Kinoblog

Na samotě u lesa
1976, colour, 93 mins

• Director: Jiří Menzel
• Script: Zdeněk Svěrák, Ladislav Smoljak
• Camera: Jaromír Šofr
• Production Design: Zbyněk Hloch
• Editing: Jiřina Lukešová
• Sound: Adam Kajzar
• Music: Jiří Šust
• Production Manager: Jan Šuster
• Production Company: Barrandov Film Studios
• Cast: Josef Kemr (Komárek); Zdeněk Svěrák (Oldřich Lavička); Daniela Kolářová (Věra Lavičková); Marta Hradílková (Zuzana); Martin Hradílek (Petr); Ladislav Smoljak (Zvon); Naďa Urbánková (Zvonová); Jan Tříska (Dr, Houdek); Zdeněk Blažek (Hruška); Alois Liškutín (Kos); František Řehák (Lorenc); Václav Trégl (Vondruška); Vlasta Jelínková (Vondrušková); Oldřich Vlach (Kokeš); František Kovářík (Komárek senior); Míla Myslíková (Božena); Evžen Jegorov (gamekeeper); Milan Štibich (Co-operative chairman); Petr Brukner (salesman)

First of all, some much-needed context. Seclusion Near a Forest (also known as A Cottage by the Wood, though the former title is closer to the original) was the second film that Jiří Menzel made after a five-year ban following the reception of Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti, 1969), which was itself banned until 1990. The first, Who Looks For Gold? (Kdo hledá zlaté dno?, 1974) is generally regarded as a blatant (if understandable) attempt to curry favour with the Communist regime, and is rarely revived, though it did mark the first of four collaborations between Menzel as director and Zdeněk Svěrák as writer (Svěrák had also played minor roles in two of Menzel’s late 1960s films, including Larks on a String).

Seclusion Near a Forest is much closer to the Menzel of old, though it lacks the barbed edge of his adaptations of the work of novelist Bohumil Hrabal. Indeed, to the untrained eye, it resembles a straightforward domestic comedy in which a family of four (parents Oldřich and Věra Lavička and their children Zuzana and Petr) try to fulfil a dream about having their own summer cottage, only to find that the reality doesn’t match up to the fantasy. Much of the running time is taken up with low-level bickering (especially when they end up sharing the cottage with the elderly Mr Komárek and an assortment of fleas) and slapstick interludes (the wheelchair-bound Mr Lorenc involuntarily colliding with a haystack), before everyone comes together in what’s virtually a group hug.

So far so apparently bland - but there’s a fair bit more going on beneath the surface. Seclusion Near a Forest was made at the height of Gustav Husák’s “normalisation” period, which lasted from 1969-89, the year after the Soviet invasion to the Velvet Revolution. While repression in general and cultural repression in particular remained as rife as it had been in the Stalinist 1950s (albeit without the show trials and summary executions), Czechs were encouraged to live outwardly normal lives. They weren’t in any real sense “free”, but they were allowed to purchase consumer goods and holiday cottages in the countryside were by no means idle fantasy - as the film demonstrates. Andrew Roberts’ invaluable essay ‘Normalization and Normal Life in the Films of Ladislav Smoljak and Zdeněk Svěrák’ - see the links below for the full text - cites statistics claiming that by the late 1980s, fully 80% of the Czechoslovak population had at least some access to a summer cottage.

The film depicts the mechanism by which such a cottage might be acquired (including all the bureaucratic stages - Menzel doesn’t dwell on this, but nonetheless makes it clear that such transactions came tightly wrapped in red tape), and the potential drawbacks. By renting a room from the elderly farmer Komárek for 100 crowns a month, the Lavičkas establish themselves as potential purchasers of the entire cottage (for 20,000 crowns), the idea being that Komárek will move to Slovakia to live with his son. Other city-dwellers are doing something similar: the Zvons are pursuing a fantasy of working as millers by purchasing an old mill and paying lip service to the routines, though the flour sacks are actually filled with sand. (One of the film’s comic highlights involves Zvon, played by co-writer Ladislav Smoljak, attempting to lecture about the mill as it is operating, but his voice is inaudible over the clanking, grinding machinery). Meanwhile, the Kokešes have bought a cottage at a discount, achieved by allowing its elderly inhabitants to remain living there until they die - a running gag shows Mr Kokeš devising various stratagems to persuade them to leave early.

By contrast, the Lavičkas get on extremely well with the seventysomething Komárek (Josef Kemr): the children regard him as a substitute grandfather, while Lavička (Zdeněk Svěrák) is always happy to chat to him, and indeed everyone else in the village, with whom he goes out of his way to try to integrate. Věra Lavičková (Daniela Kolářová) takes on the Cassandra role: when she realises that Komárek has no plans to leave and is in robust health, she points out that buying the cottage will achieve nothing aside from a substantial dent in their funds. She’s also much less enamoured of the downside of country living, with its rotten planks, collapsing beds, defecating chickens, goats eating her freshly-baked bread and a plague of dog fleas defying the widely-expressed local adage that they don’t bite people.

