Czech cinema in the normalization period (1969-1989)

A time of the servants

Jaromír Blažejovský


“I hate this wave […] which denies strong human relationships, which treats them with irony in
advance,”[1] declared Kamil Pixa, the scriptwriter of Klíč [The Key], the first ‘normalizing’ film.
And indeed, the normalizing faction in Czech cinematography sprang from hatred; it was the hatred
held by those who took an active part in building the Stalinist regime of the 1950’s and who felt
that the Prague Spring of 1968 shattered their world view and their careers. After the invasion of
the armies of the Warsaw Pact, these people elbowed their way into leading positions in all areas
of public life, including cinematography.


Negation of negation, or striking back against the New Wave

The term ‘normalization’, derived from official Communist Party documents of the period, is
generally used in the Czech and Slovak context to cover the whole of the two decades 1969-1989. Its
beginning is marked by the appointment of Gustáv Husák as First Secretary of the Czechoslovak
Communist Party (April 1969) and the purge that followed, when an almost half a million members
were expelled from the party. Such expulsions were usually accompanied by discrimination in
professional life or education; they affected whole families. The reform movement of the 1960’s was
declared to be “a critical development in the party and society” and its leaders were stigmatised
as supporters of “right-wing opportunism and revisionism”. After a short period of liberalization
the spiritual life of the country was thrown back into the tight grasp of Soviet ideology – in its
stale form typical of the Brezhnev era. The open terror of the 1950’s did not occur again; however,
what did return was its rhetoric, including the normative aesthetic of socialist realism.

   In cinematography, the forefront of the attack was launched at the New Wave. The products of the
1960’s were denounced for their “unacceptable trends such as scepticism, nihilism, alienation,
egoistic individualism, exaggerated sexuality, cynicism, aggression and violence, negativism in
relation to previous socialist development, the discrediting of communists, non-class illusion.”[2]
Ten Czech feature films made in the years 1969 and 1970 never went into distribution, others were
publicly screened only briefly, while many older pieces of work, including films that had won
international awards in the 1960’s, were withdrawn from circulation. The ban also affected several
dozen films from abroad. The FITES professional association was wound up and replaced with the film
section of the Czech Union of Dramatic Artists. The creative teams at Barrandov were dissolved and
new ones established. The post of Central Director of Czechoslovak Film was assigned to Jiří Purš.
Ludvík Toman became the key dramaturgist of the Barrandov studio, while decisions about film from
behind the scenes were made by Miroslav Müller, the head of the cultural department of the Central
Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Jan Kliment of Rudé právo, the daily newspaper of
the Central Committee, became the arbiter of how well the ideological, party and popular line was
trodden; his articles were full of resentment towards the New Wave and the critics who had
supported it, notably A.J. Liehm.

   The party leadership faced the question of “whether to continue with this film production,
distorted as it is, or whether to stop completely for a certain period of time”.[3] In the end, the
tactics of a “differentiated approach” towards filmmakers was adopted. The best conditions were
granted to those who subscribed to the politics of normalization. These included, of the well-known
artists, for example, Karel Zeman, Otakar Vávra and Zbyněk Brynych as well as some of those who
made genre films, such as Oldřich Lipský, Václav Vorlíček, and Jindřich Polák. Considerable
influence was seized by those who had felt left in the shadow of the New Wave’s success: Karel
Steklý, Jiří Sequens, Vladimír Čech, Josef Mach, Jaroslav Balík, and Antonín Kachlík. One by one,
filmmakers linked to the ‘Czechoslovak cinematic miracle’ that had gone before were invited to pick
up their work again; some had to redeem themselves with an ideologically engaged film or by making
a public statement in which they declared themselves followers of socialism, repudiating their work
from the 1960’s. Directors who continued almost without a break included Juraj Herz, Jaromil Jireš,
Jaroslav Papoušek and Karel Kachyňa, while Jiří Menzel and Hynek Bočan returned after a five-year
absence. Antonín Máša, Jan Schmidt, Zdenek Sirový and František Vláčil kept themselves busy for
some time making films for children and youth. Evald Schorm, with the exception of a short
documentary about the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, entrenched a position for himself as a theatre
director and only towards the end of his life, troubled by disease, was he to return to film
Vlastně se nic nestalo [Killing with Kindness, 1988]. Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer, Vojtěch Jasný, Ján
Kadár, Jan Němec, and Jiří Weiss went into exile. The most tragic fortune fell to Pavel Juráček
who, until his death in 1989, was prevented from shooting a single film, at home or in exile, while
Ladislav Helge and Karel Vachek were “silenced” in a similar way. Only Věra Chytilová managed to
return to creative work in the 1970’s without an apparent compromise with the regime and without
any weakening of her creativity.


Production and distribution

During the normalization period, Czech film became a strong link in the chain of socialist cinema.
Totalitarianism ensured that the cinema industries of all the satellite countries had an extensive
market to supply and, by joining forces, they provided it with a comprehensive mix of genre
repertory: cinema screens from Berlin to Vladivostok showed Apache Indians galloping across the
prairie, from the Red Indian stories made in East Germany; spies and undercover agents in action
fought Yugoslav partisans; mounted Rumanian haiduks and gun-toting cowboys hailed from
Transylvania. Together, the countries brought out co-productions; of them, the most official was
the epic Vojáci svobody [Soldiers of Freedom, 1971-1977], directed by Yuri Ozerov, about the role
of the communists in defeating nazism, filmed as a co-operative project between the Soviet Union,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania. A six-hour-long, big-budget
film, probably shown only to schools, military units and to students on communist party education
courses, it was a peculiar monument to the general secretaries of the fraternal communist parties
who were then in office. Each of these apparatchiks was portrayed in his earlier years as an
important organizer of anti-fascist warfare.

