9


JIŘÍ MENZEL

Peter Hames


If writer/director Pavel Juráček was among the first to reflect the new concern with Kafka and
Hašek, Jiří Menzel did most to place cinema at the direct service of literature. All of his films
of the sixties were based on literary sources, and his primary concern seems to have been the
accuracy of his adaptations. The main inspiration was Bohumil Hrabal, from whose work he adapted
The Death of Mr. Balthazar (Smrt pana Baltazara) in Pearls of the Deep (1965), Closely Watched
Trains (1966), his best-known film; and Larks on a  Thread (Skřivánci na nitích, 1969). Capricious
Summer (1967) was based on Vladislav Vančura’s novel, and he worked with Josef Škvorecký on Crime
in the Girls School (1965) and Crime in the Night Club (1968). Despite this wide range of sources
and his devotion to the “vision” of the original authors, Menzel’s work has, to adopt Joseph Losey,
an unmistakable “signature.”

The international impact of Forman’s Loves of a Blonde has been equaled only by Closely Watched
Trains, which won the Hollywood Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1967. Critics in both the West and
the East have linked the films in terms of their gentle observation of ordinary people, sense of
humor, and their themes (love versus the repressive status quo). Because of these similarities, the
work of Forman and Menzel is frequently confused or grouped together. In fact, Menzel’s approach to
filmmaking is quite different from that of Forman. Not only does he remain close to his literary
sources, but his films are conventionally well made and carefully scripted and use mainly
professional actors. His use of visual imagery is distinctive and reveals a strong surrealist
influence.

Like Forman, Menzel’s first love was theater, and he maintained links with both the Semafor Theater
of Suchý and Šlitr and the Činoherní klub, where he produced Machiavelli’s The Mandrake. In the
early seventies, when he was unable to direct films, he produced pop concerts featuring such stars
as Eva Pilarová. Throughout his career, he has acted in both his own films and those of other
directors. He appeared in and was assistant director on Chytilová’s Ceiling (1962).

Menzel’s first film as director was The Death of Mr. Balthazar/The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, one
of the seven episodes made for Pearls of the Deep, an anthology film adapted from Hrabal’s stories.
The film not only reflected widespread admiration for Hrabal’s work but was regarded at the time as
something of a New Wave manifesto. Despite his debt to Surrealism, Hrabal’s work was welcomed
primarily for its authenticity, its vignettes of everyday life, and a speech and humor derived from
the real world.

Closely Watched Trains, Jiří Menzel, 1966



The original stories for both The Death of Mr. Balthazar and Chytilová’s episode At the World
Cafeteria (Automat svět)[1]have been translated. Both adaptations show extreme loyalty to Hrabal.
Despite this, Menzel’s episode is much the most impressive and individual of the five that made up
the final film.[2]^

The original story for The Death of Mr. Balthazar was based on the death of a West German
motorcycle rider during the Czechoslovak Grand Prix in the early fifties. Škvorecký writes:


In both the story and the film, the race is seen through the mythologising eyes of four motorcycle
fans; it is really a chain of folkloric narrations with the motorcycle race turning into a
legend.[3] ^


The film is structured around the simple device of recounting events during a family outing to the
race track. The group consists of a middle-aged couple without children and an aged father. In the
opening section, there is a sense of liberation as a succession of tracking shots carries us
forward to experience the carefree joys of motoring. Soon, however, there is an explosion, and we
see the abrupt and static image of the car – a 1931 Walter cabriolet – isolated and broken down in
a field.

The car’s breakdown is attributed to the wife’s having done a favor for a butcher by transporting
six people and a bedstead. Later, the husband boasts that it has carried six butchers and a
wardrobe. Their repairs to the car are conducted like a major surgery, their only exchanges
centered on their common interest – motorcycle. The stylized observations are based on their
ability to detect the make, cubic capacity and year of manufacture from the sounds of passing
engines.

The father remains isolated, a small figure standing against a background of foliage, and delivers
the first of several self-absorbed monologues about the past, to which only he listens and in which
only he is interested. As is often the case with Hrabal, it is the Austro-Hungarian past to which
he refers and, in particular, to the dilapidated state of the old archbishop’s residence, the
incumbent having long since departed for the Tyrol “so as to be nearer heaven.”


The literary nature of the film’s dialogue is undoubtedly straight Hrabal as are the absurd
confrontations. Where Menzel scores is in applying Hrabal’s observation within the context of an
actual race meeting, the documentary or cinéma vérité views of reality serving as a counterpoint to
the literary elements. However, he has already begun to contribute his own poetic imagery – the
oddly isolated shot of the broken-down car in a field, the iconic and magical details that make up
its appeal, the old man almost swallowed up by his background, the apelike onlookers hanging from
the pine trees, and, most of all, the slow motion photography of the race itself as the riders move
in dream ballet to the sound of Bach’s Fugue in B Minor. The magic, the freedom, the dream that
they represent for the devotees are all caught in a few images. It is, of course, a freedom
intimately bound up with the idea of death. Two old men live in the past but reinforce the fact of
their survival by reflecting on the deaths of famous motorcyclists.


