Czech new wave filmmakers in interviews

222 Pages·2004·67.59 MB·English

by  Buchar, Robert

Czech New Wave Filmmakers in Interviews

Czech New Wave
Filmmakers
in Interviews
R B
OBERT UCHAR
foreword by Antonín J. Liehm
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Buchar, Robert, ¡95¡–
Czech new wave filmmakers in interviews / Robert Buchar ;
foreword by Antonín J. Liehm.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7864-¡720-X (softcover : 50# alkaline paper)
¡. Motion pictures—Czech Republic. 2. Motion picture
producers and directors—Czech Republic—Interviews. I. Title.
PN¡993.5.C89B83 2004
79¡.4302'33'0922437¡—dc22 20030¡9550
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2004 Robert Buchar. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: (clockwise from top left)Ji†í Menzel, Stanislav Milota, Jan
Nfimec (photographs by Robert Buchar), Drahomíra Vihanová (courtesy
CINEART TV Prague, photograph by Vlastimil Malaska), Karel Vachek
(photograph by Bob Barnes), Ivan Passer (photograph by Morton Zarco›);
(background)Vfira Chytiltová (photographs by Robert Buchar).
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Contents
Foreword (Antonín J. Liehm) 1
Introduction 9
Antonín Má§a 15
Jan Nfimec 24
Sa§a Gedeon 31
Ji†í Menzel 38
Vfira Chytilová 51
Ji†í KrejVík 73
Jaroslav BouVek 87
Jaroslav Brabec 93
Jan Svfirák 99
Zuzana Zemanová 108
Alois Fi§árek 112
Otakar Vávra 115
Drahomíra Vihanová 125
Ivan Passer 144
Karel Vachek 151
Stanislav Milota 160
The Velvet Revolution and Beyond 180
Notes 187
Bibliography 211
Index 213
v

Foreword
ANTONÍN J. LIEHM
The history of Czech film started immediately after Edison and the
Lumière brothers. Czechoslovakian cinema flourished during the silent
era, taking full advantage of international collaboration between Prague,
Vienna, and Berlin studios. This all ended when sound film arrived and
raised the language barrier, which pushed Czech cinema towards provin-
cialism. But Czech film didn’t go away. Thanks to a tradition of good
professional craftsmanship, we still watch many of these films from the
30s on television and buy them on video. We don’t do that just because
of their historical nature or nostalgia.
But some filmmakers wanted to do more than just make entertain-
ment films for a small local market. They wanted to make art films that
could reach the whole world. The Second World War and German occu-
pation didn’t suppress this movement. On the contrary, it had the oppo-
site e›ect. The occupation and subsequent cutbacks on production of
Czech films surprisingly raised awareness of film as an important part of
the nation’s culture. It was then that the concept of a nationalized film
industry was born. The idea was that a nationalized film industry would
free filmmakers from dependency on the market and the box o‡ce and
move film closer to art. When the war ended in ¡945, a nationalized film
industry seemed possible. The Sirenreceived a Gold Leo Award in Venice,
Ji†í KrejVík made his film Conscienceand Ji†í Weiss Stolen Borders.But in
¡948, the period of brutal Stalinism interrupted this and it wasn’t until
1
2 Foreword (Antonín J. Liehm)
the mid–50s that Czech film was able to make a turnaround. Many of
the old dreams were fully realized in the 60s when Czechoslovak cinema
became, for a short period of time, honored worldwide. The Soviet inva-
sion in August ¡968 abruptly ended the “Czech film miracle,” and the
period of so-called normalization that followed after ¡968 wiped out
everything. The “Velvet Revolution” in ¡989 didn’t just fail to build on
the best from Czech history but returned Czech cinema to the provin-
cial misery of the pre–World War II era.
This is a brief, schematically condensed history of Czech film you
have to know before you begin to read the following text. Robert Buchar,
a Czech cinematographer who for many years has taught at Chicago’s
Columbia College and remembers this history very well, interviewed a
number of Czech filmmakers a couple of years ago in front of his video
camera. He focused his attention on the creators of the “Czech film mir-
acle” of the 60s called “Czech New Wave.” (Unfortunately, Slovak
filmmakers who played an important role in the movement are not
included.) He added Jan Svfirák, Jr., and Sa§a Gedeon as successful rep-
resentatives of the “Velvet Generation.” When Czech television refused
to broadcast this extraordinary documentary, the author made it avail-
able in the literary form so we all can read it.
The book version has two advantages. First, it’s more complete. Every-
thing that didn’t fit into the two-hour television format is here. If you see
the film, you will understand how important this is. Second, the interviews
in the book have a raw taste of the unpolished spoken word. It adds a
drama and complexity to individual interviews, often surpassing the fas-
cinating authenticity of the audio-visual recording. The consecutive lineup
of individual interviews fully supplements direct confrontation created by
the editing in the film.
Thirteen years after the November turnover, Czechs have an Insti-
tute for Contemporary History and many others. They are shooting
films—mostly fictions and non-fictions made for television about the
horrors of Stalinism. But until today, nothing worthy was shot about the
real history of 20 years of normalization, or about how the Czechoslo-
vakian society in the 60s tried to find a way out of the darkness of Stal-
inism. But Czechoslovakia lived through this history, slowly but steadily
recuperating from the Stalinist terror and consciously (or unconsciously)
trying to follow up with better traditions of the past history. It’s not
di‡cult to guess why. The 90s, like the era of Stalinism, were years of
ideology: years of denouncing the past and celebrating the present and
Foreword (Antonín J. Liehm) 3
the future. The more distant the past is, the more comfortably you can
dig in it. The 60s and normalization were much more complicated times.
In the 60s there was an energy to life, or something coming alive. It’s
better not talk about this here because the younger generation, which
didn’t experience it, could get an idea. In order to assess the normaliza-
tion period it would be necessary to explain and document how ¡5 mil-
lion people “su›ered and fought against communism” while a handful of
dissidents pretty much “sabotaged” this process. To explain this would
be much more complicated and much more di‡cult than to denounce
the terror of Stalinism.
And this is exactly the point where these filmmakers enter. They can-
didly and without self-censorship describe this landscape—a landscape
full of lions and many white spots on the map of recent Czech history.
They openly talk about the spirit of the 60s, about the Czech New Wave
film movement, about the challenges they faced, and about their hopes.
The fact that none of them was a member of the Communist party makes
their confession even more credible. They are aware that those they called
“Bolsheviks” during normalization included at least half a million peo-
ple expelled from the Communist party after September ¡968 and fired
from their jobs because they opposed for years the reality of that fraud-
ulent dream. But this is not about words but about the fact that they are
saying out loud, on camera, what many others think but are afraid to say
in public. Are they brave, courageous? I don’t believe that any of them
thinks about it. They simply stayed faithful to their own beliefs, paid for
it dearly during the normalization period, and are not willing to com-
promise today. The question is, how long they will remain an exception?
But more important are their opinions about the normalization and
present times. Their candid confessions reflect the character of the time
period that lasted four times longer then the Nazi occupation. During
this period, the risk was much smaller than during the World War II,
barely two thousand out of the fifteen million people in the nation pub-
licly stood up in opposition. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and
artists owe us answers to the questions these facts present.
A few of those who speak here are opening Pandora’s box, letting us
see images of demoralization, moral relativism and egoism that grew (and
continue to grow) through the society and left scars much deeper than a
decade of barbaric Stalinism. Milan Kundera once wrote that Stalinist
socialism allowed us to see sides of human character we sometimes sensed
but haven’t seen or refused to see. This experience deeply influenced Kun-