Speaker 1: Oh is bot it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 2: go out to a theater.
Speaker 3: They want cold sodas, pop popcorn and no monsters.
Speaker 2: In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Off kiss z Chesting also shares a day provision sprb man.
Speaker 4: Everybody's sharing me hiding month from.
Speaker 5: Alsas that you escape as it.
Speaker 2: Would you read what you are? Yeah, what's act you
Speaker 2: recomping up?
Speaker 6: Chosen hell, it's.
Speaker 4: Distens perform.
Speaker 7: Chesuo some so move.
Speaker 5: A cemetery sties out to the book and it's easy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your houst. Mike White,
Speaker 2: join me once again. It's mister Jonathan Allen.
Speaker 8: Hello, happy Yeptember.
Speaker 2: Also back in the booth is miss Maurice Howard.
Speaker 1: Hi Mike, thanks for having me back, and Hi Jonastan,
Speaker 1: very happy to be here. It's also Sparks Timber, the
Speaker 1: Sparks fans out there like myself. September is a significant mountain.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, I had no idea. I hope we don't
Speaker 2: conflict with those Sparks fans. Does overlap.
Speaker 1: I think it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: We conclude Checktember twenty twenty four with the film from
Speaker 2: Fred to czeck Lassal Adelhyde released in nineteen seventy. The
Speaker 2: film stars Peter Chipback as Victor, a former Czech soldier
Speaker 2: turned caretaker of a confiscated German estate where he encounters
Speaker 2: the titular adel Hyde played by Emma Cherna, who is
Speaker 2: being held as a prisoner. Their evolving relationship forms the
Speaker 2: core of the film, set against the backdrop of a
Speaker 2: post war displacement and political tension. We will be splitting
Speaker 2: this film as we go along, so if you don't
Speaker 2: want anything ruin, turn off the podcast and come back
Speaker 2: after you've seen the beautiful new restoration of the film
Speaker 2: that is now available on Blu Ray. So, Jonathan, when
Speaker 2: was the first time we saw adel Hyde and what
Speaker 2: did you think?
Speaker 8: I probably saw it about maybe twenty years ago, so
Speaker 8: I think it came quite early in my discovery of
Speaker 8: the Czechoslovak New Wave, and I probably didn't see it
Speaker 8: in a really great copy to start with. And I
Speaker 8: must admit that I think when I first saw it,
Speaker 8: it passed me by a little bit. And I think
Speaker 8: I was aware of flat Seel and I was aware
Speaker 8: of Marketa Lazarova I don't know if I had seen
Speaker 8: Marketa Lasarova by back by that point, but I feel
Speaker 8: that sadly, at the time this film was a little
Speaker 8: bit under the shadow of Marketa Lazarova, or under the
Speaker 8: shadow of my expectation of that film, because I just
Speaker 8: really wanted to see that, and I think because this
Speaker 8: is rather more restrained and low key film, it probably
Speaker 8: didn't make as big an impact as it should have done.
Speaker 8: But I think with having seen it again, rewatched it
Speaker 8: and understood more of the content act of the history
Speaker 8: that it's dealing with, I think I've come to appreciate
Speaker 8: it much more and in its own way. I think
Speaker 8: if as bold of a film in terms of what
Speaker 8: it's kind of themes it's addressing as market Lazarova. So yeah,
Speaker 8: it's one that's really grown on me. I think the
Speaker 8: more I've watched.
Speaker 2: It in therees.
Speaker 1: How about yourself, I think I would have first seen
Speaker 1: it much more recently than that, only sometimes just pre COVID,
Speaker 1: I think in a cinema though I was in Prague
Speaker 1: and it was playing at Kinoskaizort in the center, and
Speaker 1: it was one of his that I hadn't seen. I
Speaker 1: was familiar with his earlier films, so I was very curious,
Speaker 1: and I have to admit too that I didn't quite
Speaker 1: latch onto it on first site the way I had
Speaker 1: with marke Let and Lanza or Value of the Bees
Speaker 1: and the White Dove as gorgeous earlier films. I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with market Lanzrova. That's one of the most sublime in
Speaker 1: cinem experience as I've ever had. And so I did
Speaker 1: go to the cinema, to Kinoskitters all that day with
Speaker 1: great expectations, and I did come back a little not confounded,
Speaker 1: but just somehow a little underwhelm. But just reviewing it again,
Speaker 1: just very recently, let's say, in the last twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: it was a different film. And I've seen the main actor,
Speaker 1: Pettitchepink in quite a number of films over the years,
Speaker 1: and I'm used to putting on quite different sorts of
Speaker 1: style of performance. So I came to this not expecting
Speaker 1: quite what I got out of it just now actually,
Speaker 1: because he's so restrained in it to everything about this
Speaker 1: is quite quite austere. Some little moments aside, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's striking. It's a striking film. So I'm a convert.
Speaker 2: As check timber has been progressing throughout the years. I've
Speaker 2: been going through Vassel's filmography, so starting with market E Lazarova,
Speaker 2: we did the commentary track for Valley the Bees and
Speaker 2: now Adele Hide, and it's just every single time it's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: It's very different. I think you can see Devil's Trap
Speaker 2: and Marketta and Valley the Bees. Some people consider that
Speaker 2: a trilogy. I can definitely appreciate that Marketta is so epic,
Speaker 2: and then you come to Adelhyde and it's just such
Speaker 2: a small story set against a big backdrop, but a
Speaker 2: small story, but yeah, very restrained and of course beautifully told.
Speaker 2: Because Fletchel's camera work and what he does, how he
Speaker 2: tells stories, I just absolutely love it.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a real lived in quality to the world
Speaker 1: he puts on film, and I well, I've been in
Speaker 1: the Czech Republic quite a number of times. I've spent
Speaker 1: very little time in Moravia where this film is set.
Speaker 1: In the story and it's looking at that mana Helse.
Speaker 1: We spend so much time, and it's the architecture is
Speaker 1: so different to how it is much of Bohemia. There's
Speaker 1: sort of a focus quality to that quite gorgeous manner
Speaker 1: house that Chippick's character is there to administer. There's a
Speaker 1: different feel. It feels, not like in as medieval films,
Speaker 1: or perhaps they're even said in an earlier period than
Speaker 1: just the medieval. You get a sense of a Czech land,
Speaker 1: a Czech culture that's not at all familiar. And here
Speaker 1: as well, there's Maravi isn't very known to me, and
Speaker 1: there's something just about that environment, that the architecture, that
Speaker 1: that that waste we spend so much time and it's
Speaker 1: it's quite unfamiliar, but I still felt very immersed in it,
Speaker 1: very transported to it.
Speaker 8: I really love that description of it has lived in
Speaker 8: and as immersive, because yeah, I feel exactly the same thing. Really.
Speaker 8: I don't think anybody would describe it as like a
Speaker 8: reassuring film or as a cozy film, but there is
Speaker 8: somehow feeling of being, yeah, just like immersed in an
Speaker 8: environment and have just there's a sort of sensoryquality to that.
Speaker 8: I think in the way that he establishes the time
Speaker 8: period and the place and the sense of the seasons
Speaker 8: as well. And yes, I think that is a connection
Speaker 8: with his medieval films, where you do feel just you
Speaker 8: are totally absorbed into this time and place really, so yes,
Speaker 8: I think it. Yeah, lived in is a really beautiful
Speaker 8: way to describe it.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 8: I guess one of the things that's a big change
Speaker 8: from his previous feature films is that he's working in color, really,
Speaker 8: and I don't think he'd use color for any of
Speaker 8: his feature films. I think it was only I think
Speaker 8: the one of the short films that he made back
Speaker 8: in the fifties that was like the last time that
Speaker 8: he'd used color. And one of the interesting things about
Speaker 8: this is the way it begins, because I guess you
Speaker 8: start off black and white and then you shift to color,
Speaker 8: and I don't know, I mean, how connected that is
Speaker 8: to the fact that this was his first feature film
Speaker 8: in color really, And yeah, I think a significant change
Speaker 8: after that beautiful sort of high contrast black and white,
Speaker 8: as you say, of the medieval films. But I think
Speaker 8: the way that the color is used is really careful
Speaker 8: and really significant. And from what I've read, apparently he
Speaker 8: was very fastidious about the colors, and I believe that
Speaker 8: this has been reported that apparently he was very insistent
Speaker 8: to the cinematographer that they not used the color red,
Speaker 8: So I think he was very careful about crafting the
Speaker 8: precise kind of color palette that he wanted. Having said that, though,
Speaker 8: I just recall that the title itself is in red
Speaker 8: at the beginning, so that's an interesting choice given that
Speaker 8: he apparently didn't want to use much red in the film.
