Cutting It Short (Postriziny) [1980]

Jiri Menzel is a master at making movies that delight his viewers thanks to the light comic nature of the plots, as also make them think courtesy the utterly palpable socio-political commentaries. Cutting It Short, unlike his Closely Watched Trains, Larks on a String or I Served the King of England was decidedly low-key insofar as searing critiques or subversive humour go; nevertheless, the simple fact remains that it is a charming, whimsical, delectable and pleasantly erotic situational comedy with subtle social observations thrown in for good measures. Based on a story by the famous Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, the fable chronicles the curiously funny events leading to his birth. Set in a small and peaceful Czech town, it tells the tale of how the idyllic life of a mild-natured man (Hrabal’s father), who’s a manager at a large brewery, and married to a beautiful, luscious young lady with a wide-eyed curiosity for life, gets tossed out of the window upon the arrival of his earthy, motor-mouth brother who has an incorrigibly loud voice and a penchant for ribald jokes. The film’s climax does have a socio-political subtext, albeit too subtle for non-Czech viewers; however, that apart, what truly stands out for the film is the sense of nostalgia for a time lost in space. The acting is marvelous throughout, bringing forth the idiosyncrasies of not just the characters, but also of the place and the era that the story is set in.





Director: Jiri Menzel
Genre: Comedy/Situational Comedy/Social Satire
Language: Czech
Country: Czech Republic (erstwhile Czechoslovakia)

Larks on a String [1969]

Jiri Menzel, along with Milos Forman, spearheaded the Czech New Wave, and his Closely Watched Trains is considered his greatest masterpiece. Larks on a String, however, is criminally under-viewed, and though the film managed to see daylight 21 years after it was made, we cinephiles are lucky that the then-Czech government never destroyed the prints in the first place. On the surface this is a delectable, charming, buoyant and immensely engrossing fable set in a repressive regime. However, like Closely Watched Trains or Forman’s The Firemen’s Ball, the film is filled with subversive humour and wit, and was a searing critique of the iron-hand rule of the powers that be. With the communist junta having come to power, the bourgeois are being forced to do hard industrial labour and dissidents get vanished from the society. And in such a climate as this, brews a series of tragi-comic and deeply humanistic love stories, including that between a diminutive, soft-spoken and seemingly apathetic former chef and an angel-faced, cherubic girl who’s a prisoner and working in the same plant that he is. It is filled with a host of idiosyncratic and unforgettable characters – oddball middle-aged people who were forced to leave their former professions, and a mild-natured, newly-wed police officer who is having a torrid time trying to figure out his pretty, bashful wife. The humour is never too dark nor saccharine, thus making this brilliantly acted film, in equal measures, bittersweet, ironic and yes, darkly comic; but more importantly, quietly disturbing in its bleak portrayal of a dismal socio-political environment, and absolutely mesmerizing, absorbing and fulfilling for its viewers.





Director: Jiri Menzel
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Political Satire/Social Satire
Language: Czech
Country: Czech Republic (erstwhile Czechoslovakia)

The Firemen's Ball [1967]

The Firemen’s Ball was quite an event in the career of Milos Forman, who would later become a darling of Hollywood what with his One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus. It was his first film made in colour; but more importantly, it was his last movie in his native Czechoslovakia before he headed for America just in time to escape Prague Spring. The movie, which got banned in the country, is about a disastrous ball hosted by a group of middle-aged firemen in honour of their old retired chief. The crisp length and hilarious gags belie the movie’s immense artistic worth. It is a brilliant, anarchic, genre-bending classic whose comic timings would leave everyone laughing out loud, but whose subversive humour and satirical insights into a society behind Iron Curtain would not escape even those unaware of the then political turmoil surrounding the country. The actors, mostly non-professionals, did a remarkable job in bringing forth the farcical events that ensue over the course of the evening (interestingly, a number of members of the cast were repeated from the movie that preceded it, Forman’s delightful comedy Loves of a Blonde). The fact that Forman could infuse even the boisterous proceedings with a few moments of deep pathos and subtle (yet pinching) observations made the movie one for the ages, and along with a similarly subversive socio-political satire by Jiri Menzel, Closely Watched Trains, forms a cornerstone of the Czech New Wave.





