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One of the defining works of the Czech New Wave was the portmanteau film Pearls from the Deep (Perlicky na dne, 1965). Not only did it bring five key directors of the Wave (Chytilova, Jires, Menzel, Nemec and Schorm) together in one film, making it the Wave’s official “coming out” as a group, but it tied them to a writer, Bohumil Hrabal, whose ability to capture the rhythms and refrains of everyday spoken Czech was highly influential on the Wave’s directionRead More »
Since he works many hours in the maternity ward of a Czech hospital, the comic couplings of a young doctor take place in whatever out-of-the way spots he can find. Sometimes he has a few free hours, and he takes his women to a secluded spot. Some of these spots have become legends: once he took his girl to a junkyard, and their lovemaking became the object of attention of a horde of workers poised on cranes in any spot they could find. His two primary loves are the wife of the head of the clinic and one of the nurses there. When he discovers that he is falling in love with the nurse, he proposes marriage, but she is much too independent to put up with the likes of him for long – even if she is pregnant with his child.Read More »
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Short Cut is a comedy revealed more in the acting and witty dialogue than in the simple premise of the story itself: how the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal was born. Actually, the story is, in many ways, the writer’s conception. The setting is a small town where Hrabal’s father Francine (Jiri Schmitzer) is in charge of a large brewery. Both the blessing and bane of his life is his gorgeous wife Marja (Magda Vasaryova). Blessing, because she is not only beautiful but resourceful and intelligent and lively, bane because every other man would like to get to know her better. Marja saves the day more than once, and the couple are happy in their life together. When Francine’s brother arrives for a visit, an attraction starts to develop between Marja and her brother-in-law that may have upset the marriage, were it not for a fortuitous accident. Read More »
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The story of a Prague family who decides to buy a country cottage, but also with a “grandfather”, the original owner. He currently rents one room to them and promises to sell the whole house later. However, the sale itself is constantly postponed, so the eager Praguers are forced to live with him on weekends and holidays…
From the confrontation of people from the city and the rural environment, the authors Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak were able to benefit from a number of unforgettable comedic situations, and at the same time very aptly describe the phenomenon of cottage farming, which spread in the 1970s.Read More »
The story of a soldier looking after a broken plane in a remote Soviet village. Meanwhile, the German-Soviet war breaks out, but he carries on guarding it, protecting it even against the NKVD and Red Army, brought there on the information of his conscientious fellow-citizens. Based on a book by Russian writer Vladimir Voynovich, published in 1975 in Paris; Voynovich himself emigrated in 1980 following persecution by the regime. The film uses almost exclusively non-professional actors, and its tone captures the atmosphere of the start of the war and also of coloured film.Read More »
Long-Repressed Tale of Repression
The junk heap to which the characters of “Larks on a String” are consigned is a kind of paradise. Here, in the early 1950’s, former members of Czechoslovakia’s banished bourgeoisie are nominally engaged in forced labor, but in fact are free to play cards, discuss philosophy, joke sardonically about their situation and languish as they choose.
The men in this group — among them a professor who refused to destroy decadent Western literature, a saxophonist whose very instrument was considered an offense against the state and a lawyer who upheld the radical idea that a defendant ought to be allowed to plead his case — also spend a lot of time trading secret smiles and sidelong glances with a group of female prisoners nearby. The women, dressed in drably functional uniforms, nonetheless manage to look nymphlike as they laugh and frolic and hum little tunes. The setting is bleak and the season unspecified, but in spirit, it might as well be spring.Read More »
Plot:
Episodic misadventures of people living in an isolated Czech holiday village. One man is collecting anything that is a bargain, including only shoes for the left leg (cheaper than buying them in a pair) while another enjoys watching TV with a goat in his coach. When hunters of one association shoot a boar in a school, an argument explodes because the school lies on the territory of another association of hunters. The school teacher, however, manages to reach a compromise: divide the boar meat between the two hunter camps. However, during dinner, the hunters again start a quarrel.Read More »
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“The entire town knows that I want to be a train dispatcher for the simple reason that I don’t want to do anything?just like my ancestors?but stand on the platform with a signal disc and avoid any hard work, while others have to drudge and toil.” – Milos HrmaRead More »
Synopsis:
While serving the cream of Prague society, humble waiter, Jan Díte (Ivan Barnev) dreams of owning his own hotel and becoming a millionaire. Full of desire and ambition, he hustles his way towards his dream. But getting a fortune and keeping it are two different things. Directed by celebrated Czech director Jirí Menzel and set in German occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II, I served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále) is a bitter-sweet comedy exploring the gradual maturing of an ambitious man who, suddenly in love and guided by stupidity rather than opportunism, finds himself on the side of the occupying power.Read More »