Věra’s complaints give the film its dramatic tension, especially in the second half, but Menzel and his writers aren’t interested in family-rupturing rows. But, as Roberts points out, the film’s gentleness can be read in two ways: Menzel, Svěrák and Smoljak go out of their way to set up scenes in which people are given opportunities exploit others for their own gain - and then refuse to let their characters take the bait, as demonstrated by the brief scene in which the representative of the local farming collective is quite happy to sign and stamp Lavička’s form in the middle of the farmyard with no formalities. As with the later (also Svěrák-scripted) My Sweet Little Village (Vesničko má středisková, 1985), the film’s criticisms of the Husák regime are so subtle as to be barely discernible, but it’s likely that domestic audiences were more than capable of reading between the lines: true communal happiness comes from looking out for each other, and ignoring the authorities’ strictures as much as is feasible.

It’s primarily a writers’ and performers’ film, though Menzel’s own distinctive fingerprints can be discerned via the deceptively casual staging of such set-pieces as the opening traffic jam, Zvon’s milling lecture, the alfresco lunch (whose oldest guest is convinced that he’s met the new arrivals before) and quasi-slapstick moments such as the collapsing bed. Also characteristic of Menzel are a handful of seemingly throwaway cutaways, in one oddly memorable case to a close-up of a framed photograph of an elderly couple mounted on Komárek’s bedroom wall - as if to suggest not merely a lengthy ancestral thread but also that life goes on regardless of any day-to-day complications. It’s not quite a feelgood comedy, but it’s certainly closest to that than much of Menzel’s other work.

DVD Distribution: Centrum českého videa (Czech Republic), PAL, no region code

Picture: The source print is in adequate condition for a thirtysomething film - the colours are somewhat pasty, there are quite a few white dust spots, and occasional glimpses of more serious damage, but nothing that impedes viewing. The transfer appears to have been sourced from an analogue tape (there’s a telltale texturing to the image), its shortcomings becoming particularly clear during scenes in low light, where the lack of shadow detail becomes a problem. But none of it seriously affects viewing pleasure, and it’s a distinct cut above the same label’s My Sweet Little Village. The aspect ratio is 4:3, and there are no compositional or historical reasons why it should be anything else.

Sound: Two soundtracks are on offer: a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix and a Dolby Digital 2.0 track - probably the original mono. Both sounded virtually identical, so I stuck with 2.0 on the grounds that it was probably closest to the version original.

Subtitles: The English subtitles have a few typos, but the translation is always perfectly clear.

Extras: Most of the extras are off limits to non-Czech speakers, but consist of Czech filmographies of Jiří Menzel and his cast, unsubtitled interviews with Menzel (4:36), Zdeněk Svěrák (4:37) and Ladislav Smoljak (5:42), six very short scenes from the film (also unsubtitled) and a stills gallery that plays for 1:15 and is accompanied by the film’s score. There’s also a selection of promotional material from the DVD’s sponsors, and information about other discs in the series (again, all in Czech).

• YouTube has an extract from the film, albeit in unsubtitled Czech.
• České filmové nebe (in Czech)
• Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze (in Czech)
• Internet Movie Database
• Andrew Roberts’ essay ‘Normalization and Normal Life in the Films of Ladislav Smoljak and Zdeněk Svěrák‘ (PDF).

Thanks to an upcoming Riverside Studios Cinema season of the films of Jan and Zdeněk Svěrák, and the imminent release of the first English-subtitled DVD of Jiri Menzel’s I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2007), I’ve decided to devote much of November to exploring the work of the two most internationally successful Czech directors after Milos Forman.

Despite being from different generations, Jiří Menzel (b. 1938) and Jan Svěrák (b. 1965) have a surprising amount in common. Their international profile notwithstanding (they’ve notched up two Best Foreign Film Oscar nominations and one win apiece), they’ve almost exclusively worked in their native country and language, they’ve regularly collaborated with writer/actor Zdeněk Svěrák (Jan’s father, Menzel’s contemporary), and most of their films are characterised by an agreeably old-fashioned humanist outlook that seems both quintessentially ‘Czech’ and yet has universal appeal.

These are the films I’m hoping to look at in more depth, all of which are available on English-subtitled DVDs.

Jiří Menzel

1965 - Pearls of the Deep (Perličky na dně)
1966 - Closely Observed Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky)
1967 - Capricious Summer (Rozmarné léto)
1969 - Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti)
1976 - Seclusion near a Forest (Na samotě u lesa)
1981 - Cutting It Short (Postřižiny)
1983 - Snowdrop Festival (Slavnosti sněženek)
1985 - My Sweet Little Village (Vesničko má středisková)
2007 - I Served the King of England

Jan Svěrák

1988 - The Oil Gobblers (Ropáci)
1991 - The Elementary School (Obecná škola)
1994 - Accumulator 1 (Akumulátor 1)
1994 - The Ride (Jízda)
1996 - Kolya (Kolja)
2001 - Dark Blue World (Tmavomodrý svět)
2007 - Empties (Vratné lahve)

Zdeněk Svěrák

1969 - Larks on a String
1976 - Seclusion near a Forest
1983 - Three Veterans (Tři veteráni)
1985 - My Sweet Little Village
1991 - The Elementary School
1994 - Accumulator 1
1996 - Kolya
2001 - Dark Blue World
2007 - Empties

Because I want to get all the Riverside titles out of the way before the season starts on November 7th, I’ll start with those and then jump back to the 1960s to start exploring the great Menzel/Bohumil Hrabal collaborations. In the meantime, here’s my report from the Jiří Menzel Q&A that followed the London premiere of I Served the King of England.

