8


JURAJ HERZ

Peter Hames


The work of Juraj Herz has never attracted the attention it deserves. Despite his involvement with
Pearls of the Deep, he remained on the periphery of the main developments. This was why Liehm
excluded him from his almost encyclopedic series of interviews and is to some extent borne out by
Herz's own views:


I cannot say that I have the sense of belonging to the Wave. I rather feel that I am at one with
certain individuals—with Jireš, or Schorm, but not with the Wave.[1]^


It is interesting that he should refer to two of the New Wave's more conscious craftsmen since,
despite their ordered framework, his own films sometimes hover on the verge of a Jakubisko-like
excess.

Although a Slovak, Herz's films have been almost exclusively Czech. He came to cinema via a
training in drama and work as a director for the Semafor theater. Like Manzel, he appeared in the
Semafor-inspired If a thousand clarinets... (1964). He worked as an assistant to Kadár and Klos and
was assistant rector on Brynych's Transport from Paradise before working on one of the episodes for
Pearls of the Deep. He made two feature films in the late sixties, The Sign of Cancer (Znamení
Raka, 1967) and The Lame Devil (Kulhavý ďábel, 1968), the first a psychological detective story,
the second a musical burlesque. According to Škvorecký, The Sign of Cancer was a socially critical
work that attacked antiintelectualism  while Liehm[2] regarded it as one of a select group of films
that entertained as well as informed.[3]

It was probably Herz's existence "on the periphery" that enabled him to continue work in the
postinvasion years without making naive propaganda or, like Kachyňa, settling for children's films.
His most important film, The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol, 1969), was the most successful "art" film
of the postinvasion year, and it is difficult to imagine that its atmosphere of pessimism and
decadence met the approval of the authorities. Herz was involved in the brief flowering of original
films for Slovak television that began with Stanislav Barabáš's version of Dostoyevsky's A Gentle
tature (Nežná, 1967) and continued with his own adaptation of Maupassant's Mouche, Sweet Games of
Last Summer (Sladké hry minulého léta, 1969). His next two films, Oil Lamps (Petrolejové lampy,
1971) and Morgiana (1972), were adapted from novels by Jaroslav Havlíček and Alexander Grin,
respectively. He obviously chose the well-known Eastern European expedient of the time machine,
making films set in the past and based on established literary works. However, he maintained an
individual approach and chose subjects that provided a scarcely optimistic view of human nature.
All three films became the subject of contention and conflicting attitudes despite winning
international awards. His collaboration with Jaroslav Kučera on Morgiana has been described as the
last film of the New Wave. Had it not been for the Soviet director Sergei Gerasimov's timely
observation that it was the best fillm yet made of Grin's work, it would certainly have run into
major trouble. Both Oil Lamps and Morgiana provided scope for a continuation of some of the
"grotesque” and “decadent" preoccupations of The Cremator.

Herz worked for a year with the novelist Ladislav Fuks on the screen adaptation of his novel The
Cremator. Like Lustig and Grosman, Fuks lived his youth during the Nazi occupation and was
preoccupied with the wartime situation and the Jewish theme. He made his reputation with his first
novel, Mr. Theodore Mundstock (Pan Theodor Mundstock) which was published in 1963 and issued in an
American translation in 1968.

The Cremator is set before and after Munich and is concerned with the rise to power of an insane
worker in a crematorium, whose incinerators will soon be put to use by the occupying power. His
mental deterioration is linked to the rise of Nazism, and there is a conscious emphasis on the
bourgeois respectability of his family life. The film is a criticism of collaboration. Karl
Kopfrkingl becomes a willing tool of the occupying force while his wife and son acquiesce in their
own ritual murder. The linking of the story with the Jewish theme suggests that the message of the
film might well be linked to that of Brynych's Transport from Paradise – "never again like sheep."
On the other hand, it can also be interpreted on a more general level as a criticism of the Czech
tradition of survival at any cost. The film's constant overstatement — extreme close-ups, liberal
use of the fish-eye lens, its deft use of black comedy, and the insidious relish of Rudolf
Hrušínský’s performance—makes The Cremator a uniquely disturbing experience.

The precredit and credit sequences together create a mood of nightmare. There are exaggerated
close-ups of parts of animals – a leopard, a python, a rhinoceros, and an elephant. As Karl talks
in a melodious and obsequious way, the image of a snake is intercut with his comments. The images
are justified by a visit to the zoo – at the end, Karl and his family are arranged in a respectable
"album" grouping but[ ]distorted within the shape of an oval mirror. The credit sequence itself is
a montage of hands, portions of bodies and faces sinking into an infernal holocaust, accompanied by
a ghostly female voice that Zdeněk Liška uses as a major musical leitmotif.