   In the 1970-1989 period, Czech cinematography turned out, on average, thirty feature films a
year for cinemas, with the Slovak score at around ten. More than 200 titles premiered every year in
the cinemas; along with 40–45 local productions they would include some 40 films from the Soviet
Union and about 50 titles from other European socialist countries. Around 15 films from the USA,
and about 40 films from western Europe premiered every year, the remainder being taken up by work
from other continents. Cinema programming was based on a quota system: socialist productions made
up 60% of the repertory (of which a third was to be covered by local production), while the
non-socialist share was not permitted to go beyond 40%. In practice, the audience figures for
capitalist productions exceeded 50% of the market while the foreign ‘friendly countries’ had only
20%. In addition, the numbers were ‘improved’ by including shows for schools, double reporting of
the results of two-part films or by manipulating the statistical data. Approximately 40% of foreign
films were dubbed into Czech, and the Czech dubbing school was generally believed to be of
exceptional quality.

   The most massive film-related organized event was the itinerant Workers’ Film Festival. This was
divided into two parts: the winter section would be reserved for art films, the summer section,
held in open-air cinemas, featured more popular fare. An overview of local products was presented
every April in the form of the Czech and Slovak Film Festival, organized on a rota by regional
towns. However, the bureaucracy in power kept the awarding of prizes fully under their control.
Films for children were assessed, with a degree of independence, at the festival in Gottwaldov (now
Zlín), and films for teenagers at the festival in Trutnov. The International Film Festival in
Karlovy Vary took place every even year, serving as a forum for leftist filmmakers from all the
‘three worlds’: the socialist, the capitalist, and the third world.

   The number of cinemas in the Czech lands fell during normalization, from 2,394 in 1970 to 2,025
in 1989. There were 664,195 shows in 1970, some 540,592 in 1989. Audience figures over the same
period dropped from 84,246 in 1970 to 51,453 in 1989.[4] The manner in which films were distributed
remained unchanged from that of the 1960’s. There were around fifty cinemas in the country with
equipment for the projection of 70-mm films. The proportion of wide-screen format cinemas increased
during the twenty years of normalization, from a third to one half, although many simple village
facilities giving one or two shows a week were maintained as well. Copies would be issued for all
cinema types. It would not be uncommon for a movie fan to be able to take in certain popular titles
first in the 70-mm format, then in wide-screen 35-mm version, a reduced form in 35-mm academic
format and finally in a village civic centre with a 16-mm projector. Promotional material issued
for the premieres was the same as in the 1960’s (posters, series of photos, trailers, slides).
Collections of photographs for Soviet and Czech and Slovak films were later replaced by a series of
disposable colour-printed images.


Stage one: consolidation

A considerable number of the feature films created in the years 1970-1989, approximately six
hundred of them, function as living cultural heritage, basking in viewer popularity whenever re-run
on ‘public-service’ or private TV channels. Other films are better left lying in the vaults for
fear that showing them would verge on a criminal act – propagating a movement that leads to the
curtailment of the freedom of citizens. It is therefore appropriate and just to distinguish between
normalization period films, covering all the films made during the twenty-year period, and as a
sub-classification within them, what might be known as normalization films, by which we understand
those more or less affected by the overweening ideology, and within this set an even narrower group
of normalizing films, taking an attacking role in the process with the aim of subjugating the minds
of the viewers to the normalization perceptions of the past and the present. One may find
subversive films among the normalization period films, or discover works acceptable for their
rendering qualities or their ability to entertain among normalization films. None of the above
pertains to the normalizing films – they were a mouthpiece of the neo-Stalinist cadre within the
Czechoslovak Communist Party which, after 1968, had zero tolerance for its democratically inclined
comrades.

   The two decades of normalization can be sub-divided into several stages. The years 1969-1971
were marked by what became known as “consolidation” – the purges gained momentum but the mood of
the 1960’s still lingered. Debutants from this period ended as a lost generation: Ivan Renč, after
his first work Hlídač [The Guard], and Ivan Balaďa, after Archa bláznů [The Arc of Fools], made no
more feature films; Drahomíra Vihanová, responsible for the prohibited Zabitá neděle [Killing Time
on Sunday] later continued by making documentaries, but shot no feature films until the 1990’s. Vít
Olmer (Takže ahoj [Bye – Bye]) and Petr Tuček (Svatej z Krejcárku [Saint from the Suburbs])
returned to directing films for cinemas ten years afterwards, starting in the Gottwaldov studio.
Nahota [Nakedness], Václav Matějka’s first offering was banned but its auteur established a snug
position for himself in normalization production: alongside serious psychological dramas, he did
not turn down ideological commissions. The first and, last chance to shoot a self-penned feature
film was given in 1970 to the poet, actor and singer Jiří Suchý (Nevěsta [The Bride]) and the
artist Ester Krumbachová (Vražda ing. Čerta [The Murder of Mr. Devil]). Through their works, both
had had a profound influence on the cultural climate in the 1960’s. However, their film debuts only
conjured up an impression of departure from the passing New Wave.