It’s dated yesterday, but I don’t think it ever made it into the printed version of the Guardian, which is why I didn’t spot it until now. Anyway, here’s an excellent interview with Jiří Menzel as his latest film I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2007) finally gets a belated and brief British cinema run.

Apologies for the apparent lack of activity over the past few days: I’ve spent them preparing the various multimedia elements of my talk Andrzej Wajda: An Introduction, which I’ll be presenting at the BFI Southbank tonight at 6.15 - and, as ever, these things take much longer than expected!

Polish Radio recently interviewed me about the Wajda season, though they only ended up using a short snippet on Katyn. The recording is here - I’m the one without a Polish accent.

Once the immediate Wajda pressure is off, I’ll post more pieces on individual films, and I’ll also be looking at Jiří Menzel’s collaborations with the novelist Bohumil Hrabal as the latest, I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2007), finally gets a (minuscule) British cinema release.

And I can also thoroughly recommend the Imperial War Museum’s ongoing season of Polish films, which I mentioned a few days ago - I paid a visit myself on Friday and saw Krzysztof Zanussi’s In Full Gallop (Cwał, 1995) on the big screen for absolutely nothing. Sadly, the number of people in the auditorium didn’t even stretch to double figures, which just goes to show how little value people place on things when you give them away.

Last Sunday saw the Barbican’s London premiere (and only the second UK screening) of Jiří Menzel’s I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2007), his sixth adaptation of the work of the great Czech writer and eccentric Bohumil Hrabal following his contribution to the anthology Pearls of the Deep (Perličky na dně, 1965) and the features Closely Observed Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966), Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti, 1969), Cutting It Short (Postřižiny, 1980) and Snowdrop Festival (Slavnosti sněženek, 1983).

What made the event particularly memorable (aside from the joy of being able to see the film in a packed cinema with an audience that was clearly heavily Czech, judging from the way they laughed at the spoken dialogue rather than the subtitles) was that Menzel himself was there to introduce it and discuss both it and his career after the screening with the critic and Czech cinema expert Peter Hames. Sadly, the curse of the Sunday evening rail timetable meant that I had to leave before the end, but here’s a précis of what I managed to catch.

Hames opened the discussion with a brief summary of Menzel’s career, which the director upstaged by wiggling his eyebrows at the audience, thus setting a gleefully irreverent tone that continued throughout. (Menzel clearly understood much more English than he was comfortable admitting to officially, and he and his interpreter had become something of a comedy double-act by the end).

Menzel began by discussing the writer Bohumil Hrabal and his various travails with the authorities: he was very much a cult figure at a time when the Czech authorities were relaxing the imposition of Socialist Realism. Menzel and his friends initially made a film (Pearls of the Deep) that consisted of a number of Hrabal adaptations, and Hrabal was sufficiently impressed not only to let Menzel adapt his novel Closely Observed Trains for the screen, but to agree to work on the script with the young neophyte (who wasn’t even thirty at the time).

Hrabal is often described as being essentially untranslatable, his work often consisting of seemingly random anecdotes and streams of consciousness - but Menzel pointed out that although this might be true linguistically, he’s actually much easier to adapt for film as his writing is so visual. Although the script for Closely Observed Trains was revised six times before Hrabal and Menzel were satisfied with it, that’s scarcely a problem (”Like a good spirit, it has to be distilled.”)

Hrabal died in 1997, but had several conversations with Menzel on the subject of I Served the King of England. Menzel initially turned down the project, as he thought it was too complex. Then, shortly before Hrabal’s death, he relented and wrote a first draft of the script, of which Hrabal was… constructively critical. He was nicer about the second draft, though Menzel doubted whether he’d actually read it. Menzel said that it was ultimately good for the film that he couldn’t get it off the ground for several years (he didn’t specify why, but the project was tied up in legal red tape over a dispute over the rights).

Someone asked him whether he had any plans to film Hrabal’s masterpiece Too Loud a Solitude, but Menzel said he didn’t dare: he thought the material was too strong. Hames pointed out that he’d actually toned down quite a lot of the darker material in I Served the King of England, but Menzel defended this by pointing out that the scene in the novel where Lise is decapitated would be easier to process in verbal form than it would be in visual form, where the image would be so powerful that it would unbalance everything else. (He added that it would also make the film “too contemporary”, to audience laughter).