Speaker 8: But yeah, I think the way that the color is
Speaker 8: handled is very careful. But of course it's also very
Speaker 8: restrained color too, isn't it really?
Speaker 2: So it does.
Speaker 8: I guess that's another reason why it doesn't really leap
Speaker 8: out at you the way that the black and white
Speaker 8: say does in the earlier films.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels very drained sometimes, and especially once you
Speaker 2: get to the manor house and just everything feels old
Speaker 2: and decrepit and dirty and just yeah, the drain of
Speaker 2: color helps make it feel that way. But then you
Speaker 2: do have occasional black and white shots in the film.
Speaker 2: When our main character is having a ulcer attack, there's
Speaker 2: that beautiful shot of the water coming out of the spigot,
Speaker 2: but then there's color that's been added to it, almost
Speaker 2: like a psychedelic effect, which is nice. And I swear
Speaker 2: there's at least one moment where he looks down at
Speaker 2: the courtyard and it feels like that's in black and white.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it is or just everything is
Speaker 2: so colorless, but I was like, is that a black
Speaker 2: and white shot? Because I thought it was nice that
Speaker 2: he's throwing in these little black and white moments even
Speaker 2: in this muted color film.
Speaker 1: It definitely were a couple of moments like that, and
Speaker 1: there was one that was very high contrast, really high
Speaker 1: coming back to most met last or in particular, where
Speaker 1: that's really so ramped up that this weird, odd little
Speaker 1: moment where it feels like just a moment of just
Speaker 1: pure expressionism. I don't think it's as I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a moment with any narrative of significance per se,
Speaker 1: just this a little I felt like the man Victor
Speaker 1: there's just a bit outside of himself, disassociating or something
Speaker 1: perhaps happening there. Just yeah, a really weird little moment
Speaker 1: that's so different to the rest of the film, so
Speaker 1: as if he's looking out of the place, but the
Speaker 1: image seems to have him in it, but his face
Speaker 1: is very obfuscated through the true this contrast, something's abstracted
Speaker 1: the image somewhat anyway, it's a little bit hallucinatry.
Speaker 2: You really get the feel in this one that it
Speaker 2: is based on a book, which it is, as is
Speaker 2: a lot of his other works. So I feel while
Speaker 2: I'm watching this, I'm like, Okay, I feel like there's
Speaker 2: more to this story that maybe I should have read
Speaker 2: the book, but I could not find an English translate
Speaker 2: it topy of it. But it also feels play like
Speaker 2: at times, because really there's like your three main characters
Speaker 2: that you have throughout this, and the way that the
Speaker 2: one character, the corrupt official, will drop in and out,
Speaker 2: and then for the most part it is our main
Speaker 2: character and ar titular characters between Victor and at Adelhyde,
Speaker 2: and they're growing changing relationship throughout so much of this,
Speaker 2: and that it's I would say, what ninety percent of
Speaker 2: this movie takes place in one location, takes place at
Speaker 2: the manor House. The rest of it we start off
Speaker 2: on the train, we go to the official's office, and
Speaker 2: then after that it's pretty much just at the manor House.
Speaker 8: Yes, it would have been very easy to I don't
Speaker 8: know if it ever was adapted into a theatrical version,
Speaker 8: but yes, it would be very easy to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I'm a little bit confused about the genesis of it.
Speaker 8: There was a book by Vladimir Kerner, who also wrote
Speaker 8: Valley of the Bees with Latchil, and from what I've read,
Speaker 8: I believe there was an initial version of the script,
Speaker 8: which I think was submitted a little bit earlier, kind
Speaker 8: of I think about nineteen sixty six, and I'm not
Speaker 8: quite sure about whether Kerner had written the novel before that.
Speaker 8: I think maybe he had, but I think the novel
Speaker 8: was published a little bit later. I think the novel
Speaker 8: was published in sixty seven, so that was after the
Speaker 8: initial attempt to get the script produced, and that had
Speaker 8: failed because nineteen sixty six was still the Novotny era
Speaker 8: and there was still difficulty in making this kind of
Speaker 8: film on this kind of theme, dealing as it does
Speaker 8: with the post war treatment of Germans in Czechoslovakia. And
Speaker 8: apparently the earlier version of the script at least was
Speaker 8: on a kind of bigger scale, and I think there
Speaker 8: were more like subplots, and there were more characters and
Speaker 8: more of a sense of the kind of community around
Speaker 8: the main characters. And apparently, at some point from the
Speaker 8: first version to the to the novel, because the novel itself,
Speaker 8: at least the version that was published is also very
Speaker 8: similar to the existing film, And I think there had
Speaker 8: already been a kind of stripping down of the story
Speaker 8: at that point. And then yeah, so I think I
Speaker 8: guess Kerner had decided to do that at some point,
Speaker 8: perhaps because maybe it was going to be less controversial
Speaker 8: if you didn't have that kind of wider context in there.
Speaker 8: But originally it was meant to be I think a
Speaker 8: little bit more not as much of a chamber work
Speaker 8: in the original idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can absolutely imagine this on stage too. It
Speaker 1: would be very straightforward production to mount. It is very
Speaker 1: much a chamber drama. I mean, you could say that
Speaker 1: there's an extent to which that Manner houses at of
Speaker 1: psychological space as much as a narratively meaningful physical space.
Speaker 1: And I lived in space, as we were talking about.
Speaker 1: But it's Yeah, there's a degree of decrepitude and yet
Speaker 1: a degree of a faded glamour to this place. It
Speaker 1: is a bit grand, and some rooms notably grander than others,
Speaker 1: and a bit more decoration, and some of that decorations
Speaker 1: quite beautiful.
Speaker 2: But yeah, for me, it's still.
Speaker 1: A curious a curious house It's don't know how common
Speaker 1: that architecture is throughout Moravia, but I'm still going to
Speaker 1: say it has a grandeur that wouldn't be just super
Speaker 1: commonplace back then, circle close of World War two or
Speaker 1: to the current day. Have you been to Moravia, either
Speaker 1: of you much? Have you know the neighborhood?
Speaker 2: No, I can't say idea.
Speaker 8: Only wants to burn Oe. Yeah, not to the countryside unfortunately.
Speaker 8: But in chat reviews that I've read of the film,
Speaker 8: it does tend to describe it as a bizarre house,
Speaker 8: so I think probably even by like Moravian standards, I
Speaker 8: guess it's pretty striking. Yeah, I agree with that idea
Speaker 8: that I think it is a kind of psychological space.
Speaker 8: I don't know whether i'd go so far as to
Speaker 8: describe it as Gothic, but there is a kind of
Speaker 8: fairy tale quality. And interestingly, at that point, before Victor
Speaker 8: actually enters the house, I think it's during his journey,
Speaker 8: you hear a voiceover I believe I'm not quite sure
Speaker 8: whether it's the voiceover over of Adelhyde herself, but there's
Speaker 8: a somebody like reciting a kind of fairy tale story.