Menzel’s second work was for yet another episode film, this time the title story from the
three-part adaptation of Josef Škvorecký’s Crime in the Girls School.[4] The story concerns a very
English-style detective, Lieutenant Borůvka, who is faced with solving a crime at a girls school
closely modeled on Ronald Searle’s St. Trinian’s. The school itself is an old country house, and
Borůvka is soon on a trail of theft and possible murder in which the girls’ secret society, KKK, is
brought to book and the caretakers illicit whiskey still uncovered in the basement. KKK stands for
“Kill Kitten Klan” (Kitten, or rather Kočička, is the name of the missing math teacher) and the
members rejoice in the Czech equivalents of such names as Miss Jackie Ripper and Miss Dracula.
Their world is far from that of “meritorious mathematicians” (the award decorates the teacher’s
room) and the school slogan “Studovat, Studovat, Studovat” (Study, Study, Study). Their extramural
activities range from orthodox sex, stealing cars, lesbian sex, and posing for Playboy magazine
(wrongly interpreted by the English teacher as a magazine for sporting youth) to looking at
pornographic slides. No doubt the film was regarded in some quarters as highly subversive, but the
humor is at a fairly routine level and could scarcely be more innocuous.

There are one or two surrealist touches – the bust that blows smoke at the girls when offered a
cigarette, the whiskey still that looks like a corpse when covered with a cloth, the wizened and
grotesque faces of the teachers spaced among potted plants during the lieutenant’s interrogation,
and the black underwear and leather-like gear of the Kill Kitten Klan. As the Imperial Dragoness
and leader of the Klan, Věra Křesadlová bears a striking resemblance to the evil Diana Monti
(Francine Bergé) of Georges Franju’s Judex (1963). Despite these pleasures, Crime in the Girls
School is a minor work that does little to prepare for the aesthetic complexity and power of
Closely Watched Trains.

The chance to film Hrabal’s story was originally offered to Schorm and, subsequently, Chytilová,
neither of whom felt capable of accommodating it to their own filmic approach. Menzel apparently
accepted without having considered the problem. In any event, he and Hrabal collaborated very
closely on the script and introduced a number of modifications to the original story. It is a
testament to the harmony with which they worked that Hrabal ultimately preferred the film to his
original[5] and that Menzel, when accepting his Oscar in 1967, attributed all the credit to Hrabal.
Menzel has said:


As Schorm says, a film is a gesture of love towards man. And when love is in question, I believe
that Mr. Hrabal is the most qualified, that is why I placed myself at his service.[6]^


The precredit and credit sequences of the film are brief and condensed preludes to the development
of the main theme and provide an indispensable context for what follows. The film opens with a
fade-in to an almost empty room where we see small pictures in plain frames of the hero’s
great-grandfather, grandfather, and father. The hero’s voice records: “My name is Miloš Hrma.
People often laugh at my name, but ours is a famous family.” We are told about great-grandfather
Lukáš who fought on the Charles Bridge and retired early after a student demonstrator threw a stone
at him “with devastating effect.” Grandfather Vilém, on the other hand, was a hypnotist, widely
considered an idler, who tried unsuccessfully to hypnotize German tanks as they advanced on Prague.
Father, an engine driver, had been able to retire at forty-eight since engine drivers are credited
with double time. During this recording of the family heritage, Miloš is dressed in his new
uniform. The camera moves gradually from his polished shoes, up his trouser legs, past shining
buttons, to his cap, which his mother lifts ceremonially above his head. The scene recalls the
coronation of Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible and Olivier’s Richard III. Miloš later comments: “I
myself have just finished a training course to be a station guard. It is common knowledge in our
town that like all my family . . . my one desire is to stand on a platform and avoid hard work,
while others have to slave and slave and slave. . . .”

The humor of this introduction is very much in the tradition of Hašek and Švejk, the legendary
idleness a political stance against authority and dogma. Occasionally, when aggression becomes
physical, this will take the form of an absurd and quixotic gesture such as the hypnotizing of
invading tanks as they “liberate” the capital. The focus on Miloš’s uniform strikes an apparently
incongruous note in that only the absurd stationmaster has a similar obsession. However, the
grandeur of the uniform is in inverse proportion to the importance of his job, and its use here is
primarily symbolic and ironic. It signifies his entrance into adult life where he will continue the
family tradition and encounter the mysteries of the opposite sex.

The film is set during the German occupation, and the credit sequence summarizes its impact in
mainly still shots. The music, with its flat percussive effects, echoes those satirical pieces
about mythical military heroes, Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije and Kodály’s Háry János. The terrifying
nonentity of the “closely watched trains,” their weapons shrouded in tarpaulin sheets, is
effectively conveyed. However, the human reality behind it all is established by the intercutting
of an image of a German soldier eating. It is surely no accident that the sequence ends with the
restless circling of pigeons, suggesting the madness they symbolized in Georges Franju’s antiwar
documentary Hôtel des Invalides. The aesthetic complexity of this opening reveals the enormous gap
between Menzel’s approach and the adopted by Forman, Papoušek, and Passer.

There is no need to provide an extended outline of the film’s theme and narrative progression since
the shooting script is both obtainable in English and extremely readable. Since, as with all
Menzel’s available features, his prime concern is with characterization, I shall approach the film
through the depiction of individual characters and continue with a consideration of its distinctive
visual imagery.

