Jiří Menzel & František Vláčil

 Jiří Menzel & František Vláčil

The Czech Golden Age
1)The Czech Golden Age - In 1993, Czechoslovakia became two countries: the Czech Republic and
    Slovakia.
2)The Czech Golden Age (sometimes referred to as the Czech New Wave) lasted roughly between 1961
    and 1969.
3)During this time, the filmmakers working in Czech cinema enjoyed a measure of intellectual and
    creative freedom.
4)The Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia during the early 1940s, and after WWII the country was
    governed by a communist regime led by a strong Soviet presence.
5)Under both the Nazis and communists, Czech cinema was censored and repressed.

Two certificate institutions were founded in Czechoslovakia.
1)The first was the Czech film school the F.A.M.U. (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing
    Arts in Prague) founded in 1947.
2) The second was the Barrandov Studios in Prague that was founded in 1921.
   a) Major additions were made to the Barrandov Studios during the Nazi occupation.
   b) Most of the significant Czech filmmakers were products of the F.A.M.U.

Mast & Kawin explain that the Czech masterpieces were of four general types of films:

FIRST TYPE
1)First, there were films centered on resistance to the Nazi occupation.
2)In the Czech films of the 1960s, the central figures of resistance are frequently weak, lazy, and comic
   —ordinary people who eventually are forced to take a political stand.
3) Jiří Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains (1966) is a film about a boy, Milos, who takes a job at a railway
    station.
4)Milos takes the job because he aspires to a life of no work, but he soon is thrust into a plot with Czech
    partisans against the Nazis.

Film clip: 

The following clip shows the opening of Closely Watched Trains.
Notice Menzel’s sense of humor against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Closely Watched Trains. Opening scene Click Here

Grandfather got his leg broken and became alcoholic, Hi other grandfather was a hypnotist - funny picture of him looking into the camera with his hands out. His father retired at 48 and was a locomotive engineer. Great clips of him on a locomotive and resting on a couch he said the populace was envious of him since he's young healthy and retired - great black and white stills and can live off his pension for 20-30 years without doing a thing - picture of him looking at his stopwatch looking out at the train and laying back down. His mother or grandmother helping him put on the uniform which is too large for him and saying we will be the envy of the town with a uniformed working man. suit is too large. head to toe shot of him... lovely shot. The slow crowning of the hat - too large and a smile. Grandfather bragged about his pension and was beaten to death - a black mark at the bottom of the screen comes on. His other father the hypnotist was the only one who decided to resist the germans thinking he could stop the tanks with his hypnotism and got run over. He finished his dispatcher training and the town this his goal is to continue the family tradition and do nothing except stand around on the platform with a signal disc while they spend their whole lives working themselves to the bone. 
Whole film Click Here

Janus Film Review about the film Click Here

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Wry and tender, Academy Award™-winning Closely Watched Trains is a masterpiece of human observation and one of the best-loved films of the Czech New Wave.

SECOND TYPE

1) A second genre, the historical costume drama, was less popular in the 1960s but still produced
    significant films.
2)As with other repressed national cinemas, Czech films could avoid delicate political issues by
    avoiding contemporary life altogether.
3) František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová (1967) is a brutal historical film that takes place during the
    Middle Ages (13th century).
4)The film’s plot involves local wars between pagans and Christians and is noted for its hand held
    camera work and brutal violence.

In the following clip, Marketa appears as a holy vision to her father, Lazar, as he prays for his life.  Lazar has been caught scavenging by Mikoláš after his attack on a caravan.

Marketa Lazarová (František Vláčil, 1967):

Brothers were hunting and neighbors helped themselves from their spoils was saved from death by a holy vision. Outside filming like Swedish filmmakers black dogs in the snow. a simpleton with one arm has bells on him. throws a weapon and steals a horse. He killed maybe a man. Another guy is attacking the men sword fight. kind of savage guys. the guy with the sword is killed and another horse is stolen. One of the bad guys killed?? one guy is tied to a carriage - tied him up don't kill him. So hard to understand. Greetings lord lazard  bad horses leg. bright light like bergman. yes, he sees a vision nuns walking up a hill then a girl with a white doe in her breast. Now the nun is holding the bird goes into a bright white church. Now lots of birds fly out of the house.  

Nice YouTube video about the Czech New Wave Click Here

A well written article on Closely Watched Trains

Films from Czechoslovakia were among the hottest and most interesting topics of world cinema in the mid-60s. In 1966, when he made 'Closely Watched Trains', Jirí Menzel was 28 years old and this was his first feature film. He won the Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film, but his film was actually the second Czechoslovak film that enjoyed (two years apart) this precious recognition. From the perspective of more than half a century that has passed since the making of the film, the decision of the Academy jury of that year seems very inspired. 'Closely Watched Trains' is a beautiful and human film, which uses as a pretext a genre of movies deprecated due to propaganda productions in order to tell a simple and emotional story, with credible characters, anti-heroes if you will, or simply ordinary people living in unusual times.

Train stations, and especially the small and lonely ones, were a perfect setting for many memorable films from the American productions to these of the Eastern European cinema. The station in 'Closely Watched Trains' was located in central Europe, in the Czech Republic occupied by the Nazis, in the last year of the Second World War. The stationmaster obeyed the regulations, the railway inspector repeated the slogans of the Nazi occupiers, while ordinary people tried to live their lives. Milos, the main hero of the film (Václav Neckár) is a young man just out of adolescence, who inherits his retired father's job at the train station. His magician grandfather had been crushed by the German tanks entering Prague while trying to stop them by hipnose (the scene was filmed 23 years before the events in Tiananmen Square). Milos' thoughts are more on his own sexual performance in doubt after a failed experience in the company of an attractive ticket controller. The strictly guarded trains filled with German soldiers that continue to pass through the station will at some point bring the roller of history over the characters of the film. Innocence and the threat of death, coming to age and first loves, the desire to live and heroism, sex, absurd and death are combined in the story in a way specific to Czech literature and cinema. The film, like other by Menzel, is an adaptation of a novel by Bohumil Hrabal.

'Closely Watched Trains' was one of the first films of world cinema to approach the theme of World War II in an absurdly humorist register and especially from a human perspective, of those who did not necessarily want to be involved, who did not seek heroism but nor did they belong to the despised category of the traitors. I do not know to what extent today's viewers can appreciate not only the talent of the screenwriter and of the director but also their courage in making such a different and daring film under the conditions of communist ideological control in Cold War Europe. Each of the characters has humanity, color, and a distinct psychological profile. The story is told fluently, and there are many anthology scenes in this film. I already mentioned the scene of hypnotizing the tanks, I would add the car on rails that predicts the films of Emir Kusturica which carries the inspector or the scene in which the stationmaster's wife gives Milos explanations life while caressing the long neck of a stuffed goose. With 'Closely Watched Trains' Jirí Menzel made perhaps one of the best debuts in the history of the film. It is remarkable, however, that what followed never lowered by much the bar of quality.