The first scene provides an incongruous contrast as piano and violin play at a reception, and the
atmosphere of a prewar tea room is evoked. Karl has leaflets distributed which urge people to save
up for their cremation. He gives a lecture on “the good humanitarian state" and quotes from the
Tibetan Book of the Death. The sooner man returns to dust, he argues, the sooner he can be freed
from the inhibitions of life and be reincarnated. Evil and suffering must be destroyed: incinerator
will dispose of a human body in seventy-five minutes.

Karl's campaign is closely paralleled by that of the Nazi engineer Reinke, an honored guest at the
reception. Over dinner, he points out what Hitler has achieved for the benefit of Austria. He too
has his leaflets, but this time they extol the virtues of National Socialism. He points out that
there must be at least a drop of German blood in Karl's veins and that a sensitive man would be
aware of that fact. Karl decides that his son, Mili, should perhaps learn more German. However, he
is perturbed by the political turn in the conversation – he had rather wanted to tell Reinke about
the freak born with two heads, four arms, and four legs.

The alliance between the two men is progressive and inevitable, Reinke exploiting both Kail's
madness and the hypocrisy of his bourgeois beliefs. On his second visit to Karl, for Christmas
dinner, he points out in confidence some of the advantages of joining the Nazi party. In
particular, he mentions membership in the casino, where wives are not allowed and only blonde girls
are to be found. For the first time Karl‘s wife, Lakmé, shows independence from her husband by
refusing to join in a toast to the great German nation.

Karl soon goes to his family doctor, Dr. Bettelheim, to ascertain whether his blood is Czech or
German. At the casino, he begins to denounce his friends and acquaintances: "We have enemies – even
in the crematorium." These include not merely a woman who has rejected his advances but, more
especially, the director, who once said he'd like to incinerate all Germans. His denunciations also
take an oblique form. His friend, Strauss, and Dr. Bettelheim are good men but "do not understand."
As for his nephew, Jan, he is only a boy, but he does encourage Mili to go wandering (earlier he
had praised Jan for the reverse).

The arrest of Karl's colleagues coincides with the physical arrival of the Germans and the raising
of Karl's hand in a proud Nazi salute. While his first denunciations have been partially related to
the furtherance of his career, there is no end to the demands that will be made of him or the
film's progressive nightmare. When Reinke discovers that Lakmé is half-Jewish, Karl obliges with
her murder, that of his son, and the attempted murder of his daughter. At the end of the film, he
is escorted to a waiting car by Nazis, who hold an umbrella over his head. Now, he says, he can
save the nation, humanity, and the whole world. As the rain pours down, a vision of the Tibetan
capital of Lhasa appears behind the windshield wipers of the car.

The film is permeated by a sense of insanity. In selecting a madman as their hero, Herz and Fuks
are able to generate an additional horror that provides a fresh response to the familiar and
mundane qualities of Nazi logic and the collaborationist ethic. At the beginning of the film, Karl
may be obnoxious and slightly mad, but his initial steps toward the Nazis are based on a perfect
awareness that they are the future overlords and that he is in a position to advance his career. A
few friends and acquaintances may be sacrificed without too much effort, but whatever his
limitations as the model paterfamilias he imagines himself to be, the liquidation of his own family
must lead to total insanity.

The Cremator is a film of excess, and there is nothing in its major scenes designed to underplay or
lighten the horror of the central theme. The deliberate use of comedy and the exaggerated horrors
depicted provoke a response that is often a mixture of laughter and nausea. The disjunction between
words and action is a characteristic shared with the theater of the absurd, but there is nothing
purgative about the humor.