Miloš Hrma has embarked optimistically on a career, he hopes, of glory and idleness. Nothing very
striking seems likely to happen to him when he arrives for his first day of work, and his three
colleagues seem to share most of the attitudes, particularly idleness, for which the Hrma family is
also famed. There is the station guard Hubička (“Smallkiss”), sleepy and preoccupied with his
midnight love life; the stationmaster, who greets him with a pigeon perched on his head and covered
in bird droppings; and the porter, Novák, who leaves all the minor jobs undone in a manner that can
only be described as conscientious.

The significance of the war and of the German occupation impinge only accidentally on Miloš, who,
for most of the film, is preoccupied, like most youths of his age, with his sentimental education
and the problem of losing his virginity. Since he is an innocent abroad in the adult world, I shall
consider him last, examining first of all the characters with whom he comes in contact.

It is the lascivious and sex-obsessed Hubička (Josef Somr) who is the prime mover in the solution
to Miloš’s problem, both frustrating him in his early romance and keeping the subject constantly
before him. When Miloš’s girlfriend Máša, conductress of the local train, is about to kiss him, it
is Hubička who whistles the train out. The two youngsters, eyes shut, reach out their lips to each
other as the train starts from the station. The bemused Miloš is brought back to reality only when
Hubička’s whistle is popped into his wide open mouth. The scene emphasizes Miloš’s innocence and
leads directly to Hubička’s more “sophisticated” view of the world. He is interested only in what
Máša may be like in bed.

Shortly after their discussion of Máša, there is the famous episode with the countess, which is
suffused with Hubička’s lustful musing. “The very first glance would tell you that she was bred in
silk – a stout feudal lady with aristocratic behaviour even on a horse.”[7] As she whispers to the
avidly disgusted stationmaster about the decline of morals in the district – in particular, the
need to reconsecrate a church after the discovery of fornicators behind the high altar – Hubička
gazes with fascination as her well-textured hindquarters case themselves out of and then into the
saddle. He whispers: “If only she would lean over me… that would black out the whole world for
me.”[8] He confides his dream of being a cart that the countess would hold by the handle and push
into the storeroom.

Hubička’s activities are not, however, confined to talk. During his first spell of night duty,
Miloš is able to spy on him entertaining a “cousin” on the stationmaster’s prize Austrian sofa. On
the night when Miloš is in the hospital, Hubička stamps the telegrapher’s backside with the station
stamps (resulting in a high-level inquiry). It is also Hubička who is entrusted by the resistance
with the task of blowing up a Nazi munitions train. Finally, he arranges for Miloš’s sexual
initiation at the hands of the glamorous resistance fighter, the suitably named “Viktoria Freie.”

This association of sex with the theme of national liberation was one of the most politically
“subversive” qualities of the film, undercutting the traditional (and inhuman) convention of the
noble resistance fighter. Despite, perhaps because of, his escapades, Hubička is a “positive”
character. There is no hesitation on his part when the resistance movement approaches him for his
cooperation. Yet, even for him, there is an element of the accidental in what happens. Despite his
sexual prowess, it is the telegrapher who involves him in her ploys, and it is the resistance
movement that comes to him (he is not a member). He fails to become a hero only by accident.

The stationmaster, played by Vladimír Valenta, already mentioned for his work on Conscience,
Desire, and The Accused, is the embodiment of traditional virtues and an undisguised figure of fun.
Apparently dedicated to the ideals of patriotism, militarism, religion, respect for authority, and
hard work and consistently nostalgic for the great days of the Austro-Hungarian past and the
aristocracy (in the shape of the countess), he fails conspicuously in his attempts to live up to
his own moral values.

Besides his deference before the countess and his Austrian sofa, he claims to have served in a
cavalry regiment under “Baron Chotek and Earl Silva el Torre el Tasse.” (The result of this last
boast is an invitation to ride the countess’s stallion, an act performed with the greatest
discomfort.) He also shows an unhealthy interest in the forces of corruption that are striking at
the foundations of the old order. It is he who compliments Hubička’s “cousin” on her charming
little ears and tells her the story of the butcher who hid a piece of udder in his fly, cutting off
a protruding nipple to the horror of a lady sitting next to him on a train. However, he is soon
called away by his wife, an evening of sexual jealousy completed by the sound of girlish laughter
filtering up the ventilator shaft. From his moral prison, he shouts the first of a series of
tirades down the shaft-about the fall of the church of Rome, the Last Judgment, Armageddon, and a
sink of iniquity. Later, in a line of dialogue reminiscent of Capricious Summer, he refers to “this
decadent age” and offers the opinion that all pornographic writers should be shot.

The stationmaster’s elaborate preparations for his long-awaited promotion are thwarted by the
inopportune visits of the Nazi controller, Zedníček (Vlastimil Brodský). On the first occasion he
is being fitted for his new uniform and finds himself saluting with one sleeve missing. When
Zedníček pays his final visit, he is discovered feeding the pigeons and covered in droppings. The
controller’s assistant, Mr. Slušný (“Polite”), will see to it that his promotion is deferred.
However, despite Hrabal’s merciless attack on his hypocrisy and on traditional values, the
stationmaster remains a sympathetic, humane, and well-meaning figure who always shows a personal
consideration for Miloš.

