8


IVAN PASSER

Peter Hames


Ivan Passer was the most elusive and retiring of the Forman group and, before leaving
Czechoslovakia to work in the West, had made only two independent films, A Boring Afternoon (Fádní
odpoledne), one of the separately released stories from Pearls of the Deep (1965), and Intimate
Lighting (1965). Many Czechs regard these as two of the best films to have been produced by the New
Wave.

Jaroslav Boček has described Passer’s talent as the ability to create a “plurality of happening.”
“The number of actions surrounding a person, into which he enters, either actively or passively,
enables the jumping of sudden sparks, which become the flowers of everyday life, its poetry and
humor.”[1] Of A Boring Afternoon, he writes:


Passer combines half a dozen events at one go: the youngster reads a book, the pub-keeper swears at
him, the women singing over their beer, old Mr. Juppa meditates about football and the man with the
pot of pickled cabbage leads the talk from football, which they don’t know how to play anymore
today, to that “wonderful woman” behind the window. And everything here discharges in contacts,
promptings, small sparks, in one word: in an atmosphere both lyrical, fragile and captivating.[2]^


The same could obviously be said of Intimate Lighting, a film which bears the stamp of apparent
improvisation. It describes the visit of Petr, a classical musician, to the country house of his
friend, Bambas, who is head of a provincial music school. As with Forman and Papoušek, Passer is
concerned with presenting a situation, not a story, and there is minimal narrative content. During
the weekend, Petr and Bambas go to a village funeral, compare past and present, and make a drunken
attempt to “escape” (from circumstances, from age, from their life). However, Sunday morning marks
the return of the status quo.

Embodied in this are typical Forman/Papoušek themes, but both the social milieu and the treatment
are often very different. Neither of the main characters, Bambas and Petr, is young, and both find
their meaning and direction in life through music. However, lest the film be presented in too
individualistic a light, it should be remembered that Papoušek collaborated on the script and was
assistant director, Věra Křesadlová appeared in the role of Petr’s girlfriend, Štěpa, and Jan
Vostrčil as Bambas’s father-in-law. The photography was in part by Ondříček, although the
documentary gray of Loves of a Blonde is absent in favor of a sunny and sometimes glossy lyricism.

The opening scenes very much support Boček’s comments on A Boring Afternoon, lacking the precise
script points of Forman and Papoušek, creating rather a mood that is essential to the subsequent
character observation. During the credit sequence, we see bars written up on the blackboard of the
main practice room in a provincial music school. The conductor’s hand appears in front of the
board, once the back of his neck, his full face appearing when the credits finish. The orchestra is
rehearsing its part in a concerto, which they are soon to play. There is an exchange between the
conductor and the cellist, Honza the pharmacist, on a matter of interpretation.

Bambas is introduced, back to the camera and working at a typewriter, his administrative role
emphasized. He walks through a small practice room where an old man is teaching a young violinist
and on to the rehearsal. There is a good deal of discussion on the progress of ticket sales, and
Bambas announces that he has asked the soloist (Petr) to come a day early. As the concerto is
played, there is a panning movement across the room, revealing that the orchestra consists almost
entirely of old men. The camera ends on a boy and then the window, moving outside to continue along
the side of a railway car. We see the shadow outline of a cello case and two figures moving along
the inside - Petr and Štěpa. Bambas meets them.

The only obvious points made in this opening scene are the way in which Bambas’s enthusiasm for
music has been side-tracked into administration (although this only makes sense in the light of
what follows), the juxtaposition of youth and age, and the fact that the orchestra consists mainly
of old men. Otherwise, it is simply a case of observing the everyday reality of the rehearsal and
the routine dialogue between conductor and players. Where the film scores, both here and elsewhere,
is in Passer’s intimate knowledge of this situation and his love for musicians and the world of
music. It is an admixture of cinéma vérité influence and lyricism, concluding with the obvious
poetic device of the silhouetted figures in the railway car. Whatever hard truths may emerge from
his observation, they are submerged by affection, and it is this that distinguishes Passer’s work
from that of Forman. It is a sense of reconciliation that is also to be found in the work of Menzel
and Jasný.

