This is an important film for Serbian history, showing an elaborate military ceremony designed to link the Karadjordjevic dynasty with the Serbian-Ottoman Wars and the nation’s independence, but it’s also a precious record of filmmaking at that time, in which we see camera operators and the film’s producer, Svetozar Botorić. For the purposes of Ruritania, however, it’s included to draw attention to King Peter I (1844-1921), a ruler who demonstrably used cinema as a means towards legitimizing his place on the throne.
For much of the 19th century, Serbia was ruled by the Obrenović dynasty, first nominally under the Ottoman Empire and subsequently as kings following full independence in 1878. Then on 11 June 1903, King Aleksandar I Obrenović and his deeply unpopular wife Queen Draga fell victims to a coup organized by army officers who infiltrated the palace late at night, chasing the royal couple into a secret chamber where they were discovered and shot before their naked, mutilated bodies were defenestrated. The brutal deed sent shockwaves throughout the world and made Serbia, and its new king Peter I Karadjordjevic, a pariah. Pathé responded the same year with Assassinat de la famille royale de Serbie (believed lost), directed by Lucien Noguet; in 1905 Theodore Kremer dramatized the story for the stage in Queen of the Convicts or, From Farmhouse to Throne. Countless Ruritanian stories and films subsequently mined these dark images, variations of which turn up in Three Weeks and Hans Kungl. Höghet shinglar.
As the eldest son of the rival dynasty, Peter had been living in exile, receiving a liberal education in Geneva and Paris. He translated John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty into Serbian, and fought in the Franco-Prussian War and against the Ottomans before moving to Montenegro, where he married Princess Zorka, eldest daughter of then-prince Nikola. How involved he was in his rival’s assassination is still debated, but his coronation was largely boycotted by world powers, and only his successes during the Balkan Wars and, crucially, World War I, shifted international sympathies very much in his direction. Those interested should consult the special number of La Renaissance devoted to “L’Hommage à la Serbie” (22.01.1916), where a range of prominent figures from Raymond Poincaré to Robert de Montesquiou and Paul Signac celebrate Peter’s achievements.

Jay Weissberg