The explicitly political points made in the film center on the character of Zedníček, who is both a
collaborator and spokesman for the occupation regime. His first appearance occurs shortly after the
visit of the countess. Lest my description seem too ornate, I will let the screenplay speak for
itself:


A car mounted on rolling-stock wheels is coming along the tracks towards the station. The car door
opens and Councillor Zedníček, dressed in an expensive overcoat, steps ceremoniously out on to the
running board; he stands there saluting as the car trundles towards us. His entry is somehow
reminiscent of Lohengrin on the swan or Field-Marshal Keitel entering the great captured cities,
with one hand leaning against the windscreen of his car and the other holding his marshal’s stick
adorned with diamonds. . . . [Zedníček] is an inconspicuous human being, inspired throughout with
the great ideas of Nazism, Mission and Providence sparkling from his eyes.[9]^


Zedníček has brought a document with him that requires everyone’s signature, recognizing the
minimum sentence for neglect of duty as ten years. In some cases he asserts in incongruous
juxtaposition, people may be sentenced to life – or even death! Before reaching that point, he sets
out a map to show the various tactical moves that the Germans are making to “liberate” Europe. In a
scene that is a precise repetition of a similar one in The Good Soldier Švejk, he demonstrates “the
masterly tactical retreat of our armies.” To indicate the strategy, he uses official stamps that
will later be put to better use on the telegrapher’s backside. Even Zedníček is distracted by her
as she scratches between her breasts with a pencil.

Miloš greets the various stages in this ideological pep talk by asking the simple question “Why?”
Zedníček is forced into platitudes about saving civilization, eventually shifting his ground to the
wishes of the Führer. He finally concludes: “We must all keep together, we are all in the same
boat.” He leaves in his car with the same pomp and ceremony as his arrival, only this time the car
moves backward. The martial music that previously accompanied him (Liszt’s Les Préludes) is
repeated.

His final appearance coincides with the moment when Hubička is due to blow up the munitions train.
He arrives with the telegrapher and her mother (Milada Ježková) to follow up the complaints about
Hubička’s exploits with the rubber stamps, which were registered first with the police and then
with the regional magistrates. These have now been passed to a disciplinary commission of the
railway authorities. On all three occasions, either the girl’s buttocks or a close-up photograph of
them is shown to unbelieving officials. The girl smiles tenderly and proudly as she tells her
story. Zedníček concludes that Hubička has not committed a crime against personal freedom but that
the use of the station stamp constitutes abuse of the German language. He finishes by summarizing
Hubička’s and Miloš’s reactions to the urgent problems of the time-one stamps the telegraphers
backside while the other tries to commit suicide in a brothel: “We all know that the Czechs are
nothing but laughing hyenas.” His words are greeted with successive explosions as the munitions
train blows up. The humor and the policy of noncooperative acquiescence have become political acts
after all.

The quality of innocence required in the role of Miloš made his part one that was extremely
difficult to cast. After fifteen different nonactors had been tested, it was Ladislav Fikar’s wife
who come up with the suggestion of pop singer Václav Neckář. In using a nonactor, Menzel was able
to capture the vacuous and dreamy innocence of a youth about to be initiated into the ways of the
world. He is entirely dependent on others for action and advice in both love and life.

His first tentative efforts to develop a relationship with Máša are both thwarted by Hubička (the
whistle episode and the loud noise in the next room when Hubička and the “cousin” tear the Austrian
sofa in their passion). Throughout, it is Máša who must take the initiative and she who suggests
that they spend the night together at her uncle’s. He is a photographer who provides a constant
stream of good-natured innuendo while fingering and touching the young girls who come to be
photographed in his studio. Again, the conditions for love-making are not perfect (the door will
not shut properly), and Miloš keeps both his hat and his virginity.

The next morning is greeted by a bomb attack, a huge explosion that completely wrecks the studio.
The uncle, waking to find that everything has collapsed, roars with laughter at the absurdity. It
is the film’s first association of laughter with explosions. Incongruously erect among the general
destruction is a long humiliating reminder of Miloš’s sexual inadequacy from which he sadly
collects his coat before leaving

Confronting the evidence of his failure, Miloš makes his one personal decision – to commit suicide.
He goes to a brothel where, to the disgust of the madame, he hires a room for himself alone. He
slashes his wrists in a frightening and methodical scene and is rescued only by the accidental
intervention of a builder who happens to knock a hole in the wall. At the hospital, Miloš is
advised by Dr. Brabec (“Sparrow”), played by Jiří Menzel himself as a far from reassuring young
man. He reveals that he had experienced the same problems of premature ejaculation and suggests
that Miloš should think of something else, such as football, and seek the help of an older woman.

Miloš first consults Zedníček, to whom he has to report, but is thrown out when he asks for advice
about women. Next he tries the stationmaster’s wife, who is busy force-feeding a gander, caressing
and stroking its long neck. She is unable to offer any practical advice, but the sight is
sufficient to give him an erection. It is only after Hubička has explained the situation to the
resistance fighter “Viktoria Freie” that Miloš “becomes a man” and then only after he has been
physically thrust into the room with her.

The next morning, Miloš hums Hubička’s theme, the one that always signifies a night of sexual
adventure. He is seen in an identical pose, looking in contemplation at the sky and poking his
finger in his ear as the stationmaster examines a second tear in his precious Austrian sofa. Having
proved himself, Miloš takes on Hubička’s role in blowing up the munitions train while the latter is
involved with Zedníček’s investigation. Thus, despite himself, he achieves manhood and dies the
death of a romantic martyr. In the blast from the explosion his hat is caught by Máša, Hubička
roars with laughter, and Novák grins broadly. This conclusion, which decisively integrates the
personal story of Miloš with the fight for national liberation, brings together the points made in
the opening sequence, revealing that the film is something more than the study of a young man’s
sexual problems.

