Acting
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Wartime events from a child's perspective were a popular theme during the previous regime - here it is a twelve-year-old village boy who experiences dangerous situations with retreating Nazi troops in picturesque South Bohemia... Any attempt to achieve a more believable depiction is destroyed by the staging's grandeur, and in the end the result is an awkward piece, suitable at most for celebrating the relevant national holidays. A longer copy with a tragic ending is stored in the NFA. Milda is shot unnoticed by an SS major.
February 1948. The struggle of decisive social forces for the heart of Europe.
Two young returnees from the First World War face a difficult future because they cannot find work. One eventually finds a job as an electrician, the other breaks into the Social Democratic press, where he gets the chance to watch up close how the Social Democratic leadership deceives its members and enters the service of the ruling classes. And a newly-trained journalist solves the problem of whether he should also adapt to the corrupt environment...
In an unusual, apolitical approach, director Jaromil Jires has fashioned a standard drama that features an older lawyer with failing health who goes to practice in the countryside. His series of odd court cases reveals more about the human condition than about law. In one of these litigations a wayward nephew has cheated his elderly aunt out of her savings. In court, the nephew insists the money was a gift, but his aunt explains she only gave him the money as a loan. Although the lawyer technically wins the case, everything of value seems lost in the meantime. His services are paid for in rabbits because the aunt has no currency, and in the end, the nephew cons his aunt into parting with her savings anyway. Other cases expose similar types of petty corruption.
Vera, wife of the plumber Simandl (Josef Somr), is found murdered in the cinema next to the IDOC (Information and Documentation) agency where she worked. Police captain Marha (Frantisek Nemec), who is leading the investigation, is informed by Simandl that on the day of the murder Vera promised to bring home fifty thousand crowns to buy a car. Marha's primary suspects are the three men working at the agency: deputy editor-in-chief Brandl (Jirí Pleskot) and editors Pernata (Eduard Cupák) and Remes (Ludek Munzar, and of course also Simandl.
Set in Prague during the years leading up to World War II, this family saga tells the story of a cobbler named Vincenc Bursik (Vladimir Mensik), who uproots his clan from the country to the city, only to suffer the loss of his wife and the failure of his shoe business within months. When his daughter moves away to go live with a wealthy businessman as his mistress, Vincenc is left to take care of his two sons, who spend their days in a secret garden vying for the affections of a teenage girl.
The former reputed lover and bon vivant Petr Vok from Rožmberk was widowed at the age of sixty-three. The loss of his much younger wife is hard to bear and it seems that nothing in his life will please him anymore. His loyal friends and servants do everything possible and impossible to cheer him up, but sometimes interesting situations arise, such as when they get him a guaranteed real mermaid. Will anyone be able to cure the master of his lethargy?