Word: kadar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...modern Czech cinema indicates the importance of that renaissance. At one end of the spectrum we find Milos Forman, director of Peter and Paula and A Blond in Love, whose gentle touch conveys exquisitely subtle shifts of mood. At the other end stands the team of Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos, who have created in The Shop on Main Street a film of enormous impact and meaning...
...them suddenly would probably cause the regime of Walter Ulbricht to collapse. Poland still has three Soviet divisions, but the Russians remain unobtrusive, and Polish Party Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka paranoically fears that a Russian pullback would encourage German encroachment on the Oder-Neisse line. Only Hungary's Janos Kadar could profit from the removal of the four or five Russian divisions still in his country: they serve as a constant reminder of Moscow's brutal role in repressing the 1956 Hungarian revolt. Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, like Rumania, house no Russian troops...
Half of the audience in Philharmonic Hall gave The Shop on High Street a deserved five-minute standing ovation; the other half remained seated, paralyzed by the film's impact. Director Jan Kadar uses his camera as the eyes of Tono Britko to place the viewer inside the mind of the simple farmer who the Nazis make the "Aryan Manager" of a Jewish button shop in Czechoslovakia...
When Britko drinks, Kadar places a rum glass before the lens; when Britko wakes up, the camera moves slowly along the ceiling and wall and finally up his legs, coming into focus with exquisite timing. Soon the audience becomes vicarious inhabitants of Britko's village. We walk down the main street behind Briko as he tips his hat to friends; we stop to hear an old fiddler play a bitter-sweet tune; we cringe when a Nazi dragoon marches...
...plot concerns Britko's response when the old Jewish lady who owns the shop must be hidden to avoid deportation. Before the troops and trucks arrive, the film trips along as a charming piece of village comedy in which the audience easily becomes involved. When Kadar shifts unexpectedly to tragedy, the audience gets swept helplessly along...