New Cinema in Czechoslovakia - (By Alistair Whyte - 1971) - Movies

Czechoslovakia has a long cinematic history, and by the early thirties Prague had the most modern studios in Europe. In 1932, the film "Ecstacy" by Gustav Machaty caused a scandal throughout the world with its famous nude scene and made a star of its actress, Heddy Kiesler (Hedy Lamarr). At the same time, the thirties saw the debut of Martin Fric and Otakar Vavra, who continued to make films right into the sixties.
Despite this tradition, the nationalized Czechoslovak cinema was very disappointing in the immediate postwar years, except in the field of animation. In the late fifties, films began to become more adventurous, but the growing liberalization was halted in 1959. Certain features were attacked and banned, and film-makers were told to concentrate on the portrayal of more 'positive' heroes. By the time these banned films were released in 1963, the political climate was changing, and the Czechoslovak cinema was entering the period of extraordinary creative activity that was to last, despite sporadic attempts to tighten the screw, until 1968.
These years saw the emergence of a group of exciting young directors, but many older, established film-makers produced works that merit attention. The veteran Otakar Vavra, who as a lecturer at FAMU, the Prague film school, taught taught many of the leading figures in the Czech New Wave, continues to make features that can stand comparison with those of his distinguished pupils. "Romance for Trumpet" (1966) is an extremely poetic work based on a ballad by Frantisek Hrubin. Constructed around a man's nostalgic memories of his first idyllic romance, Vavra's film is distinguished by its feeling for nature and its counterpoint of love and death, idealism and earthy sensuality.
Karel Kachyna, who was one of the first graduates from the Prague film school, began directing in the fifties, at first in partnership with his contemporary Vojtech Jasny. In "The Night of the Bride" (1967), Kachyna turns to the sort of socio-political issue that is the concern of many of the modern Hungarian film-makers. More lyrical, more intimate, more amusing than its Hungarian counterparts, this film is set in a small Moravian village and deals with the problems involved in collectivism. The dramatic tension in "The Night of the Bride" is created by the return from a convent of a novice who leads the villagers in a revolt on Christmas Eve. This character, with her underlying sensuality, her masochistic delight in walking barefoot through the snow, her puritanical treatment of her idiot servant that borders on sadism, is portrayed by Jana Brejchova, the leading young Czech actress. Her chief opponent, the tiny communist official of the village, well acted by Minislav Hofman, is for much of the film a figure of fun, but he does ultimately appear as courageous and sympathetic. Nevertheless, "The Night of the Bride" does not follow a strict doctrinaire line and is very different from a socialist realist work; at the same time it shows great concern for formal beauty: the composition of the shots, the figures standing out against the snowy landscape, the use of wide screen all make Kachyna's film a visual delight.
Of all the older directors, however, the most famous and most influential are Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos who began working as a team in 1952. After the banning of "The Three Wishes" in 1959, Kadar and Klos did not make another feature until "Death Is Called Engelchen" which appeared in 1963. Their most famous film "The Shop on the High Street" appeared in 1965. The setting is a small Czech town during the Second World War. Tono, a carpenter, dislikes his brother-in-law, the fascist leader of the community, but for personal rather than ideological reasons; when the latter asks Tono to requisition a shop on the high street, the carpenter is pressed by his wife to accept. The shop is run by a deaf old Jewish woman on whom Tono takes pity, and he gradually finds that he is being forced into taking sides. By helping her he is opposing the fascist regime. When the Hinka guards begin to round up the Jews to transport them to concentration camps, Tono is faced with a moral crisis: should he save her at the risk of his own life? The old woman is incapable of understanding what is happening, and in exasperation the carpenter pushes her roughly and accidently kills her. In despair, he commits suicide. Tono's growing awareness, his feelings of guilt, his moments of cowardice, all raise the question of the responsibility of the individual to fight prejudice and oppression. "The Shop on the High Street" is not, however, a gloomy tragedy: it begins in an atmosphere of near farce, but as the film progresses, the humour slips away, and the relationship develops between the carpenter and the old woman, beautifully portrayed by J. Kroner and the Polish actress Ida Kaminska. The film ends with an imaginative dream-sequence, in high key and slow motion, showing Tono floating along in the sunshine with the old woman on his arm.