Director: Milos Forman
Genre: Comedy/Political Satire/Social Satire/Black Comedy
Language: Czech
Country: Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia)

Loves of a Blonde [1965]

Before Czech émigré Milos Forman earned recognition in Hollywood for movies like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amedeus, he’d already directed a couple of wonderful movies in his homeland – Loves of a Blonde being one of them. A delightful comedy and a subtle satire on the then Czechoslovakian society, Loves of a Blonde is a movie any director would be extremely proud to have in his oeuvre. Containing a distinctly Czech sense of humour – light-hearted on the surface, but with a deeply impactful social commentary underneath, the movie is about a fragile, naïve young girl who lives in a town where women heavily outnumber men. She lives a banal and unspectacular blue-collar existence, only punctuated by her comically tragic relationships with men, including one with a wonderfully opportunist piano player from Prague, leading to some memorable situational comedy at his parents’ house. The movie could have very well been one on disillusionment and cynicism; instead what we have is deliberately low-key, delectably whimsical and immensely enjoyable for discerning viewers. The tone is never scathing or bitter, rather it is gentle and understated. The acting is almost flawless, thanks in large parts to Forman’s brilliant selection of cast. This timeless gem really succeeded in making me smile and in inducing a tinge of sadness somewhere very deep, at the same time.

Director: Milos Forman
Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Political Satire
Language: Czech
Country: Czechoslovakia

The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na Korze) [1965]

The Shop on Main Street was a product of the Czech New Wave, arguably the most fertile period of Czech film history. However, though thematically it was linked to the best films of that period – Holocaust tended to feature significantly (directly or otherwise) in those movies, structurally it wasn’t, in that it wasn’t as whimsical or darkly comic like, say, Closely Watched Trains. The movie, often considered one of the most poignant depictions of that despicable and sad time of human history, is about a simple carpenter living in a small town who develops a wonderful friendship with an old Jewish lady while working as an Aryan comptroller at her shop, only for it to end on a devastatingly tragic note. The tragi-comic movie is essentially about the inherent ambiguity in human nature – the fact that just one moment of madness is all it takes to convert a friendly, sympathetic man with an unprejudiced mind into a raging fanatic. Shot in elegant black-and-whites and enacted wonderfully by its superbly chosen cast (especially its two principal leads), the movie manages to profoundly disturb its viewers and elicit a few wry smirks here and there with equal ease. Though a few more dollops of black humour might have alleviated the movie’s effectiveness, its simplicity and sensitiveness, however, remained in my mind even after the credits had rolled.






Directors: Jan Kadar & Elmar Klos
Genre: Drama/War Drama
Language: Czech
Country: Czechoslovakia

Closely Watched Trains [1966]

One of the most outstanding products of the sixties’ Czech New Wave movement, Jiri Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains is a black political satire presented in the garb of a delectable and farcical comedy. Like his latest work I Served the King of England, at the heart of the movie lies a charming and deceptively innocent fable (with a diminutive protagonist) that is as much an absurdist parable as it is a sharp political critique. The movie follows a soft spoken but seemingly apathetic young guy, Milos, who has gotten the safe job of a railroad worker during the turbulent and draconian Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. What follows is a curiously funny coming-of-age story, but with enough allusions and indications that his safely ensconced existence is surely on the path of experiencing a tragic turn of events. Filled with unforgettable incidents, fascinating characters that could easily be called parodies, and moments of wry black humour and farce, this universally acknowledged masterpiece and deeply human anti-war movie deserves far wider recognition in popular circles.





Director: Jiri Menzel
Genre: Comedy/Political Satire/War Drama/Resistance Movie/Coming of Age
Language: Czech
Country: Czech Republic (erstwhile Czechoslovakia)

I Served the King of England [2007]

There were two principal reasons for deciding to catch a movie (at the ongoing Kolkata Film Festival) with as unattractive a title as I Served the King of England – the movie has been directed by the Czech master Jiri Menzel, and the huge buzz it has generated here at the festival circuit. This is a pitch black comedy and a socio-political satire marvelously disguised by its bright picturization and infectious narrative. Covering genres that range from bittersweet fable to slapstick and vaudeville, this picaresque tale manages to make one laugh and think in equal measures. Told in elaborate flashbacks by a diminutive old man recently released from prison (having served only 14 years and 9 months of his 15 years sentence), the movie follows the meteoric rise of an ambitious waiter whose sole dream is to be a millionaire. Told in the form of a farcical comedy, and punched with a heavy dose of absurdism, wry humour and bleak ironies, but with strong overtones of pathos and humanism, the movie manages to paint a rich and vivid picture of the troubled history of the erstwhile Czechoslovakia. The two things that especially stand out are the director’s audacity to tackle this extremely tricky subject with such bravado, and the high-voltage performances by the two actors who essayed the gleefully amoral and dangerously detached protagonist in his younger days, and the reminiscing, introspective and strangely captivating older patron representing the present, respectively.





Director: Jiri Menzel
Genre: Comedy/Political Satire/Absurdist Comedy/Period Film
Language: Czech
Country: Czech Republic