In response to a question about whether the film was a comedy, Menzel said yes. Although it might seem that the protagonist Jan Dítě is hard to sympathise with after he turns a blind eye to the Nazi threat, this was part of Menzel’s overall portrait of what he sees as the Czech character, and its infinite capacity for blending in. Dítě is a typical Czech figure, and he’s made likeable in order to establish some point of identification. (”Dítě has to be good, even if his deeds aren’t”). He said that writing the script took a year and a half, but shooting was generally delightful as he was working with an excellent team. However, the worst bit was reading the largely negative reviews in the Czech press (”Czech critics are cleverer than the rest of us”).

The discussion about the film was interleaved with various other subjects: Menzel reminisced briefly about his time at FAMU when he studied alongside many of the leading lights of the Czech New Wave, but in response to a question about whether he was consciously evoking Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (Sedmikrásky, 1966) in the film’s frequent food scenes, Menzel said a stronger role model was Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe (1973).

Asked about how Eastern European films differ today from those made under socialism, Menzel said that it’s harder to make films today because filmmakers previously had very specific artistic aims, often dictated by external forces (technological or political restrictions). Today, you can do literally anything, and this can be limiting. Also, it was easier to get funding under socialism once the project had been approved.

Asked about the differences between adapting Hrabal and the equally distinguished novelist Vladislav Vančura (author of Capricious Summer/Rozmarné léto, which Menzel filmed in 1967), Menzel quipped that Vančura was much easier to work with, as he was dead and couldn’t defend himself.

Acknowledging that all his films can be described as comedies, Menzel explained that humour has a long tradition in Czech literature, and most classical books have some element of humour (”so it’s in my blood”). Czech humour is very close to Jewish humour, in that the Czechs often see themselves as serfs running rings around their masters, unlike Hungarians or Russians who saw themselves very much in the latter role. Unsurprisingly, Menzel is a big fan of silent comedy, and he fondly cited Chaplin and the way his films are “narrated by the image”.

And that, sadly, was all that I had time for - but I Served the King of England is opening in London on May 9th, and I’m hoping to have written about at least some of Menzel’s earlier Hrabal adaptations in more detail by then. Surprisingly, all five are out on DVD with English subtitles (a complete list of current Menzel DVDs can be found here), and while the Czech DVD of the new film isn’t English-friendly, it will doubtless appear on a British or American label at some point this year.

Last night I attended the keenly-awaited Censorship as a Creative Force Screentalk discussion at London’s Barbican Arts Centre, in which Jiří Menzel, István Szabó and Agnieszka Holland (an eleventh-hour replacement for Andrzej Wajda) discussed their experience of censorship under the various totalitarian régimes under which they had to spend much of their creative careers.

It was a fascinating evening that covered a lot of ground, and it was a particularly inspired idea to open with a screening of Wojciech Marczewski’s undeservedly obscure 1990 feature Escape from the ‘Liberty’ Cinema (Ucieczka z kina ‘Wolność’), as this riff on Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo in the context of late-1980s Polish communist censorship was very funny, very pertinent, and much appreciated by the audience.

Then the critic Peter Hames took the stage to introduce his distinguished guests - including Andrzej Wajda. Although not physically present, Wajda had sent a ten-minute video address that made a perfect scene-setter, not least when technical problems at the start caused half the image to be obscured by a thick black bar (an irony noted by many, including Holland).

Wajda opened with the point that Communist countries were notorious for their toilet paper shortages, but claimed that this was actually a by-product of their governments deliberately restricting the production of paper of any kind. In other words, they didn’t censor specific words so much as the medium on which they were printed.

The same principle applied to film stock, which was strictly rationed and recorded - which caused difficulties for Wajda’s former protégé Roman Polański when he made his short film Mammals (Ssaki, 1963). Like most resourceful and cash-strapped young filmmakers, he made it with short ends - offcuts of film saved from other productions - but problems arose when he wanted to submit it to a film festival. Film Polski required him to produce receipts for the film stock - and because he couldn’t, the film didn’t officially exist.

Wajda then described the typical censorship process, which involved several stages. First of all, the film’s subject had to be approved, and then the script once it was written. In some countries, a so-called ‘editor’ would be present on the set making sure that what was shot matched what was written, which led to an anecdote about a debate in Moscow as to whether shooting scripts counted as works of literature - if they did, they couldn’t be altered by the director. However, this didn’t happen in Poland, to Wajda’s relief.

The finished film was then examined by officials in a closed screening known as a ‘Kolaudacja’, and if there were problems the Head of the Cinematography Committee would request changes. They also decided what kind of distribution the film should get: general or specialised, international or domestic, and in some cases whether to put them forward for major awards such as Oscars. Clearly, this ostensibly routine decision could also be used to punish filmmakers who were perceived to have overstepped the mark.

Surprisingly, Wajda only once had direct dealings with a censor (he recalled the man had a number, not a name) - after the ‘kolaudacja’ screening of Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, 1958) he was ordered to remove the final scene in which Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) meets his death on a rubbish tip. Wajda persuaded him that the scene meant that “whoever raises his hand against People’s Poland ends up on the rubbish heap of history”, and the scene stayed - and audiences interpreted it the way Wajda originally intended.

