The greater the determination of Czech film-makers to do away with the old taboos, taking advantage of every opportunity that the crisis of the system and the ideology's gradual disintegration suddenly afforded them, the more they found bans, censorship, and the fight against them to be a part of their day-to-day existence. This was the atmosphere at the time of the feature-length debut of Evald Schorm (b. 1931) - who had emerged as the director of a number of fascinating philosophizing shorts. Schorm's "Courage for Everyday" ("Odvahu pro vsedni den" - 1964) marked the birth of another directorial personality. It brought together the most varied sources of modern inspiration with traditional elements to create a truthful picture of the disillusionment of the postwar political generation. The script was by Antonin Masa (b. 1935).
In his later films, Schorm remained one of the most controversial directors, an uncompromising moralist in the best sense of the word. In his "Return of the Prodigal Son" ("Navrat ztraceneho syna" - 1966), he posed the question that was later to become a supremely important one, particularly in the Soviet Union - is it a sign of social or individual abnormality when the individual's inability to make a moral compromise is classified as madness? In "Saddled with Five Girls" ("Pet holek na krku" - 1967), he re-created a novel for adolescent girls, transforming it into a study of human malice and at the same time pointing up the hypocrisy appearing among the 'new class'.
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