Concern with seriuos moral and social problems, the blending of humour and tragedy, the willingness to exploit stylistic techniques that create a certain element of fantasy, these features in the films of Kadar and Klos reflect the quantities of the whole New Wave of young Czechoslovak directors of the mid-sixties.
One of the first of these to make his mark was Milos Forman whose feature "Peter and Pavla" appeared in 1963. Forman specializes in the portrayal of everyday life, of ordinary individuals who are neither 'positive' heroes nor tortured anti-heroes. Peter, the main male character in the director's first work, is an unexciting young man who has started his first job as a store detective. The film shows his clumsiness at work and his relationships with the girl Pavla, who is not really interested in him, and with his parents, especially his pompous, convention-bound father. What is important in this touching, humorous work is not the story but rather the fine observation of human behaviour and the remarkably convincing performances that Forman draws from his actors, Paula Martinkov and Ladislav Jakim in the title roles, and especially Vladimir Pucholt as a nervous young worker who borrows money from Peter.
Pucholt is the leading male actor in Forman's next film, "A Blonde in Love" (1965). A young factory worker, acted by the talented Jana Brejchova, falls in love with a pianist in a dance band. For her the meeting is an intense emotional experience. For him it is merely the affair of one night. The girl goes to visit the boy in his home town, which embarrasses him and shocks his parents. In this amusing sequence the director pokes fun at the narrow-minded older generation, while arousing compassion for the girl. Throughout the film the director casts an ironic eye on contemporary Czech society and on human foibles in general. In both these films Forman uses a dance-hall sequence to observe man the social animal. He shows the girls trying to attract attention while pretending to remain aloof, the boys drinking to obtain Dutch courage, the soldiers, in "A Blonde in Love", removing their wedding rings in the hope of finding a woman for the night.
A dance-hall is the setting of Forman's third feature, "The Firemen's Ball" (1967), which shows how a social function goes haywire. The firemen's celebrations are interrupted when they are called out on duty. On their return, they find that all the tombola prizes have been stolen. The crowning disaster occurs when the old commander of the force is given a presentation for his services - the box, which should have contained a gilt axe, is empty, this too has been stolen. In all his films Forman shows sympathy for the disappointments of his characters but in "The Firemen's Ball", which concentrates on the older generation, poking fun at convention and tradition, he infuses his humour with a more biting note of satire.
Ivan Passer, who wrote the scripts of these three films, directed "Intimate Lighting" (1965) which is in the same territory as the films of Forman. A musician from the town, accompanied by his playful mistress, visits an old friend who lives in the country with his wife, children and parents. After spending a day and night, during which the friends talk, attend a funeral and play music together, the visitors prepare to leave. Thus the film has virtually no plot and no drama, in the conventional sense of the word, but Passer, like Forman, records telling little actions which reveal the underlying tensions and disappointments in the characters. This is very much in evidence in the meal scene where the members of the host's family argue over the sharing out of the parts of the chicken. The film suggests the disillusionment of the married man, who, unlike his friend, has sacrificed his liberty for material comforts- his house, his car. As in "Peter and Pavla", the film ends with a sudden freeze of the action, the implication being that this is a reflection of 'real' life which does not offer satisfying conclusions. The wry humour, tinged with compassion that one finds in the films of Milos Forman, is not, however, so evident in "Intimate Lighting".
In 1965, "Pearls of the Deep" appeared, an anthology film based on the short stories of the leading Czech author, Bohumil Hrabal. Ivan Passer was to contribute an episode, but his short, "A Boring Afternoon", was released seperately since it was felt that otherwise the film would be too long. As it stands, "Pearls of the Deep" contains episodes of five of Czechoslovakia's leading young directors: Jiri Menzel, Evald Schorm, Jan Nemec, Vera Chytilova, Jaromil Jires.