In its attitudes, if not in its form, Closely Watched Trains is the Czech film that comes closest
to the humor and satire of The Good Soldier Švejk, not least because it is prepared to include the
reality of the war as a necessary aspect of its comic vision. The attack on ideological dogmatism,
bureaucracy, and anachronistic moral values undoubtedly strikes wider targets than the period of
Nazi occupation. However, it would be wrong to reduce the film to a coded reflection of
contemporary Czech society. The attitudes and ideas derive from the same conditions that originally
inspired Hašek. Insofar as these conditions recur, under the Nazi occupation or elsewhere, the
response will be the same.

The film asserts the power of humor and good-natured nonconformism and has none of the abrasive
qualities of a Forman or the earnest social analysis of a Schorm. In the final analysis, it is a
film of reconciliation, for, as Menzel has said: “We all know that life is cruel and sad. What’s
the point of demonstrating this in films? Let us show we’re brave by laughing at life. And in that
laughter let us not look for cynicism but rather reconciliation.”[10] As with Renoir and Truffaut,
the oppressors in Menzel’s films are human like the rest of us.

There are few scenes more unusual in contemporary cinema than that in which a group of wandering
German soldiers eye a trainload of pretty nurses with “little-boy-lost” looks and starry-eyed lust.
This is a far cry from the fascist beasts of the conventional war film. It is in subverting the
stereotypes, showing everyone as human, war as absurd, and heroism as accidental that the film
contrives to be both reassuring and thought-provoking.

Menzel’s debt to Surrealism has already been mentioned, and much of the imagery in Closely Watched
Trains has the kind of poetic charge typical of Franju’s work. His major achievement lies in a
consistent eroticization of the images that reflect Miloš’s situation. On a simple level, this is
conducted with a deliberate use of phallic symbolism – the levers that Miloš must handle while
Hubička pesters him about Máša, the coffee grinder gripped between the “cousins” thighs, the
swelling mound of ticker tape as he spies on Hubička and the “cousin,” the coat rack, the goose’s
neck, and finally, the lone signal among the clouds of the final explosion (an exact parallel to
the earlier coat rack image). More important than these, however, is a strong feeling for texture,
whether it be the new cloth of uniforms, the shining leather of the desecrated Austrian sofa, or
the soft skin of the telegrapher’s backside.

The same ability is reflected in Miloš’s suicide scene where two razors are set parallel in the
cracks of a wooden stool, the two blades carefully aligned with the grain of wood. When Miloš
brings his wrist down onto the blades and a pool of blood is released, the image is “felt” in the
same way as the other textural images. All the young girls are soft and nubile, even the older
“Viktoria Freie” sharing in the magical quality with which Menzel invests his women. In the latter
case, he emphasizes her white boots and scarf, which appear in the dark before we see her face. She
carries the bomb wrapped in Christmas ribbon, has long eyelashes, and is a circus artist in
peacetime.

The use of this kind of imagery interspersed with points made on the level of script and
characterization makes for a powerful and emotional work. One strange, dreamlike sequence, which
occurs shortly after news is received that the munitions train is expected, illustrates the
originality of the approach adopted by Menzel and Hrabal. There is a sudden warning that an SS
transport train is coming. Everyone disappears from sight, leaving Miloš alone to salute as it
passes. The SS are armed with submachine guns, and the train stops in front of him. Two bodies are
lying on the steps of the freight car, the studded boots of one beside the head of another – yet
another example of the “chosen” image. Miloš finds himself prodded by the pistols of two SS men,
“beautiful as gods,” is taken to the Kommandant of the train, forced to leave with them.

Miloš stands with his hands above his head as an incongruous cheerful and lyrical melody is played
on the soundtrack. The countryside slips away behind him – a girl walking along a path, farm
buildings, cottages, trees in blossom – the constant movement of the train evoking a physical
sensation of beauty and of life slipping away. Again this is intentional. The script describes the
scene: “We see laid out in front of us all the beauty of the world as Miloš had known it, the
beauty of the world to which he is saying goodbye.”[11] But he is spared when the Kommandant
notices the scars on his wrists, stops the train, and motions him to leave. As he climbs down the
steps of the freight car, it is as if he is backing down the rungs of a ladder into a swimming
pool, the beauty of the landscape surrounding him like water. From a conventional script situation,
Menzel and Hrabal have produced a sequence of sensitivity and poetry, of love and humanity.

Menzel’s second feature, Capricious Summer, was awarded the Grand Prix at Karlovy Vary in 1968.
Vančura’s novel, which Ivan Olbracht considers, like Švejk, to be one of the greatest works of
Czech humor,[12] was a natural choice for Menzel, and he approached his task with the intention of
maintaining absolute respect for the original. Škvorecký writes:


Menzel’s treatment was flawless and reverent and, with the assistance of an excellent cast, he
exploited the text to its fullest potential. Among the film makers Menzel must be the most ardent
servant of modern Czech literature...[13]^

^

Milan Kundera has written of Vančura’s original:


He preserves a content smacking of mediocrity, but he confounds it with a deadly serious expression
of pathos. This gives birth to prose of a remarkable parodying humour, a sparkling tension between
pathos of delivery and pettiness of material...[14]^


In view of the film’s strong dependence on Vančura’s words, it can be fully appreciated only if
these are understood. This is so obviously the case that most Czechs regard the essential qualities
of the film as inaccessible to a foreign audience. I would contest this on two grounds. The first
is on the superficial level of subtitles, where there has been a genuine attempt to preserve the
literary and archaic qualities of the original. Second, and more important, is the superb acting of
the three principals, where stylized delivery, physical stance, and gesture do much to overcome the
language barrier. Finally, Menzel’s direction has the strong visual qualities that were a
distinctive element of Closely Watched Trains. His respect for the original ensures that in
adapting it to a new medium, he recognizes the need for imaginative re-creation. His film goes
beyond simple reverence for a literary text.

