Czechoslovakia

views updated

Czechoslovakia

BEGINNINGS
THE SOUND FILM
TOWARD THE PRAGUE SPRING
NORMALIZATION AND AFTER
FURTHER READING

Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918 following the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. The Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia had been ruled from Vienna while Slovakia had formed part of Hungary. Despite close linguistic ties, this was the first time that the two nations had been linked for over a thousand years. Following the Munich conference of 1938, when the country was forced to cede its German-speaking areas to Germany, Hitler encouraged the secession of Slovakia, and Bohemia and Moravia were established as a Nazi protectorate following the German invasion of March 1939.

The country was reunited in 1945, and became part of the Eastern bloc after the Communist coup of 1948. In the 1960s, there was an attempt to move beyond the dogmatic Stalinism of the 1950s, culminating in the Prague Spring of 1968. This attempt to combine socialism and democracy was perceived as a threat to Soviet hegemony and resulted in the invasion of fellow Warsaw Pact countries in August of that year. This led to a repressive regime that was to last until the fall of Communism during the so-called "Velvet Revolution" of November 1989. The country split into the Czech and Slovak republics in 1993 after decisions taken within the political leaderships. It did not reflect popular opinion, which favored maintaining the union.

Despite these political turmoils, the Czech cinema became an established part of the European mainstream in the 1920s and 1930s and has maintained a significant level of feature production throughout its subsequent development. Its history pre-dates the formation of the independent state of Czechoslovakia and there were also important precursors to the cinema. J. E. Purkyn? (1787–1869) wrote on persistence of vision as early as 1818 and, together with Ferdinand Durst, created the Kinesiscope in 1850. The first film producer in Austria-Hungary was the Czech photographer Jan K?íženecký (1868–1921), who made his first films in 1898. His film Smích a pl? (Laughter and Tears, 1898), with the actor Josef Šváb-Malostranský miming the two emotions, could almost summarize international perceptions of the defining characteristics of Czech cinema (based on such films as the 1966 Ost?e sledované vlaky [Closely Watched Trains]).

BEGINNINGS

A permanent film theater was opened in Prague in 1907 by the conjuror Ponrepo and regular film production began in 1910. By the beginning of World War I, over a third of the cinemas in Austria-Hungary were based in the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia. Lucernafilm was established in Prague in 1915 by Václav Havel, grandfather of the future president Václav Havel; while other companies, including Weteb, Excelsior, Praga, and Poja, followed at the end of the war. Czech cinema's first international success was Karel Degl's Stavitel chrámu (The Builder of the Cathedral, 1919) while the first Slovak feature, Jaroslav Siakel's Jánošík, was made in grandfather of the future president Va 1921 with US financing.

The first important studio was founded by the American and Biografia company (the A-B Company) in 1921, and the actor-director Karel Lama? established the Kavalírka studios in 1926, where some of the most important films were made before 1929, when they were destroyed by fire. Despite strong competition from the German and US cinemas, feature production in the silent period averaged over twenty-six (Czech) features and was marked by both artistic and commercial success. Lama? directed a successful adaptation of Jaroslav Hašek's comic anti-war novel Dobrý voják Švejk (The Good Soldier Švejk) in 1926, which was followed by three silent sequels: Švejk na front? (Švejk at the Front, 1926), directed by Lama?, na front? (Švejk v ruském zajetí (Švejk in Russian Captivity, 1926), directed by Svatopluk Innemann; and S (Švejk v civilu (Švejk in Civilian Life, 1927), directed by Gustav Machatý. In partnership with his then-wife Anny Ondra (1902–1987), who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's The Manxman and Blackmail (both 1929), Lama? formed a successful team that achieved international success in the French, Austrian, and German cinema, although they transferred their production base to Berlin in 1930.

