Interview from "Closely Watched Films" - (By Antonin J. Liehm - Spring 1968) - Movies - http://maxpages.com/czechcinema/Interview

Jiri Menzel lacks Nemec's pathos and his manner, but he is equally obstinate. In Menzel's case, the obstnacy is concealed by a quiet smile, an appearance of shyness, and a transparently naive glance. Only those who know him well will perceive the dozen imps dancing at the back of his eyes, constantly waiting for their chance. Does anyone know when he is serious or when he is joking? When he is truly angry or when he is just pretending? That is undoubtedly his strength. The strength of his talent and of his films.
If Hasek's "Good Soldier Schweik" is one of the godfathers of Czech literature and culture in general, Menzel is certainly his direct descendant. His sense of humor is of the same breed. Not a showy sense of humor, it is sneaky rather than brash, catching you unawares, always on the brink of tears. But there is something else, unrelated to the tradition of Schweik. Menzel is a master at deflating anything that makes too much of itself, that is too serious, too tragic, anything conceited, anything pushy, or full of hot air. It isn't satire. Menzel just sticks out his foot a little, looking the other way, whistling a tune of utter innocence, and pompousness falls flat on its face, or scrambles out of the mud puddle, looking around helplessly to see who tripped it up.
Menzel directs stage productons almost as well as film. And the Czech theater is also a story. The theater has been in the forefront of Czech public life during the nation's critical periods ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century. And, like film, the theater blossomed in the 1960s. After a fallow quarter century, new leaves began to sprout from the roots planted by the avant-garde of the thirties. The Theater Beyond the Gate, The Theater on the Balustrade, The Drama Club, Semafor, directors, Otomar Krejca, Alfred Radok, Josef Vostry, Jan Grossman and many others became familiar names throughout Europe. Menzel and Schorm worked as directors at the Drama Club. In their turn, the actors of the avant-garde theaters were contributors to the best Czech films that used professional actors. And this broad foundation, not limited to a single art, a single field, was one of the secrets of the development of Czechoslovak film.
And that secret is related to another. Prague is a city that is a museum. To walk its streets is to continually pass through centuries, styles, cultures. They exist side by side, yards or inches apart. Prague is a small city, with a population of barely a million, and yet it has twenty permanent theaters, most of them with repertory companies, two opera houses, and much more. The incomparable inspirational quality of the locale, the 'genius loci', the accumulation of talents, their constant intermingling, the fact that they make up a sort of large family, a community- all this produces sudden bursts of new art, new culture in the broadest sense of the word. That is how it was in the great sixteenth century of Czech humanism, and again in the latter half of the nineteenth, and more recently in the thirties and sixties of our century. And each time somebody came along and trampled it with a hobnailed boot.

***

Jiri Menzel's reputation was made when the "Mr. Balthasar" episode of the film "Pearls of the Deep" called the attention of film specialists throughout the world to his abilities. The mystery-parody "Crime at a Girl's School" presented him to Czechoslovak film viewers. Thanks to the Oscar awarded to his "Closely Watched Trains", film audiences everywhere also got to know him. "Capricious Summer" didn't quite make it to Cannes in 1968- nor did Menzel, because Cannes was called off as a result of the filmmakers' revolt.
Menzel got a lot of personal publicity in the socialist world by virtue of the acerbic hostility of the Russian periodical "Sovetskaya Kultura". So Menzel is taken care of, for the foreseeable future, that is.
Tongue in cheek, he says, 'It sure is a relief to be famous, at last.'
'I'll bet,' I nod.

'Except that I'm beginning to lose my sense of humor already. All the things that happened around me gave me a boost- I mean, they sort of picked me off the ground. Now, I'm beginning to be a little afraid of what I'm doing. I didn't really care before, but now they're taking me seriously.'

'What's wrong with that?'

'As soon as people begin to take me seriously, they stop being fertile soil for what I am doing.
Look, when you water your flowers, you've got to have that thingamajig with holes in the spout of you watering can, for dispersion. If you just poured the water straight out of the spout, the concentrated stream of water would dig up your soil, and where would you be?
I have a friend, the director Evald Schorm; he's had more experience than I have, and he used to consider it his duty to tell me something sensible once in a while, to set me straight. He was usually right. But whenever he would start to say something like that, I would plug up my ears and ignore what he was saying. I found it much more instructive just to look at him. He influences me far more effectively by just being the way he is than by telling me things. I guess he figured that out for himself, too, because he doesn't talk sense to me anymore. And so, if I want to avoid the danger of beginning to take myself too seriously, I can't let people take me seriously either.'

'Chaplin?'

'I don't get the feeling that Chaplin was suddenly possessed by a burning desire to be taken seriously. It never even occured to me. I rather thought that it was simply fatigue, something that happens to everyone. When I saw 'Limelight', I felt awfully sorry for him. And I feel even sorrier when I see film critics or students who- at the mention of Chaplin or Clair- dismiss them with a wave of a hand. That's the compensation of an artist, their requital, the end; it's something we all have to look forward to, people getting even with us for once having raised us to the skies. The snobbism where we come from isn't quite that bad yet, but the way people behave toward, say, Krska- that isn't very nice either. Because if it weren't for Clair and Chaplin, no one today could do what he does. After "The Countess of Hong Kong", they tore Chaplin to shreds in France.'