Capricious Summer is a visually beautiful, reflective, and nostalgic film that examines the
provincial world of three aging members of the bourgeoisie. Their routine is disturbed by the
arrival of a traveling conjuror and a beautiful blonde. While emphasizing the romantic dreams
nurtured by the three men, the film also juxtaposes their inaction with the fundamentally
subversive life of the artist.

The film’s action is prefaced by an absurd, witty, and faintly iconoclastic quotation:


This church was at one time the object of much abuse, having been built by a fool conceited enough
to alter the ground plan contrary to the rule. We were acquainted with that master builder and we
liked him well, even if he was somewhat immoral.


The attitude of engaging irreverence would not be out of place in Menzel’s other films.

The quotation is followed by a shot of the church spire as the camera moves down and back through a
lush green field to a notice saying “Bathing Establishment”. There the significance of the church,
other than its geographical association, comes to an end. The three central characters, each
representing a pillar of bourgeois society, are introduced. The fat Antonín Dura (Rudolf
Hrušínský), proprietor of the huts, represents commerce while his colleagues Canon Roch (František
Řehák) and Major Hugo (Vlastimil Brodský) represent the church and the military. Much of the film’s
humor derives from the ritual interplay among the three as they argue the case for material,
artistic/spiritual, and heroic values. The theatricality of all this is emphasized by the fact that
they sit on a jetty, which is at the same time a raised platform resembling a stage.

It is a summer afternoon and Menzel introduces a number of evocative and impressionist shots – the
shadow of a wooden fence on the ground, a wasp buzzing round a half-empty wine bottle – an idyllic
sequence that ends with Antonín floating on his back in his blue-and-white-striped bathing suit,
his cigar sticking up like a funnel. However, the rain, in a manner reminiscent of Renoir’s Partie
de Campagne, soon negates the lazy, summer’s afternoon by extinguishing Antonín’s cigar and pouring
rapidly into their half-empty glasses. He comments prophetically: “This is a most unfortunate
summer,” the line with which he will close the film and which, by then, will apply to more than
just the weather.

The sexual theme makes an early appearance in the person of Kateřina, Antonín’s large, domineering,
and sexually deprived wife. Her charms are readily available to the three men, who prefer talk to
action and fantasy to reality. As they discuss “philosophy,” she interrupts to reminisce, no doubt
with some exaggeration, on the forceful ardor shown by Antonín when they were courting. His
achievements may lie in the past, but her needs do not and she makes a play for both the canon and
the major. While punting on the river with the former, she recalls the times when the organist used
to pinch her bottom and suggests that since he, the canon, is an educated man he would surely not
lag behind in inventiveness. As the boat slowly sinks, he replies in the film’s characteristically
pompous dialogue: “The swimming master, you, and I are old enough not to be tempted to jump over a
neighbor’s fence.” She tries the same tactics on the major, telling him of the soldier who used to
wear red breeches and twist feverishly at her buttons. The major is unimpressed with her exploits
with the lower classes, responding dryly that those who wore red breeches were recruited from
farmers.

For the three men, sex is a spectator sport, as indeed is everything else, for they are never shown
doing anything except eating, drinking, and talking. They eye pretty girls in the village and keep
a watch on the activities of young couples, but that is all. When a group of young ladies come to
use the bathing huts, Antonín pats their backsides as he ushers them into cubicles. The major,
however, seeks to escape lest they try to drown themselves and thereby force him to perform a
heroic act.

The sterile routine of their life is broken by the arrival of Arnoštek’s caravan, a square
horse-drawn vehicle, which recalls that of the traveling conjuror in Bergman’s The Face (Ansiktet,
1958) and the Cirque Daisy in Franju’s Judex (1963). Arnoštek (Jiří Menzel) crosses the stream with
the help of his blue and white balancing pole, trips on the bathing jetty, and completes his
“entrance” by walking on his hands. Perhaps it is because he is a tightrope walker that he shows a
remarkable inability to keep his feet on the ground. After cadging a meal – “My audience normally
showers me with uneatable objects” – he turns to the cinema and announces a program of “mysteries
and diversions,” which will be presented in the village, with half-prices for children and
soldiers. The last shot of this sequence shows Arnoštek walking off along the opposite side of the
river long balancing pole bobbing comically in tune to the music of a fairground organ.