   The first films to be both successful and something that the new cinematography management could
be proud of were Na kometě [On the Comet, 1970], a new special-effects feature by Karel Zeman based
on Jules Verne sci-fi, and Už zase skáču přes kaluže [I Can Jump over Puddles Again, 1970 ], a film
by Karel Kachyňa, in which the film script by the then-banned Jan Procházka was purported to have
been written by Ota Hofman. Juraj Herz filmed Petrolejové lampy [Oil Lamps / Petroleum Lamps,
1971], a brilliant adaptation of a novel by Jaroslav Havlíček and the stylish Morgiana (1972) based
on a novel by Alexander Grin. Both films were a tour de force for the actress Iva Janžurová. Two
mad-cap, fanciful comedies by the scriptwriter Miloš Macourek and the director Václav Vorlíček
enjoyed thoroughly deserved popularity: the farce “Pane, vy jste vdova!“ [Sir, Are You a Widow?,
1970] continued to mock state officialdom, in much the free spirit of the previous period, while
Dívka na koštěti [The Girl on the Broom, 1971] related the adventures of a naughty student at a
school of wizardry (Saxana, played by the singer Petra Černocká, may be considered Harry Potter’s
older sister).

   The year 1971 saw the emergence of the first normalizing films. Klíč, a true story based on the
exploits of the communist resistance fighter Jan Zika, was directed by Vladimír Čech on the basis
of a script by Kamil Pixa, whose family harboured Jan Zika during the German reprisals after the
assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, nazi overlord of the Protectorate days. It was the first of a
series of hagiographic films about important figures within the workers’ movement and had the air
of a passionate defence of the bond between the Czech communists and the Kremlin. It was presented
as a contribution to the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and was awarded a Silver
Medal at the Moscow festival. The office drama Člověk není sám [Man Is Not Alone, 1971] by the
director Josef Mach was a primitive replica of the enemy agent stories from the 1950’s; indeed the
plot was set in that period and involved the attitude of a somewhat hard-done-by, but honest and
talented engineer.


Normalization on the offensive

The years 1972-1977 may be referred to as the period of normalization on the offensive.
Cinematography was to serve the working people, read: functionaries. The ideological function of
art prevailed over the aesthetic function, the principles of Stalinist aesthetics from the 1950’s
were re-applied, and the professional skills applied in the films produced plumbed new depths. The
number of first works to be completed was insignificant, as new directors were only given a chance
in short-story film projects. It was in this, and only this, period that films were made that bring
up the reform year of 1968, always seen in a satirical or repulsive light: Karel Steklý’s Hroch
[The Hippo, 1973], Za volantem nepřítel [An Enemy Is at the Wheel, 1974], and Tam, kde hnízdí čápi
[The Place Where Storks Nest, 1975], Vojtěch Trapl’s Tobě hrana zvonit nebude [The Bell Will Not
Toll for You, 1975], a shameless piece of agitprop depicting the supporters of the Prague Spring as
a bunch of nitwits and drunkards under the influence of intriguing conspirators, and Václav
Vorlíček’s Bouřlivé víno [Wine Working, 1976], a comedy that was the only anti-reform film to sit
well with audiences. The economic reforms of the 1960’s were attacked through Hněv [Wrath, 1978], a
bleak film by Zbyněk Brynych, showing miners risking their lives in a struggle against the planned
closure of mines.

   One of the declared tasks of normalization cinema was to illustrate the decisive role of the
Communist Party in 20th-century Czechoslovak history. With the aim of rehabilitating the actions of
repressive state organs in the 1950’s, the director Ivo Toman filmed the western fashioned Cesty
mužů [Roads of Men, 1972], featuring state security characters. Otakar Vávra pored over a trilogy
set in modern history but the only solid result was the introductory part Dny zrady [The Days of
Betrayal, 1973], about Munich 1939. The action war spectacular Sokolovo (1975) was a flop and
Osvobození Prahy [The Liberation of Prague, 1976] had the air of going through the motions just to
finish the trilogy. However, Vávra’s professional skills were completely lacking in the portrayal
of Vojtěch Trapl, when in Vítězný lid [The Victorious People, 1977]  he attempted, within the
device of a simulated documentary play, to depict the seizing of power by the Communist Party in
February 1948. Antonín Kachlík’s Dvacátý devátý [1929, 1974], a political film, reconstructed the
events of the 5th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1929, at which the ‘Gottwald
wing’ came to power, starting the process of adopting the Bolshevik line for the Communist party.
Intended as a contribution to the actually non-existent discussion of the permanent struggle
between the left and right in the workers’ movement, it was a shameless piece of sycophancy to the
controversial figure of Klement Gottwald. In Kronika žhavého léta [Chronicle of a Hot Summer,
1973], an epic almost three-hours long, Jiří Sequens adapted Bitva [The Struggle], a novel by
Václav Řezáč, in which the events of the end of the 1940’s are narrated in socialist realism
methodology and according to the ideological prejudices of the Stalin era (Nástup [Deployment]),
the previous volume of the two-volume novel, had already been filmed, by Otakar Vávra earlier in
1952). Another celebration of the 1950’s, this time from an air force point of view, was Vladimír
Čech’s opus Vysoká modrá zeď [The High Blue Wall, 1973], the first Czech feature film shown in
70-mm format.

   The normalization regime was founded on the unwritten social contract that the citizens would
not rebel and the party and the state would in turn take care of “meeting the expanding needs of
the working people”. Films, teleplays and soaps purported to portray the everyday life of the
working class, agricultural co-operatives, the military and the working intelligentsia; in
thoroughly ostentatious fashion, they showed the building of power generation facilities and
high-rise housing estates, and screened feasts where the tables groaned under bacon and demijohns,
while the officially presented pop music tried to convince the people that “the whole earth is
rising” but it was only “here at home” that paradise existed, and poetry proliferated extolling a
quality that can only be termed “sound down-to-earthness”. The typical hero of contemporaneous
normalization films was the managing director of a company, or another hard-working comrade of
mature years, an eye-witness to Victorious February. The workplace would be incomplete without a
jovial chairman of the Party Organization, usually played by Miroslav Zounar or Miloš Willig. It
was deemed desirable to avoid “art-for-art’s sake formalism”, so most of the films resembled
teleplays with linear narratives and theatre-like directing. The ideological message was frequently
reinforced by significant music or an explicit commentary. Filmmakers who trod the party line most
devotedly (Steklý, Trapl, Kachlík) were given relative freedom to realize their own experiments. In
their particular case, this meant providing room for their dilettantism.

