Synopsis wrote:
Like a fairy tale, King Henry and King Good-thought decided long ago that their only children should marry and so prevent war arising between their kingdoms ever again. But the young prince is wary of marrying anyone he doesn’t know.

	
Silene.smutna.princezna.1968.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264-WLF.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 26 min
Size: 	2.74 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	790x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	4 398 kb/s
BPP: 	0.403
Audio
#1:  	Czech 2.0ch AAC LC @ 107 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E1BFFEA4E424C8D/Silene.smutna.princezna.1968.576p.BluRay.AAC2.0.x264-WLF.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English (SRT)

The post Borivoj Zeman – Silene smutna princezna AKA The Incredibly Sad Princess (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Shot in 1968, but banned by the Czech government until the fall of the Communist regime in 1990, Menzel’s wry comic drama is a hymn to humanity and nonconformity. The film’s principal characters are residents of a state-run junkyard / labour camp for those whose actions have been deemed counter-revolutionary. On one side of the yard live the men, most sent here for re-education. On the other side, are a group of women interned for the crime of attempted defection. Separately, the two groups lazily toil, sorting out piles of scrap metal (one huge pile is nothing less than a veritable mountain of crucifixes and religious icons); together, they flirt, philosophize, and occasionally sneak off behind the hillocks of slag to make love. Larks on a String is at once a stinging indictment of the repressive politics of Czechoslovakia’s past, and an endearing comedy and affecting love story.

2.17GB | 1h 34m | 958×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/EACF46F5642B0DE/Larks.on.a.String.1969.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.mkv
or
https://nitro.download/view/A1FEC28F7995895/Larks.on.a.String.1969.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/5D9A8953EFE7592/Larks.on.a.String.1969.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.part2.rar
https://nitro.download/view/E39AFDFB267786B/Larks.on.a.String.1969.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.part3.rar

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Jirí Menzel – Skrivánci na niti AKA Larks on a String (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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.

This long-suppressed Czechoslovak film, made in 1969 by Jiri Menzel (best known for his 1966 “Closely Watched Trains”), offers a trenchant blend of playfulness and political satire. The film’s blithe mood manages to accommodate the most scathing thoughts of Mr. Menzel and the writer Bohumil Hrabal, who co-wrote a screenplay based on Mr. Hrabal’s stories. Visiting bureaucrats jokingly spout their rhetoric (“We’ll pour our peaceful steel down the imperialist warmongers’ throats — hands off Korea!”) while at the same time acknowledging the real restrictiveness of the climate. The efforts of friendly officials to skirt regulations in behalf of the prisoners lead to sobering yet laughable absurdities, as when a man is allowed a proxy wedding with his fiancee’s grandmother, since the fiancee herself is a prisoner.

At its considerable best, “Larks on a String,” which opens today at the Film Forum, manages to be both whimsical and dark. Mr. Menzel’s direction has a benign, anecdotal style that serenely embraces the full oppressiveness of the characters’ situation.

Among the film’s notably odd moments are the wedding scene, at which a shy young guard finds his silent wife looking much more captivated by the gypsy musicians who are playing than she is with him, and the peculiar consequences of this union. Also memorable are the glimpses of forbidden artifacts, like typewriters and crucifixes, being dumped on the junk heap as the principals almost casually look on. “We’ll also melt them down into a new kind of people,” one bureaucrat says. But the threat is so hollow it’s almost amiable and complicit, which is surely one of the many reasons “Larks on a String” was so long banned.
Janet Maslin, NY Times, February 13, 1991

https://nitro.download/view/6FCF077685473A7/LarksonaString-Avi.rar

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English (optional)

The post Jirí Menzel – Skrivánci na niti AKA Larks on a String [+Extra] (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
“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 Hrma

Director Jiri Menzel made an auspicious feature film debut with his 1966 Closely Watched Trains (Ostre sledovane vlaky), claiming only the second ever Best Foreign Language Film Oscar? won by a Czechoslovakian, following Jan Kadar’s The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze), which took the first, two years earlier. A graduate of the Czech film school FAMU, Menzel was instrumental the the 1960s Czech New Wave, both as a director and as an actor in films by his contemporaries. His films focus on the “nobody,” examining the paradoxes that make up the common man, with a wry wit and tragic humor; but unlike some of his fellow graduates such as Jan Nemec, Milos Forman, and Ivan Passer, his tone was much less cynical. His film career was suspended in 1969 after the Soviet invasion, and Menzel was forbidden from making films until 1975, when he was forced to renounce the “mistakes” of earlier films. The cause, his Larks on a String (Skrivanci na niti) and its anti-communist theme, was banned by the authorities for 21 years. Menzel would come to the attention of the Academy again in 1985 with another Best Foreign Language Film nomination for My Sweet Little Village (Vesnicko ma stoediskova).

Based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal, who would become his frequent collaborator, Closely Watched Trains takes place in 1944, at a remote country rail station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Here, young Milos Hrma (V?clav Neck?r) takes a job as a rail guard trainee, following a long family tradition of avoiding laborious work. His father was a conductor, retired early and now living off a pension; his grandfather was killed when he, single-handedly, tried to stop the German advance into Prague through hypnotism. Now, Milos will learn the trade of train dispatcher, making sure the trains don’t crash, and being especially careful with the “closely watched” trains carrying troops and munitions to the German frontline.

Despite his country being entrenched in war, the concerns Milos has are centered around his unsuccessful relationship with women. Though Milos has the attentions of a young conducteress (Jitka Bendov? as Masa), he is fascinated by the ability of train dispatcher Hubicka (Josef Somr) to seduce and behave around women, as much as this behaviour vexes the stationmaster, Max (Vladim?r Valenta). Milos is at a loss to understand how he should perform in the presence of the opposite sex, especially after a particularly embarrassing incident that leaves him quite distraught. His awkward attempts to rectify the situation result in a series of mishaps, engaging all around him, who themselves are absorbed in their own personal business, seemingly unaffected by the global conflict being waged only a few miles up the tracks. The outside world fails to derail the young boy’s focus on losing his virginity, which is the only cause with any significance in his existence.

Menzel does a fantastic job of maintaining a credible yet incredible plotline intact (look for his cameo as Dr. Brabec). V?clav Neck?r’s innocent involvement in the events in his life are portrayed without flaw, as are those of his accomplices. The black & white cinematography is wonderful, despite being limited to scenes mostly in and around the station. The film’s music perfectly underscores the mood on screen. The pace is very easy going, and the editing maximizes the comic potential, without over doing it. Closely Watched Trains is littered with humor, from the local German authority, Counselor Zednicek (Vlastimil Brodsky), explaining the brilliance in strategy of German retreat from all fronts, to an incident involving office supplies and a young telegrapher at the station?surely a first for seduction cinema. The deceptive cheekiness of the film belies what will eventually unfold, but we are witness to the absurdities of daily life from which Milos hopes to extract the rules of being an adult. Where his journey will take him is not obvious from the start, but the getting there makes for some very amusing cinema.

1.39GB | 1h 32mn | 790×576 | mkv

https://tezfiles.com/file/20083b8d509b2/Jiri_Menzel_-_%281966%29_Closely_Watched_Trains.mkv
or
https://nitro.download/view/986C12EA24AB7DC/Jiri_Menzel_-_(1966)_Closely_Watched_Trains.mkv

Language(s):Czech, German
Subtitles:English

The post Jirí Menzel – Ostre sledované vlaky AKA Closely Watched Trains (1966) first appeared on Cinema of the World.