Speaker 8: And I guess when you first see the house. When
Speaker 8: you see the exterior, it does have that kind of
Speaker 8: fairy tale qualities. Yeah, I think there is some kind
Speaker 8: of maybe Gothic a psychological dimension to it, and it's
Speaker 8: a Yeah, it's a very strange space as well, I
Speaker 8: think in terms of the way it's presented, because I
Speaker 8: don't think you ever fully get a handle on what
Speaker 8: it really looks like inside of how the spaces relate
Speaker 8: to each other. And there's a sense of rooms like
Speaker 8: adjoining one another in a way that's unpredictable. For instance,
Speaker 8: there's that point where he's like rummaging around in I
Speaker 8: guess the room that used to be adel Hide's bedroom,
Speaker 8: and then he discovers there's a door, and then she's there,
Speaker 8: and she seems to be doing something in the room
Speaker 8: next to it, And there is this sense that you
Speaker 8: can't quite grasp like where each room is in relation
Speaker 8: to the other. And as you say, there is a
Speaker 8: kind of range of different kind of like moods and
Speaker 8: qualities to the rooms. And the first room, it's interesting
Speaker 8: that he decides to sleep in the room that looks
Speaker 8: like the most comfortless and it's like like an attic
Speaker 8: looking little room, isn't it really and then I guess
Speaker 8: as the narrative progresses and as their relationship develops to
Speaker 8: some extent, he's changing room. And then I think in
Speaker 8: the one of the latest things, he's actually in her room,
Speaker 8: isn't he sleeping there? At which point the color schemes
Speaker 8: start to change as well. And so yeah, there is
Speaker 8: this use of the spaces, I think, to reflect the
Speaker 8: psycho and the relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then there's definitely a labyrinth scene quality to that,
Speaker 1: and that lay the layout that house. And I think
Speaker 1: that's amplified too by the the way the film is carts.
Speaker 1: But from one scene to the next, sometimes suddenly there's
Speaker 1: someone in the house who really it wouldn't have a
Speaker 1: sense of a passage of time. It's a new day
Speaker 1: and now the inspectors dropped around against just in the
Speaker 1: next scene bad of an eel, he's in a room.
Speaker 1: It has this peculiar, a rhythmic quality to the editing
Speaker 1: that just makes that that house seems a little more
Speaker 1: peculiar as well, in that sense, a bit more of
Speaker 1: a psychological space, because there's just something that doesn't give it.
Speaker 1: I never feel that a scene has resolved. There's a pause,
Speaker 1: a little hiatus, we catch our breath and then it's
Speaker 1: a new day, and it doesn't get those sort of beats,
Speaker 1: And I feel that makes that house a peculiar place
Speaker 1: to spend time in because just how time seems to work,
Speaker 1: and it seems a little abstracted as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny we're doing an episode in October on
Speaker 2: Melpertweet the Harry Kummel film, and that it's all about
Speaker 2: a labyrinthine house. But I was also reminded a lot
Speaker 2: of the house from Black Noon and right, yeah, the
Speaker 2: Louis Maul film, and just again it yeah, like that
Speaker 2: fairy tale quality, especially going to somebody's house and you
Speaker 2: don't know who they are, what they are. And that's
Speaker 2: part of this too, is the revelation that adel Hyde
Speaker 2: is actually the daughter of the man who owns the house.
Speaker 2: It's not she is not a servant. She should have
Speaker 2: been the fairy tale princess here, but unfortunately the mean
Speaker 2: old dad is a Nazi officer, one of the worst.
Speaker 2: So he's being held in a Russian prison, I believe
Speaker 2: at this time due to be hanged, and he is
Speaker 2: eventually hanged, though off screen in this and then yeah,
Speaker 2: you find out, oh, she's his daughter. And by the way,
Speaker 2: there's this beautiful cage outside where he used to keep
Speaker 2: Polish prisoners just for fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does seemn feel the unsaved re character, doesn't
Speaker 1: He not one of those fun, jolly Nazis.
Speaker 8: But yeah, they call him the greatest of the biggest
Speaker 8: fascist in the area. So yeah, even by naturally standard,
Speaker 8: he's pretty bad.
Speaker 2: So then you're like, what is she like? Then? If
Speaker 2: this is who her father is she like this then
Speaker 2: sets up that mystery too, and this whole she's the
Speaker 2: daughter of a Nazi? Is she just as bad as
Speaker 2: he is or is she a different person? And what
Speaker 2: type of person is she? And I think she does
Speaker 2: a great job of not letting us in and not
Speaker 2: showing us who she is. She's very enigmatic throughout this
Speaker 2: whole film, even as he starts to I think, fall
Speaker 2: in love with her. Some of that is reciprocated, some
Speaker 2: of it isn't.
Speaker 1: Well, it remains very clear, I'm clear as you're out
Speaker 1: how much or how little she understands his Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah there is that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's never clarified, whether she's understanding what's being said
Speaker 1: and not letting on or not understanding and that ambiguity
Speaker 1: is in no way resolved by the end of the film,
Speaker 1: not that it seems to have hindered them having some
Speaker 1: sort of thing for one another, with perhaps some genuine
Speaker 1: emotional racist, some sort of connection, though the film's austerity
Speaker 1: makes it hard to get a full read on that
Speaker 1: as well, because isn't a film of grand gestures and
Speaker 1: big emotions. It's all so bottled up, and these are
Speaker 1: some traumatized people. Really hard to know how much she
Speaker 1: might be naive, or how much she might be calculating,
Speaker 1: or how much she might be just pragmatic, how much
Speaker 1: she might think about her own goose is cooked, and
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of time as well.
Speaker 2: How much can she play this guy in order to
Speaker 2: get away clean if she can possibly.
Speaker 8: It must have been a very difficult part to play,
Speaker 8: and from what I remember from the book it really
Speaker 8: doesn't give anything. I think, it doesn't really get into
Speaker 8: the sort of psychology and in terms of how to
Speaker 8: play that, how to physically manifest the part. I think
Speaker 8: really that's all done through the direction and through the
Speaker 8: performance of Emma Churner. Really, and as you say, it's
Speaker 8: very inscrutable, isn't it. And the fact that she's lumped
Speaker 8: in with all the other Nazis and with the father
Speaker 8: by the officials. I guess it's meant to show that
Speaker 8: it's I think there's partly there's meant to be a
Speaker 8: there's meant to be a critical tone towards them, that
Speaker 8: they're just associating any German with Nazism. So I think
Speaker 8: they're clearly is a stent in which she is being
Speaker 8: wronged a little bit by the way she is just
Speaker 8: considered as a Nazi too. But then, as you say,
Speaker 8: there are there's ambiguities, aren't there? And I'm thinking of
Speaker 8: specifically the scene with the record and you hear that
Speaker 8: sort of military style march come on, and then she's
Speaker 8: had up and she's looking very proud, and then they
Speaker 8: get genuinely unnerved. Don't they buy the expression that she has?
Speaker 8: And at that point you're thinking, yeah, maybe there is
Speaker 8: some kind of pride or some kind of commitment to
Speaker 8: this idea. But yes, it's never really resolved either way.
Speaker 1: I think it was no longer just this nice, these nice,
Speaker 1: sugary strauss waltz is that they were all enjoying. But
Speaker 1: it sounds like something militantly nazy the awkward moment for
Speaker 1: all of them.
Speaker 2: There's the whole thing too about the keys in the
Speaker 2: house and making the house and mystery itself as far
Speaker 2: as oh, yeah, no, there's just the two keys. Here
Speaker 2: you go, here's both of these keys were good, only
Speaker 2: to find out that there is a third key that's
Speaker 2: going on and there's somebody else hiding in the house,
Speaker 2: which we don't find out until really the third X reveal.
Speaker 8: It's almost like a Chekhovian moment, that, isn't it. There
Speaker 8: are only two keys, so when somebody says there are
Speaker 8: only two keys, you're meant to question and yeah.
Speaker 1: Gives it a bit of that sort of gothic fairy
Speaker 1: tale flavor as well into that there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the first time I watched Rebecca where
Speaker 2: I was just like, is the old Missus de Winter
Speaker 2: really dead or is she hiding in the house. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was my initial impression when I saw that. I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, no, she's way too strong of a personality.