THE SOUND FILM

Gustav Machatý (1901–1963) was the most ambitious "art" director of the period, and attracted attention with his Expressionist-influenced adaptation of Tolstoy's Kreutzerova sonáta (The Kreutzer Sonata, 1926). He enjoyed a big success with Erotikon (1929), which was consolidated by his first two sound films, Ze soboty na ned?li (From Saturday to Sunday, 1931) and, especially, Extase (Ecstasy, 1932), winner of the Best Direction Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1934, which introduced Hedy Kiesler (Lamarr) (1913–2000) to world audiences and was sold to over twenty-six countries. The success of Ecstasy was followed by an MGM contract and film work in Italy and Austria. However, he was able to complete only one Hollywood A-feature (Jealousy, 1945), which was scripted by Dalton Trumbo, and was primarily employed on second unit work. The poetic lyricism of Machatý's style did much to establish the tradition of lyrical cinematography that continued through to the post–World War II period. One of his key collaborators was the photographer and avant-garde director Alexandr Hackenschmied (Alexander Hammid) (1907–2004), who directed the experimental Bezu?elná procházka (Aimless Walk, 1930), and later, in the United States, made documentaries, and co-directed films with Herbert Kline and Maya Deren.

The introduction of sound raised the question of the viability of Czech language production for a population of only 15 million. But while only eight features were produced in 1930, the average had risen to over forty by the end of the decade. The Barrandov film studios were built in 1932–1933 with the intention of attracting international production (which finally happened in the 1990s), but developed in the 1930s mainly as a center for national production, following growth in the domestic audience.

Martin (Mac) Fri?, whose career extended from the 1920s to the 1960s, made some of his most important films in the 1930s, including work with such leading comic actors as Vlasta Burian (1891–1962), Hugo Haas (1901–1968), and Old?ich Nový. Perhaps most notable was his collaboration with the theatrical team of Ji?íVoskovec and Jan Werich (1905–1980), whose Osvobozené divadlo (The Liberated Theatre) was a cultural phenomenon. Their musical satires and parodies, described by the eminent linguist Roman Jakobson as "pure humour and semantic clowning," took a political turn in the face of economic depression and the rise of Nazism. After appearing in Paramount's all-star revue Paramount on Parade (1930), they made four feature films, including two by Fri?—Hej-Rup! (Heave Ho!, 1934) and Sv?t pat?ínám (The World Belongs to Us, 1937). The former deals with the destruction of a corrupt capitalist at the hands of a workers collective while in the latter, Voskovec and Werich (V+W) defeat a Hitler-like demagogue and his big-business supporters with the help of the workers.

Both The World Belongs to Us and the film version of Karel ?apek's anti-Fascist play Bílá nemoc (The White Sickness, 1937), directed by Haas, were the subject of Nazi protests and were suppressed following the German invasion of March 1939. Voskovec and Werich spent the war years in the United States, where Voskovec eventually settled and, as George Voskovec, became a successful Broadway actor as well as appearing in a number of Hollywood films. Hugo Haas also left for Hollywood, where he played cameo roles and directed a sequence of B features, three of them based on Czech sources.

Other Czech directors to attract attention during the 1930s included Josef Rovenský (1894–1937) (?eka [The River, 1933]) and Otakar Vávra, who moved from experimental shorts to features in 1937. His 1938 film Cech panen kutnohorských (The Guild of Kutna Hora Maidens) won an award at Venice but was banned during the Occupation. Slovak feature film production was not to develop further until after the war, but Karel Plicka's Zem spieva (The Earth Sings, 1933), a feature-length record of Slovak folk culture edited by Alexandr Hackenschmied, attracted international attention when it was screened at Venice in 1934.

Following the Western allies' capitulation to Hitler at the Munich conference over the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia's German-speaking areas), the Germans invaded in March 1939 and the Czech lands became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Under "clerico-Fascist" leadership, Slovakia declared independence immediately. The Germans took a controlling stake in the Barrandov studios and issued a list of prohibited subjects, eventually extending the studios as an alternative center for German production. Although Czech production declined from forty features in 1938 to nine in 1944, a number of leading directors, including Vávra and Martin Fric, continued to make films.

The Czech star Lída Baarová, who had been signed up by the German film studio Ufa (Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft) in 1934 and had a well-known affair with Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, saw all of her films banned in Germany due to Hitler's anger at the scandal, but continued to work in Czech films. She finally returned to Czechoslovakia in 1938, making some of her best films in the late 1930s, including four for Vávra, who directed her in Panenství (Virginity, 1937) and Dívka v modrém (The Girl in Blue, 1939). The Nazis expelled her from the Czech studios in 1941 and she continued her career in Italy. A group including Vávra planned the nationalization of the film industry after the war, a goal achieved in 1945, along with the establishment of the Koliba studios in Bratislava (Slovakia), and the foundation of the Prague Film School (FAMU) in 1946. Czech films again attracted international attention when Karel Steklý's (1903–1987) Siréna (The Strike, 1947) and Ji?íTrnka's feature-length puppet film Špalí?ek (The Czech Year, 1947) won awards at Venice.