The film’s action is given a formal setting by the way in which Bambas’s household is introduced.
As Bambas, Petr, and Štěpa approach the house across the fields, there is an isolated shot of the
garden gate, which is then supported by an image of the whole house. Like Petr and Štěpa, the
audience does not know what it will contain.

Petr comments politely and admiringly on the house. Bambas’s wife looks out from the terrace and
goes in again, and a background of domestic triviality is immediately established. We are
introduced to the chaotic world of young children comment from the older one that “Kaja did his
wees in the bath.” The wife and grandmother appear almost by accident, the camera observing their
skirts before we see their faces. The confused situation in which both women are clearly
preoccupied with meals, children, and housework is nicely and unobtrusively captured. It is a
sequence made up from the small sparks and promptings referred to by Boček and the cinéma vérité
illusionism of Forman.

It is against this background that the disillusion of the two friends is gradually introduced.
During the evening meal, Bambas speaks sarcastically of his provincial fate in a “village with the
Blue Danube.” Petr observes that he is able to play only classics and that even Prague is not so
different from anywhere else because its Philharmonic Orchestra spends so much of its time abroad.
Bambas’s wife reveals that now that her husband is head of the school, he no longer comes home
bad-tempered (an obvious indication of his unsuitability as a teacher). The only bright topic of
conversation is a newly discovered work by Jirovec, which has recently been recorded by the
Budějovice radio station.

Passer has described the unique contribution of Czechoslovak cinema as “the obstinate investigation
of surrounding reality. . .” The films “are a diagnosis resulting from discovering reality - no
critique, no prescription, no cure. A statement of the fact that as individuals and as a society,
we are in a state of permanent crisis.”[3] Leaving aside the impossibility of attaining such a
dispassionate investigation, the influence of these ideas can be seen in the trivial and everyday
problems of Intimate Lighting. The logic of the film is determined by chronological progression,
what the characters might typically do on Saturday morning (they play at a funeral), at dinner, in
the early evening (they rehearse a quartet), and in the late evening. With the exception of Bambas
and Petr facing the death of their dreams after midnight, the film’s observations seem haphazard,
accidental, and not directed toward any overall argument. There is an “obstinate investigation” of
reality as it might typically be rather than the critical analysis of a problem. Passer allows
himself time to develop sequences that do not require justification as part of a thematic
development.

Forman has recounted how, during the filming of Black Peter, Vostrčil was always disappearing to
play at various funerals, and it is this experience upon which Passer draws in the first major
section of the film. The money that Bambas and his father-in-law earn from playing at funerals is
put toward the cost of building additional housing.

Placed in a key position within the film, it is a lyrical and whimsical sequence that sets a
dominant aesthetic tone, which is never negated. Bambas, Petr, Grandad, and Štěpa follow a funeral
procession in a car, moving slowly through fiat fields of waving wheat and past evenly spaced
telegraph poles. Grandad remarks philosophically that mourning is always the same. “They say you
can travel the world with a single sad song.” In the role of Štěpa, Věra Křesadlová looks
stunningly beautiful, a fit subject for any male fantasy. When she walks behind the procession,
Grandad and Bambas have an opportunity to admire her figure. Grandad remarks that her breasts could
be a bit bigger, and the thought is sufficient to make him give an unaccustomed leap onto the
roadside.

Then there is a curious and surreal scene in which the three men wait behind a wall and view the
funeral in long shot. The camera pans from a girl’s legs pointing into the air in the middle of a
field to the small figure of a man urinating against a wall near the church. When he disappears,
more men appear to the sound of hymn singing to carry out the same task, and an old man with an
umbrella approaches the girl in the field. In desultory fashion, Grandad reminisces about the time
when he had “a girl like that” in a field of rye. The conversation turns to Smetana, and Petr fat
female haymaker clad in a bikini. This combination of visions, with its reflective humor, is quite
different from anything to be found in Forman and Papoušek. It is photographed with a high contrast
largely absent from their work and close to the lyrical tradition of Czech cinematography.