Karl's love of music is demonstrated during the opening reception where the mood is predominantly
comic and he says that people should like music (quoting German examples). He asks Mr. Strauss,
whom he later denounces, if he is related to Richard Strauss. During a guided tour of the
crematorium, which resembles an oriental temple, Karl introduces a new employee, Mr. Dvořák, to the
wonders of the establishment. Dvořák is played by Jiří Menzel in the rather absent-minded style of
Arnoštek, reacting in comic manner to the horrors revealed. Karl shows him the gas ovens, coffins,
an iron bar that may come in useful (to kill his son, Mili), and the corpse of Miss Strunná whose
skin is "wonderfully pink." In an automatic movement, he runs his comb through her hair, setting it
attractively, and then combs his own. The sequence ends with the small figures of Karl and Dvořák
framed and dwarfed by a huge battery of funeral urns. Karl has already asked Dvořák if he likes
music. In a later scene, he is asked to play Dvořák's Largo as a coffin is pushed into the furnace
by the equivalent of a devilish stoker from Hieronymus Bosch. In a domestic scene, Karl suggests
that they should play Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (Songs for Dead Children), or perhaps, something
more cheerful like Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre.

The hypocrisy of Karl's attitudes is brought out in three linked sections set at a fair, in a
brothel, and in his "model household." Like most fathers, Karl occasionally takes his family to
zoos and fairs. Their faces light up with unaccustomed pleasure as they listen to the fairground
organ, watch the merry-go-round, and see the acrobats. However, he has other "entertainments" in
store. First there are the waxworks, a chamber of horrors that includes a bathroom (he will murder
his wife in a bathroom) and a murderer who used a crowbar (another reference to the murder of his
son). Then there is the exhibition of freaks, of the effects of syphilis and gonorrhea. But, he
observes: "Modern medical science can protect us" – a cue for a cut to Dr. Bettelheim's practice
where Karl acquires just such protection lest he be infected by his work. ("You know, I touch no
woman but my own angel.")

In two directly linked sections, Karl's visit to a brothel and his home life are contrasted. The
depiction of the brothel is particularly sordid, emphasizing the mechanical nature of the sex on
offer. It opens with a panning shot of deglamorized whores, singling out a thin and
demented-looking blonde. Karl is unable to have his favorite woman and is issued a towel at the
foot of the stairs leading to the girls' rooms. Later, a prostitute squats to wash herself as Karl
takes off his trousers. He observes that it's a good thing Mr. Dvořák isn't smoking so much and
screws up his shirt as an unseen but presumably oral sex act is performed. Throughout the episode,
the obscenity is emphasized by constant reference to a carefully wrapped gift he has bought for his
daughter, which must on no account be crushed.

When the scene shifts to his home, he is again shown in his shirt and socks commenting on Dvořák's
smoking habits. He presents Zina with her present and announces to the air and as if in communion
with another world: "We have a beautiful and blessed house." The juxtaposition of his "model"
family life with obscene sex is brought to a conclusion in a later scene at the casino as Reinke
talks to him and Karl struggles to watch the chief Nazi collaborator being fellated by a prostitute
under the table. It is then that he learns that he must show his loyalty by murdering his wife.

This procession of scenes based on Karl's sexual habits provides a good example of the way in which
events and episodes consistently interrelate, contributing to the irresistible drive toward a
horrific climax. A political dimension is always present. The three major scenes at the crematorium
are specifically linked to political developments – successively Munich, the threat of the German
army on the border (someone comments: "We live in a civilized world. Why should they occupy us?"),
and the physical presence of the Nazis.

Karl's future attacks on the three members of his family are meticulously prepared for through the
references to the iron bar, the bathroom, and the "joke" that he should hang up his wife as part of
the Christmas decorations. The care that he lavishes on his sickly-looking son, Mili, wiping his
glasses and combing his hair in the precise manner he reserves for corpses, reveals the narrow line
that divides Mili from life or death. Each of the attacks is presented with maximum horror,
accompanied by Karl's reptilian unctuousness, his hypnotic and meaningless monologues. His concern
for order is particularly nauseating as he ties his wife's shoelace after hanging her and hoses
away his son's Wood at the crematorium.

The Cremator was clearly conceived and made with a great deal of freedom, and there are few
concessions to the conventions of either "popular" or "art cinema" taste. It is an imaginative,
illusionist, aesthetically well-structured work, which, nevertheless, forces the audience to
reflect on what it has seen. While it forces reflection, its power also derives from its hypnotic
effect—its imagery, the monotonous sound of Karl's voice, the attraction of the calling female
voice on the soundtrack. It is this duality of attraction and repulsion that makes the film unique.

I have described the film as a comedy, and, as in the case of the repeated appearances of an
arguing couple, the humor is sometimes conventional. However, since they appear even in the
sequences leading to the assaults on his children, the progressive incongruity becomes part of the
film's overall nightmare. The dialogue is frequently witty because of the inappropriateness of the
comment or its plain stupidity, but it is difficult to laugh outright when faced by a huge close-up
of Karl or the implications that lie behind the words.