   Ideology would even filter through into films that were apparently pure entertainment. Ladislav
Rychman filmed an updated version of Strakonický dudák [The Strakonice Bagpiper], a classical fairy
story by the National Revival playwright Josef Kajetán Tyl, as a pop musical starring Karel Gott.
Conceived as the essence of Czech indolence, it was designed to nip in the bud any thoughts the
audience might have concerning emigration. Zbyněk Brynych came up with Jakou barvu má láska [What
Is The Colour of Love? 1973], a conflict-free portrait of a woman, who is a politically engaged
engineer and member of parliament, and then, largely through negligent directing, added the last
straw to Noc oranžových ohňů [Night of Orange Fires, 1974], an artistic catastrophe of a film, a
drama in which a top worker finds himself in jail after a road accident, but there remains a model
communist. Brynych’s series of failures culminated in Romance za korunu [Romance for a Crown,
1975], musical kitsch with an extensive cast of official pop stars; the scene in which sixteen-year
old apprentice Píďa and the pop star Karel Gott eat a sausage with mustard in Wenceslas Square
remains especially unforgettable.

   The 1970’s also saw the rise of Stanislav Strnad’s star as a director. His comedy Můj brácha má
prima bráchu [My Brother Has a Marvellous Brother, 1975] was based around the unexpected parenthood
of a young couple, and filmed in the style of Bakaláři [Bachelors], a popular TV series of short
family comedies. In similar fashion to many teleplays and TV soaps of the period, it promoted the
state population policy. The young people in the film were as well-behaved and well-groomed as only
the party functionaries could have wished. Strnad also received official plaudits for his Běž, ať
ti neuteče [Run or You Won’t Catch Him!, 1976], a contemporary drama in which he followed the
principles of socialist realism while attempting to portray a model communist managing director “of
ordinary flesh and blood”, although not overly educated, struggling against an engineer with
right-wing views. A typical trait for films of this type was a romantic subplot featuring the
relationship between the hero, usually an active fifty-something, with a young woman of tender
years: in films, the comrades loved to see themselves as objects of adoration by young women.

   For all the prevailing dullness and mediocrity, a few films were created in the period that
their authors need not be ashamed of, even today. Jaromil Jireš, who shortly before had been the
target of sharp criticism for the surrealist feérie Valérie a týden divů [Valerie and a Week of
Wonders, 1970], filmed  …a pozdravuji vlaštovky [Greeting to the Swallows, 1972], a poetic work
long in the preparation, about the heroism of Maruška Kudeříková, a young woman fighting with the
communist resistance. The idyllic “fragments” of the young martyr’s life before she was thrown in
jail and executed by the nazis, bring to mind the fates of all the women executed in the course of
Czech history. Jaroslav Balík built Milenci v roce jedna [Lovers in the Year One, 1973], his best
film, set just after the Second World War, around the contrasting photogenics of the colour and
black-and-white image, highlighting the fragile beauty of the Marta Vančurová, the leading actress.
Jiří Menzel returned to directing with Kdo hledá zlaté dno [Who Looks for Gold, 1974] about the
building of the Dalešice dam. In spite of a poor film script constructed around a trivial morality,
he created a relatively credible portrait of the working environment and the people in it,
considering the circumstances.

   Only comedies from this period have managed to enjoy permanent popularity: Tři oříšky pro
Popelku [Three Nuts for Cinderella, 1973], a winter fairy-tale by the screenwriter František
Pavlíček and the director Václav Vorlíček with an extremely good cast, Šest medvědů s Cibulkou [Six
Bears and Cibulka, 1974], a circus comedy by Oldřich Lipský, or Holky z porcelánu [Girls from a
Porcelain Factory, 1975], a refreshing comedy by Juraj Herz. The musical 30 panen a Pythagoras
[Thirty Maidens and Pythagoras, 1973] by Pavel Hobl featured Jiří Menzel, appearing on the screen
after a lengthy period of absence, as a singing math teacher. This experiment, produced in the
Gottwaldov studio, was the last lingering trace of the atmosphere of the 1960’s; its inconspicuous
release had been delayed by four years. The writer duo Zdeněk Svěrák – Ladislav Smoljak, from the
Divadlo Járy Cimrmana theatre, launched their impressive film career in style. Their comedy
Jáchyme, hoď ho do stroje [Joachim, Put Him into the Machine, 1974], directed by Oldřich Lipský
with Luděk Sobota in his first and best lead, made fun of a “conditionogram” fad; in Czechoslovakia
the film entertained almost three million.