The funeral party itself is a sweaty, shirt-sleeved, beery occasion with Grandad and Bambas
“bringing forth the tears” as promised. While they are waiting outside in the car, Štěpa and Petr
are passed by a group of peasant women. They look in on Štěpa, and she is obviously discomfited. As
they disappear, rakes over their shoulders, their faces and figures worn by work, the last words of
a song echo from the party – “the lovely girl I left behind.” The words could perhaps apply to
their lost youth, and, at its most obvious this juxtaposition of Štěpa with peasant women is a
confrontation between past and present, youth and age, town and country. In a conventional
socialist realist film, the image would probably be explained in terms of a spoiled city girl/noble
worker contrast. A director like Antonioni would use the idea in much the same way. As it is,
Passer avoids all of this to provide an effect that is simply mysterious and poetic.

Later, when the four of them have returned to Bambas’s house, there is an apparently unstructured
scene that gives the sense of a typical meal time. The meal disintegrates into a squabble over food
as a chicken is apportioned to the diners. Štěpa offers her drumstick to Kaja as Grandad watches
enviously. In quick succession, Bambas’s wife transfers the contents of her plate to Štěpa and
Grandmother passes her food to the mother. In the resultant confusion, Grandad ends up with the
drumstick (which he wanted), and the children try to pull the leg apart as if it were a wishbone.
All this is played for overt comic effect while emphasizing the traditional sacrifice of food by
the two mothers. The scene ends with Bambas losing his temper, the children being sent to bed, and
Štěpa retreating to the kitchen in a state of uncontrolled giggling. Her innocence is juxtaposed
with the habitual ill-temper of Bambas, which is exacerbated by the cacophony of family routine.

In the quartet rehearsal that follows, the bad temper and bickering is carried over from the
previous scene as Bambas criticizes the playing of Honza the pharmacist and that of his
father-in-law, who is likened to a lumberjack. Just as Štěpa had parted company from the men during
the funeral, she again follows a separate course. Her actions are intercut with the rehearsal, but,
in this case, the emphasis is on her and not on the reactions of the men. She talks to the
grandmother, who can boast a more exotic past than the younger generations. Grandad, who had worked
in a circus, had eloped with her after they had known each other for only three days and carried
her off to France. Štěpa then finds some kittens in the garden, holding one of them up at the
window where the four musicians are playing. The section ends with a scene in which Štěpa beckons a
simple-minded farmhand over the garden wall and presents him with a half-eaten apple. It is an
incident that seems precious when described but acceptable in context. The three elements in the
sequence - the “fairy tale” (Grandmothers elopement) and Štěpa’s fascination with the animals and
the farmhand-all emphasize her spontaneity and youth.

At night, when everyone else is in bed, Bambas and Petr meet and, to beer and slivovitz, engage in
some late night “philosophizing.” For Bambas, this is the best time of day, when he can relax on
his own and listen to music on the radio. The discussion again turns to Jirovec - he is old and
simple but his music “has something.” Eventually, the two of them take a positive act to reject the
shared assumption that they are failures. They decide to take off “into the wide world” and make a
living by playing their instruments-at funerals rather than concerts since no one goes to the
latter. As they escape, they are silhouetted by car headlights as if greeting a new dawn while a
full orchestra plays the music of Jirovec in sympathy. But the romantic mood is soon defiated when
we notice that Petr is still wearing his pyjamas and a bus passes them as they walk in the wrong
direction.

On Sunday morning, reality reasserts itself. When the family assembles for breakfast, Petr and
Bambas have the expected hangovers and his wife has a toothache. An alarm clock shatters the
silence (it often goes off two hours late depending on the weather). Grandmother has prepared
eggnog as a special treat, and Grandad proposes a toast to health, the concert, and pretty women.
Bambas’s response is characteristically morose. As they stand up to drink, the eggnog fails to come
out of the glasses. “Ah, these Sundays,” Grandad comments. There is a final long-distance frozen
shot of the house, bed linen hanging over the balcony, with the drinkers presented in a careful
composition, Grandad’s belly well to the fore.

