By Jennifer Baldwin. Forget the French New Wave. Yes, OK, I just got finished writing here at LFM about the greatness of Godard and VIVRE SA VIE, and I dig Truffaut and the rest of the Cahiers crowd as much as the next girl – but if I were stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life (or maybe stuck forever in a reeducation camp for Obama regime dissidents … just kidding), there is only one European “new wave” film movement I’d want to spend the rest of my days watching and it actually ain’t the French.
It’s the Czechoslovak New Wave, a film movement that received a lot of international recognition and acclaim back in the mid-to-late 1960s (e.g., winning Best Foreign Film Academy Awards in 1965 and 1967). This movement was a big deal back in the day.
But the Czech New Wave is somewhat forgotten these days, much to my disappointment. I wouldn’t really know much about it myself if it hadn’t been for the fact that I took a class back in my college days called “Central and Eastern European Cinema” taught by the genius Herb Eagle. (Admittedly, I needed to get the required “Race and Ethnicity” credits and it was the only class that satisfied those requirements that semester.)
Thanks to the tutelage of Professor Eagle I was soon hooked on Miloš Forman and Vera Chytilová films, like Chytilová’s Daisies featuring the two Maries.
Sadly, I don’t think the Czech New Wave gets enough love these days from film buff types. Everybody tosses around names like Godard and Truffaut and Rohmer and Rivette, but does anybody ever mention Chytilová or Jireš or Kádar and Klos or Menzel or Němec? (Miloš Forman doesn’t count because he’s become a well-known and award-winning director of Hollywood movies since emigrating here some 40 years ago.)
The Czech New Wave deserves better than to be some half-remembered footnote to the cinema of the 1960s. Frankly, I think the films that came out of Czechoslovakia in that era are not only fascinating examples of 1960s New Wave cinema, but they’re also still highly relevant for right now. These movies still have the power to speak to us on a political level as well as on a purely human level. If anybody wants to see what truly vibrant, brilliant, political (and personal) filmmaking is all about, they should take a look at the Czech New Wave.
Some brief historical background (though for a fuller and better summary of the movement, check out GreenCine’s post here):
Before the New Wave began challenging the political status quo and experimenting with film form in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the films of Eastern Bloc countries like Czechoslovakia were dominated by ‘socialist-realism’ (i.e., heavy on the ‘socialist,’ light on the ‘realism’). Everything in socialist-realist cinema had to depict how wonderful and hardworking the proletariat was, and how mean and evil the capitalists were. In an effort to uplift and idealize the poor and the working class, socialist-realist cinema never really showed the reality of what it was to be poor and working class – only the fantasy propaganda version. And heaven forbid a film be hard to understand or avant-garde; those were corrupt Western notions that had no place in the Communist state. Everything had to be as simple as possible so that even the most humble farmer could understand.
So basically from the late 1940s up through most of the 1950s cinema in Czechoslovakia consisted of fairly well made, conventionally narrative films that looked ‘realistic’ but were nothing more than thinly veiled Soviet propaganda.
What followed from here was a slight ‘thaw’ in the late 50s that saw award-winning filmmakers Elmar Klos and Ján Kadár making a daring, socio-political critique of Czech life in their film THREE WISHES (1958). The film was, however, quickly suppressed and banned by the Neo-Stalinists until 1963. But Czech filmmakers weren’t ready to go back into the socialist-realist box. The late 50s and early 60s began a cycle of films about the Nazi Occupation and World War II (such as ROMEO, JULIET, AND THE DARKNESS) that used the Nazis and the war to make allegorical comments and criticisms about contemporary Czech society.
By 1962, Slovak director Stefan Uher had made THE SUN IN A NET, a highly stylized, formally experimental character study that was denounced by the First Secretary of the Slovak Communist Party as being too subjective in its vision and not exhibiting enough “socialist realism” – and was eventually banned in Bratislava. But when Czech film critics rallied in support of the film, giving it a premiere showing in Prague – and political leader Alexander Dubček became head of the Slovak Communist Party by promising to liberalize the country and give the world “socialism with a human face” – the Czechoslovak New Wave was ready to begin.
What followed for the next six or so years was a brief but explosive film movement characterized not so much by uniform aesthetic principles but by a spirit of freedom – freedom to experiment with film forms (avant-garde, surrealist, cinema verite), freedom to be critical of a political system that was oppressive and incompetent, freedom to show what it really meant to be a human person living in a repressive, anti-human, anti-individualist society – freedom that had been practically denied to filmmakers during the socialist-realist period.
This new artistic freedom wasn’t by any means absolute – the authorities often banned films or suppressed distribution and New Wave filmmakers faced delays and rejections of their scripts so that many of them were unable to work for years at a time. Several overtly political films were ‘shelved,’ (i.e., banned forever; in fact, some of these films were not seen until after the fall of Soviet Communism). Jaromil Jireš’s THE JOKE, Forman’s FIREMEN’S BALL, Jasný‘s ALL MY COUNTRYMEN, and Němec‘s THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS were all famously ‘shelved.’
The New Wave effectively ended when Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops marched into Czechoslovakia and instituted a brutal regime change. Gone was the relative freedom that Czechoslovak filmmakers had experienced under the new liberalizing government of Alexander Dubček. The New Wave was over, even though many of its best filmmakers still continue to produce intriguing, quality films today.