Following the Communist takeover in 1948, there was a fairly swift adherence to the moribund formulae of Stalinist cinema, particularly in the period 1951–1955, combined with another decline in production. However, as the novelist Josef Škvorecký (b. 1924) once put it, artistic common sense always gnawed at the formulae of Socialist Realism, and filmmakers sought ways of expanding beyond official limitations. It was at this time that the Czech cinema achieved international reputation in the field of animation. Ji?íTrnka, Karel Zeman (1910–1989), Hermina Týrlová, B?etislav Pojar, Ji?í Brde?ka, and many others led the way, with features from Trnka (Staré pov?sti ?eské [Old Czech Legends, 1953], Sen noci svatoja Brde?nske [A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1959]) and from Zeman (Cesta do prav?ku / A Journey to Primeval Times, 1955, Vynález zkázy /, An Invention for Destruction, 1958), who eventually made nine feature animation films. Many early films with an explicit Left orientation were clearly honest and committed, particularly before 1948. The Strike, a collective statement by the pre-war Left avant-garde, was one example and Vávra's N?má barikáda (Silent Barricade, 1949) about the Prague uprising, although simplified, was another. Vstanou novíbojovníci (New Heroes Will Arise, 1950), by Ji?íWeiss, gave a committed account of the early years of the labor movement.

Weiss had started to make documentaries before the war and had spent the war years in Britain where, besides working with the British documentary school, he made his first fiction films. On his return, he made an impressive film about the Munich crisis, Uloupená hranice (The Stolen Frontier, 1947) and won international awards with Vl?íjáma (The Wolf Trap, 1957) and Romeo, Julie a tma (Romeo, Juliet, and Darkness, 1960), notable for their psychological depth and dramatic visual style. Another director who began in pre-war documentary was Elmar Klos (1910–1993), who began a long-term collaboration with the Slovak Ján Kadár in 1952. A sequence of challenging films culminated in the first Czech (and Slovak) Oscar^® -winner, Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street, 1965). After the Soviet invasion of 1968, Kadár emigrated to the United States, where his films included an adaptation of Bernard Malamud's The Angel Levine (1970) and the award-winning Canadian film Lies My Father Told Me (1975). Weiss also emigrated to the United States but made no films until the German-produced Martha und Ich (Martha and I, 1990).

TOWARD THE PRAGUE SPRING

In the late 1950s, a number of new feature directors made their debuts, including František Vlá?il, and early FAMU graduates such as Vojt?ch Jasný, Karel Kachy?a and the Slovak, Štefan Uher. In a world in which criticism of Stalinism was forbidden, they found their inspiration in the visual traditions of Czech lyricism and in broad humanist subject matter. Although little known to international audiences, they were to make some of the most significant films of the 1960s. In the 1990s, Czech critics voted Vlá?il's historical epic Marketa Lazarova (1967) the best Czech film ever made and Jasný'?s dob?i rodáci (All My Good Countrymen, 1968), which dealt with the collectivization of agriculture, was to prove one of the most politically controversial films of the Prague Spring. In 1990, Kachy?a's Ucho (The Ear, 1970) still impressed at the Cannes Film Festival when it premiered after a twenty-year ban.

Slovak cinema, which enjoyed a separate—if interactive—existence after 1945, saw the development of a number of significant talents after the production of Palo Bielik's film Vl?ie diery (Wolves' Lairs, 1948), about the Slovak National Uprising of 1944. The most notable were probably Peter Solan (b. 1929) and Stanislav Barabáš. Uher, who began his career in 1961, paved the way for the innovative developments of the 1960s with his Slnko v sieti (Sunshine in a Net, (1962), which combined lyricism with significant narrative innovation.