Speaker 2: She has to be here in the house someplace, Missus
Speaker 2: Danvers has to be hiding her out. I did want
Speaker 2: to call out young Votresil and apologies for all of
Speaker 2: these names, but he is the one that plays the
Speaker 2: other official, the corrupt official, and known for me as
Speaker 2: just being this kind of lovable bureaucrat guy. He shows up,
Speaker 2: he's the dead and loves of a blonde. He's the
Speaker 2: band mit leader and if a thousand clarinets, it's a
Speaker 2: fuddled in the fireman's ball. And in this he is
Speaker 2: so good as a villain. I couldn't get over how
Speaker 2: good he was because and I don't know if some
Speaker 2: of that is because he has always given this older
Speaker 2: bear type performance, but here, oh my gosh, you just
Speaker 2: dread every single time he's on screen.
Speaker 1: It's funny because he's always described as a non actor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's one of Millers Foreman's discoveries, one of just a
Speaker 1: casting choice. I think an audition in the first instance,
Speaker 1: where he was yeah, and he was I thinking of
Speaker 1: exactly pursued acting, but it seemed to find him. And
Speaker 1: yet did this day. Anytime you ever find any reference
Speaker 1: to him, it's alway those non actor jan Vostachill just perverse,
Speaker 1: because he's definitely putting on a not putting over. The
Speaker 1: prof he's delivering is in a very different tonal register
Speaker 1: to the buffoonery, the gentle buffoonery of Fireman's Ball or
Speaker 1: the again, is he a bit of buffoonery and loves
Speaker 1: of the blonde but paternal flavor of like crownishness.
Speaker 2: It's terrific.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't buyd on actor anymore. I don't
Speaker 1: want a part of that. Actually, this is a performance.
Speaker 1: I feel it's in my bones.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I agree. I think at the time that I
Speaker 8: think in reviews from the Czechoslovak press, I think that
Speaker 8: was recognized that yeah, this is actually a real performance,
Speaker 8: this is real acting. And yeah, as you say that,
Speaker 8: I think he just tend to be tagged as a
Speaker 8: non professional. I think he got that role in audition
Speaker 8: because he was a real musician, and yeah, it was
Speaker 8: just a case of like taiepage or just using somebody
Speaker 8: from that environment. But yeah, he's really delivering the real
Speaker 8: quote and quote performance. And it reminds me a little
Speaker 8: bit of the way that I've actually uses Vladimir Menschicic
Speaker 8: in ma ket Lazarova, because I guess in a way
Speaker 8: it's doing something very different with the usual kind of
Speaker 8: character they play, but in a way also using that
Speaker 8: baggage somehow, because I feel that yeah, he he has
Speaker 8: played these figures Ostra Chill has played these figures who
Speaker 8: represent this kind of incompetent authority, and here I guess
Speaker 8: it's it's also it's another kind of incompetent authority, is
Speaker 8: there are another kind of chaotic authority, but in a
Speaker 8: rather more sinister way. I think he's playing one of
Speaker 8: these officials who I think were called revolutionary guards, who
Speaker 8: were the people that were appointed supposedly to keep order
Speaker 8: after the war, who had come out of the parties,
Speaker 8: and but were people who were often involved in killing
Speaker 8: and in looting and things like that. So yeah, he's
Speaker 8: playing really quite a sinister character. We don't really know
Speaker 8: exactly what he's done or what he's been involved in.
Speaker 8: Certainly he is involved in like pilfering and in petty
Speaker 8: crime and possibly worse things, and has possibly sanctioned a
Speaker 8: lot of worse things as well. And yeah, so it's
Speaker 8: like a creepy twist, isn't it, on that kind of
Speaker 8: figure that he's played.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he nails it.
Speaker 8: Really, he's really brilliant.
Speaker 1: When we first meet him in this film, he breats
Speaker 1: a Chepek's character Victor with great skepticism, that apparently all
Speaker 1: sorts of people are just rolling up and claiming to
Speaker 1: be all sorts of other people, suggestive of a bit
Speaker 1: of chaos in the aftermath of World War Two. Generally
Speaker 1: we shouldn't come as a surprise, but there are quite
Speaker 1: a lot of layers to that performance. We really don't
Speaker 1: know what that he stands for and who he's standing against.
Speaker 1: The whole start of the film, we are seeing people
Speaker 1: generally be mean to our protagonist. He gets russed up
Speaker 1: on the tray and throat offered and then beaten up properly.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing we see him is with
Speaker 1: this inspector character who's extremely dubious about his claims to
Speaker 1: be a lieutenant and to have served in I guess
Speaker 1: it's our foreign legion type arrangement wound up in Scotland,
Speaker 1: of all places, working in a store, and it gives
Speaker 1: that would possibly introduced another level of disdain that perhaps
Speaker 1: this was a serviceman who actually hadn't gone around shooting
Speaker 1: people or doing other somehow admirable acts during wartime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are there's quite a lot of enigmatic qualities
Speaker 1: to all of these three key characters in the film. Really,
Speaker 1: I think that's perhaps why it has rewarded repeat viewings.
Speaker 1: Why I just got a lot more coming to it again,
Speaker 1: just in the last day, having another watch and just
Speaker 1: going there's actually a lot in this, and I can't
Speaker 1: come away from it with anything approaching a definitive read. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm quite happy about.
Speaker 8: There's an ambiguous moment where I think he heard when
Speaker 8: he's looking at Victor's details and then he notes that
Speaker 8: he was in the RAF and he gives a look,
Speaker 8: and yeah, it's not quite clear what that look is
Speaker 8: meant to represent, probably some kind of disdain or distrust,
Speaker 8: and I guess possibly relating to that whole antagonism about
Speaker 8: Czech and Slovak soldiers who had served in the RAF
Speaker 8: in Britain who should have been celebrated as heroes, but
Speaker 8: we're not. We're actually persecuted by the communists, And so
Speaker 8: whether there is some kind of that, I don't get
Speaker 8: that it's like an ideological disdain, but yeah, there's some
Speaker 8: kind of hostility that comes in there, isn't there. I
Speaker 8: think that idea And I think it's also that idea
Speaker 8: that he's been away from the real action, isn't it
Speaker 8: that he's oh, yeah, you've just been in Britain and
Speaker 8: you've not seen the real horrible stuff that we've seen here.
Speaker 8: And yeah, but as you say, yeah, it's hard to
Speaker 8: get a read on what he stands for, isn't it
Speaker 8: really other than just looking out for himself and getting
Speaker 8: as much booze and as many spoils as he can
Speaker 8: really And.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, he does then have the temerity to scold
Speaker 1: Victor for skeelling mostly selling adul hide for two bottles
Speaker 1: of something. Yeah, a transaction he was trying to issue himself.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot of the hypocrisy of these people
Speaker 1: that these officials.
Speaker 2: I think he's very jealous that our main character, that
Speaker 2: Victor has found all that cognac hidden in the chateau.
Speaker 2: He was looking behind the books, which is funny. Reminds
Speaker 2: me of that Chris Rock routine about hide your money
Speaker 2: in books, but here he's hiding all the cognac behind
Speaker 2: the classics, which was pretty nice. And yeah, that also
Speaker 2: leads us to know that Victor can speak multiple languages,
Speaker 2: and he's trying his best to speak German but not
Speaker 2: doing that great of a job of it. But he
Speaker 2: is learning throughout this whole thing of how to say
Speaker 2: go to my bed, which I thought was pretty nice.
Speaker 8: Yes, I remember in the novel it goes into that
Speaker 8: in detail. Yeah, he's learning one word at a time,
Speaker 8: basically just very laboriously memorizing it over I think probably
Speaker 8: over a few days as well. Yes, it's really he's
Speaker 8: really just determined to get it right.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, the whole time, you're like, she probably
Speaker 2: understands if he had said that in check. But yeah,
Speaker 2: she's not going to ever give up that what she
Speaker 2: knows and what she doesn't know that. Yeah, as you said,
Speaker 2: the inscrutable I think is a great word for her.
