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Kiesler, who went on to Hollywood fame as Hedy Lamarr. Another early
Czech director, Hugo Haas, filmed an excellent adaptation of Karel Čapek’s
anti-Nazi, science fiction novel, Bílá smrt (White Death, 1937), before find-
ing fame in Hollywood.
Few films were made by Slovak directors before WWII, but cinematog-
raphy saw a real evolution after the war, typified by the light-hearted and
ever popular Cathy (1949) by Ján Kádar. In 1953, Koliba, Slovakia’s film
studio, opened in Bratislava, creating a backbone for Slovak cinema for
years to come.
A NEW WAVE
The new wave (nová vlna) of artsy avant-garde productions washed ashore
in the mid-1960s. Among the earliest and best were Černý Petr (Black Peter,
1963; the US version was called Peter & Paula) and Lásky jedné plavovlásky
(Loves of a Blonde, 1965) by Miloš Forman. Slovak director Ján Kádar forged
ahead with Smrt si říká Engelchen (Death Calls Itself Engelchen, 1963) and
teamed up with Elmar Klos to produce Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main
To look through the
history of famous Moser
glass, go to www
.moser-glass.com.
The slender novel Utz
by British writer Bruce
Chatwin looks back on
the life of a Prague
ceramics collector,
recently deceased, and
is a sharp and charming
insight into Czech life.
Chatwin died in 1989 and
Utz was his last work.
Street, 1965), which won an Academy Award for best foreign film. It’s a mov-
ing film depicting the life of Jews in Slovakia under Nazi occupation. In 1967,
Czech director Jiří Menzel garnered the same honour with Ostře sledované
vlaky (Closely Watched Trains), based on Bohumil Hrabal’s eponymous
book about growing up during WWII. František Vláčil’s Markéta Lazarová
(1967), a medieval epic of paganism versus Christianity on a personal level,
usually tops polls ranking the best Czech films of all time.
Czech Film Center (www
It was a busy, successful period, but just a few short years later the Soviet
.filmcenter.cz) has the
invasion stopped the flow abruptly. Many young directors of the time escaped
lowdown on film festivals
censorship because they were among the first graduates of the Academy of
and current Czech
Film during communist rule and were therefore assumed to be ideologically
productions.
‘clean’. Some took a hiatus; some left the country. Forman became a suc-
cessful Hollywood director with films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
Amadeus (filmed in Prague) and The People vs Larry Flint.
Films critical of the postinvasion regime were made during 1969 and 1970
but were promptly banned from public screening. The most outstanding of
those from Czech directors were the morbid Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator
of Corpses), directed by Juraj Herz, and the gloomy Ucho (The Ear), directed
by Karel Kachyňa. Žert (The Joke, 1970), directed by Jaromil Jireš, is a film
version of Milan Kundera’s eponymous book. The gritty and powerful
documentaries by Slovak film-makers Dušan Hanák and Dušan Dušek were
banned during the communist years but their popularity remained strong.
Probably the best among the films of the next two communist decades was
the comedy Vesničko má středisková (My Sweet Little Village, 1985) directed
by Jiří Menzel – a subtle look at the workings and failings of socialism in a
village cooperative. One of Slovakia’s best-loved directors is Juraj Jakubisko;
his Sedím na konári a je mi dobre (I’m Sitting on a Branch and I’m Fine,
1989) is an excellent but bizarre tale of life in Slovakia after WWII involving
stolen gold, murder, bad luck and tree climbing.
One of the greatest Czech exports is the animated work of Jan Švankmajer;
his creepy Alice (1988) is a masterpiece. The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer
(1984) is a tribute to the film-maker by underground American animators
You can read snippets of
the Quay Brothers.
Czech and Slovak authors
in translation at http://
THE ’90S TO TODAY
centomag.org/ceslit/.
Director Jan Svěrák and his screenwriting brother Zdenék are among the
biggest names of modern Czech cinema. Their 1994 hit, Akumulátor, was the
most expensive Czech film produced at the time. In 1996 it was surpassed
at the box office by the internationally acclaimed Kolja (Kolya), another of
Svěrák’s works, which managed to score the two big film prizes of 1997: best
foreign film at both the Cannes Film Festival and the US Academy Awards.
It’s a slightly sugary story about a confirmed Czech bachelor saddled with a
small Russian child on the eve of the Velvet Revolution. Samotáři (Loners,
2000), by director David Ondříček, centres on a group of people trying to
find love in the 1990s.
Martin Sulík is one of Slovakia’s most prominent current directors,
winning an Oscar nomination for Všetko, čo mám rád (Everything I Like,
1992) and international acclaim for Krajinka (The Landscape, 2000). Lack
of funding and the subsequent closing of the Koliba movie studios in 2000 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]