Santis (H-8
beat the favored film Cesta duga godinu dana). Tanhofer ultimately
accepted an offer from the Avala film in Belgrade, directing the
war-thriller-drama Osma vrata. However, it seems that the luck with
screenplays that he had had in his two previous films, had run out: Osma
vrata dealt quite superficially with the topic of an intellectual who
sacrifices himself in a collision with the revolutionary movement. Three years
before, director Vladimir Pogačić
used the same theme and made the much more intriguing film Veliki i mali.
It became obvious that Tanhofer started to approach his directing projects in
the same way he approached his cinematographic ones – as if they were an order
that he had to fulfill without much intervention. Sometimes in his directing
projects he would become intrigued with different things. The slow fantastic
comedy Sreća dolazi u 9 would
probably be long forgotten in the history of Croatian film were it not for the
skillfully realized special effects; the weak melodrama Svanuće
resists complete oblivion thanks to its atypical portrayal of the railroad
workers and the appearance of the, at that time, popular singer Senka Veletanlić.
The modern war thriller Dvostruki obruč,
was the only other decent screenplay (by Ivo Štivičić)
that Tanhofer got and therefore represents one of the peaks of his career.

For Tanhofer, a filmmaker who showed interest in many diverse areas, directing
was just partially a passion. Nevertheless, this passion resulted in one
outstanding and two more than solid films. (Nenad Polimac)