Resurrection

Once the opposition manifesto Charter 77 had come into being, the cultural scene polarized. While
the signatories to it were publicly ostracized and harassed by the police as ‘losers and
self-styled pretenders’, the majority of artistes did not join them; some even signed the so-called
“anti-charter” in order to win conditional confidence on the part of the regime and “peace for
work”. There had also been some changes in cinematography in the 1976-1977 period, mainly
attributable to classic figures from the 1960’s being allowed more room for their creativity. The
breakthrough came with the return of Věra Chytilová. Once an exclusive intellectual author, she
shot Hra o jablko [Apple Game, 1976], an experimental comedy about male egoism, under the auspices
of Kamil Pixa in the Krátký film studios. Its audience figures topped the two million mark. Apart
from a likeable story, several period in-jokes, a refreshing cast (Jiří Menzel and Dagmar Bláhová
from the Divadlo na provázku theatre), and some shocking sequences featuring authentic childbirths,
the success of the work can be partially attributed to a several-month-long delay of the premiere.
Chytilová continued in a provocative vein in her subsequent works: the apocalyptic, crushing satire
Panelstory aneb Jak se rodí sídliště [Story from a Housing Estate / Prefab Story, 1979] took top
honours at the San Remo festival, was banned just before the premiere and then released after a
delay of at least two years and not in all regions at that. It took equally as long for her parable
Kalamita [Calamity, 1981], filmed at the same time, before it reached its audience. These were
followed by Faunovo velmi pozdní odpoledne [The Very Late Afternoon of a Faun, 1983], a satirical
comedy about male vanity and sexism, and the stirring documentary Praha – neklidné srdce Evropy
[The Restless Heart of Europe, 1984], commissioned by Italian TV. At first, it was only screened in
film clubs and did not go into wider distribution until the days of perestroika. By 1989, Věra
Chytilová had managed to make Vlčí bouda [Wolf’s Hole, 1986], a children’s sci-fi horror picture,
Šašek a královna [The Jester and the Queen, 1987], a stage play by Bolek Polívka from Divadlo na
provázku and Kopytem sem, kopytem tam [Tainted Horseplay, 1988], a comedy warning about AIDS and
the sexual promiscuity that leads to its spread.

   A counterpoint to the moral appeals by Věra Chytilová was played by the laid-back idylls
(almost) from Jiří Menzel, a generation contemporary. In the kind-hearted satire Na samotě u lesa
[A Cottage Near the Woods, 1976], penned by Svěrák and Smoljak, he gently poked at the fad of the
weekend cottage, in the perfectly stylish Báječní muži s klikou [Those Wonderful Men with Crank,
1978] he paid tribute to the pioneers of Czech cinematography. It was only then that he was able to
return to the work of Bohumil Hrabal and film his Postřižiny [Cutting It Short, 1980] – the novel
through which the writer re-entered, in 1975, the world of officially published Czech literature.
Although Postřižiny was in line with the contemporary wave of hedonism (the film is set in a
brewery and its content mainly comprises pleasures of the flesh: drinking beer, feasting on whole
pigs, bathing, admiring the charm of a woman [Magda Vašáryová]), it was primarily a nostalgic
celebration of the good old days, when free enterprise had not yet been threatened by the rebelling
proletariat. Less successful, partly due to a less than perfect script, was Slavnosti sněženek
[Snowdrop Celebrations, 1983], Menzel’s next film, based on short stories by Bohumil Hrabal and
centering around an argument between two parties on a boar hunt about the proper procedure for
roasting wild boar. Menzel’s greatest commercial success was the comedy Vesničko má středisková [My
Sweet Little Village, 1985], based on a script by Zdeněk Svěrák. Seen by 3,691,000 people in
Czechoslovak cinemas, it was the best Czech export film commodity of the whole two decades and was
even nominated for an Oscar. Again, Czechs were portrayed as people who, deep inside, are nice and
kind-hearted and busy themselves with well-cooled beer, picturesque landscape and pleasures of the
flesh.

   František Vláčil’s comeback to full-length films was Dým bramborové natě [Fires on  Potato
Fields / Smoke on the Potato Fields, 1976] based on the novel Doktor Meluzin [Doctor Meluzin] by
the regime writer Bohumil Říha, with the excellent actor Rudolf Hrušínský cast in the leading role,
an actor who, with a single exception, had been banned from the screen from the end of the 1960’s.
Vláčil’s Stíny horkého léta [Shadows of a Hot Summer, 1977] followed, a western drama based on a
film script by Jiří Křižan about a brave highlander fighting against a bunch of quasi-military
bandits (Bandera adherents) threatening his family, and was awarded the Crystal Globe at the
festival in Karlovy Vary. After Koncert na konci léta [Concert at the End of Summer, 1979], a
biography of the composer Antonín Dvořák, Vláčil made Hadí jed [Serpent’s Poison, 1981], a very
personal black-and-white film on the subject of alcoholism, then an adaptation of Pasáček z doliny
[A Little Herdsman from the Valley, 1983], a novel by Ladislav Fuks, in which the same bandits
re-appear, and Stín kapradiny [Shadows of Fern,  1985], a formally exquisite adaptation of  Josef
Čapek’s novel. Vláčil’s filmography was concluded by Mág [The Magus, 1987], an account of the life
and work of the romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha.

   Juraj Herz re-established his artistic credentials with Den pro mou lásku [The Day for My Love,
1976], a psychological drama with the tragic motif of a child’s death, after which he embarked on
the surrealistically rendered horror-fairytales Panna a netvor [The Maiden and the Monster] and
Deváté srdce [The Ninth Heart, both 1978]. After a few genre parodies he made Zastihla mě noc
[Caught in the Night, 1986], a modern version of a hagiographic film devoted to the communist
journalist Jožka Jabůrková, in which the harrowing scenes from the concentration camp (Juraj Herz
had experienced it himself as a child) rival Spielberg’s Schindler’s List of a far later period.
After this he left to work in West Germany.

