Word: kadar
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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...
Britko's agony of conscience becomes everyman's agony as the film, initially a simple piece of village comedy, shifts into social criticism and ultimately into tragedy. As Kadar once said, the story of Mrs. Lautmann "could be transplanted to a Negro woman in Alabama, or a woman awaiting deportation to Siberia in Stalinist Russia, but why should we go outside our own country?" Kadar's genius, however, consists in focusing upon Britko, the best of the typical villagers. When Britko finally breaks down, the social order of the village has reached its nadir...
...thoughts. When he looks up at a church steeple, "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" briefly enters the soundtrack. A bittersweet fiddler's tune of his dilemma, while a full choral anthem accompanies his moment of decision. Finally, the cheerful and ubiquitous band music characterizes the optimism about human nature which Kadar and Klos insist on maintaining through the entire film...
...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...
...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...