The conclusion reinforces the mood of quiet despair that lies at the center of the ['his derives
principally from Bambas, a man financially dependent on his relatives, isolated in provincial
obscurity, and a self-confessed failure. At meal-times, he eats his food in a kind of oblivion,
using music and fishing as his means of escape from a petty environment. Petr, a more lightly
sketched character, is different, it is implied, only because he has not got a car, a house, and a
family. He has, of course, got Štěpa, which means that some of his illusions are intact.

The essentially faceless quality of these two middle-aged men is pointed up by the more vital life
of the young and the old. On the one hand are the grandparents play with their memories of
elopement, grandmother’s ballet exercises, the ability to play with children, and the confidence to
drink to “health, the concert, and pretty girls.” On the other is the glamorous and ingenuous
Štěpa. In Passer’s portrait of a “mid-life crisis,” no one changes overnight and no new adjustments
are made. It is worth noting that Bambas and Petr are men of the fifties, juxtaposed between those
character was formed before the war and those with no adult experience of the Stalinist period.

While this pessimistic observation is present in the film, it is in no way allowed to dominate. As
already indicated, the lyrical mood of the photography sets the prevailing aesthetic tone, and the
film’s observations are primarily affectionate and humorous. The more serious aspects of the
analysis are injected into the film’s I overall interplay of character. As Boček observes:


Forman’s humour, though it is cultured, permits itself a clownish exhibitionism at times. Passer
remains more at the humorous gesture, he only lightly touches situation, and then goes on as if
afraid that its further development might the human dignity of his characters.[4]^

^

In the same way, he avoids giving added weight to the film’s pessimistic elements lows the optimism
of his own vision to dominate. Despite its “obstinate investigation” of reality, it is a film of
love and reconciliation.


While the contribution of the Forman group to the New Wave is recognized everywhere, its nature is
open to differing interpretations. In the case of Forman’s films, do they mercilessly expose the
spiritual sources of fascism and Stalinism, provide bitter political allegory, or show a humanist
portrait of everyday “reality”? Do they make us think, or do they fail to question the reality
portrayed?

Much depends on the standpoint of the interpreter, but it can be argued that Forman’s films do a
number of these things at the same time. Humanity does not rule out criticism. On both counts, the
strength of Forman’s films lies in the methods adapted - the use of nonactors, a concern with
reflecting the look and situations of  everyday life, and an examination of situations based on
observation of character rather than literary analysis. They exhibit an apparent authenticity
absent from the more obvious intellectual approach of the “critical realists” and the experimental
products of the New Wave.

Stylistically, the look of cinéma vérité is consciously sought in Black Peter and Loves of a
Blonde. The camera work is functional, people walk in front of the lens, there are jump cuts, and
the editing often seems intentionally awkward. Passer’s Intimate Lighting maintains some of these
attributes although his country idyll is much more smoothly achieved. It is also more
self-contained and does not extend far outside the interplay of the leading actors. With Forman’s
Tlre Firemen’s Ball and Papoušek’s The Best Age, the work of the group becomes more manipulative,
more concerned with using characters to make points, less concerned with observation and
improvisation.

The strength of Forman’s satire in The Firemen’s Ball makes it a unique and invaluable work, but
its strength no longer derives from the shock of verisimilitude. Equally, Papoušek’s films are
consciously worked out in advance. The particular qualities of Black Peter, Loves of a Blonde, and
Intimate Lighting arose from a specific period and a specific kind of collaboration. It is unlikely
that their effect or appeal could have been achieved or maintained after 1968.


In: Hames, Peter. The Czechoslovak New Wave. University of California Press., Berkeley, 1985, pp.
150-157.



________________________________

[1] Boček, Looking Back, p. 27.

[2] Ibid., p. 28.

[3] Ivan Passer, interviewed in Liehm, Closely Watched Films, p. 384.

[4] Boček, Looking Back, p. 28.