Besides Zločin v šantánu (Crime in the Nightclub), in 1968 the writer Josef Škvorecký also contributed to the bitter comedy Farářův konec (The End of a Priest) as the author of the original idea and screenwriter. Together with the director Evald Schorm, he created a story whose protagonist is an inept sexton, who decides to leave his job in a big church in the city. He sets off for a new life in a remote mountain village, where by coincidence people are desperately looking for a priest to administer the last rites to someone. At first, the sexton tries in vain not to be considered part of a “miracle,” but in the end he reconciles himself to the role of new spiritual pastor – and because he performs the job judiciously with an understanding of human weakness, the quirky villagers soon take him to their hearts. The local schoolmaster, who is propagating an atheist education in the spirt of communist ideas, is strongly averse to this. Until now, he had been the village community’s celebrity. The self-assuredness of “healthy reason,” which the manipulative and careerist schoolmaster crows about, stands against the faith of a simple man who has humbly taken a coveted task upon himself. The teacher tries to discredit this false priest of obvious moral authority. Ultimately, he denounces him and causes a tragic finale… In The End of a Priest, Evald Schorm used a “theatre” framework – just like he did in his subsequent film Den sedmý – osmá noc (The Seventh Day – the Eighth Night, 1969). Whereas in The End of a Priest, a group of fairground comedians presents the plot of a modern broadside ballad, it is again possible to see it as a Passion Play that is a parable about the Soviet occupation. In both instances, it concerns a variation on the fate of Jesus. Škvorecký’s idea, however, is based on a newspaper article from that time about a man who pretended to be a priest somewhere in the Eagle Mountains. The meaningful setting of the story is a Czech village in the 1950s which becomes an allegory for the totalitarian system. Vlastimil Brodský and Jan Libíček excel in the lead roles in Schorm’s masterpiece. Josef Škvorecký himself played the small role of a professor appearing on television.

Fararuv.konec.1969.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-LYCANTROPE.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 35 min
Size: 	2.80 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.077
Audio
#1:  	Czech 2.0ch AAC LC @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/ECBB5B545A40634/Fararuv.konec.1969.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-LYCANTROPE.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:Czech

The post Evald Schorm – Fararuv konec AKA The Parson’s End (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This is a live action film adaptation of “Too Loud a Solitude” released in the Czech Republic in 1996, one year before Bohumil Hrabal’s death. And there is a big eastern egg in the film that Hrabal played a cameo role in this film.

DVD Label: Magic Box
DVD Format: PAL (Region 2), 16:9
DVD Audio: AC3 2ch
Program: AnyDVD
Menus/Video/Audio/DVD extras: Untouched
Extras contain: None
DVD runtimes: 01:28:27 (Main Feature)

https://nitro.download/view/F0304009A1A203C/Une_trop_bruyante_solitude.rar

Language(s):Czech, French
Subtitles:Czech

The post Véra Caïs – Une trop bruyante solitude AKA Too Loud a Solitude (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Some people with a strange cat arrive in a small village. The cat wears glasses, and when someone takes them off, she can colour people, according to their nature and mood. The grown-ups of the village consider the cat to be dangerous, but the kids just love her…

Az.prijde.kocour.(Vojtech.Jasny.1963).BDRip.576p.Custom.Color.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 44 min
Size: 	3.00 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x402 
Aspect ratio:  	2.547
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 563 kb/s
BPP: 	0.361
Audio
#1:  	Czech 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 80.0 kb/s (Projection Booth audio commentary with Mike White, Spencer Parsons and Chris Stachiw)

https://nitro.download/view/A3B01BB17A160E0/Az.prijde.kocour.(Vojtech.Jasny.1963).BDRip.576p.Custom.Color.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Vojtech Jasný – Az prijde kocour AKA The Cassandra Cat AKA When the Cat Comes (1963) 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.

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:
Some people with a strange cat arrive in a small village. The cat wears glasses, and when someone takes them off, she can colour people, according to their nature and mood. The grown-ups of the village consider the cat to be dangerous, but the kids just love her…

1.53GB | 1h 39mn | 1029×438 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/A34483B8332829A/Az.Prijde.Kocour.x264.AC3.AdagioZ.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:Czech, English

The post Vojtech Jasný – Az prijde kocour AKA The Cassandra Cat (1963) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
This castle has its own ghost – a mysterious White lady. She emerges from the painting on the wall when someone speaks out magic formula. White lady is a good ghost, she can make someone’s wishes true. Even if it is a new duct. But a miracle is not the thing that Communist leaders want in the town.

1.49GB | 1h 35mn | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/AFE8D4F7CF7D078/Bila_pani_(The_White_Lady)_(1965)_–_Zdenek_Podskalsky.mkv
or
https://tezfiles.com/file/bde514b26dde6/Bila_pani_%28The_White_Lady%29_%281965%29_–_Zdenek_Podskalsky.mkv

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English (muxed)

The post Zdenek Podskalský – Bílá paní AKA The White Lady (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.