Why is the Czech New Wave still important now, twenty years after the fall of Soviet Communism? First of all, it’s because the films are still good and entertaining even apart from their political importance.
But I also think the Czech New Wave can and should stand as a beacon and inspiration to the many political filmmakers working today who are making films under oppressive and authoritarian governments. The Czechs and Slovaks know how to make truly effective political films. One of the key ingredients in this respect is the particularly Czech/Slovak sensibility of combining the comic with the serious (often the tragically and disastrously serious).
In Jirí Menzel’s CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS, the comic and the serious are constantly juxtaposed; we watch with horror as a character tries to kill himself only to chuckle a few moments later when the randomness of everyday life ends up saving him. The film is filled with moments such as these, moments of defeat mixed with triumph, comedy mixed with tragedy. Menzel’s film is playful on the surface even as it is deadly serious underneath.
Czech New Wave films have a tendency to be satirical and ironic in tone, highlighting the contradictory and paradoxical aspects of life. These are not dry, didactic political tracts masquerading as cinema; these are touching, poignant, hilarious, absurd, disturbing, ironic, profoundly sad, and utterly human films that entertain even as they agitate for political and social change. Even in some of the bleakest of the Czech New Wave films, the filmmakers manage to find hilarious moments of dark comedy.
What’s more, the themes and messages of the Czech New Wave films still resonate with us nearly fifty years later. Ineffectual bureaucracies and stultifying socialism are still sucking the life out of us in the West, so Forman’s masterful FIREMEN’S BALL, a sharp critique of bureaucracy and socialism, still works as social satire today.
DAISIES, the avant-garde masterpiece of director Vera Chytilová (the only major female filmmaker to emerge during the New Wave) feels just as necessary today. It should be screened for all oppressed Muslim women living in radical, anti-female Islamic countries (and in some Western countries as well). The delightful hedonism of the two Maries, their mad pursuit to “be bad” in a society that either ignores them, suppresses their rights, or destroys them is just as necessary now in certain parts of the world as it was in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. Just imagine the anarchical fun the two Maries would have in Tehran today, or even in certain parts of downtown Toronto, for that matter!
I love the spirit of freedom inherent in the films of the Czech New Wave. These are films that never fail to show how individual freedom is part of the essence of our humanity. And they never fail to show the failures of those governments and societies that suppress this freedom. The films of the Czech New Wave are fearless in this respect and yet they never fail to be well-made, humane, powerful pieces of entertainment, regardless of political content. These are films that remind us that the freedom of the individual matters – even as the films make us laugh, cry, and sympathize with their all-too-human characters.
A Guide to the Czech New Wave:
Klos and Kadár:
THREE WISHES (1958)
THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (1965)
ADRIFT (1968)
Štefan Uher:
THE SUN IN A NET (1962)
Vera Chytilová:
SOMETHING DIFFERENT (1963)
DAISIES (1966)
Jiří Menzel:
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS (1966)
LARKS ON A STRING (1969)
Jaromil Jireš:
THE JOKE (1968)
Miloš Forman:
BLACK PETER (1963)
LOVES OF A BLONDE (1965)
FIREMEN’S BALL (1967)
Evald Schorm:
EVERYDAY COURAGE (1964)
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON (1966)
Jan Němec:
THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS (1966)
Vojtěch Jasný:
CASSANDRA CAT (1963)
ALL MY COUNTRYMEN (1968)
Zbynek Brynych:
THE FIFTH HORSEMAN IS FEAR (1964)
PEARLS OF THE DEEP (1964) (a New Wave anthology film)
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It’s fascinating that filmmakers were doing all this in the ’60s in the Eastern bloc countries. I really had no idea about any of this (maybe I should have taken those cinema classes in college the way you did!) but its cool that they were doing this. Why were the Communist authorities so worried about these films? By suppressing them they probably actually just increased interest in them and made the population more determined to see these films.
Well, the government at the time was sort of split on two sides. Dubček was liberal (in the democratic sense, not the American politics sense) and he was trying to open Czechoslovakian society up. But there were still hard line Stalinist types in the government, so filmmakers were kind of caught in the middle: starting to be given more freedom, but with Neo-Stalinist types always watching over their shoulders.
You are right, though, that people did want to see these films and there was pressure from within Czechoslovakia and from without (i.e.: the West) to let these films be shown and the directors to be recognized. When Jirí Menzel won an Oscar for CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS, the Czech authorities wouldn’t let him get his award, but they eventually relented because of the pressure.
As to why oppressive governments want to suppress films that are critical of said government? Well, I think it all comes down to power. Once the people of a country start to laugh a their government bureaucrats thanks to a film by say, Miloš Forman, it becomes that much harder for the bureaucrats to hold onto their power.
Those are really good points Jennifer, thanks so much for the response. It is true, laughter is the most dangerous thing for tyrannical governments, because their power relies on instilling fear in the public. Once that is gone then I guess, as you say, that it is that much harder for them to keep their grip on power. (Look at how over-sensitive Obama is every time someone makes a joke about him!)
Now I feel I have to go and see some of these films! “Closely Watched Trains” was on TCM some time last year. I watched a little bit of it but because I didn’t have the knowledge about the Czech New Wave and what it meant I didn’t stick with it and watch the whole thing. Now if they replay it I will definitely watch it! Thanks again for the explanation of what it all meant.