This led to Wajda’s fundamental point: that because censors were more comfortable with words, this meant that filmmakers relied heavily on images, and the more ambiguous the better. The same was true of Kanal (1957) - everyone watching the film at the time knew that the Soviet Army was on the opposite bank of the Vistula, so merely showing the river was sufficient: the censors couldn’t cut it.

Agnieszka Holland then talked about the experience of working on Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1976), which finally went into production some 13-14 years after the script was written - she was initially asked to read it because she was one of the youngest people in Wajda’s film unit (Zespół Filmowy X), and the minister of culture was worried that it might have dated. Ministers of culture generally got replaced every nine months or so, which was handy as filmmakers could always invoke their predecessor’s approval of their project if necessary.

István Szabó recalled an incident at Cannes in which he replied “yes” to a journalist’s question regarding whether there was censorship in Hungary. A Hungarian friend said that he must have lost his mind - and, sure enough, two weeks later he was ordered to attend the film office. The official had French newspapers on his desk, signalling the subject in advance, but instead of giving Szabó a carpeting, he congratulated him and said that Hungarian filmmakers should be outspoken, so that foreigners will know that they come from a liberal country. This, needless to say, was also part of the censorship process.

Jiří Menzel said that the system in Czechoslovakia was similar to that in Poland and Hungary: no censorship office as such, but people knew what was or wasn’t possible. It was a sequence of tightening-up and loosening of restrictions, seen at its most extreme form in 1968, when censorship was abolished, only to be reinstated with a vengeance after the Soviet tanks invaded that August. His 1969 film Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti) illustrated this process: Bohumil Hrabal couldn’t publish in the 1950s, but was more acceptable in the 1960s, when he wrote stories satirising the stupidity of the Stalinist regime. In 1968, Menzel felt he could get away with adapting them into a film, which was completed before the new Czech government could crack down on it - but in the event they shelved it for twenty years.

In response to a question about whether censorship was necessary for creativity, Agnieszka Holland said that it was a complicated issue. Fundamentally, there is no place where censorship doesn’t exist, though in the West it’s economic rather than political. But she made the point that audiences in the Eastern bloc were generally more sophisticated, because they had to be, and barely-watchable third-generation VHSes of films like Wajda’s Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981) were scrutinised as though they were holy writ. Now, films are available in perfect copies, but they’re moronic romantic comedies - so censorship is still operating. István Szabó discussed the evolution of Miklós Jancsó’s highly stylised film language as a means of getting round the censors, and thinks that this is a point in favour of censorship, in that it encourages artists to be more creative.

This led to the most contentious issue of the evening, when Szabó reminisced about meeting a Cuban doctor-turned-film distributor, who had just seen a Hungarian film that he adored (Szabó didn’t identify it, but his description of the atmosphere of decadence and the lovingly-shot treatment of food suggests it may well have been Zoltán Huszárik’s Szindbad, 1971). However, he thought it was quite unsuitable for screening to Cubans, because there was too much indulgence - not least in the fact that the lead character often left food uneaten. Szabó sympathised with this, but Holland strongly disagreed, sayng that Cubans were hungry because of the regime, not the film, and they should be grown-up enough to be allowed to confront the truth, however brutal. Her audiences are her partners, not her children. (This led to a somewhat heated exchange about the differences - if any - between Nazism and Communism).

After a question about John Osborne’s surprise credit on Colonel Redl (in a nutshell, the rights to A Patriot For Me were cleared after Szabó realised that his script bore a passing resemblance, but Osborne was never directly involved - incidentally, copyright issues can also result in the censorship of films, though this wasn’t spelled out), the discussion turned to whether humour could be a subversive weapon. Szabó expressed his admiration for Menzel’s films, and Menzel said that everything serious must have a trace of humour, but a good comedy should be about serious things (something recognised by Shakespeare and Chaplin). However, if you talk about serious things too seriously, unintentional humour is often the result. Szabó said that a key difference between Hungarians and Czech is that the former take themselves more seriously (Holland claimed that Poles are in between).

Finally, in response to a question about whether censorship would always be an issue. Holland felt that as long as religion and similar ideologies existed, censorship would prevail. The Middle Ages were less bothered about it, because they didn’t know they were being lied to. In Communist Poland, they did, and resented it, so the tension was enormous. But after 1989 Holland understood that humanity couldn’t handle freedom either - they needed the illusion of some kind of order. And for that reason, censorship of some kind will always continue.

And on this rather pessimistic (albeit justified) note, that was that. My congratulations to the Barbican, the Czech Centre, the Hungarian Cultural Centre and the Polish Cultural Institute for pulling it all together (not least in seamlessly resolving the last-minute changes) - and Peter Hames and Menzel’s interpreter did their jobs to near-invisible perfection. It was well worth the trip.

In late April, the Barbican Arts Centre in London is hosting a week-long season, Censorship as a Creative Force, in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute, the Czech Centre and the Hungarian Cultural Centre.