   The ever-diligent Karel Kachyňa was still capable of finishing several films a year and, in some
of his works, continued developing the theme of young loves, from his older films. In the visually
experimental Smrt mouchy [Death of a Fly, 1976] he showed, in unconventional fashion, a sensitive
youth reaching sexual maturity; in Setkání v červenci [Meeting in July, 1978] he depicted a love
relationship between a student and his female teacher. Erotic motifs, with an excellent cast,
helped gain popularity for his comedy Sestřičky [The Nurses, 1983]. Although the narrative of two
nurses harked back to the 1950’s, it carefully avoided reflecting the political context of that
period. Kachyňa’s Dobré světlo [Good Light, 1986], about a photographer specializing in naked
ladies, was even banned for some time. The epic ramifications of his Lásky mezi kapkami deště [Love
between the Raindrops, 1979] about the fortunes of a shoemaker and his family in the 1930’s,
remained sadly unappreciated, but his adaptations of two popular short stories by Ota Pavel, Zlatí
úhoři [Golden Eesis, 1979], produced for TV, and Smrt krásných srnců [The Death of Beautiful
Roebucks, 1986] met with a better response.

   Films with subversive implications no longer banned by the regime began to emerge sporadically,
but the critics were not in a position to point out their potential; such information would have
been tantamount to informing on the author to the authorities. Thus, such films were less than
appreciated by most audiences. Jiří Krejčík, after a lengthy break and in collaboration with the
scriptwriter Zdeněk Mahler, addressed the life of the diva Ema Destinová; their Božská Ema [Divine
Ema, 1979] was presented as a story of what fate can do to an artist in a world lacking freedom. In
Prodavač humoru [The Seller of Humour, 1984] he targeted the ham acting and the moral bankruptcy of
the popular entertainment business. Jaromil Jireš directed Opera ve vinici [Opera in the Vineyard,
1981], intended as a celebration of Fanoš Hřebačka-Mikulecký, the author of many folk songs in the
tradition of the Podluží region that had become “folklore”. Although the script was written by
Vladimír Merta, perceived as an alternative, folk-scene personality, the resulting film was a
box-office flop and even those Moravians who knew Fanoš Mikulecký in person could find no gratitude
to bestow upon it. Unambiguous parallels with the spying on Czech intellectuals that characterised
normalization could be drawn in Romaneto [Novelette, 1980] and Záchvěv strachu [The Seller of
Humour,  1983], two films by Jaroslav Soukup from the National Revival period. Veronika (1987) by
Otakar Vávra was in a similar vein; the title character was a police agent sent by the Austrian
police to tail the patriotic Czech writer Božena Němcová. The hero of Signum laudis (1980), made by
Martin Hollý in Czech-Slovak co-production, was a certain Corporal Hoferik, diligent in his service
in the trenches of the First World War, finally executed by cowardly officers for his loyalty. The
demoralised commanders who persisted in fighting the battle to the point of the annihilation of
their subordinates, while they had lost any belief in the meaning or goals of that battle, could
not help but remind audiences of their own experience of the hypocritical representatives of the
regime.

   Young directors and debutants were allowed to work, with a degree of caution. Karel Smyczek was
the one who raised most hopes when, with his Housata [Goslings, 1979] set in a hostel for female
apprentices, he declared himself at one with the heritage of style and ethics established by the
Czech New Wave. He continued to tread the same line in Jen si tak trochu písknout [Just to Whistle
a Bit, 1980] and Sněženky a machři [Snowdrops and Dabs, 1982]. In Proč? [Why, 1987], inspired by
real events, he questioned the aggression of sports fans. Sedm hladových [The Hungry Seven, 1988],
about the participants in a slimming course, was an easy-to-see-through metaphor of
totalitarianism. Jiří Svoboda’s approach as a director had deep foundations in theory, although the
critics reproached him for rational coldness. His best works include Dívka s mušlí [Girl with a Sea
Shell, 1980], a psychological drama about the children of an alcoholic mother, Schůzka se stíny [A
Meeting With Shadows, 1982], an ambitious film centring around the nazi medical experiments carried
out on people, and Zánik samoty Berhof [The Doom of the Berhof Lonelz Farm, 1984], a thrilling tale
from the end of the war in which the tension seldom flags. Jaroslav Soukup managed to anticipate
the mood of the younger generation with Vítr v kapse [Wind in the Pocket, 1982], a film notable for
its honesty. In contrast, his other films for teenagers were merely calculated commercial products.
Vladimír Drha, with his debut Dneska přišel nový kluk [A New Boy Has Arrived, 1981] established,
for a short while, the credentials of an author who seeks critical reflection upon social wrongs.
Zdeněk Troška established himself as a director of classical costume fairy-tales (O princezně
Jasněnce a létajícím ševci [Princess Claire and the Flying Cobbler, 1987], and popular comedies
Slunce, seno, jahody [Sun, Hay, Strawberries, 1983]. The talented documentary-maker Fero Fenič made
his debut with Džusový roman [A Juicy Romance, 1984], a coming-of-age feature film about a
working-class girl who is seduced and abandoned. It was released for distribution after a delay of
three years. In the context of the Czech cinematography of that period, it presented an unvarnished
picture of reality; nevertheless, it lagged behind films with similar subject matter produced in
neighbouring countries.

   Cinematography again started to respond to the success of fringe theatre. The fame of Divadlo na
provázku [Theatre on a String] from Brno gave rise to the film version of Balada pro banditu [A
Ballad for the Bandit, 1978], a musical scored by Miloš Štědroň, directed by Zdeněk Pospíšil and
with a secret co-screenwriter, the dissident Milan Uhde. The director Vladimír Sís, who later took
over responsibility for the film adaptation, also screened Boleslav Polívka’s play Poslední leč
[The Last Trap, 1981].

