Word: czech
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...culmination of a long process which depended on political conditions, and resulted in a close relationship between four generations of directors who, despite the differences in their outlooks and techniques, were animated by a strong feeling of solidarity. Both elements account for the richness and the diversity of the Czech film production...
...ideal" conditions of the 1960s, freeing Czech directors from commercial constraint and political pressures as well, account in part for the emergence in Czechoslovakia of a dozen first class film directors of international recognition (winning two Oscars for The Shop on Mainstreet, by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos, and in 1968 for Mencl's Closely Watched Trains). When the Russian tanks rolled in and put an end to the Dubcek experiment of "socialism with a human face," Czech film directors, as well as many other people, were faced with the following choice: emigration abroad or "internal emigration." For most...
These personal tragedies are only one aspect of the incredible mediocrity now ruling over Czech film production. The tone was set by Miroslav Muller, a hardliner and the current cultural watchdog of the Czech Communist Party. He tried his own talent and wrote the screenplay of a new film directed by K. Stekly (who is well in his 70s and the only director who agreed to do the job). The film is called The Enemy at the Wheel and is supposed to be an allegory on the 1968 events. The story goes something like this: a gang of cab drivers...
What made the "discreet charm" of Czech films of the 1960s in the West was a certain atmosphere, their simplicity in the observation of everyday life, of ordinary people, a subtle sense of humor combined sometimes with social satire. This required a deep and almost subconscious knowledge of a place and people and feelings. These qualities are impossible to transport to a new reality. In other words, it is impossible to make "Czech" movies in America. Ivan Passer's recent Law and Disorder just doesn't work when it tries to be a "Czech film" about ordinary Brooklyn shopkeepers...
...future of Czech film directors in America is a different story from the future of Czech cinema. Some of the best have left the country (the last to leave was Jan Nemec who arrived in Paris last summer, after six years of not being allowed to shoot). Those who stayed are on the blacklist, and to be blacklisted in Prague--as well as in Hollywood in the fifties--means to lose the possibility to do creative work for many years. Ivan Passer once related how eager he was to start shooting his first American movie, Born...