Good Entertainment - (By Mira & Antonin J. Liehm - 1977) - Movies - http://maxpages.com/czechcinema/15_Good

Searching for a new language, doing away with the traditional script and with studio sets - unless a high degree of stylization is needed - viewing film art as a persistent destroyer of myths and a seeker of the truth about man and society - those were the dominant characteristics of Czech film during the period known as 'The Czechoslovak Film Miracle,' dominated by the directors of the 'young wave.' The tradition of highly professional, good comedy, musical, mystery, thriller, and adventure story, that had developed over the years, specially in the United States, France, and Great Britain, was entirely lacking in Czechoslovakia and in Eastern Europe in general. From the very beginning, commercial production here was provincial by nature and was aimed exclusively at the least demanding audiences on the domestic market or in the neighboring countries. But under the pressure of an unusually high percentage of artistically ambitious films made by the Czechoslovak film industry, which by the mid-sixties was producing about 40 films a year, as much as 25 to 35 percent of which were beyond the framework of common commercial production, the quality of the so-called entertainment genres also went up.
In 1964, the first successful Czechoslovak musical was shown. Called "The Hop Pickers" ("Starci na chmelu"), and directed by Ladislav Rychman (b. 1922), its central motif was the confrontation of middle-aged hypocrisy with the honesty of youth. Director Zdenek Podskalsky came up with a 'ghost story,' the politically daring satirical comedy "White Lady" ("Bila pani" - 1965), based on a story by Karel Michal. Another specialist in the comedy genre, Oldrich Lipsky (b. 1924), achieved great success with his intelligent but uneven parody of westerns, "Lemonade Joe" ("Limonadovy Joe" - 1964). Vaclav Vorlicek (b. 1930) achieved a good response internationally with his spoof of the comic strips, "Who Wants to Kill Jessie?" ("Kdo chce zabit Jessii?" - 1966).
A turn for the better as far as quality is concerned was also taken by the mystery and adventure film genres. There were detective stories by Petr Schulhoff (b. 1922) - for example, "The Murderer Hides His Face" ("Vrah skryva tvar" - 1966) - and a mystery with political motivations filmed by Stepan Skalsky (1925) - "The Pathway Through the Deep Forest" ("Cesta hlubokym lesem - 1964), which revealed the background of one of the most infamous secret police 'frame-ups' of the early fifties - as well as the exceptional "Sign of Cancer" ("Ve znameni raka" - 1966), directed by Slovak director Juraj Herz, who was working in Prague. In 1968, Herz made an interesting political horror film, "The Cremator" ("Spalovac mrtvol"), the story of a 'small' man who is transformed by ideology into a mass murderer.
The traditionally important area of films for children and young people was graced with a number of film-makers that raised the overall standards of that genre, including Josef Pinkava, Milan Vosmik, Ludmila Plivova, Jiri Hanibal, and above all, Milan Hobl (b. 1935), who directed "Do You Keep a Lion at Home?" ("Mate doma lva?" - 1963).
In the area of animated films Jiri Trnka added his voice to those of the fiction-film directors with a powerful metaphor about the fate of the artist in a totalitarian society, "The Hand" ("Ruka" - 1966). Karel Zeman continued in his efforts to combine animation with live actors, particularly in "War of the Fools" ("Blaznova kronika" - 1964), but he never could rise to the poetical immediacy of his first great successes.
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