The film's one concession to art house cliché is the stylized and continued presence of Death, who
takes the form of a beautiful brunette. This kind of device has been used by directors as diverse
as Cocteau and Don Levy and has its counterpart in Fellini's "innocence" figures and Jireš's flower
girl in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. However, considering the film's addiction to excess, it is
a curiously understated symbol. She merely appears, unexplained, at regular intervals (the
crematorium, the brothel, the boxing match, the crematorium again, Lakmé's funeral service, the
conclusion). She fades into the background and provides the same latent attraction as the musical
leitmotif.

Herz's next film was made in his native Slovakia for Slovak television. Sweet Games of Last Summer
(1969) was adapted from Maupassant's Mouche and won a prize at the Monte Carlo television festival.
Despite its luminous color photography (Dodo Šimončič) and loving re-creation of
turn-of-the-century atmosphere, it betrays the limitations of its television origins. Its brisk
pace and overemphatic musical score are foregrounded at the expense of a theme that would have
benefited from more restrained and reflective treatment.

The heroine, Ria (Jana Plichtová), Maupassant's Mouche, is a poor laundress excluded from the
social life of her lover, Rothschild (František Velecký). The romance is waning when Rothschild's
friends meet her for the first time and find themselves entranced by her sexuality. Unlike
Maupassant's heroine, Ria remains faithful to her lover but leads each of the five friends to
believe that she has slept with the others. At the end of the film, after a miscarriage, the men
offer to make her another child. The twist in the film, however short-lived, is in moving from a
situation in which women are used in a male-dominated society to a kind of matriarchy in which the
woman holds sway over five potential lovers. Also of note is the offbeat sensuality of Jana
Plichtová with her red hair, gray eyes, and freckled white skin, which is very far from that of the
conventional beauty.

The sexual theme is continued in Oil Lamps (1971). The story of an unconsummated marriage and a man
dying of syphilis are not, one would have thought, the ingredients around which to build a romantic
love story – but that is what Herz has achieved. Havlíček's novel, written in 1935, was scarcely a
model of Socialist Realism. Škvorecký suggests that "other-isms, like psychologism, naturalism, and
a predilection for decadent themes, all of them pejorative in the socialist realist vocabulary, are
better applicable to his work."[4]

In adapting the novel, Herz produced his most conventional and aesthetically balanced work. It
draws great strength from a use of traditional romantic narrative, but the physical sickness at the
heart of the tragedy is explicitly linked to social and moral corruption. The film's main
achievement lies in the juxtaposition of this unpleasant reality with the formal aesthetic beauties
of the great romance. Herz was working for the second time with Dodo Šimončič, and the very lush
qualities of the surface color seem to hint at concealed decadence.

The opening scene is set in a theater on New Year's Eve, 1899. A man in evening dress sporting a
silver sash marked "1900" welcomes the new century. He speaks optimistically of the world being a
better and happier place in fifty years. There is an extended dance sequence, fireworks in the
park, and the film's heroine, Štěpa (Iva Janžurová), joins in the mood of optimism and hope.

Štěpa's love life is frustrated by the restricted middle-class views of her parents, who refuse to
let her marry a social inferior. A "liberated" young lady who drinks beer and dresses
"outrageously" (in orange), she offends against the proprieties demanded by her most suitable
escort. It is in this confined situation that her interest revives in her cousin and former
childhood sweetheart, Pavel (Petr Čepek), now an officer in the Austrian army and the natural focus
of the town's female attention.

Pavel's father is in financial difficulties, and the family farm is run by his elder brother. Pavel
himself spends his time on gambling, drinking, and women. Gradually, it is revealed that he is
suffering from syphilis and that this is the real reason for his failure to return to the army. He
eventually accepts his family responsibilities by agreeing to marry Štěpa in an attempt to get them
out of their troubles.

Štěpa's hopes for romantic fulfillment, a happy family, and her radiant optimism are brilliantly
portrayed in Iva Janžurová touching performance. Her subjectivity is sufficient to protect her from
the incoherent suspicions already voiced in the community and the innuendo of Pavel's own comments.
Although her parents originally oppose the match, the romance proceeds. The Sunday promenade with
Pavel resplendent in his blue uniform and the marriage ceremony that soon follows are colorful,
romantic occasions, but Pavel's straight, emotionless face is in direct contrast to Štěpa's open
happiness.

