Kaspar Len returns home after three years in the army. He vainly searches for the mason Kryštof’s family where he had lived before he left. All he finds out is that Kryštof’s daughter Márynka, who was in his thoughts all those years, is now working in the local brothel. He goes to visit her and Márynka tells him of the misfortunes which befell her family. Her father lost his job and hunger forced him to steal some food from the merchant Konopík. Konopík caught him red-handed and threatened him with the police. He finally raped Márynka. Kryštof went mad and drowned himself in despair. Márynka grew up in a reformatory and then found herself in the brothel where she had to work to pay off her debts. Len decides to avenge Kryštof’s family…

Mstitel.1960.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 20 min
Size: 	3.46 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	6 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.116
Audio
#1:  	Czech 2.0ch AAC LC @ 125 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/6EC418B3AD4D476/Mstitel.1960.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/03DE739985A71AD/Mstitel_aka_The_Avenger_EN_final.srt

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:Czech, English

The post Karel Steklý – Mstitel AKA The Avenger (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The 1968 Czechoslovakian film All My Good Countrymen (Všichni dobrí rodáci) is a tremendous piece of cinema. It’s the kind of picture one watches on several occasions across a lifetime, both to better understand what it has to say and also to feel more attuned to the culture and history it represents. The film feels epic in scope, despite coming in at under two hours in length, and this is largely because of its focus on a single setting across a dozen or so years, with numerous wonderful and ugly things happening in the interim. Director Vojtech Jasný also wrote it, putting in a decade’s worth of work to make what would become his signature film. It would be the last feature he’d get to direct in his home country for decades, as Jasný was effectively banned from filmmaking as a result.

The movie begins with singing in a church service and soon enough includes a joyous, celebratory scene inside a beer hall. It’s 1945, World War II has just ended in Europe and there’s obvious cause for such happiness. That the film is able to mix in these ritualistic occasions of gaiety alongside moments of disturbing and terrible actions allows it to capture a remarkable sense of dimensionality. Every day is black and white until they mesh into the grey. There’s also a terrific early scene showing two young boys, dressed identically, as they encounter one of the men, a tailor, from the main group of characters in an idyllic field. The boys have pistols – real guns with real ammunition – and they begin firing. It’s a startling exchange. There’s a distinct destruction of innocence element at work in this sequence.

It feels somewhat reductive to claim Jasný is simply focusing on a septet of friends because there’s much more at work here, with its novel-like breadth, but the majority of the picture can indeed be filtered through the interactions which involve these men. As the year advances to 1948 and a white horse runs through the snow, we soon see an exchange involving a butcher cutting meat with a cleaver. An odd scene plays out where blood gets splattered onto the face of the other man. The violence tends to sneak up on you in this film but it’s entirely present. Most prominently, perhaps, it comes to the fore when we see Bertin, one of the men and a postal worker, shot directly by a gunman. It’s such a startling scene, perhaps more directly than any other, and it’s also the first inclination that we’re dealing with death in a significant way in the film.

The redheaded “merry widow” who we’d just seen cavorting with Bertin earlier manages to add intrigue to this secondary theme of death. Either through poor luck or circumstance she becomes involved with a few of the men who later suffer untimely deaths in this village. Her exact role is never fully explained but it’s nonetheless a curious element. As she sings while watering her garden and wearing Bertin’s postman hat, a lyrical quality emerges to trouble the viewer just as confidently as it carries us from one scene to the next.

Especially prominent early on is the bespectacled Ocenáš who later abandons the village because of the frequent threats. These warnings pop up throughout the picture and are portrayed as a result of tactics of intimidation to join Communist efforts. It’s a frightening proposition we see: sign and be left alone or refuse only to be constantly and significantly pressured to do so. Death seems to await many of those who resist among the group of seven. The political implications here are surely a factor in what caused the film to be “banned forever” in 1973 after the Soviet invasion.

Still, a great film needs to be able to fully transcend any and all limitations, including political ones. As with so many of the Eastern European works released by Second Run, All My Good Countrymen does just that and stands mightily as an astonishing work of art even when isolated from its political context. The reality of modern film viewing is fluid. It’s unattached to any such political movements and those viewers unaware or unwilling to fully immerse themselves in the necessary context shouldn’t be punished. The truly excellent artistic endeavors always exist outside the boundaries in which they were created, and All My Good Countrymen is no different. The film is a miracle of narrative expression.

2.84GB | 2h 00mn | 788×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/EDE7FA54F396EE4/Vsichni_dobri_rodaci_AKA_Chronique_morave_(All_My_Compatriots)_-_1969_-_Vojtech_Jasny_(576p).mkv

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English,Spanish

The post Vojtech Jasný – Vsichni dobrí rodáci AKA All My Good Countrymen (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Karel Kachyna’s 1970 The Ear is a harrowing tale that interweaves marital discord and surveillance paranoia. With its portrait of a government functionary who spends a sleepless night wondering if he’ll be arrested before daybreak, it’s no wonder that The Ear had to wait until 1989 for its Czech premiere; the wonder is that it was made at all. The latter, at least, can be explained by the fact that Kachyna’s long-time collaborator, scenarist Jan Procházka, was a government official of some standing – which accounts, no doubt, for The Ear’s insider perspective, playing as it does with the couple’s knowledge of which rooms in their comfortable house are likely bugged and which aren’t. As they discuss the arrest of his superior, the couple moves from room to room, opening and closing doors depending on which conversations they want heard and which they don’t. (After a long night of drinking and recriminations about their infrequent sex life, he pulls a bear rug from a kitchen cabinet and lays it on the floor, their bedroom assumed to be bugged.) With its escalating marital tensions, The Ear is as much Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as 1984, with a helping of Seconds for the flashbacks to the official party they’ve just come from, replaying idle chat that seems menacing in retrospect. (Based only on this film, Kachyna might also pass as Czechoslovakia’s answer to Polanski.) With its pitch-perfect ending, The Ear is a surprisingly commercial thriller that tangles with dark undercurrents – a movie ripe for rediscovery.

4.37GB | 1 h 35 min | 992×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/57CCD1A281CF229/the.ear.1970.720p.bluray.x264-ghouls.mkv

Language(s):Czech, some Russian
Subtitles:English

The post Karel Kachyna – Ucho AKA The Ear (1970) first appeared on Cinema of the World.