I’ve already booked tickets for the two highlights - a panel discussion on April 25 with the extraordinarily impressive line-up of Andrzej Wajda, István Szabó and Jiří Menzel, and Menzel pops up again on April 27 to introduce a preview of his new(ish) film I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2006). The latter has been out on DVD in the Czech Republic for some time, but it definitely doesn’t have English subtitles.

Other screenings include Wajda’s Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1976) on April 26, Szabó’s Taking Sides (Szembesites, 2001) and Miklós Jancsó’s The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965) on April 28 (presumably separately) and Zdeněk Sirový’s Funeral Rites (Smuteční slavnost, 1967) on April 30. There also seems to be an extended run (30 March to 30 April) of Menzel’s long-banned 1969 film Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti, 1969).

And I’ve been meaning to do a proper Menzel DVD survey ever since uploading this sketchy overview a few months ago, so I’ll try to schedule that for this time next month.

While researching something else (as is always the way), I stumbled upon former Guardian critic Derek Malcolm’s A Century of Films - a survey of his personal Top 100, with a robust defence of each film’s inclusion.

And on glancing down the list again for the first time since 2001, I notice that nine of his choices came from central and eastern Europe (or, in the case of Blanche, from a Polish filmmaker adapting a Polish play). This is perhaps unsurprising for a critic who came of age in the 1960s when Jancsó, Tarkovsky and the Czech New Wave dominated cinematic proceedings, but it’s gratifying nonetheless.

So here’s a direct link to his individual reviews:

• Andrei Rublev (Андрей Рублёв, d. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966, USSR)
• Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, d. Andrzej Wajda, 1958, Poland)
• Blanche (d. Walerian Borowczyk, 1970, France)
• Closely Observed Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, d. Jiri Menzel, 1966, Czechoslovakia)
• Love (Szerelem, d. Károly Makk, 1971, Hungary)
• The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, d. Miklós Jancsó, 1965, Hungary)
• A Short Film About Killing (Krótki film o zabijaniu, d. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1987, Poland)
• Strike (Стачка, d. Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, USSR)
• W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (W.R. - Misterije organizma, d. Dušan Makavejev, 1970, Yugoslavia)

Vesničko má středisková
1985, colour, 100 mins

• Director: Jiří Menzel
• Producer: Jan Šuster
• Screenplay: Zdeněk Svěrák
• Photography: Jaromír Šofr
• Editor: Jiří Brožek
• Design: Zbynek Hloch
• Music: Jiří Šust
• Cast: János Bán (Otík); Marian Labuda (Pávek); Rudolf Hrušínský (Dr. Skružný); Petr Čepek (Turek); Libuše Šafránková (Jana); Jan Hartl (Kašpar); Miloslav Štibich (Kalina); Oldřich Vlach (Kunc); Stanislav Aubrecht (Járda); Zdeněk Svěrák (Evžen Ryba, the painter); Marie Šebestová (Věra Kousalová, the teacher); Július Satinský (Pilot Štefan); Josef Somr (Kovodřeva, the editor); František Vláčil (Adolf Ticháček); Milena Dvorská (Pávková); Milada Ježková (Hrabětová); Ladislav Županič (Rumlena); Jitka Asterová (Rumlenová); Jiří Lír (Rambousek, the landlord); Blanka Lormanová (Půlpánová); Rudolf Hrušínský Jr. (Drápalík); Evžen Jegorov (Brož, the sexton); Jiří Schmitzer (okrskář Tlamicha); Rudolf Hrušínský IV (Kalina ml.)Věra Vlková (nanny Pávková); Anna Vaňková (Kalinová); Petr Brukner (co-worker Duda); Míla Myslíková (Fialková); Jan Hraběta (combine harvester operator Žežulka); Jana “Paprika” Hanáková (saleswoman Echtnerová); Milan Šteindler (závozník Šesták); Vladimír Hrabánek (caretaker Pavlíček); Zuzana Burianová (Bohunka); Klára Pollertová (Majka Pávková); Vida Skalská (cook); Jan Kašpar (Ferda); Vlasta Jelínková (Ticháčková); D.Hajná (Hrušková); A.Fišerová.
• Crew: Eva Horázná (assistant editor); Antonín Vaněk (boom operator); Jiří Kučera (stills photographer); Emil Sirotek, Gabriela Kerekešová (assistant producers); Pavel Nový, Jan Peterka (production supervisors); Antonín Mařík (camera assistant); Karel Hejsek (assistant cameraman); Hana Suchá (script supervisor); Petr Slabý, Jan Hraběta, Věra Pištěková (assistant directors); Josef Hrabušický (assistant architect); Bedřich Černák, Rudolf Beneš, Jaroslav Lehman, Stanislav Rovný (sets); Běla Suchá (costume design); Ludmila Ondráčková, Iva Bártová, Dana Chaloupková, Jana Soudná (costumes), Tomáš Kuchta, Šárka Šimůnková, Simona Marešová (make-up); Filmový symfonický orchestr (music performed by); Dr. Štěpán Koníček (conductor); František Černý, ing. Karel Jaroš (sound recording); Miloslav Vydra (5. dramaturgicko-výrobní skupina vedoucí skupiny); Filmové studio Barrandov (production company)

A gigantic box-office hit on its original release (5 million tickets sold in a country whose population wasn’t much more than double that), Jiří Menzel’s gently subversive comedy My Sweet Little Village is clearly regarded with immense and continuing affection in the Czech Republic, if online popularity polls are anything to go by.