Speaker 8: There's that moment when he's looking at her things, and
Speaker 8: then he finds the book, doesn't he And it has
Speaker 8: like a check poem, I believe, And I don't think
Speaker 8: we find out who has written, whether she's written it
Speaker 8: or whether it's somebody I think possibly a school friend
Speaker 8: has written it. And then I think he asks her,
Speaker 8: doesn't he do you speak check? But it still doesn't
Speaker 8: get answered. And there are moments, aren't there, where she
Speaker 8: he'll say something and she will look, or there'll be
Speaker 8: some kind of indication or suggest that she's understood. But yes,
Speaker 8: it never really resolves it. And then I like the
Speaker 8: fact that at the end, when there's the kind of
Speaker 8: the sort of trial or the hearing at the end,
Speaker 8: and then they're finally speaking through an interpreter, And I
Speaker 8: think that's a nice way to conclude the relationship because
Speaker 8: I guess that it's that very so a sad reassertion
Speaker 8: of the boundary between them, isn't it. I think through
Speaker 8: the motif of language that finally they actually just have
Speaker 8: an interpreter, so that that kind of any kind of
Speaker 8: communication now is completely distanced. And yeah, that was a
Speaker 8: nice idea.
Speaker 2: I think it was the same thing that I had
Speaker 2: with Marquetta Lazarova, where I am not smart enough to
Speaker 2: hear the difference between the Czech and the German a
Speaker 2: lot of times, so I won't realize that they're speaking
Speaker 2: different languages. But this one was a little bit easier
Speaker 2: for me than Marketta, just because it was so forefronted,
Speaker 2: as opposed to when people would like ride up on
Speaker 2: their horses and be like, I'm speaking German or I'm
Speaker 2: speaking Czech. I don't know. As a viewer, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what's going on exactly. But a few
Speaker 2: times watching the movie I understood a lot better. That
Speaker 2: was the thing. I listened to the episode we did
Speaker 2: on Marquetta just recently, and I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I talk a lot in here about how many times
Speaker 2: it takes to view Marquetta to really get a grasp
Speaker 2: on it, and even then I still don't feel like
Speaker 2: I fully have it. Like series, I can see why
Speaker 2: you're obsessed with the movie like that, because it just
Speaker 2: gives you so much more every single time you watch it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to pretend to be all over that
Speaker 1: film either, And each time that I've seen it in
Speaker 1: a cinema, I've seen it a couple of times in cinema,
Speaker 1: I've just wound up giving up trying to piece it
Speaker 1: all together and just actually let the entire thing wash
Speaker 1: over me, because it's just such a sublime, sort of
Speaker 1: ecstatic experience of a film. So a very different film
Speaker 1: to Adult Hyde doesn't go for those ecstasies, so that
Speaker 1: the Staniaka score still has moments, so that the corral
Speaker 1: it's not to that same overwhelming effect as in Markisa.
Speaker 1: And he's also using a lot more of the catalog
Speaker 1: of strals and bark are one of the barks in
Speaker 1: this in adult Hyde, but you're obsessed with Staniek Blishka
Speaker 1: as well as I think one of the great composers
Speaker 1: who's never got his dune not fully really should be
Speaker 1: a household name. But I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: his recorded work that's never been never hinted and distribution
Speaker 1: in any way outside of the films themselves, which is
Speaker 1: a sad thing.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I think it's just truly one of the most extraordinary
Speaker 1: and versatile composers will ever have worked in film. Do
Speaker 1: you feel the same way, not just me, I'm sure definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he was a genius and in some ways I
Speaker 8: think something like market Lazarovar, it's almost it's almost like
Speaker 8: an opera somehow, isn't it. I think in the way
Speaker 8: that the image and the narrative and the music and
Speaker 8: sound work together really And yeah, I think he was
Speaker 8: a great genius. And I think a lot of my
Speaker 8: enthusiasm I think for check Us like check Us the
Speaker 8: back film and specific films like market Letherova or The Cremator,
Speaker 8: I think they owe a lot to his involvement in memorily. So, yeah,
Speaker 8: he's an incredible figure.
Speaker 1: I think and all of the Jung Shrunk Myers earlier
Speaker 1: short films too. How he managed to score those things incredible. Now, Genius,
Speaker 1: I'm always excited to discover that there's still more of
Speaker 1: his work. I've not caught yet, because he worked so
Speaker 1: prolifically on films grand and lesser, and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of those lesser, and no doubt still some grand ones.
Speaker 1: I haven't caught up with that either, And some TV
Speaker 1: did propy of TV work as well. But that versatility
Speaker 1: to go from kerl coral singing to electronica and now
Speaker 1: really early electronica and some sort of guitar, some band
Speaker 1: music in other soundtracks, absolutly extraordinary composer musician. Yeah, genius,
Speaker 1: don't want to bandy that Orderland just too willy nilly,
Speaker 1: but I think it's warranted.
Speaker 2: With Lishke, it's always one of those when his name
Speaker 2: comes up on screen, I'm like, Okay, I'm in for
Speaker 2: something good here.
Speaker 1: There are some filmmakers who used and when you see
Speaker 1: some of their later work, especially in the period of
Speaker 1: normalization where generally everything got a bit dowdy it anyway,
Speaker 1: but so many of those the new wave films and
Speaker 1: films from that era not necessarily made by the new
Speaker 1: wave filmmakers, and we can't really properly include Blachal amongst
Speaker 1: the new wave. He was around earlier and didn't go
Speaker 1: through farm with the film school. When you see some
Speaker 1: of their films from the peak era where people like
Speaker 1: Lishka are on the soundtrack, orlu Bosh Fisher or Ilazeliank
Speaker 1: some other greats, and then you see some of those
Speaker 1: seventies or eighties films and you just don't They don't
Speaker 1: got it. And part of it's just not being able
Speaker 1: to have happened to that extraordinary pool of talents that
Speaker 1: full state subsidization allowed for you quite the little credit
Speaker 1: you see so matter of factly in films of this
Speaker 1: era of adul Heights period, that music by the National
Speaker 1: Film what was it, film Symphony Orchestra. Anyone needed and
Speaker 1: you needed a symphony orchestra for your film, we's got one.
Speaker 1: And that didn't continue.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's one of the great advantages I think of
Speaker 8: that communist era film industry that they were able to
Speaker 8: just pull resources like that. So it's if you need
Speaker 8: the army, you've got the army. Or if you need yeah,
Speaker 8: like you said, like the state orchestra just get them,
Speaker 8: and you did have to go through the kind of
Speaker 8: normal procedures that you might have to where all the
Speaker 8: institutions are run by or owned by separate, separate people,
Speaker 8: and yeah, you could just I've heard that this was
Speaker 8: the case with Parijana, for example, when he was making
Speaker 8: Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors, and they just needed these
Speaker 8: kind of precious relics that the state could just request
Speaker 8: anything that was needed. And yeah, this was the other
Speaker 8: side of the There was obviously disadvantages to this kind
Speaker 8: of film industry, but I think there were big benefits too.
Speaker 8: And yeah, I think just this ability to just, yeah,
Speaker 8: as you say, just pull on any resources that you needed,
Speaker 8: including great composers or great symphony orchestras and things like.
Speaker 1: That, great cinematographers, just great talent all round. And it's just, yeah,
Speaker 1: so many contradictions are bounded then that you removed the
Speaker 1: marketplace from filmmaking, and you can get extraordinary things done,
Speaker 1: but then you can't always be guaranteed you do a
Speaker 1: film will be seen for the next twenty years.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, because I.
Speaker 8: Do find that one of the strange things about the
Speaker 8: normalization period really that. I guess in a way there
Speaker 8: is a there's a sort of a benevolence, but also, yeah,
Speaker 8: there is also there must have been a huge frustration
Speaker 8: to the fact that, yeah, you had filmmakers who I
Speaker 8: guess would be on the payroll, they would be actually
Speaker 8: employed at Barondoff, but just would not be able to
Speaker 8: get a film made. So they would be earning a
Speaker 8: salary or be it like a small salary, but yeah,
Speaker 8: it just could not get anything made. And yeah, I
Speaker 8: think there's something so contradictory about that that on the
Speaker 8: one hand, you're stopping people making films, but you're also
Speaker 8: paying them. You're also giving them some kind of a living.