'Still, most people are happy to be taken seriously!'

'Well, we all have the right to our own peculiar foibles.'

'That sounds like an aphorism- neat; for the Sunday supplement, or a TV talk show. But seriously?'

'We talked about this once with [director and scriptwriter Antonin] Masa. When you try to catch a bird, you can't just go right at him: you'd just scare him off, and he'd fly away. You have to let him be, pretend that you're not the least bit interested in him; and he'll latch onto you himself. As soon as you strive too hard for anything, you destroy it. At best, all that will latch onto you will be a bunch of people who share your opinions. But if you want to talk about things with people who disagree with you, you have to begin with something else entirely.'

'Hearing you talk like that makes it sound as if in each film you appraoch the viewer with an artfully contrived design.'

'But it's ot just the viewer: it's a matter of myself too. If I want to resolve a problem for myself as well, I can't approach it head on. If I did, I'd probably turn tail and run at the very start. But if a person is enjoying himself, he generally runs into things that he'd never have happen otherwise. The Chinese have a proverb, and it's true: "You don't arrive at the truth by dissection." The more we reach for the truth, the more we analyze, the farther away from it we go. Even for my own personal use, I prefer truth that is a bit foggy, unclear, but that remains vital with the passage of time, compared with something very precise and pigeonholed, something definitive that has an odor of dead literalness about it.
You can't express anything with a simple sentence or summarize it in a definition. As soon as it's out, you've departed from the truth. Whenever I do it, I always get the impression that I've just brushed past the truth, past reality.'

'And what is filmmaking to you, then?'

'A living.'

'You get an "A" for aphorisms!'

'But everything is contained in that answer. If I wanted to qualify it, I'd be lying; I'd leave out a whole lot of things, and what I'd be saying would be the truth only for that moment. Besides, I'd be making a declaration of a program that, if I should really want to adhere to it, would start to fence me in, limit me; and that would be the moment I'd start going to hell.
Another answer to the question of why I make films could be, "Because I am allowed to"- because it is my livelihood, the way I live. I'm not saying it's the best way; I'm not saying it's the ultimate way.'

'But why, of all things, films?'

'I don't know. It's hard to put a finger on. I don't think anyone can specify a "why of all things" like that. I heard someplace that the Japanese put a book, a hammer, and a compass in front of a small child. Depending on which item he reaches for, they make their decision on his future profession. I grew up among my father's books [the elder Menzel was closely associated with Czechoslovak animated film and cartoon production], and so that was the direction in which I reached.'

'And your father's sense of humor?'

'Well, it's like this: I'm is son, and I don't know him like that. Father is very amusing outside the family, like a lot of people, I suppose. I've always thought that I inherited my sense of humor from my grandfather, on my mother's side. I can thank my father above all for the culture he instilled in me. And I learned from observing my mother how to be rude to people in a way that doesn't turn them off.'

'And in motion pictures?'

'You know how I got into film in the first place? It was never much of a hobby for me. But they turned down my application to the drama faculty at the university, so I decided to go into TV directing. Then I took an exam for Otakar Vavra, he accepted me, and so I began to do films.
An impassioned love affair rarely leades to a good marriage. Hence my somewhat disrespectful attitude toward motion pictures, the fact that I don't take the work too seriously, makes for much more relaxed work. That is probably as it should be.'

'Do you like to work with the stage?'

'I do. It's more fun, too. And it's different. Theater takes more effort. In film a person is, after all, more or less a technician. On stage you work exclusively with people; that's the best part of it. But seriously, I'd be happiest if I could just answer all your questions with aphorisms. That doesn't commit a person to anything.'

'I'll give you the opening of a lifetime for an aphorism: Whom or what would you like to direct on stage?'

'No, not that. I used to have fantasies about being in charge of a theater. I even have repertoire lists in notebooks stashed away someplace. What I'd like to do terribly is to direct people who aren't professional actors, but who know how to act and have a good stage sense- like pop singers, for instance.
One night I went to a student production of the theatrical studio of the Prague Drama School. The kids had written their own review, based on the nonsense poems of Christian Morgenstern; they accompanied the verses with dramatic action in counterpoint. That's what I call truly creative acting.
For the most part, actors think that one has to say the word "coffin" in the funereal tone. But as I see it, the ultimate in the art of acting is to be able to say "Go stick your head in a bucket" the way you say "I love you," and vice versa. But generally your experienced actors don't see this.
When I first met Jiri Suchy [popular hit-song writer and performer, co-founder with Jiri Slitr of the Semafor Theater], we confided in each other that his life's desire was to direct films, while mine was to have a theater of my own. The fact that neither of these dreams ever came true probably left us both with the healthy ambition that we need. A dream fulfilled is the grave of creative activity.'

'We had something; maybe still have it: the miracle of the Czechoslovak film wave.'