As with many domestic comedy successes, though, it’s not immediately obvious to outsiders just why this particular film should have struck such a chord. Although it achieved some international exposure on the back of its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film (it was the first Czech film to reach the last five in nearly twenty years), its Western critical reception was generally more muted, most writers noting that the film’s blend of gentle humour and broad slapstick might be less appealing outside its native country.

Certainly, on the surface, the film could hardly be more straightforward. Most of it is set in the village of the title (one of the characters is an amateur aviator, giving Menzel a perfect excuse for some lyrical aerial shots), and its economy seems to revolve around a large collective farm. All the characters are instantly recognisable: the bull-headed Turek (Petr Čepek), suspects that his wife Jana (Libuše Šafránková) is having an affair but unable, despite many angry accusations, to spot that the culprit is Václav Kašpar (Jan Hartl); mullet-haired teenager Járda (Stanislav Aubrecht), hopelessly in lust with his sister’s teacher Věra (Marie Šebestová), who prefers the older-man charms of itinerant painter Evžen Ryba (Zdeněk Svěrák); Doctor Skružný (Rudolf Hrušínský), whose medical skill is offset by his appalling driving; above all the self-consciously Laurel-and-Hardy duo of Járda’s father Karel Pávek (Marian Labuda), plump partner of the gangling near-imbecile Otík Rakosnik (János Bán).

There’s a plot of sorts - the Machiavellian machinations of a man much higher up the bureaucratic ladder to take over Otík’s house as a summer retreat, shipping him off to a crummy Prague flat and dead-end office job as a decidedly slanted exchange - and the development of this (and the associated bribery, corruption and, ultimately, victory on the part of the innocents at the bottom) is what gives the film its reputation for subversion. On the face of it, it’s hard to see how a Communist government could disapprove of a film whose ultimate message that life is only truly sweet if people look out for each other - were it not for the fact that it’s precisely those government officials who are depicted as the major obstructions to the achievement of this paradise on earth.

Admittedly, this is hardly biting satire, and doesn’t even have the edge of Menzel’s 1960s work, but under the circumstances this is understandable. Czech cultural policy in the 1970s and 1980s did not, to put it mildly, encourage anything that could be interpreted as a full-on attack on the status quo, and Menzel had already spent six years out of work in the 1970s as “punishment” for overstepping the line. As a result, My Sweet Little Village is a classic example of what Miloš Forman called “writing between the lines”, if only to allow Menzel to continue his career.

However, the film’s real strengths require no such historical context. While its numerous wry observations are never quite as quirky as that found in the films Menzel adapted from the work of the novelist Bohumil Hrabal (Closely Watched Trains/Ostře sledované vlaky, 1966; Larks on a String/Skřivánci na niti, 1969; Cutting It Short/Postřižiny, 1980; Snowdrop Festival/Slavnosti sněženek, 1983), there are plenty of delicious moments.

Chief amongst these are those that betray Menzel and writer Zdeněk Svěrák’s entirely genuine love of the countryside and its traditions, something they’d already demonstrated with their earlier collaboration Seclusion Near a Forest/Na samotě u lesa (1976). Dr Skružný’s appalling driving is exacerbated by his tendency to go into Stendhal Syndrome-like raptures when confronted with the beauty of the surrounding environment, while the painter Evžen Ryba (Svěrák himself) refuses to paint anything that doesn’t directly evoke his romanticised view of Czech country life. All this is counterpointed throughout by János Bán’s gentle-giant performance as Otík - a Hungarian actor (recently seen in Lajos Koltai’s Holocaust drama Fateless, 2006), Bán reputedly understood very little Czech, which adds extra weight to his general air of amiable befuddlement.

Typically for a popular Czech comedy, all of this is interspersed with rather earthier humour involving misplaced food (and beer), men distracted by women’s bottoms, cartoonish car accidents, and so on. Much of this could have been transplanted from the slapstick era, and Menzel is himself a fan of silent comedy, having paid direct tribute to it in his 1978 film Those Wonderful Movie Cranks/Báječní muži s klikou, and peppering his other films with obscure references (one of the characters in Cutting It Short keeps comparing his own disasters with Lupino Lane comedies) - but a little of this can generally go a pretty long way.

But, on the whole, it lives up to the promise of its title: it’s a sweet little village and a sweet little film. Expect no more, and you’ll get no less.

DVD Distribution: Centrum českého videa (Czech Republic), PAL, no region code

Picture: For all the film’s stature, this DVD only just passes muster. The source print has seen better days, which quite a few white dust spots on the image (though the timing of a nasty tramline suggests it was present on the original shot in question), and the encoding is somewhat basic, with particularly glaring digital artefacting present at the fog-shrouded start, and regular glitches thereafter, momentary picture freezes being typical - I double-checked on my laptop to make sure it wasn’t my player at fault.