It was against the lyrical humanist background of the late 1950s–early 1960s that the Czech New Wave made its debut in 1963 with Miloš Forman's ?erný Petr (Blackpetter), V?ra Chytilová's O n??em jiném (Something Different), and Jaromil Jireš's K?ik (The Cry). All three films addressed the problems of everyday life, with cinéma-vérité a key influence on Forman and Chytilová. While the emphasis on the look of everyday life heralded movement in a new direction, the New Wave rapidly escaped any particular stylistic form in favor of a diversity of output that also comprised lyricism, critical realism, and the avant-garde. Other directors who emerged in the mid- to late-1960s have been seen as "New Wave," including Jan N?mec (Démanty noci [Diamonds of the Night, 1964], O slavnosti a hostech [Report on the Party and the Guests, 1966]); Pavel Jurá?ek and Jan Schmidt (b. 1934) (Postava k podpírání [Josef Kilián, 1963]); Evald Schorm (Ka?dý den odvahu [Everyday Courage, 1964], Návrat ztraceného syna [Return of the Prodigal Son

MILOŠ FORMAN
b. ? áslav, Czechoslovakia, 2 February 1932

Miloš Forman is one of the major directors of the Czech New Wave. He studied screenwriting at the Prague Film School (FAMU), and made his debut as writer/director with Konkurs (Talent Competition) and ?erný Petr (Black Peter) in 1963. In collaboration with his colleagues Ivan Passer and Jaroslav Papoušek, who subsequently became directors themselves, he developed a style of semi-improvised film making that used non-professional actors and focused on everyday life. This apparently accidental discovery of reality—a world of dance halls, canteens, and run-down flats—was, he argued, a reaction against the false and idealized images promoted by the official cinema.

His next two films, Lásky jedné plavovlásky (Loves of a Blonde, 1965) and Ho?í, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball, 1967), were both Oscar^® -nominated. The Firemen's Ball, the comic story of how a local fire brigade fails in its attempts to organize both a raffle and a beauty competition, was interpreted, even at script stage, as a satire on the Communist Party. In 1973, following the Soviet invasion of 1968, it was listed as one of the four Czech films to be banned "forever."

It was his last Czech film, and Forman was working on the script of his first American film in Paris in 1968 when the Soviet invasion took place. He remained abroad and became a US citizen in 1977. Taking Off (1971) continued the improvised, group-centered approach of his Czech films but, despite festival success, did not succeed with American audiences. He subsequently chose to work with preexisting themes from his adopted culture and not to write his own original screenplays.

His subsequent American films—frequently compared adversely with his Czech ones, although they won him two Best Director Oscars^®—reveal, in fact, a decidedly off-center portrait of American life. They include adaptations of Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975); E. L. Doctorow (Ragtime, 1981); the James Rado–Gerome Ragni–Galt McDermott musical Hair (1979); and, more recently, collaborations with screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski in their continuing gallery of American eccentrics (The People vs. Larry Flynt, 1996; Man on the Moon, 1999). Forman based himself in New York rather than Hollywood and his subjects always have had an intrinsic interest and have been treated in sophisticated ways. His two "European" projects, the multiple Academy Award^® -winner Amadeus (1984), from the play by Peter Schaffer, which was made in Prague, and Valmont (1989), an adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, made in France, were also his most elaborate. In both, he treated his heroes—Mozart and his wife and the sexual predators of Valmont—pretty much like the young innocents of his early Czech films.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

Black Peter (1963), Loves of a Blonde (1965), The Firemen's Ball (1967), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984), Valmont (1989)

NORMALIZATION AND AFTER

The period between 1970 and 1989, that of so-called "normalization," was, despite substantial production, a relative lowpoint in the history of Czech and Slovak film, as it was in cultural life in general. Following the invasion, it has been estimated that over 170,000 people left the country and that 70,000 were expelled from the Communist Party. The heads of the Barrandov and Koliba studios were sacked and the films of the "wave" were condemned as expressions of petty bourgeois egoism.

The new films of the 1970s were almost devoid of substantive content. Simplified moral tales and teenage love stories were the order of the day. Nonetheless, directors such as Kachy?a, Jireš, Vlá?il, and Uher walked the tightrope with a certain measure of success. Menzel, who returned to filmmaking in 1975, and Chytilová, who returned in 1976, kept alive some of the qualities of the New Wave—Menzel with his adaptations from Hrabal, which included Post?ižiny (Cutting it Short, 1980), and Chytilová with a number of critically abrasive films such as Hra o jablko (The Apple Game, 1976) and Panelstory (Prefab Story, 1979). Menzel even gained an Oscar^® nomination for Vesni?ko má st?edisková (My Sweet Little Village, 1985). But the regime was not interested in promoting its more interesting projects, preferring to champion propagandistic epics to an uninterested world film community.

