'There is Pantić!', shouted young and old people alike when they would see him on the street. That caricature of a character from Tight Skin simultaneously helped and hindered him



Only a few people knew him as Nikola Simić. Kids called him Bugs Bunny because he spent many years synchronizing the rabbit in the cartoon. Of course, the character of the accountant Dimitrije Mita Pantić helped him to become the ultimate superstar of populist YU humor. He followed Čkalja’s humorous school of comedy based on burlesque, gags and exaggerated grimaces, often garnished with a hefty dose of prurience. However, that role also hindered him because his more impressive roles were unjustly pushed aside. What Mira Stupica was for his brother Bora Todorović, who in a way determined his acting career, Simić had in his brother Slavko, also an actor, who once said: “You will never be an actor.”

Like Todorović, Simić also worked with Slobodan Šijan. In Strangle Vs. Strangler he portrayed a clumsy inspector, whose raincoat evokes inspector Clouseau from Edwards’ series about Pink Panther. Moreover, Šijan’s intertextual references reach much further, all the way to Alan Ford and Hitchcock’s Psycho (co-screenwriter was the film critic Nebojša Pajkić), and garnished with pop cultural references (rock musician Spiridon Kopicl is portrayed by Srđan Šaper from the band Idoli, and in his film band VIS Simboli the main guitarist is Srđan Kojić Koja). As Šijan liked to quote Eric Rohmer who said that “to make a distinction between art as entertainment and art as reflection is actually a flawed way of thinking”, Simić also had more serious roles, especially in the earlier part of his career. In 1959, he had an outstanding role in Vladimir Pogačić’s excellent partisan drama Sam, which was one of the few examples of the genre that focuses on the psychological profiles of its characters. In Tadej’s Hitler iz našeg sokaka he portrayed a village bum and Volksdeutscher Leksi, who becomes a cruel Nazi official. In parallel with film roles, he acted in theatre, and is remembered for the long-lasting play A Flea in her Ear, that can be compared only with Kvrgić’s Exercises In Style when it comes to the number of performances. (Dragan Rubeša)