'I prefer not to think about it. Something like that can happen only in a state like ours, because only in a state where noone is responsible for anything can funds on the order of millions be placed in the hands of people who are entirely unknown. The mess that makes it possible for a barber, say, to become director of a factory also made possible, in fact, the birth of the Czechoslovak "nouvelle vague". In a certain sense, then, I suppose I'd be in favor of this chaotic disorder continuing.
And another thing. A well-developed film industry existed here at the outset, so that a person who "a priori" didn't know much about film didn't have to go under as a result. There were always enough qualified people who knew what they were doing. For instance, there are a lot of technical things that I learned about in school that I don't have to bother with; I can rely on a lot of people who know all of it without ever having gone to school to learn it.
Another important factor is the existence of our Film Academy. Generally, the people who teach at film schools all over the world are people who can no longer practice their professions. But because where we come from, there is no great difference between the fee of a film director and the salary of a university professor, people like Vavra can teach at the Academy. I don't know if there is a film school on a university level in the West that could afford to take on someone like Hitchcock, say, to guide a single class from start to finish through six years.
Still, the organization of th ground swell that we are talking about also required a certain inner unity that was partially created by the pressures to which we were subjected. Everyone was agreed on who was against us, and whom we were opposed to as well. This concord even crossed boudaries as difficult as the generational one. If this goes the way of all things now, well, then, I just don't know.... But jackasses are always with us.'

'That was the unity within cinematography as a whole. But what about the unity among the young filmmakers?'

'First of all, we've all been friends since our school days. I don't know, but I keep on worrying about what will happen now. Certain conflicts are bound to arise.
But as to the kinship- you know where it came from? We were all brought up in the same "family"; we all experienced exactly the same influences: the Pioneers, the Hemingway thing, the Kafka thing, the cinema verite thing. And the result was that we all ended up being products of the same culture, with a common aim, even though our insides were very specific, entirely different, even from an artistic point of view.
So now, for instance, if I were to have to choose a friend from among the members of either the Czech new wave or the French one, I'd choose one of our own people, for proximity's sake- mental, spiritual proximity, I mean.
Besides, things are small where we come from; we are all here together, all the time. And even if we come to a parting of the ways by virtue of our generations or our opinions, we are still obliged to stay together as people; we cannot truly separate. This is not the case in France, for instance: there one can go for a year without running into anyone; people are strangers to each other.
In Hollywood, now, tat's a different story entirely. Everyone is in the same place again. They threw a party for me there, and they were all there together, from the young ones like Jewison, say, all the way to Sternberg and Vidor- as friends. But maybe they play fair there; maybe they aren't petty and envious of each other; and if someone makes an extra hundred thousand, maybe the others just assume that he deserves it.'

[I wasn't entirely sure if that was the whole story, but then I wasn't there, so I kept my mouth shut.]

'That was the only place where they really treated me like a colleague, irrespective of the size of the country I come from. Not so in France.'

'You did get the Oscar there.'

'As for the Oscar, I look at it something like this: if the Union of Czechoslovak Film Workers were to nominate five candidates for the best foreign film of the year, and every member had the right to vote for only one of them, the votes would be counted and the one with the most votes would get the award. This seems more democratic than having a jury chosen more or less at random making decisions about the awards. The main difference, though, is the fact that here in Czechoslovakia, one gets to see many more foreign films, and more interesting ones, than over there in America.
But I would be all for introducing this system for awarding the Trilobite Prize, particularly in the sense that the members of the Film Academy in America are well aware of the fact that there are other people who make a film, not just the director. And so they give the Academy Award for the best animation, sound, music, editing, supporting acting, and, of course, camera work, etc. In our film industry there are people handling these jobs with a high level of skill, talent, and ability all their own, and in their own way they are contributing considerably to the establishment of our directors' glory abroad.
Of course, their criteria are entirely different from ours. That is why they probably shouldn't tell call the Oscar an award for the best foreign film of the year, but rather for the foreign film best liked in America that year.
And it is sort of snobbish to make an issue of the fact that a film was honored as best film of the year in the USA and neglect to mention the fact that it received the same recognition in, say, Finland. Who is to say that the Americans have better taste than the Finns?
Anyway, someday I'd like to talk to you about Czechoslovakia as we present ourselves abroad.'

'Why not now?'

'Well, the fact that success abroad decides success at home ulimately leads to the best of everything being channeled outside our borders: all the care devoted to the World's Fair in Montreal, just to show off in front of foreigners. Do you know what we could accomplish if those efforts were exerted at home instead? But that isn't the worst by far. Many things are done with an eye exclusively to foreigners. We even have theaters and troupes living exclusively off foreign tours. And we at home hardly ever get to see them. Yet it seems that noone realizes that the cultural stock that we do have is being gradually used up on tours, that performers lose their sparkle or pick up things that change them.
Still, it is our success abroad that we have to thank for the fact that we are tolerated at Barrandov, that the young film artists are allowed to shoot films. Do you think that after "Diamonds of the Night", Nemec would still be making films had it not been for that film's success in the West?'

'Do you remember when we were in Moscow together two years ago?'

'I'd really like to go there again. You know, I never got to see the city, really. And then I'd go farther, to Siberia. I'd like to get to know Russia, to see what we should look out for.'
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