Jiri Menzel's episode "Balthazar's Death", a strange little film tinged with fantasy, describes a family's visit to a motorcycle rally. Nothing of the racing is shown, only the reaction of the spectators and especially those of the family, who, when the favourite is killed, declare how lucky they are to be present at yet another fatal accident. "Closely Observed Trains" (1968), which shot Menzel to international fame and won an Oscar in 1968, is also based on a work by Bohumil Hrabal. It is set during the Second World War. The young, inexperienced hero reminds one somewhat of the young man in "Peter and Pavla", but much more happens than in any of the works of Milos Forman: there is the developing story of the main protagonist with his attempted suicide, his first taste of sex, his death; there is also am amusing sub-plot concerning the sex-obsessed assistant station-master and containing the memorably funny sequence where he rubber-stamps a girl's bottom. The humour of the film is, however, tinged with a black comedy evident in the scene where the hero tries to cut his wrists- and in the almost casual way that he is killed, trying to sabotage a train.
Menzel's next feature, "Capricious Summer" (1968), adapted by the director from a humorous Czech novel, is beautifully shot in colour and is very different in mood from his first feature. The plot concerns three middle-aged friends, a priest, a major and a bathing-pool attendant, who meet, drink and argue in a lively but friendly way. This routine is disturbed by the arrival of an acrobat and his charming assistant, Anna. The three men in turn flirt with the girl, but each is humiliated. The wife of the bathing-pool attendant moves in with the acrobat, the priest almost loses an ear in a struggle with some shocked villagers, the major is beaten with a stick. When the acrobat and his assistant finally leave, the three friends and the wife fall back into the routine of their lives. The relationships between the three men are delicately portrayed, and the film has great whimsical charm. At the same time, there is a black side to the comedy, which links "Capricious Summer" to "Balthazar's Death" and "Closely Observed Trains": this can be seen in the rather sadistic close-up of the priest's ear being sown up with a fish-hook by the bathing-pool attendant.
The acrobat in "Capricious Summer" is portrayed by Menzel himself who enjoys acting and has played roles in many films including those of Evald Schorm, the 'conscience' of the New Wave in Czechoslovakia. Schorm's first feature "Courage for Every Day" (1964) immediately ran into trouble with the authorities who held up its release for many months. The hero, Jarda, refuses to admit that his political ideals have been wrong and, as a result, loses his mistress and friends. Jarda's gradual disillusionment and final recognition of the truth can be seen as an illustration of 'de-Stalinization' on an individual level. Schorm's next film was the bizarre episode in "Pearls of the Deep" entitled "The House of Joy". Filmed in garish colour, this short work showed the visit of two insurance agents to the house of a primitive painter. To interpret the main role Schorm used a genuine primitive painter, Vaclav Zak, said to have inspired Hrubal's story in the first place. The film shows the inability of conventional social structures, represented by the insurance agents, to cope with the original individual, represented by the artist.
The problem of individual liberties and the pressures of convention is a major theme in Schorm's most impressive feature, "The Return of the Prodigal Son" (1966). The hero, Jan, is being treated in a mental hospital after an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide. His wife, his colleagues, his psychiatrist find him bewildering, for he was 'happily' married and 'well established' in his work. Despite his desire to leave the asylum, Jan suffers great anguish on the occasions when he is allowed to return to everyday life. His problem is that he is unwilling to compromise his conscience in order to fit into the accepted social structures. At the same time, he can detect the repressed despair in the very people who find him bewildering. Jan is an outsider, and the society in which he lives alienates and persecutes anyone who will not conform- this would appear to be the sense of the sequence towards the end of the film where he is mistakenly hunted as an assassin by a mob of peasants. "The Return of the Prodigal Son", beautifully acted by Jan Kacer and Jana Brejchova, is a challenging and moving film which evokes the despair of the individual who is at odds with society. It is not astonishing that the authorities placed a virtual ban on this film when it was first released.
