Czechoslovakia Archives » Page 4 of 7

7.4

Men About Town

Three blue collar workers have a night out in big city Prague.

NR

7.4

1969 Comedy 99 min Play

7.2

Larks on a String

Set in the late 1940s, the film concerns the treatment of suspect "bourgeois elements", a professor, a saxophonist, and a milkman, who are put to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation.

NR

7.2

1969 Drama 94 min Play

7.2

Birds, Orphans and Fools

In the aftermath of war, two men and a woman begin acting more like children than adults, leading to tragedy.

NR

7.2

1969 Comedy 78 min Play

7.7

The Cremator

Mr. Kopfrkingl enjoys his job at a crematorium in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. He likes reading the Tibetan book of the dead, and espouses the view that cremation relieves earthly suffering.

NR

7.7

1969 Comedy 100 min Play

4.3

Elective Affinities

Documentary showing the Czechoslovakian political landscape in March 1968, when president Antonin Novotny, a hardline Stalinist, stepped down and moderate communist Ludvik Svoboda was elected. Five months later, in August 68, the Prague Spring would end with the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact.

NR

4.3

1968 Documentary 85 min Play

6.7

The Garden

Frank visits his friend Josef, who introduces him to his pedigree rabbits and his wife Mary. Frank is more interested in the slightly unsettling fact that Josef and Mary's garden fence is entirely made up of living people holding hands. Finally, Frank asks Josef how he manages to keep the fence together..

NR

6.7

1968 Comedy 17 min Play

7.5

The Valley of the Bees

Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Armin now not only assumes control of his fathers properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.

NR

7.5

1968 Drama 97 min Play

7.4

The Flat

A nondescript man is trapped in a sinister flat, where nothing seems to obey the laws of nature.

NR

7.4

1968 Animation 13 min Play

6.9

Capricious Summer

Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only ...

NR

6.9

1968 Comedy 74 min Play

5.4

Riders in the Sky

This movie is realistic and even crude, and maybe that is the reason, why it's so impressive. Instead of romantic (nearly melodramatic) scenes, incorporated to the Sverak's "Tmavomodry svet" (Dark Blue World) it offers stories from ordinary, cruel life of Czech pilots in Great Britain. And it's even more deeper. The final scene with two soldiers - Czech and German, which are not enemies more, when the both men are facing their destiny in despair... Some of the most haunting moments includes ...

NR

5.4

1968 Drama 91 min Play

6.8

The Man Who Lies

A man may or may not have betrayed a resistance fighter during World War II. He has supposedly been shot down by the Nazis and wanders into town. Mourning the death of an unseen comrade, he is taken in by the family of the dead rebel. He engages in a superfluous affair and witnesses the lesbian relationship between the man's sister and a female servant. When passions subside, the family has doubts about the reliability of the man's story.

NR

6.8

1968 Drama 95 min Play

7.5

The Terribly Sad Princess

Musical fairy tale tells the story of prince and princesses from neighbouring friendly countries who have to marry each other, as decided by their wise fathers with their advisors. However, the royal children want to decide their fate themselves. They meet in the royal garden, where princess pretends to be a maid and prince to be a herdsman. Prince under cover is imprisoned and helps princess with rebellion. She becomes sad all the time, because she does not want to marry anyone. Luckily, ...

NR

7.5

1968 Comedy 73 min Play

6

Hotel for Strangers

A gifted poet checks into a Gothic hotel in hopes of meeting the woman with whom he has long been enamored. He is surrounded by a variety of offbeat characters like the hefty homosexual cook, shadowy clerks, snooty waiters, and valets prone to violence. He finally meets the woman of his dreams only to lose her and ultimately meet with tragedy.

NR

6

1967 Comedy 103 min Play

5.6

Romance for Bugle

A lyrical story about first love, death and disappointment, based on a poem of the same title.

NR

5.6

1967 Drama 86 min Play

6.7

Late August at the Hotel Ozone

A troupe of young women on post-apocalyptic earth are lead around by a mistress born before the war, eventually stumbling into the company of a lonely old man.

NR

6.7

1967 Science Fiction 77 min Play

5.6

Martyrs of Love

This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most perfect embodiment of Nemec’s vision of a film world independent of reality. Mounting a defense of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of Love cemented Nemec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to ...

NR

5.6

1967 Comedy 71 min Play

7.5

Happy End

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

NR

7.5

1967 Comedy 71 min Play

7.9

Marketa Lazarová

Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.

NR

7.9

1967 Drama 166 min Play

7.1

The Firemen’s Ball

The firemen of a provincial Czechoslovakian town throw a ball in honor of the old chief's retirement. There will be music and dancing, a beauty pageant and a raffle. The whole town will be in attendance. However, the proceedings are dogged by difficulty at every step. Workplace injuries, stolen prizes, a shortage of pretty girls... and fire.

NR

7.1

1967 Comedy 73 min Play

7

A Report on the Party and the Guests

In Jan Němec’s surreal fable, a picnic is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up. This allegory about oppression and conformity was banned in its home country but became an international success after it premiered at the New York Film Festival.

NR

7

1966 Comedy 70 min Play

6.4

Punch and Judy

Two puppets, Punch and Judy, do battle to the death over the custody of a live guinea pig.

NR

6.4

1966 Animation 10 min Play

7.3

Carriage to Vienna

A WW2 story of a young Austrian soldier running from the Russian army and a woman whom he forces to come along in order to save his wounded mate.

NR

7.3

1966 Drama 76 min Play

5.1

The Hobbit

The very first movie adaptation of J.R.R Tolkein's The Hobbit. Made in just 30 days so that the producer could keep hold of the rights to Tolkien's books.

NR

5.1

1966 Adventure 12 min Play

6

Pearls of the Deep

A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression and the versatility of the movement’s directors. Based on stories by the legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal, the shorts range from the surreally chilling to the caustically observant to the casually romantic, but all have a cutting, wily view of the world.

NR

6

1966 Comedy 105 min Play