Word: russian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Czech intellectuals played such a prominent political role during the Dubcek era, they also became one of the most exposed targets of the repression that followed the Russian invasion. Their films were banned, their works removed from libraries along with those of Sartre, Graham Greene and Aragon. Among the officially published translations. Russian works dominate; curiously, perhaps only Raymond Chandler can rival Sholokov or Fadeev. In cinemas only Russian war movies, American westerns and second rate French and Italian comedies are available...
...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 of the directors who stayed, the "normalization" meant no longer being...
...arrange the firing of a manager and the foreman of a garage, both devoted communists. The foreman's wife is seduced by her former lover, recently returned from emigration, who intends to take her with him to the capitalists. But, thanks to Providence, the airport is closed (because the Russian Antonovs carrying tanks are just landing). The overjoyed foreman, immediately recognizes the sound and shouts gratefully, "It's them!" Then, as the script indicates, the noise of the engines swells to a crescendo and "grows into an optimistic chorus of heavenly voices." Even Zhdanov would have considered this as sabotage...
Maybe 1968 signaled the end of the "new wave." However, a dozen directors of international standing were already turning to something different, finding new ways of expressing their talent. The Russian invasion not only put an end to the "new wave" but, for the time being anyway, to Czech cinema as such...
...only now that the West is becoming acquainted with the extraordinary revival of Czech literature that took place during the 1960s as these remarkable works keep coming from Western publishers, along with books, written after the Russian invasion, that are banned from publication in Czechoslovakia. Contrary to the situation in cinema, we have here much more of a sense of the continuity of this literary trend. Movie production is a "public activity" which requires substantial material means; once the political conditions had changed, the production of "undesirable" directors was stopped. Writers are much more difficult to silence. They...