Interview from "Closely Watched Films" (Epilogue) - (By Antonin J. Liehm - Spring 1968) - Movies - http://maxpages.com/czechcinema/Interview_1968

'What do you think of the world now that you've seen more of it?'

'That it's good to be home.
You might say that a person explores the world in order to shed his illusions. That's probably a good thing.
You change priorities on a trip like that; you change your standards about things that seemed very important to you at home. There is no cause to fall on your butt when you run into apparently insurmountable obstacles or great people here. And besides, you just confirm for yourself that everything is relative, and that things here aren't so much worse than anywhere else.
A person should travel in order to be able to understand why, in fact, everything about us, and things that represent us, display a sense of humor. It's not inherited, this humor of ours. It has been forced upon us, because if you don't have a sense of humor, you can't possibly live in Czechoslovakia.'

***

In 1969- the year thet all those banned scripts were filmed, and all the films ended up in the safes- Jiri Menzel's best film saw the light of day. "Nightingales on Threads" is a love story in which the protagonists are the outlaws of the fifties, political prisoners and gypsies. The film is based on a story by Bohumil Hrabal, the author of "Closely Watched Trains". Before a film finally emerges from the original idea, a year passes sometimes more. And so everything that was finally permitted in the spring of 1968 didn't leave the studios until the spring and summer of 1969. Right under the axe that was known as 'political normalization'. "Nightingales on Threads" was deposited in the censor's safe.

***

Would anyone other than Jiri Menzel have thought to ask whether the miracle of Czechoslovak film wasn't perhaps the product of a collapsing economy? Whether only a society in which inflation is such that only things are of any value, a society in which the economic criteria of profitability have vanished, can afford the luxury of unprofitable films? The question is not entirely irrelevant, especially since distribution, in the service of political and local interests, was placing obstacles in the path of production, while import-export was trying to exploit its originality.
In the spring of 1968, the question of what to do about the organization of Czechoslovak cinematography was a pressing one. Full advantage had been taken of the existing structure, which was quite clearly defined. The first plans for a new structure were based, on the one hand, on the principal of public filmmaking, and, on the other, on past experience with the state as sole proprietor of the film monopoly. Their conclusion was essentially this: 'public filmmaking, yes; centralized state ownership, no.' More specifically, there was to be extensive decentralization in the sphere of production and in the artistic preliminaries for films, and a reuniting of film distribution and import-export with production.
The detachment of those two principle sources of income from production in the 1950s, with jurisdiction over them assigned to the localities in the case of distribution, and to the Ministry of Foreign Trade in the case of import-export, to all intents and purposes spelled death to the spirit of the nationalization decree, the end of autonomy. It also meant that distribution and import-export would serve the needs of the Stalinist state and its institutions rather than the needs of film art. The experiences of the 1960s showed that a political thaw releases public funds for film work that is increasingly free, but that distribution and import-export, in different hand and pursuing entirely different interests, undermine such efforts quite effectively, creating a chasm between films and their potential audiences. Indeed, socialist film distribution throughout Eastern Europe has done far less to educate film audiences to appreciate film art in the past quarter century than was done elsewhere in Europe. This confirms something that has been demonstrated everywhere in the world, namely, that the question of distribution, like the organization of production, is fundamental to the existence of film as an art. They are related matters, neither of which can be resolved effectively without resolving the other.
It is no coincidence that the post-1968 'normalization' in Czechoslovakia first crushed all autonomous organizations in the sphere of culture and replaced them with state institutions, or eliminated their autonomy and subjugated all components of culture to the respective ministries. Disintegration of the ideology leaves the establishment no recourse but to introduce strict controls. Finally, even the great boon of socialist film, the nationalization decree, became a target of its anxiety. Early in the seventies, the Czechoslovak Parliament was presented with the draft of a law aimed at liquidating this 'anomaly', created in the spirit of democratic socialism, and at replacing it with a Stainist version: Everything belongs to the state, the state foots the bill and has the power, the first and the last say. And so Stalinism was obliged to deny publicly the very principles of socialism, in this case of socialist cinematography. This does have the advantage of making things perfectly clear.
(Copyright - International Arts and Sciences Press, Inc.)

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