ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two films, Dva brata: film o sušuci (Two brothers: A film about tuberculosis, 1931) and Pošast: film o tifusu (Pestilence: A film about typhus, 1931) through the lens of progressive agrarianism, the approach to public health in rural areas that assigned men the collective responsibility for preventing disease and treating it in a timely fashion. We explore the wide range of analogies and metaphors brought forward by Croatian filmmakers for cultivating healthy masculinity as a consistent negation of the toxic masculinity directly connected with drunkenness and infertility. The chapter also discusses the dissemination of health films for rural populations, which addressed “manhood” in other countries and especially in the Eastern periphery of Czechoslovakia.