It was against this background that the striking animated films of the surrealist Jan Švankmajer made their appearance (although he had been making films since the early 1960s). Largely suppressed by the authorities, his work finally emerged at the Annecy Animation Festival in 1983 and he was subsequently to make his first feature, N?co z Alenky (Alice, 1987), as a Swiss-British-German co-production. By the end of the 1980s, it was often alleged that the problems for cinema were less those of censorship than an absence of good scripts, the talent needed for their creation having been lost through years of both enforced and semi-voluntary compromise. Nonetheless, prior to the Velvet Revolution of November 1989 and the fall of Communism, it had been decided to release the banned films (although only a few, including The Shop on Main Street and The Firemen's Ball, had appeared before November) and more challenging work had began to appear from directors such as Zden?k Tyc (b. 1956) (Vojt?ch, ?e?ený sirotek [Vojt?ch, Called Orphan, 1989]) and Irena Pavla (b. 1960) (?as sluh? [The Time of the Servants, 1989]).

The fall of Communism did not lead to a sudden cinematic rebirth. The nationalized industry was dismantled in 1993 (although the process had begun earlier) and the Barrandov studios have been largely given over to American and other foreign producers, with domestic producers excluded by cost. Government subsidy was virtually removed (unlike the subsidies in Poland and Hungary) and, until 2004, the burden of production fell mainly upon the public service ?eská televize (Czech Television), with a consequent emphasis on low budget production. The New Wave did not bounce back, although N?mec returned from exile and has made some interesting low budget films (notably No?níhovory s matkou [Late Night Talks with Mother, 2001]) and Drahomíra Vihanová made her second feature film, Pevnost (The Fortress, 1994), after a twenty-year hiatus. Menzel withdrew to theater for ten years rather than face the problems of production in an underfunded industry.

But, despite everything, the Czech industry survived and, in the mid- to late-1990s, a number of younger directors again attracted international attention. They included Jan Sv?rák, who won an Oscar^® with his Kolya (Kolja, 1996), Petr Zelenka (Knoflíká?i [Buttoners, 1997]), Saša Gedeon (Návrat idiota [Return of the Idiot, 1999]), David Ond?í?ek (Samotá?i [Loners, 2000]), and Alice Nellis (Ene bene [Eeny meeny, 2000]). Jan H?ebejk's Musíme si pomáhat (Divided We Fall, 2000) and Ond?ej Trojan' Želary (2004) were also Oscar^® -nominated, and Trojan's ?r Švankmajer produced a sequence of four features, including Lekce Faust (Faust, 1994) and Otesánek (Little Otik, 2001). Kolya's bittersweet story of an unemployed musician and his relationship with a 5-year-old Russian enjoyed an international box office success and many of the films, echoing the "new wave," focussed on the "small" events of everyday life. Švankmajer pursued his course of "militant surrealism" while Zelenka exhibited an original line in black humor. Both Divided We Fall and Želary were set during World War II. H?ebejk's film told the ironic story of a Czech man who hides a Jewish refugee during the war. He arranges for the Jewish man to make his wife pregnant in order to avoid sharing his flat with a Nazi bureaucrat. The existence of a strong film culture and tradition seemed to have transcended the government's post-Communist view of film culture-as-commodity.

The breakup of Czechoslovakia into the Czech and Slovak republics in 1992–1993 has favored Slovakia somewhat less. Compared with Czech production of fifteen to twenty films a year (thirty-two in 1990), Slovak production dropped to an average of two films a year in the late 1990s (compared with twelve in 1990). A number of directors made their debuts, but only one, Martin Šulík, was able to establish a body of work, with a sequence of five films including Záhrada (The Garden, 1995) and Krajinka (Landscape, 2000). Like those of other Slovak directors, they showed a folk inspiration, but their mood is reflective and exhibits a subdued melancholy. He is arguably the sole "auteur" to have established himself in the Czech and Slovak cinemas since 1989.

SEE ALSO National Cinema