Speaker 8: And it was a very strange system, I think, And
Speaker 8: I guess that was a big benefit for things like
Speaker 8: documentary or short films or animation. And as you said, Blatchil,
Speaker 8: he came through that kind of apprenticeship, didn't he really,
Speaker 8: Rather than going to film school, he was in he
Speaker 8: was making short films, he was making documentaries, and he
Speaker 8: was even in the thing that I think is one
Speaker 8: of the strangest phenomena I think of of Czechoslovak cinema,
Speaker 8: that he was in that army studio. So they had
Speaker 8: this studio film studio run by the military, which actually
Speaker 8: incubated a number of quite kind of strange talents like him,
Speaker 8: and I believe Carol Varkek the documentaries, you know, the
Speaker 8: Yan Schmidt who would work with Pavel R. R. Check Yeah,
Speaker 8: they had come through this through this experience in the
Speaker 8: Checkers Army film studio making documentaries which often had like
Speaker 8: an experimental slant to them. Yeah, that was the background
Speaker 8: that Flatchil came from, which does seem strange in view
Speaker 8: of the work that he would make in the sixties,
Speaker 8: But I guess he was able to use those resources
Speaker 8: and use that context already to experiment, because yeah, I
Speaker 8: believe his I've seen a couple of his army films.
Speaker 8: I think the one that he made in color called
Speaker 8: Glass Cloud, that's a really beautiful poetic film. Really, no
Speaker 8: one would imagine that it had come out of that context.
Speaker 1: Really, And I believe he contributed to some animated films
Speaker 1: early on as well, though the credits seem to be
Speaker 1: quite hard to find, but I think he had something
Speaker 1: to do with some papata animation. His whole story is
Speaker 1: quite peculiar. I think he actually sounds like it's quite
Speaker 1: an eccentric character. There was a documentarye some years back
Speaker 1: for film Spire about the Caliary Vary International Film Festival.
Speaker 1: You've ever come across this glorious documentary, it's great, it's great.
Speaker 1: One of the anecdotes that comes up in there is
Speaker 1: that Blatshaw that they actually make it sound like this
Speaker 1: happened more than once, that he was given to say
Speaker 1: hotel rooms on fire. According to this documentary, it was
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem to quite fit with my impression of him.
Speaker 1: Is the somehow as serious film.
Speaker 8: One would imagine a quite austerea very dignified type of filmmaker,
Speaker 8: wouldn't they, I think from the films?
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've heard that to the Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: a lot of.
Speaker 8: Personal demons, I think, And yeah, in fact, I believe
Speaker 8: that the reason, or at least part of the reason
Speaker 8: why he was not able to make films at Barrendov
Speaker 8: after normalization kicked in. I think partly was political. I
Speaker 8: think there was definitely a political dimension to it. But
Speaker 8: I think a lot of it was personal as well,
Speaker 8: I think, And yeah, I think he had he had
Speaker 8: certain issues, I think, and yeah, he was quite a
Speaker 8: tortured bigger.
Speaker 2: I think I've read a few times that he had
Speaker 2: problems with alcohol and really fell into that after this.
Speaker 2: I am curious. I've also read that this film got
Speaker 2: him into a little bit of trouble as far as
Speaker 2: this was coming out in sixty nine, so post Prague Spring,
Speaker 2: and apparently some of the Soviet authorities were like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is more of a metaphor for us invading you guys.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we're not too pleased about this. But I
Speaker 2: don't think this was banned. I'm not sure, though there's
Speaker 2: also just not supporting it as well. I guess some
Speaker 2: people call that shadow banning.
Speaker 1: It was on a subject that was clearly a bit
Speaker 1: of a taboo at the time, and to this day
Speaker 1: it's still something that I think is a bit of
Speaker 1: a sensitive issue. It's not been a tremendous number of
Speaker 1: films that I'm aware of, that have addressed the treatment
Speaker 1: of the sedate in Germans post World War Two. The
Speaker 1: one that springs to mind is a graphic novel adaptation
Speaker 1: Alois Nebel.
Speaker 8: I've seen the film, I've not read the graphic novel,
Speaker 8: but yeah, and the film's gorgeous, beautifully rotoscope.
Speaker 1: To look exactly the way the graphic novel did, and
Speaker 1: it's set very much in that it's surrounding those same
Speaker 1: issues of displacement, force, displacement and anxiety. Surrounding that it
Speaker 1: seems like it's still a scab that's not being picked
Speaker 1: out enough for the Czech culture. And I'm where I
Speaker 1: try to get to come back to culivy Vari. I
Speaker 1: I love that pestible and it's in part of what
Speaker 1: was termed the Sedate and Land, which wasn't one big
Speaker 1: contiguous strip of land around the border, but pockets spanning
Speaker 1: from the west and Bohemia where culivary Vari is very
Speaker 1: near the German border to what we're talking about an
Speaker 1: adult high that's in Moravia, way over to the east.
Speaker 1: But when I'm in culari Varium aware it has that history,
Speaker 1: and that there's a beautiful biller on the hill that
Speaker 1: used to be the Gestapo headquarters. Now there are all
Speaker 1: those layers of history in a place like that that's
Speaker 1: been occupied by Germans and Russians. And then I think
Speaker 1: the actual status of culov Ivari, who owns most of
Speaker 1: it right now nouns a bit nurky. It's a sort
Speaker 1: of stunning place, but's on a great vistable, But I
Speaker 1: know it's not something that is spoken of much, whether
Speaker 1: they're or just in the culture one broadly.
Speaker 8: During the Communist period a bit it was like officially
Speaker 8: very taboo, and I think to a large extent because
Speaker 8: the Communists had been complicit or more than complicit, even
Speaker 8: though Czechoslovakia, I guess forty five to forty eight it
Speaker 8: wasn't like fully communists, but yeah, the Communists and the
Speaker 8: Soviet Union played a big role in that treatment of
Speaker 8: the Sedate and Germans. But yeah, I think since then,
Speaker 8: as you say, I think it is still a very
Speaker 8: sensitive topic for many reasons. And I admire this film,
Speaker 8: I think for quite subtly, but nonetheless definitely it's doing
Speaker 8: it's making some of those analogies clear, isn't it. Where
Speaker 8: I guess you have obviously the horrors of the Second
Speaker 8: World War of the Nazis, and then it's saying, but
Speaker 8: look at how we're behaving now doing maybe some of
Speaker 8: the same things or some of the same attitudes are
Speaker 8: just being or some of the same actions are just
Speaker 8: being repeated. And like with the I think the book burning,
Speaker 8: for example, is quite a telling moment isn't it where
Speaker 8: Victor says, I refuse to burn books, and yeah, I
Speaker 8: think very subtly making certain criticisms. I think of that
Speaker 8: period and I think that, yeah, there's not many other
Speaker 8: films really, even in the late sixties, even at the
Speaker 8: time where taboos were being challenged, where that's really dealt with.
Speaker 8: I mean, I guess maybe a comparable film is Coach
Speaker 8: to Vienna, because that although it's not dealing exactly with
Speaker 8: the same subject, but I guess it's somehow it's trying
Speaker 8: to tackle that stereotype, isn't it, where you have good
Speaker 8: resistance fighters, evil German or NATURALI soldiers, and it's showing
Speaker 8: a much more kind of human and a much more
Speaker 8: nuanced representation of this. You have this relationship between this
Speaker 8: young in fact, he's Austrian, isn't he in Coach de Vienna,
Speaker 8: so still slightly distanced a little bit, but nonetheless I
Speaker 8: think it's showing you a much more complex picture. And
Speaker 8: then you have the treatment of him by the partisans
Speaker 8: at the end, who basically just abused him, and then
Speaker 8: they rate the female character, and so I think that
Speaker 8: was doing a similar thing. I guess the advantage that
Speaker 8: had was that the writer of that film also knew
Speaker 8: the president of Czechoslovakia and had a kind of personal
Speaker 8: contact that kind of protected that film. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 8: that was quite a special case really, But yeah, there's
Speaker 8: not many other films that I can think of that
Speaker 8: are doing this, that are like exploring this very uncomfortable area.
