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Czech Republic The Good Soldier Schweik The good soldier Schweik survives the First World War through cleverness and naiveté – the Czechs like to postulate their national character in this unheroic pose with their own very special humour. |
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In 1966 Jiří Menzel made the film "Closely Watched Trains" after the novella by Bohumil Hrabal. It shows the everyday life of ordinary people during the occupation, people who all the same are capable of heroic deeds. Miloš, the hero – actually the anti-hero – of the story, works at a remote country railway station. As a youth on the threshold to adulthood, he is troubled about his hapless sex life. The film takes a dramatic political turn when Miloš commits an act of sabotage and blows up the German ammunition train, killing himself at the same time. The poster shows Miloš gaping in astonishment, his transfigured face half bathed in light. The light comes from the sketchily drawn figure of a woman. One is reminded of the boy's dreams that run throughout the film and are happily realized before he dies. |
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Long after the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989, the film "Divided We Fall" by Jan Hřebejk deals with the time of the protectorate. The black comedy is about the married couple Josef and Maria Čížek. Although their flat is very small, they agree to hide a young Jewish man, David Wiener. They would like to be rid of their neighbour, the Sudeten-German and collaborator Horst Prohaska, but they would also have to do without the food he supplies them with. Each of the protagonists is dependent on the others. This experience all comes together in the final scene in which Josef takes the baby engendered by Maria and David for a walk and the dead Jewish family members of David Wiener wave to their grandchild, which Horst Prohaska has helped to give birth to. This is also the motif on the poster. |
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