By contrast, "Pastor's End" (1968) is a declared farce with echoes of Fernandel's Don Camillo series. Schorm's serious intent is, however, not absent from this tale of a sexton who poses as a village priest, thereby engaging in a power struggle with the socialist teacher. The film is an earthy, comic yet finally moving reworking of the life of Christ, and Schorm shows individual initiative hampered by rigid institutionalism, here symbolized by the church. And the comic secret police in the film gradually take on a more sinister significance: in the last image after the death of the sexton, the three village police, supported by many others, are shown closing in on the village- a disturbing conclusion, especially in the light of the events of 1968.
Evald Schorm is deeply concerned with the problems of personal idealism and social repression. His works seem to have become increasingly pessimistic yet contain a plea, a despairing one perhaps, for tolerance and liberty.
Jan Nemec is a director who seems to share this pessimism and concern with the outsider. His approach, however, is much less sober than that of Schorm. Nemec's first feature, "Diamonds of the Night" (1964), shows two prisoners of war escaping from a train in the Second World War. As Nemec shows them running through the countryside, he interposes, without warning, the memories, dreams and associations running through the mind of one of the fugitives. Bursting into a farm in search of food, the young man is faced by the woman of the house. His violent thoughts, of rape and murder, are visually translated. Thus the over-all effect of the film is dreamlike or even nightmarish, especially in the depiction of the grotesque old men who hunt down the fleeing prisoners.
"The Imposters" (1965), Nemec's contribution to "Pearls of the Deep", could also be described as grotesque. Two old men tell each other of the exploits of their past, but after they die it is shown that both were inveterate liars.
Both these films have a disturbing quality which is even more in evidence in Nemec's famous "The Party and the Guests" (1966). In this sinister fable, a group of friends are seen making their way to a country party when they are suddenly surrounded by a gang of threatening men. The friends are forced to play a game that becomes increasingly more frightening until, at last, the host appears and leads them to the party. One of the new arrivals steals away, but the film ends with the host sending out dogs and armed men to hunt him down.
This fascinating film, with its echoes of Kafka and its surrealist scenes such as the banquet by the lake, would seem to be, on the one hand, an attack on totalitarian rule; on the other, a satire of those who, by conforming, condone persecution and atrocity. (It is interesting that the guest who, refusing to compromise, leaves the party is played by Evald Schorm). Nemec himself talked of this film, which was banned by the authorities for almost two years, in the following terms:
'How pleasant it is to take part in all the parties life offers. To sit down at a well-laid table and leave behind the cares and worries you cannot do anything about in any case; to live, and above all, to survive, that is the credo of people and societies....'
Nemec's third feature, "Martyr's of Love" (also 1966), is made up of three episodes about timid people who long for romance. The first sequence, "The Temptations of a White-Collar Worker", shows the unsuccessful attempt by a shy civil servant to realize his dream of seducing a girl. In "Nastenka's Reveries", a waitress imagines a love affair with a handsome officer and a debonair singer. The third episode, "Orphan Rudolph's Adventure", shows how a car mechanic penetrates into a stately house where a beautiful woman shows interest in him and asks him to return later, but unfortunately Rudolph cannot find the house again. The film ends with the three 'martyrs of love' meeting at a crossroads and walking off side by side. Nemec presents these three 'gloomy farces', as he calls them, in a highly imaginative manner, drawing on memories of silent films but creating an atmosphere of disturbing fantasy that is entirely his own.
Jaromil Jires and Vera Chytilova have both used fantasy in their films. Jires' first feature, "The Cry" (1963), takes, however, a contemporary setting. While a young television repairman goes his rounds, his wife is in labour in hospital. The film is stylistically quite inventive, introducing, without warning, the man's memories of different periods in his relationship with his wife and cutting backwards and forwards between the husband at work and the wife in hospital. This allows the director to deal with the problems of marriage, while at the same time he presents a varied picture of contemporary Czechoslovakian society through the different premises visited by the television engineer.
(CONTINUED IN PART 2)
(Copyright - Alistair Whyte)

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