Speaker 1: Really, the cremator goes there as well, and it's a
Speaker 1: little way too, so you know that the checks could
Speaker 1: be corrupted by Nazi ideology. What an extraordinary film, the Netsa.
Speaker 1: You must have had the cremator on this sphen of
Speaker 1: how Mike, can I imagine?
Speaker 2: Oh, such a favorite film. I love that so much.
Speaker 8: Have you ever heard there was an assessment that was
Speaker 8: made of that within the film industry after normalization started
Speaker 8: that was just insane. There was a I can't remember
Speaker 8: who he was, but there was some functionary who basically
Speaker 8: condemned the creator. He said because, in his words, it
Speaker 8: basically blamed the Holocaust on a check collaborator. It was
Speaker 8: such a overly literal reading of it. That was the
Speaker 8: takeaway from that them that one guy ruining it for
Speaker 8: everyone else. I was just thinking, in regard to the ending,
Speaker 8: you were mentioning the idea that I think the Soviets
Speaker 8: possibly saw it as some kind of allegory. And there
Speaker 8: is a nice piece by Martin Schreier about the reception
Speaker 8: of the film, and I think he says that although
Speaker 8: it didn't get a big audience at the time, it
Speaker 8: was not really it was not really seen, I think
Speaker 8: very much. But it did get good reviews, and Traja
Speaker 8: says that it did strike a chord with at least
Speaker 8: with critics or with people at the time who did
Speaker 8: see it, because I guess it fed into that pessimistic
Speaker 8: mood of nineteen sixty nine nineteen seventy when people knew
Speaker 8: what was going to come. And I think, I guess
Speaker 8: in this film, it's in nineteen I guess nineteen forty five,
Speaker 8: isn't it maybe late nineteen forty five, so you're still
Speaker 8: not under communism yet, but it's coming. And I think
Speaker 8: the way that the film leaves us, he's just wandering
Speaker 8: across that kind of snowy landscape with landmines, and it
Speaker 8: leaves us in quite a despairing and bleak place, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 8: So I guess I think that if we're to take
Speaker 8: something from that in regard to its residences, with the
Speaker 8: time it was made. I think it does leave us
Speaker 8: with kind of an appropriate sense of pessimism and despair,
Speaker 8: doesn't it.
Speaker 6: Really.
Speaker 8: I think it's not auguring something optimistic. Something bad is
Speaker 8: going to happen.
Speaker 1: I guess it doesn't end on a Chipma note. I
Speaker 1: just I don't know how it could actually, especially just
Speaker 1: there's even a bit of ambiguity just what happens with
Speaker 1: idol Hide. At the very end, we're certainly told no
Speaker 1: one certain terms that she's suicided, But I mean, did
Speaker 1: you I don't know when there's a commotion, when this
Speaker 1: is there's all these people around, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: did she What do you think? Do you think she
Speaker 1: definitely did?
Speaker 8: I'd not thought about it. But it doesn't really show
Speaker 8: very clearly, does it what's happened. It's hard when you
Speaker 8: look at the image of her dead, it's hard to
Speaker 8: figure out. I think she's meant to have strangled herself,
Speaker 8: isn't she? But it's not very clear it does. And
Speaker 8: I was thinking too with the brother. The way the
Speaker 8: brother dies, it's also not particularly clear. I think in
Speaker 8: the book it's a little bit different because I think
Speaker 8: he has fled, and then in the book they go
Speaker 8: I think Victor and one of the one of the
Speaker 8: soldiers goes into the woods, and I think they just
Speaker 8: find him dead and like frozen to death. But in
Speaker 8: the film he's grappling with Victor, and then adel Hyde
Speaker 8: she's like hitting I mean, meant to be hitting at Victor,
Speaker 8: but I think hits the brother as well, And the
Speaker 8: last we see of him is he's just keeled over
Speaker 8: or lying on the floor, but it doesn't really tell
Speaker 8: us explicitly how he's died. Then the official the soldier
Speaker 8: comes the guy on crutches, but then it just cuts
Speaker 8: away to the hearings. Yeah, I think that too, is
Speaker 8: left a little bit unclear. I think for me anyway,
Speaker 8: it's fast to agree with the statement, which instantly seems
Speaker 8: sinister because you think of anything to do with that,
Speaker 8: not just the end of World War two times, but
Speaker 8: certainly the time which the film was made. People being
Speaker 8: asked you just agree to here's the statement we prepared earlier.
Speaker 1: You will now agree with this. Kindly agree with this now.
Speaker 1: Don't make us have to make sure agree with this.
Speaker 1: That's that sort of energy, that's the vibe I got
Speaker 1: from ending made it very unclear to me as to
Speaker 1: how les it's this idea of suicide was. I felt
Speaker 1: very unclear.
Speaker 2: I forgot that we end this movie in black and white,
Speaker 2: that we are back to It's taken us full circle.
Speaker 2: We started the film in that very stark black and white,
Speaker 2: and now it's not so stark at the end, but
Speaker 2: we are definitely devoid of all color. And you get that,
Speaker 2: like you're saying, the snowy landscape and that returned to
Speaker 2: the cross where we saw him at earlier. Yeah, with
Speaker 2: that big old field of land, minds that he's just
Speaker 2: marching across, so you don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 8: I think in the book they say that, I think
Speaker 8: he at the end of the book, he meets the
Speaker 8: girl again that he met at the beginning when he
Speaker 8: was going to the house, and the girl tells him
Speaker 8: that the landmines have all been cleared now. But interestingly,
Speaker 8: the film leaves that out, so I guess the film, Yeah,
Speaker 8: the film wants us just to maybe speculate, Yeah, maybe
Speaker 8: they're still there, maybe he will die or yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you read the book Jonathan in translation or check?
Speaker 8: I struggled with it in check. Yeah, trying to look
Speaker 8: for a translation, but sadly I couldn't. I couldn't find
Speaker 8: when I wish somebody, Hopefully somebody will do them. There's
Speaker 8: a university press in the Czech Republic that is starting
Speaker 8: to issue some really nice translations of Czech and Slovak literature.
Speaker 8: I think they were the one who put out The Cremator,
Speaker 8: so hopefully there will be.
Speaker 1: A Twisted Spoon briss the beautiful editions, Yeah, really gorgeous editions.
Speaker 8: They did Valerie in a Week of Wonders as well,
Speaker 8: and Vladimir Kerner also wrote, Yeah, there is also in
Speaker 8: the collection that I got, there was also Valley of
Speaker 8: the Bees as well. So hopefully it would be nice
Speaker 8: to see a two novel volume because I guess together
Speaker 8: they would be yeah, not maybe three hundred pages or
Speaker 8: something with the two of them. So yeah, hopefully in
Speaker 8: the future there will be a translation. But it's pretty
Speaker 8: close otherwise to the film, though, I think there's not
Speaker 8: a lot of not a lot of like big differences.
Speaker 8: Let's just added a little bit more detail, but yeah,
Speaker 8: it's essentially I think the same, really, and no suggestion.
Speaker 1: The book was ever banned at any point or became
Speaker 1: particularly controversial.
Speaker 8: I don't believe so. Yeah, often writers got a worse
Speaker 8: treatment than filmmakers, but I don't believe there was a band.
Speaker 2: I'd have to have to check.