In casting himself as Arnoštek, Menzel clearly draws attention to his function director. He is a
presenter of “mysteries and diversions” but at the same time a walker of tightropes who may fall to
his death and, more often than not, will have “uneatable objects” thrown at him. In fact, on the
third night of his performance, an old man approaches the arena and shouts at Arnoštek to come down
before he kills himself. He grabs one of the posts and shakes it insistently until Arnoštek falls
and then walks off with the comment: “What did I tell you?” He represents the apathy and
conservatism of the ordinary man who resents the difference and courage of the deviant. To confirm
him in his own prejudice, it is necessary to ensure that Arnoštek does, in fact, fall. When a man
tries to collect money for the injured performer, the worthy citizens turn tail, arguing that far
from being a poor fellow, he deserves a good whipping. Besides presenting the image of the artist
whose talents (and women) are resented by others, it is this scene more than any other that gives
the film its bitter taste – indicating the petty and selfish nature of the average man. If one
considers the fate of Menzel’s film Larks on a Thread (1969) and his own inability to work in the
early seventies, his “self-portrait” can be seen as prophetic.

While Menzel’s announcement has given due notice of the magic that is to enter the humdrum lives of
the three friends, there has been no indication of the form it will take. When the trio go to the
village at dusk to watch the new entertainment, they pass the time in observing the local female
talent. Nothing prepares them for the shock that is to come, and they are struck dumb when Anna,
Arnoštek’s golden-haired assistant, emerges from the caravan. She is dressed in yellow with a black
mask, recalling the image of Daisy in Judex. The mystery and surrealist magic of Franju’s film is
echoed in the use of the mask and the dawn/dusk howl of a dog that is a virtual trademark of the
French director’s work.

Anna is a vision that recalls their youth and the possibility of attaining a romantic dream. Their
attempts to recapture that youth and the successive efforts of all three to seduce the beautiful
Anna form the subject matter of the film’s bittersweet comedy. This is also the obverse of
Kateřina’s unsuccessful attempts to interest them in her charms.

All of the seduction attempts begin with erotic tension and a willing Anna, but none is successful.
Antonín takes her punting by moonlight before carting her into one of the bathing cabins. She lies
back invitingly with one armpit exposed. There is a shot of her legs only in frame, bent upward
with a portion of her slip showing, before she places a naked foot on Antonín’s chest. With keen
anticipation, Antonín pushes it down and then retreats, flexing his fingers as if for a major
encounter. We see his hands moving in front of him, and the camera moves down to reveal that he is
massaging her foot, a task with which he remains occupied all night. There are close-ups of an
ecstatic Anna that suggest that something more may be happening, but they are intentionally
misleading. Nonetheless, Antonín’s exploits incur the wrath of Kateřina and the jealousy of his
friends.

In the canon’s case, he arrives at the caravan door with a book of “chaste love stories” for Anna
to read – Ovid’s The Art of Love. She tells him that she is cooking fish and promises, erotically,
that she will let him hold the saucepan over the fire. As she scrambles about him in her underwear,
he finds himself face to face with her breasts and then her backside. In the meantime, two pieces
of fish shrivel and curl up symbolically in the pan. It is in keeping with his profession that he
should not take the initiative, but the tryst is soon broken when the caravan is attacked by
drunkards. In the ensuing melee, the canon is involved in a fight and his ear lobe torn.

The major takes Anna to his house where the scene begins with them eating, momentarily suggesting
that we are about to witness a Tom Jones – style sequence. However, the sexual tension is
restrained. As the major approaches, Anna bites incessantly at red apples. He sits behind her to
the faint echo of military music, the sound of which gradually increases in volume as he plucks up
the courage to make his attack. Alter some struggle, they fall back on the table, the candlestick
is knocked over, and Anna’s face is ecstatic at the major’s passion. But suddenly it is over, and
the major is asleep on her breast.

The abortive attempts of the three would-be lovers to fulfill their dreams are not merely a
function of their age but also of their social position. They have ceased to be  individuals, and
each is defined by the characteristics of his social role. As inactive pillars of a static society,
they have lost the capacity to act and can only fantasize and talk. Running parallel to their
adventures with Anna are those of Kateřina and Arnoštek, who, at any rate initially, is able to
help her with her most pressing problem. The main point about this relationship is the visual
absurdity, the contrast between the thin, spindly, “knock-kneed” (to quote one of the villagers)
Arnoštek and the mountainous Kateøina. When he carries her off to the woods, staggering under a
tremendous burden, his problem evokes sympathy.

The magical effect of the beautiful Anna has already been mentioned, but Arnoštek himself is
something of a wonder, from the moment when one of the trio comments that “everything is bulging
through his pink tights.” His act is a mixture of amateurism and skill. While perfectly able to
walk the tightrope, his performances are executed with a gracelessness verging on disaster. In
presenting the couple in all their unprofessionalism, Menzel inevitably evokes echoes of Fellini’s
love affair with third-rate variety. However, Arnoštek’s dirty white tights are forgotten when he
wears his beautiful crimson cloak. Bathed in colored lights and with all its faults, his act too is
a work of magic. Anna’s dance on the night of his fall from the wire has the same qualities,
although choreographically mundane. It again renders the three watchers speechless.

It is difficult to convey the importance of the dialogue in Capricious Summer, but one of the
scenes in which it systematically attacks some sitting political targets is when the canon
undergoes an operation on his injured ear. The words are played in counterpoint to the operation
itself, which is carried out with a gory intensity of effect recalling the attempted suicide of
Miloš in Closely Watched Trains.