Her sexual needs are stressed early in the film when she visits her uncle's farm. At night, she
discovers Pavel making love to the servant, Magda, (Jana Plichtová). The sounds of lust are
magnified as she peers eagerly through cracks in the wall. Pavel is thrust obscenely between the
girl's spread legs as she bites his hand. Štěpa gasps, they stop, and she runs off. She therefore
has no illusions about Pavel's past or his sexual prowess.

There is a similar scene on her wedding night after Pavel has refused to make love to her and
feigned sleep while she talked of the future and homemaking. She leaves the room and again hears
the sound of movement in the outer buildings. This time it is the elder brother who pursues Magda
and beats her up for sleeping with Pavel. The scene works as a physical complement to the
destruction of Štěpa s own sexual hopes.

The scenes with Magda emphasize the callous way in which she is treated by the brothers. While
Pavel's willingness to fulfill himself with the servant increases Štěpa's frustration, Magda is no
more than an object to be used. Aware of his condition, Pavel is quite happy to infect her, but his
fundamental respect, perhaps a developing love, for Štěpa leads him to his life of subterfuge.
Later in the film, Magda's death forms part of the film's escalating horror. When Štěpa asks what
has happened, she is told: "Nothing – she just died," which is a fair comment on the significance
accorded her life.

Apart from a morning of false optimism that follows the wedding, the film provides an unrelenting
record of Pavel's physical and mental deterioration. Štěpa increasingly takes on the
responsibilities of running the farm while remaining unaware of the real nature of his illness. He
invites a friend to visit them in a misconceived attempt to get Štěpa pregnant with the child he
cannot provide himself. Later, as his condition gets worse, it is linked to his destructive use of
a shotgun. An idyllic winter scene in which two children play with a hare in the snow is shattered
by Pavel's abrupt killing of the animal. In other scenes, he sits at his window and shoots birds in
a pointless and indiscriminate carnage. After suffering progressive hallucinations, his condition
deteriorates further, and he is found sitting in the corner of his room shredding and eating his
pyjamas. Finally, when Štěpa visits him in the institution to which he is confined, she finds him
completely disintegrated and foaming at the mouth.

In a tragic but rather too obviously calculated denouement, Štěpa strikes up a relationship with a
little girl accompanied by a nun. Unknown to her, the child is Pavel's daughter. The nun and the
girl travel back to the farm ahead of Štěpa, but the father and Pavel's brother want nothing to do
with his offspring. Štěpa passes them again and the girl runs toward her, only to be called back by
the nun. During her absence, the father has suggested to his son that he should marry Štěpa in
order to hang on to the property. The film ends as the farm gate closes behind her, locking her
into the sordid economic situation that led to her tragedy.

There is little point in searching for hidden or "coded" messages in Oil Lamps since it gives every
sign of being a straightforward adaptation from its source. The wonder is that such a moving but
pessimistic story could be filmed at all. Herz and Šimončič again produced a film rich in
atmosphere, turning to good advantage the Sunday walks, the parasols, and the bright blue of
Pavel's Austrian uniform. Beneath the decorative "art nouveau" surfaces lies the reality – of
syphilis (the other side of the soldier's "heroic" image), of marriage contracted for financial
reasons, of the brutality of class relations. As a portrait of its time, it would seem to be
acceptable in socialist realist terms while lacking a "positive" outlook. In fact, more than
anything, it is a film about the death of hope. The short-term answer to the welcoming of the
twentieth century at the film's opening is a resounding negative in which the demands of politics
(the Austrian army) and economics thwart the possibility of relations between individuals.

Morgiana (1912) is a very different kind of work. This time, Iva Janžurová takes on the difficult
dual role of the bad sister and the good sister, the first devoting herself to the attempted murder
of the second by use of a slow poison. She wears heavily stylized make-up to convey Viktoria as the
embodiment of evil and Klára as an innocent and beautiful young girl. For the part of Viktoria, she
wears a jet black wig, with the face underneath a white mask split by a gash of lipstick. The
double performance clearly indicates that both sisters may be seen as part of the same personality,
but any sense that we may be about to enter the world of Brecht's Seven Deadly Sins or Bergman's
Persona is soon put to flight. The film develops as a gothic melodrama full of exaggeration,
implausible plot development, and not a little homage to Alfred Hitchcock.