Speaker 5: I know that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, going back to Praka Jan Prakaska, he was treated
Speaker 8: horribly and I think basically he was essentially killed by
Speaker 8: the regime really, but I'm not sure in regard to
Speaker 8: Kerner it didn't really. I have to look into his
Speaker 8: subsequent career through the seventies and eighties. I guess he
Speaker 8: was one of those figures who I mean continued to
Speaker 8: make pretty good films. He was not a but there
Speaker 8: were no more like Maket Lazarova type films. But he
Speaker 8: was able to come back a little bit. I think
Speaker 8: some of the films that he made in the late
Speaker 8: seventies and eight is a worthwhile. I don't think he
Speaker 8: ever scaled the heights again of his sixties work, but
Speaker 8: I really like it as a film that he made
Speaker 8: with Rudolph Rashinski called Smoke on the Potato Field. That's
Speaker 8: again quite a sort of restrained chamber drama about a doctor,
Speaker 8: which is pretty good. And yeah, there's a few interesting
Speaker 8: films that he made, but I think his Yeah, it
Speaker 8: was really just a case of making do with the
Speaker 8: projects that he could make.
Speaker 1: Really, and I know Shadows of a Hot Summer was
Speaker 1: just restored and just screened last year. Curt of me
Speaker 1: very yeah, I hadn't caught up with those works.
Speaker 2: Curious too. He's fascinating. I love watching his films. Each
Speaker 2: one is. Of course, there are similarities between the middle
Speaker 2: eval films that he's doing, but then you get to
Speaker 2: the way Dove's just freaking gorgeous and so ambitious. Everything
Speaker 2: that I see by this guy, I'm just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: give me more, please.
Speaker 8: Was it Jay Hoberman who said he is like the
Speaker 8: I think he compared him, but he said he is
Speaker 8: both the Orson Wells and the I can't remember who
Speaker 8: was the other filmmaker. Was it Parajanov?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think is fair.
Speaker 5: Really.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I much as I love Check cinema Check and Slovak cinema,
Speaker 8: I think that in a way is quite a It's
Speaker 8: quite a kind of consciously modest cinema in many ways,
Speaker 8: isn't it. It's a cinema of it's a small scale cinema.
Speaker 8: It's a cinema that often deals with and it's often comic,
Speaker 8: it's often dealing with intimate, small scale situations, and I
Speaker 8: think flat Cheel is someone who brought this kind of
Speaker 8: visual ambition and this kind of epic sense. I guess,
Speaker 8: not so much in a film like adel Hyde, but
Speaker 8: in his other work, which is unique.
Speaker 5: Really.
Speaker 8: I think what he's doing in something like Makota Lazo,
Speaker 8: there are not many other check or Slovak films of
Speaker 8: that kind of vision.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, any other director from that part of
Speaker 1: the world who made the cast and crew lizbet two
Speaker 1: years in miserable conditions trying to steep themselves in what
Speaker 1: it was actually like to be in the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: as best anyone can tell. Yeah, that was not a
Speaker 1: common practice. I don't believe for most filmmakers there possibly
Speaker 1: shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: I don't think they would have gotten a whole lot
Speaker 2: of films made had they all done that.
Speaker 8: I didn't he have a breakdown, I think as well
Speaker 8: during the making of it, And yeah, I think he
Speaker 8: took a toll on everybody, including him. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 8: I guess you'd have to go to Zuwavski or Hoderovsky
Speaker 8: or somebody like that, would you to find kind of
Speaker 8: something similarly extreme.
Speaker 2: That's almost like cult leader status to be able to
Speaker 2: make a crew do that.
Speaker 1: Was the Russian director in recent time who built that
Speaker 1: whole environment over the course of several years and inflicted
Speaker 1: a sort of a Stanford University Experiment type vibe across
Speaker 1: an entire Oh wow, small town Ilia gotts. It wound
Speaker 1: up incredibly controversial because of suggestions more than the suggestions
Speaker 1: of a lot of abusive practices in this town he
Speaker 1: built for these opteen films that I think I've seen
Speaker 1: two to have emerged from the projects so far. One
Speaker 1: of them was extremely harrowing. Do you know the ones
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 2: Is ringing a bell? No, I'm so curious now, yeah me.
Speaker 1: He had one feature film called four, the number four,
Speaker 1: and then nothing was heard of him for many years,
Speaker 1: And it turned out he'd been building this little miniature
Speaker 1: Soviet town with Yeah, the stories a bit bizarre, but
Speaker 1: the films are distressing.
Speaker 2: A young Russian film director has holed up on the
Speaker 2: outskirts of Kharkov, a town one point four million in
Speaker 2: the country seat making something a movie, sure, but not that.
Speaker 2: If the gosp is to be believed, This was the
Speaker 2: most expensive complicated all concer assuming film project ever attempted.
Speaker 2: This might be it Ilyya Kersh khan Kanovski, a madman
Speaker 2: who forced the crew to dress in Stalin era clothes,
Speaker 2: fed them Soviet food out of cans and tens, and
Speaker 2: paid them in Soviet money, only made some of.
Speaker 1: Them high powered functionaries and others surfs effectively, and had
Speaker 1: them inhabit these roles with the psychological dimensions at all entailed,
Speaker 1: and lived that for extended periods of time, and then
Speaker 1: every now and again film it in a sort of
Speaker 1: semi improvised sort of way, including actual sort of Nazi
Speaker 1: thugs on there, but also guest appearances by people like Slavojkora,
Speaker 1: other personalities who would pop in to deliver a lecture
Speaker 1: or just completely bizarre and bonk is on a scale
Speaker 1: that possibly unprecedented and probably should never be repeated and
Speaker 1: possibly should never have happened in the person place.
Speaker 8: I was thinking of hard to be a god at first,
Speaker 8: But yeah, that's even that's not as extreme as because
Speaker 8: that does feel like that, doesn't it. That feels that
Speaker 8: one of those films in which the people in it
Speaker 8: had to live through that and probably suffered very uncomfortable
Speaker 8: and unpleasant situation to make.
Speaker 1: That, And in that case, the director didn't survive it himself,
Speaker 1: did he? I think was the film completed posthumously, wasn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That's right by his son, I think, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: We're going to take a break and play a preview
Speaker 2: of next week's show right after these brief messages.
Speaker 3: He gambled everything, his home, his wife, his mistress, and
Speaker 3: five pounds of fighting. Warren Oates is the cockfighter from
Speaker 3: Governor's mentions to cheap hotels. It's the big money sport
Speaker 3: that's derneyed, violent and outside the law. Cockfighter a man
Speaker 3: bow here.
Speaker 2: He can be anything you've got shown me.
Speaker 3: Warren Oates a man whose game is winning with a
Speaker 3: woman whose game is meant catfighter regular.
Speaker 2: That's right. We're going to be back next week with
Speaker 2: a look at Monty Hellman's Cockfighter in episode six years
Speaker 2: in the making. Until then, I want to thank my
Speaker 2: co host Jonathan and Serice. What is the latest with you?
Speaker 1: I have to put to bed very imminently. The program
Speaker 1: to the next moden Que sim Pistable, which runs November
Speaker 1: fourteen to twenty four. That's the most pressing of why
Speaker 1: things that am juggling and I've the commission to delivering
Speaker 1: at this moment.
Speaker 2: Are you an over committed too?
Speaker 1: Every now and again I kid myself that I've weaned
Speaker 1: myself off it's somehow, but.
Speaker 9: I have not.
Speaker 2: And Janatha, what's the latest with you, sir?
Speaker 8: So I've cometributed to the recent death crocodile release of
Speaker 8: Adela hasn't had supper yet, which for which I've written
Speaker 8: one of the essays that's out now. It's a beautiful
Speaker 8: release with lots of wonderful features and a beautiful packaging
Speaker 8: as well. And I've also got a couple of things
Speaker 8: in the pipeline for second run, some things that will
Speaker 8: be I think of interest to fans of the projection
Speaker 8: Booth and of Checktimber, and those should be released. I
Speaker 8: think end of one of them should be at the
Speaker 8: end of this year, and then another one next year,
Speaker 8: I believe.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, folks for being on the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 2: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 2: of the other shows that I work on. They're all
Speaker 2: available at runningwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community.
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Speaker 2: Projection Booth dike over the world.
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