After the canon’s abortive night with Anna, the camera again moves back across the fields from the
church to the bathing jetty. Antonín and the major discuss the canon’s injury, catch a fish, and
select a fish hook to use in the operation. In the idyllic setting of the country vicarage, they
advise the canon that “a physician might spread the rumor that your ear was not injured in defense
of the church.” Antonín asks him to “present his ear in heroic determination.” As the loose ear
lobe is shown in bloody detail, the major goes ashen, tears trickle down the canon’s face, and
Antonín reinforces his determination with alcohol. During the operation, he launches an attack on
poetry, reinforcing each point with a forceful tug on the thread:


O lecherous poets, O confounded literature!

When shall we read about the economics of production, costs, patriotism, agriculture . . .?

Or a book of poems about physical strength, the problems of the masses, fighting principles in the
correct class sense?

When will it be? In some distant time?


He inveighs against “verses of no apparent value . . . meaningless verses filled with the violence
and cruelty of people,” and efforts to “introduce new unintelligible beauty.” “The major and I say
this is foolish and vulgar.” “Now your morals are so loose you get involved in brawls.” He could
almost be speaking for the post-1969 bosses of the film industry.

In the film’s final scene, the three men gather together again by the jetty. The canon approaches
the stage, his head completely encircled by his bandage, with an umbrella held over his head. The
major has his arm in a sling (the result of a walking stick duel with Arnoštek), and Antonín, worst
of all, has had to face the return of Kateřina. As the buzzing music of the opening scene resumes,
they watch the departure of the caravan, but this time the walking figure is Anna, the object of
their hopeless fantasies. The three men drink from the small remains of a wine bottle and sit
forlornly under the sun umbrella. The rain pours in through a tear in the top as they are seen in
long shot, raised on their stage.

Menzel’s next film, Crime in the Night Club (1968), never reached the West. Scripted by Škvorecký,
it was another film owing much to the influence of the Semafor Theater. It was designed as a
starring vehicle for Eva Pilarová, whose singing had been featured on the soundtrack of Crime in
thc Girls School, and also featured Suchý and Šlitr, who composed the music, along with Vladimír
Valenta, František Řehák, and Vlastimil Brodský (as the minister of interior). At the end of the
film, Suchý and Šlitr stand on a scaffold awaiting execution. For their last wish, they sing an
endless song: “Let’s go to a promised land across the barbed wire he meadows end, the meadows end,
the meadows end. . .”[15] In the meantime minister has sent a reprieve, but a second messenger has
been dispatched with orders to murder the first.

Larks on a Thread (1969), Menzel’s third collaboration with Hrabal, has not been seen outside of
the Barrandov studios, but it is rumored to be his best work. In the early seventies, Menzel was
among those directors unable to work in films, but following an obligatory denunciation of the
excesses of the New Wave, he returned in 1975 with Who Looks for Gold? (Kdo hledá zlaté dno?).
Liehm described him at the time as an “ostentatiously uncommitted artistic personality.”[16] fair
to assume that Liehm is referring to political commitment, but he may mind Menzel’s apparently
exaggerated respect for his sources. Whatever the case, it is clear that Menzel’s films of the
sixties did have a political impact. To attribute this solely to his collaboration with Hrabal and
Škvorecký is to ignore the process of filmmaking and the differences between original script and
finished product. The oblique criticism of his later film Seclusion Near a Forest (Na samotě u
lesa, 1976) and his acting role in Chytilová’s The Apple Game (Hra o jablko, 1976) show a desire to
avoid the bland platitudes imposed on his colleagues, albeit leavened by his liking for
“reconciliation.”



In: Hames, Peter. The Czechoslovak New Wave. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985, pp.
170-186.

________________________________

[1] The Death of Mr Balthazar has been published as The Death of Mr Baltisberger (New York:
Doubleday, 1975), and At the World Cafeteria, in Jeanne W. Němcová, ed. and trans., Czech and
Slovak Short Stories (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).

[2] Only five episodes were included in the feature release (those by Menzel, Chytilová, Schorm,
Jireš, and Němec). The episodes by Passer and Herz were released separately.

[3] Škvorecký, All the Brights, pp. 168-169.

[4] Published in Josef Skvorecký, The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Borůvka, trans. Rosemary
Kavan, Kaca Poláčková, and George Theiner (London: Gollancz, 1974).

[5] Bohumil Hrabal, in Jiří Menzel and Bohumil Hrabal, Closely, Observed Trains (script), trans.
Josef Holzbecher (London: Lorrimer, 1971 ), p. 8.

[6] Jiří Menzel, quoted in Jan Hořejší, “Jiří Menzel,” Czechoslovak Life (July 1968), p.12.

[7] Menzel and Hrabal, Closely Observed Trains, p. 30.

[8] Ibid., p. 32.

[9] Ibid., pp. 45-46.

[10] Menzel, quoted in Zalman, Films and Filmmakers, p. 87.

[11] Menzel and Hrabal, Closely Observed Trains, p. 109.

[12] Ivan Olbracht, quoted in Czechoslovak Film, (1969).

[13] Škvorecký, All the Bright, p. 172.

[14] Kundera, quoted in Hořejší, “Jiří Menzel,” pp. 12-13.

[15] Alan Levy, “A Promised Land Across the Barbed Wire Where the Meadow Ends, the Meadow Ends, the
Meadow Ends...,” New York Times Magazine, 9 February 1969.

[16] Antonín J. Liehm, “Triumph of the Untalented,” Index on Censorship 5(3) (Autumn 1976): 60.