Word: czech
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...SHOP ON MAIN STREET. This poignant Czech drama hurls the question of universal guilt into a tranquil but non-occupied Slovakian village in 1942. The case concerns a Chaplinesque little nobody (Josef Króner) who, because he is an Aryan, is put in charge of the business, and the fate, of a shiningly innocent old Jewish shopkeeper (Ida Kami...
...nationalists"-down to and including three elevator operators in the Foreign Ministry. "National Communists" fared poorly throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1940s: Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka and Hungary's János Kádar went to prison on Stalin's orders; others, such as Czech General Secretary Rudolph Slánský and his Slovak Foreign Minister, Vladimir Clementis, were tried and hanged. From 1946 to 1953, Eastern Europe underwent show trials; the "water treatment," electric prodding, and skillful use of the "pear" (a jawbreaking ball screwed into a victim's mouth) yielded well...
...Czech Performer Jirí Suchý, 34, is Communism's top show-biz personality. His singing (4,000,000-record sales), writing (his musical, Jonas, is still packing them in after four years), and disk jockeying (600 songs that he wrote himself) have made Suchý the first "kroner millionaire" entertainer on the Czech list. His $63,000 income is 25 times the national average, and Suchý's latest book is a summation of Eastern
...real triumph of the afternoon came with the Fantaisies Symphoniques, the Sixth Symphony, of the late Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. It is unsurprising that the performance appeared beyond reproach, for the symphony was composed for Munch himself, with his conducting talents explicitly in mind. Munch united all the conflicting episods (ranging from ominous ostinate passages to hymnlike chords) into a thoroughly convincing whole. This was a difficult achievement, for the work is diffuse in form and ambiguous in meaning. It is suggested that Martinu was here meditating about his imminent death...
...SHOP ON MAIN STREET. Humor and fantasy heighten the impact of this keen-edged Czech tragedy. In a complacent Slovakian village in 1942, a henpecked nobody (Josef Króner) befriends but ultimately betrays the doomed old Jewess (Ida Kamiñska) whose button shop is given to him by the Nazis...