None of which renders the film unwatchable by any means, and most of it is perfectly adequate, but it does seem odd that a Czech label (and one of the majors at that) should do such a sloppy job with such an iconic Czech title. The framing is 4:3, and there’s no indication from the picture compositions that it should be anything else (the Soviet Union and its satellite states carried on using 4:3 long after it went out of fashion in the US).

Sound: Bafflingly, three soundtracks (all Czech) are on offer - Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1, and DTS 5.0. I say “bafflingly” because there’s no particular sign that much has been done to differentiate them - I listened to the DTS track, and it might as well have been mono for 99% of the time: aside from a few brief moments such as the arrival of a plane, my centre speaker seemed to be doing all the work. That said, since the film would have been mono to begin with, this isn’t a problem at all. While I’d guess that the Dolby 2.0 track is closer to the original, I found that the DTS track offered markedly better quality, so that’s what I’d recommend. There were no other issues worth noting - it’s hardly going to give your system a workout, but you wouldn’t expect that from a twenty-year-old Czech film in the first place.

Subtitles: The English subtitles are riddled with typos, and on two occasions the language switches momentarily to Czech (though only for one line apiece, and it’s obvious from the context what’s being said). The translation was also clearly not written by a native English speaker, though it’s more charming than jarring, and chimes surprisingly well with the feel of the film itself. The disc also offers Czech hard-of-hearing subtitles.

Extras: The strongest extras are the least useful for non-Czech speakers, consisting as they do of unsubtitled interviews with director Jiří Menzel, co-star Marian Labuda and writer/supporting actor Zdeněk Svěrák. The original theatrical trailer is also unsubtitled, and in exceptionally poor condition (the menu even apologises for this!), and the filmographies for the director and leading actors are naturally in Czech only. Slightly handier is a stills gallery, which is accompanied by Jiří Šust’s evocative music from the film, though purists might be annoyed at the way the images have been presented as though they’re projected onto a screen in the village cinema, with the back of Otík’s head protruding well into the frame.

Links

• České filmové nebe (in Czech)
• Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze (in Czech)
• Internet Movie Database
• Reviews: Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times); Vincent Canby (New York Times, 9 January 1987); Paul Attanasio (Washington Post)
• Interview with Jiří Menzel by James M. Markham (New York Times, 11 January 1987)
• DVD available from: CDMusic.cz; DVD Video Shop (dvdr.cz); FilmCity; Vltava.cz

Going from private e-mail, last week’s Kieślowski DVD survey seemed to have gone down pretty well - so here’s a similar overview of Jiří Menzel’s output. Unlike the situation with Kieślowski, if you aren’t familiar with the Czech DVD market you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s next to nothing available besides the inevitable Closely Observed/Watched Trains, but in fact most of his major films are out in English-subtitled editions that are at least watchable - even if some leave a bit to be desired on the transfer and presentation front.

So, without further ado:

1965 - The Death of Mr Baltasar (Smrt pana Baltazara, IMDB)

• Included in Facets’ Pearls of the Deep, Region 0 NTSC
• Included in Bontonfilm’s Perličky na dně, Region 0 PAL

  (The Facets DVD is an artefact-ridden disaster with poorly-synchronised and non-removable subtitles. Sadly, though superior in all other respects, the Bontonfilm edition only has Czech hard-of-hearing subtitles. DVD Freak compares the two.)

1966 - Closely Observed/Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky, 89 mins, IMDB)

• Criterion, Region 0 NTSC (Reviews: Digitally Obsessed, DVD Movie Central, DVD Savant, DVD Talk
• Arrow, Region 0 PAL (Review: DVD Times)
• Shock, Region 4 PAL (Review: Michael D’s

1968 - Capricious Summer (Rozmarné léto, 74 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (English subtitles)
• Facets, Region 0 NTSC (review: DVD Savant)

1968 - Crime in the Music Hall (Zločin v šantánu, 83 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (Czech HOH subtitles only)

1969 - Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti, 91 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (English subtitles)

1976 - Seclusion Near A Forest (Na samotě u lesa, 95 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (English subtitles)

1978 - Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (Báječní muži s klikou, 85 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (Czech HOH subtitles only)

1980 - Cutting It Short (Postřižiny, 93 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (English subtitles)

1983 - Snowdrop Festival (Slavnosti sněženek, 83 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (English subtitles)

1985 - My Sweet Little Village (Vesničko má středisková, 100 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (English subtitles)

1989 - The Last of the Good Old Days (Konec starých časů, 93 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (Czech HOH subtitles only)

2002 - One Moment (IMDB)

• Included in Ten Minutes Older: The Cello, Blue Dolphin, Region 0 PAL (review: DVD Times

2006 - I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 120 mins, IMDB)

• Centrum českého videa, Region 0 PAL (Czech HOH subtitles only)

As ever, additions and corrections are most appreciated.