The Individual in the Films of Czechoslovakia - (By Michael Jon Stoil - 1974) - Movies - http://maxpages.com/czechcinema/6_The_Individual_in_Czech

The conflict between the individual and society has been a favorite theme of writers and philosophers in Eastern and Central Europe for generations. The great Central European writers of the early twentieth century- Mann, Kafka, Durrenmatt, Nietzsche- were very concerned with the role of the artistic individual in an increasingly materialistic, bureaucratic society. The coming of Marxism to ideological power with its emphasis on the roles of the worker, peasant and Party, placed a temporary silence on the subject, at least in published and produced works. This situation changed abruptly in 1956.
Vladimir Kusin maintains that the catalyst for this change was the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU; he also implies that the younger generation began to suffer at this point from 'ideological fatigue'. The combined effects of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and almost a decade of overdone Stalinist propaganda apparently resulted in an awakening interest in non-Party concerns. Whatever the cause, the year 1956 witnessed a sudden outpouring of concern in the works of Eastern European artists and intellectuals for their roles as individuals within the socialist commonwealth.
The failure of the popular revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1956 and the return to stringent ideological controls forced underground any intellectual discussion of the role of the creative individual in socialist societies. Renewed discussion of the problem did not re-emerge until the middle 1960's, when it appeared in the films of the 'new wave' Czech directors. One of the earliest comments on the artist in a state-oriented society, however, came from a very 'old wave' director who had recently returned from creative exile: Jiri Trnka, the former puppeteer.
After his 'retirement' ended in 1960, Jiri Trnka returned to work with a filmed marionette version of "Midsummer Night's Dream". From then until 1965, he averaged one puppet feature film each year, including such intriguing works as "Obsession" (1961) and "Cybernetic Grandma" (1962), both of which were seen as comments on modern Czech society.
In 1965, Trnka directed his last film, a clear statement of his views on the artist in an oppressive society. "The Hand" was only two actors: a tiny puppet and a much larger human hand. The puppet represents the artist and is dressed as an old-fashioned rustic craftsman, engrossed in making little clay pots. The hand bursts into his workshop and, through pantomime, demands that the artist fashion a clay likeness of itself in a heroic pose. The artist refuses and the hand wrecks the shop. As soon as the puppet can repair the damage, the hand reappears, now with a touch of gold braid on its sleeve, and again makes the demand. The artist is intimidated into beginning the project, but the work goes too slowly for the egomaniacal hand. The artist is then visited by a flirtatious 'lady' hand and has a brief moment of pleasure dancing, only to find himself caged and a marionette with strings, where before he was an 'independent' hand puppet.
At the end of the film, the puppet-artist is made to look sick and aged. The statue is completed, but the artist 'dies' from the effort. The oppressive hand, now wearing a glove and a great amount of gold braid, carefully places the artist on a tiny coffin and covers him with an elaborate medal, posthumously commemorating his unwilling patriotic service.
No other medium could have stated Trnka's anti-authoritarian theme so well as the combination of film and puppetry that he had developed for twenty years. The result was a deeply moving short film... and, evidently, the exasperation of the authorities with Trnka's politics. Ill health prevented him from working during the bright days of the Dubcek 'Prague Summer'. He has made no film since "The Hand" and, in his sixties, his further return to film-making in Russian-occupied Czechoslovakia is not likely.
Evald Schorm, the so-called 'conscience' of cinema in Prague, completed his first feature in 1964 and immediately ran into difficulties with the authorities. His "Courage for Every Day", whose main character is a Stalinist intellectual who is reluctant to change his beliefs during the Khrushchev de-Stalinization campaign, was banned for over a year. Schorm, of course, is not a Stalinist; he mistakenly believed that by attacking the persecution of the intellectual from an unconventional point of view, he would avoid criticism from ideological conservatives- secret Stalinists- within the Party.
Later films by Schorm have also concentrated on the theme of the unconventional individual pitted against socialist society. In "House of Joy", his analysis was whimsical in the story of a primitive folk painter annoyed, bewildered, and stubbornly unresponsive to the attempts of two officials to register him for life insurance. "Pastor's End" (1968) struck a farcical note with its con artist protagonist posing as a cleric pitted against a Communist schoolteacher in a small village. The film ends with the 'priest' falling too far into the role and becoming entrapped by Church dogma, making him vulnerable to the state-supported attacks of the teacher. Forced to reveal himself as a fraud, the 'hero' finds himself deserted by his followers in the village and subject to arrest by the village police. These last are seen converging on the village from the hills, reinforced by other police, perhaps a preview of the events in Czechoslovakia later that year. Schorm has not been active since the invasion.
Jan Nemec, the director of "Martyrs in Love", has been a close colleague of Schorm and shares some of his pessimistic concern over the role of the individual. This is reflected in Nemec's surrealist film, "The Party and the Guests". The plot is peculiar: a group of well-dressed, conforming people are threatened, then take to an outdoor banquet by a sinister host. When one of the guests- acted by Evald Schorm- leaves, the host sends out dogs and guards to retrieve him. Through the film's symbolism, Nemec implies that the banquet is the security which society offers to those who accept its power to make decisions for them, the host is government, and the escaping guest represents the individual who abandons security in order to make his own decisions.
Jan Kadar, in his well-known drama, "The Shop on the High Street", also used a defiant anti-hero to express his feelings about the role of the individual in society. The film, released in 1965, centers on the unwillingness of a Czech Fascist functionary in a small town to follow ideological necessity and rid the town of an old, deaf Jewish shopkeeper. Kadar's study is deeply introspective, unlike the films of Schorm and Nemec, since it is clear that the central character is torn internally between his desire to follow the dictates of fascism and his basic Czech humanism. Kadar ends the film on a tragic note: having decided to save the old woman, the fascist accidentally kills her. This melodramatic finale blunts the political message of the film, perhaps puposely. It cannot be said that the director is using occupied war-time Czechoslovakia as a disguise for the modern Communist state in the same way as Menzel used the setting in "Closely Watched Trains". The motivation of Kadar's anti-hero, however, could be held as valid for a commited Czech Marxist, faced with the same philosophical dilemma.
Despite the difficulties encountered by Nemec, Schorm, and Trnka, many more works on the theme of the role of the individual in the socialist system were made in Eastern Europe before the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Now, with restrictionsincreased, these works are banned and their export forbidden, despite the lure of hard currency from Western distribution. As a result of this policy, such important works as Polish director Andrzej Wajda's "Everything for Sale" and Schorm's "Courage for Every Day" have not been shown publicly in the United States. The alienation of the artist is too controversial a subject and the Czechs were too outspoken on their views before the restoration of ideological controls. The directors of Poland and Hungary may have taken the Czech experience to heart; although Wadja and others may discuss the problem in their future films, they will certainly be very cautious in doing so, allowing conflicting interpretation of their statements. It is also possible that allegory and symbolism will be used more extensively as a means to evade criticism from the Party.
(Copyright - Michael Jon Stoil)

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