   The number of works created by highly appreciated and favoured protagonists of normalization was
still far from dwindling away in this period. Jaroslav Balík was the personality to emerge from
among them as having the most clear-cut artistic ambitions. Some of his films reveal an attempt at
a generation’s, perhaps even an author’s, manifesto: Balík spoke for the generation of post-war
communists. The line was already palpable in Milenci v roce jedna [Lovers in the Zear One]. In Stín
létajícího ptáčka [Shadow of Flying Bird, 1977] he contrasted the moral experience of two
generations, while in the introspective Zrcadlení [Reflection, 1977] he blended the contemporary
life of a debonair fifty-year-old working in foreign trade with his intimate memories of February
1948. Balík’s desire to make an authorial confession reached an embarrassing climax with Narozeniny
režiséra Z. K. [The Birthday of  Film Director ZK, 1987], his final, pompous opus. In the factory
drama Atomová katedrála [Atomic Cathedral, 1984] Balík celebrated the building of the Dukovany
nuclear power station, while in Rytmus 1934 [1934 Rhythm, 1980] and the attractive Šílený kankán [A
Wild Cancan, 1982] he exposed the vices of 1920’s and 1930’s capitalism.

   To hark back to the epoch of the bourgeoisie was a very common device in normalization cinema,
usually in the form of images from the struggle of the working class – clashes between workers and
the police and so on. However, nostalgic interpretations of the days of the “First Republic”
(1918-39) became common in the wake of the Sequens’ series Hříšní lidé města pražského [Sinful
People of the City of Prague]. Within the conventions of the retro style, this drew upon the
picturesque life of the Prague underworld. As well as appearing on television (1968), it was also a
sequel for cinema in four parts (1970-1971), and thrived in the Czech lands. The director Václav
Matějka expanded these thoroughly frivolous films with the bordello comedies Anděl s ďáblem v těle
[An Angel with the Devil in the Body, 1983] and Anděl svádí ďábla [An Angel Seducing the Devil,
1988], both of which pandered to the worst of popular taste.

   Antonín Kachlík sought inspiration in the Moravian countryside: in Náš dědek Josef [Old Man Joe,
1976] he combined the “sound down-to-earthness” with a eulogy to socialist development; in O
moravské zemi [The Moravian Land, 1977], the chronicle of an agricultural co-operative, he took
Všichni dobří rodáci [All Good Countrymen…] to task. The latter film, by Vojtěch Jasný, was banned
at the time. Kachlík even cast Radoslav Brzobohatý in the leading role, as had Jasný. Next, Kachlík
got hold of Vladimír Páral, a best-selling Czech writer in that period, and used Radost až do rána
[Taking Pleasure Until Broad Day, 1978), one of his less creative novels, for a kitschy celebration
of the socialist life-style. Páral’s novel Mladý muž a bílá velryba [The Young Man and the White
Whale], welcomed by normalization commentators as a shift on the part of the writer towards
positive values, was filmed in the same year by Jaromil Jireš. He also filmed Katapult [Catapult,
1983] five years later, based on an earlier novel from Páral’s more inspired creative period. It
was of no particular success.

   Otakar Vávra continued his attempts at a big-budget “super-production”. Today, he considers the
sci-fi Temné slunce [The Dark Sun, 1980] a mistake. It was a propaganda-based, updated adaptation
of Krakatit, a novel by Karel Čapek, the first version of which Vávra had made back in 1948. While
in the first version the struggle was against the classic atom bomb, the film now opposed the
neutron bomb. The shallow, biased depiction of the western world, full of decadent art, sex, drugs,
anti-war demonstrations and terrorism, made the film embarrassing even at the time of its creation.
Vávra’s most ambitious project in the 1980’s was Putování Jana Amose [Jan Amos’ Peregrination,
1983], a biographical collection of pictures based on the life of Komenský, the “teacher of
nations”. While Vávra managed to transform the book Labyrint světa a lusthaus srdce into an
inventive carnival form, Komenský’s wandering through the world of European science and art
remained subject to the didactic intention of presenting the Czech thinker as a modern fighter for
world peace. The director Jaromil Jireš also turned to the biography of famous Czechs for
inspiration in Lev s bílou hřívou [The Lion with the White Mane, 1986] in which he attempted to
capture the life and genius of the composer Leoš Janáček.

   The years 1974-1989 were the golden age of comedies written by the Svěrák-Smoljak duo. They
provided the script for “Marečku, podejte mi pero!” [“Mareček, Please Pass Me a Pen!“, 1976], one
of Oldřich Lipský’s most popular comedies. Zdeněk Podskalský contributed to Kulový blesk
[Ball-Lighting, 1978], a highly human comedy about a complicated exchange of flats and a parody of
the film kitsch Trhák [Blockbuster, 1980]. Ladislav Smoljak himself directed Vrchní, prchni!
[Waiter, Scarper!, 1980], a brilliant comedy starring Josef Abrhám in the role of a fake
head-waiter, as well as Jára Cimrman, ležící, spící [Jara Cimrman, Lying, Sleeping, 1983], an
amusing take on the fortunes of a fictitious Czech genius. Oldřich Lipský, together with the
screenwriter Jiří Brdečka, tried to re-live the past success of their Limonádový Joe and created
Adéla ještě nevečeřela [Adela Has Not Had Her Supper Yet, 1977], a decent detective parody, which
nevertheless failed to achieve such huge popularity. For children, Lipský made the comedy Ať žijí
duchové! [Long Live Ghosts, 1977], and for children and adults the Jan Werich fairy-tale Tři
veteráni [Three Veterans, 1983). Petr Schulhof, with some good detective films from the 1960’s
under his belt, investigated the Czech underbelly – narrow-mindedness, skirmishes between partners
and among neighbours, fussiness, and misappropriation of publicly owned property – in a series of
satirical comedies. The director Dušan Klein also moved over from crime films to comedy with Jak
svět přichází o básníky [How the World Loses Poets, 1982]. Based on a screenplay by Ladislav
Pecháček, it was an outstandingly successful portrait of student-life, to be followed by four
sequels in the years 1984, 1987, 1993 and 2003. The outstanding directors in the domain of
children’s films were Věra Plívová-Šimková (O Sněhurce [Snow White, 1972]; Přijela k nám pouť [The
Funfair Has Arrived, 1973]; Páni kluci [Boys Will Be Boys, 1975]) and Ota Koval (Jakub, 1976).