The film is based on Jessie and Morgiana by the Russian novelist Alexander Grin, where the action
is depicted through the eyes of the cat, Morgiana. A protégé of Gorky, Grin was a prolific writer
of fantastic tales, often set in the imaginary country of "Grinland," and was influenced by the
work of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1950, eighteen years after his death, he was denounced as an
"arch-cosmopolitan," but his work again became influential in the Soviet Union after the death of
Stalin. As mentioned earlier, Gerasimov found Herz's adaptation particularly close to the spirit of
Grin's work. In view of the ambivalent official attitudes, it is scarcely surprising that Herz's
film should be seen as cutting directly across the official policies of the early seventies.

The opening scenes of the film are fast and fragmented, thrusting the audience into a distorted
atmosphere from the first shot. A precredit sequence is set at a funeral where the two sisters
appear in black, one (Klára) attractive under her veil, the other's face lost in darkness. As with
The Cremator and Oil Lamps, the credits are particularly evocative – the red lips and eye motifs
linking the subject to Freudian symbols and a chess board foretelling Viktoria's methodic campaign.
A match strikes, and four repeated images of Klára are reflected in a mirror. Viktoria's envy of
Klára's youth and good looks is revealed as she both chides her and caresses her face. This is
followed by the first scene in which the action is seen through the eyes of Morgiana, Viktoria's
Siamese cat. The camera approaches from floor level, producing a strange, distorted, and distanced
view of the action.

The narrative development of Morgiana has much in common with both The Cremator and Oil Lamps, the
use of slow poison on Klára paralleling Kaifs increasing insanity and Pavel's physical and mental
degeneration. However, unlike the earlier films, Morgiana cheats outrageously to provide its happy
ending. The woman who sold Viktoria the poison attempts to blackmail her and is very convincingly
pushed over a cliff into the sea, the length of the fall emphasized in long shot. Miraculously, she
survives to produce a final revelation after the death of Viktoria—she had supplied a concoction
that would only appear to poison people.

However, the film is presented as if the poison were real, striking at audience sympathies in the
most direct way. Not only is it tested on a red setter, but a child is suspected of having drunk it
(as does Morgiana). For the poisoning of Klara, Herz draws directly on the methods developed by
Hitchcock in Suspicion, complete with extreme close-ups of poisoned glasses and bowls. Her
deterioration is indicated by the progressive use of glaring oranges and reds. It culminates in
hallucinations that give Kucera the chance to use some of the color techniques developed for
Daisies.

At the end of the film, Viktoria attempts a fake suicide, stage-managed to provoke an intervention
by the maid. However, Morgiana enters through a window, causing a draft that blows the door shut
just as Viktoria hangs herself. The cat's action results in a real suicide. Klara recovers, and the
film ends at Viktoria's grave in a snow-covered cemetery. There is a frozen close-up of Morgiana.

The speed and attack of Morgiana recall the hectic pace of Herz's adaptation of Maupassant, and the
film lacks the careful elaboration of a Hitchcock or Chabrol. The Herz is capable of this graduated
approach is apparent from oil Lamps. In the final analysis, Morgiana is an exercise in style for
its own sake that deliberately heightens the absurdity of its melodramatic plot. Inevitably, it is
the evil sister whose story is interesting while the beautiful Klara often appears vacuous and
stupid. Despite an avant-garde gloss, Morgiana is a piece of pure gothic entertainment with which
the entire team seems to have had enormous fun.

Herz's personal and "decadent" work was something quite out of place in the post-1968 history of
Czechoslovak cinema and was to provide one of the few points of interest in competition at
international festivals. Morgiana won the Golden Hugo at Chicago in 1973, and, as Variety
characteristically put it, it was "a novel offbeat fantasy that shores up the more lackluster
general Czech film pictures these days."[5] Those who like to seek for deeper motivation may well
wonder why a director whould choose themes of self-destruction through collaboration, syphilitic
deterioration linked to militarism, and the poisoning of the good by the bad. Any "auteurist"
interpretation would be forced to the conclusion that this is a very black interpretation of the
human condition.


In: Hames, Peter. The Czechoslovak New Wave. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985, pp.
245-255.


________________________________

[1] Juraj Herz, quoted in Škvorecký, All the Brigth, p. 214.

[2] Liehm, Closely Watched Films, p. 322.

[3] The others were Forman’s films and Ladislav Rychman’s musical, The Hop Pickers (Starci na
chmelu, 1964).

[4] Škvorecký, All the Bright, p. 214.

[5] Gene Moskowitz, „Morgiana“, Variety, 9 August 1972, p. 20.