In the time of perestroika

While the cinema of neighbouring socialist countries had, from the 1970’s onwards, exposed the
atrocities of the past and presented a bleak view of the socialist present, Czech cinema kept older
films of this type hidden away in the vaults and, until the mid-1980’s, steered within the limits
of conformity. That the normalizing directors’ strength and influence was withering was obvious as
they completely discredited themselves through their later offerings. Also plain was the
contribution being made by auteurs from the New Wave generation and the promise implicit in the
younger filmmakers whom the critic Pavel Melounek referred to as the “non-generation”.[5]
Nevertheless, no real new wave emerged and the absence of top-quality film works was even discussed
at an official discursus. On the international scene, Czech and Slovak cinema held a marginal
position, and could only count on awards at Karlovy Vary as, even in the fraternal Moscow, films of
Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian origin enjoyed greater success. The local functionaries did their
utmost to put the brakes on the relaxation brought about by Gorbachev’s perestroika, with the
result that Czech cinema, until 1989, picked itself up only occasionally to make an attempt at
social criticism or to air the manifesto of an auteur or a generation.

   The first independent Czech film was Pavučina [Cobweb], centring on a theme of drug addiction.
It was filmed in 1982 by critic Zdenek Zaoral as an amateur feature film. The material was then
completed four years later in the Gottwaldov studio and copied onto 35 mm format. The young
director Miloš Zábranský’s Dům pro dva [A House for Two, 1987] was received with enthusiasm by the
critics, although its spiritual undertones led to a short delay in its distribution premiere. The
criminal world of illegal foreign currency dealers was presented in attractive fashion by Vít Olmer
in Bony a klid [Bons and Rest / Big Money, 1987]. Pražská pětka [Prague Five, 1988), a provocative
narrative film manifesto, was the joint work of several post-modern Prague theatres of the time,
directed by Tomáš Vorel. The director Irena Pavlásková made her debut with Čas sluhů [A Time of the
Servants, 1989), a temperamental portrait of the character of a vicious woman who unscrupulously
takes advantage of any compliancy in her surroundings. Jiří Svoboda’s aim, in film Jen o rodinných
záležitostech [About Family Affair Only], was to show the torture that some communists had to
endure in the 1950’s at the hands of their own comrades, in a similar way to Costa-Gavras in his
famous L’aveu, but the film was not released until November 1989 and was not noticed in the new
political context.

   It might have appeared, after the fall of the totalitarian regime, that the Czech films from the
1960’s would be held in high esteem while the normalization products, with the exception of the
outstanding works by Věra Chytilová and Jiří Menzel, would be permanently buried in the archives.
As the reality of the television stations has shown, the normalization films are the ones that the
public finds most pleasurable. Every week, the TV screens show the best and worst of the comedies,
the crime dramas and the propaganda-tainted soaps from that period. As the other countries sharing
the same recent history, the Czech Republic has been caught up in a wave of post-communist
nostalgia. Let us hope that the hard-core normalizing films will not live to be rehabilitated by TV
viewers. They are exceptionally bad films in terms of professional skills, but it is necessary to
be reminded of them from time to time, for study purposes. After all, the propaganda was at its
most effective not in the straightforward ideological films by Vojtěch Trapl, but in
run-of-the-mill comedies that brought to the screen the inconspicuous, everyday, sometimes
exhausted, slightly narrow-minded, but, in the end, happy life of the socialist man.


In: Sylvestrová, Marta (ed): Český filmový plakát 20. století, Moravská galerie Brno & Exlibris Pra
ha 2004, pp 106-114.




























________________________________

[1] Jaroslav Vokřál: Kamil Pixa: Mám rád akční filmy. Kino, 26th volume (1971), No. 10, p. 9.

[2] Jiří Purš: Obrysy vývoje československé znárodněné kinematografie (1945-1980). Prague, ČSFÚ
1985, p. 101.

[3] Jiří Purš: Současné úkoly naší kinematografie. In: Jiří Purš: Poslání socialistkého filmu,
ČSFÚ, Prague 1981, p. 32.


 - [4] Ladislav Pištora: Filmoví návštěvníci a kina na území České republiky, Iluminace, 9th year
(1997), No. 2, pp. 63-106.

[5] Pavel Melounek: Témata a rukopis jedné ne-generace, Film a doba, 29th year (1983), No. 3; Pavel
Melounek: „Ne-generace“ po dvou letech, Film a doba, 31st year (1985), No. 6; Pavel Melounek:
Horečky všedního dne, Prague, ČSFÚ 1987, p. 12.