Ostře sledované vlaky / Closely Watched Trains (1966)
Comedy | Drama | War
An apprentice train dispatcher at a village station seeks his first sexual encounter and becomes despondent when he is unable to perform.
Starring: Václav Neckár, Josef Somr, Vlastimil Brodský, Vladimír Valenta
Director: Jirí Menzel
Vesničko má středisková / My Sweet Little Village (1985)
Comedy
Comedy about the people who inhabit a small town. For years the overbearing Pavek has endured Otik, the "town idiot," sharing his meals and the front seat of their dump truck. But Otik is such a sweet-natured fool that Pavek, exasperated as he becomes, always relents on his threats to find another partner. This Laurel and Hardy-like pair are at the heart of a comedy which finds humor in an abundance of everyday situations. The town doctor regularly wrecks his car because he's admiring the scenery, a romantic teenager develops a hopeless crush on his sister's schoolteacher, and an adulterous housewife and her boyfriend are just one step ahead of her suspicious, hot-headed husband.
Starring: János Bán, Marián Labuda, Rudolf Hrusínský, Petr Cepek, Libuse Safránková, Jan Hartl
Director: Jirí Menzel
Rozmarné léto / Capricious Summer (1968)
Comedy
Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine… A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance… Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest skill, but with a slim and beautiful assistant, Anna. Antonin speaks to her. The two spend the night in the change room by the river, Antonin massaging her feet all night long. Katherine decides to move into the caravan with Ernie. But now the major and even the canon sense Anna's attractiveness…
Starring: Rudolf Hrusínský, Vlastimil Brodský, Frantisek Rehák, Míla Myslíková, Jana Preissová, Jirí Menzel
Director: Jirí Menzel
Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále / I Served the King of England (2006)
Comedy | Drama | Romance | War
I Served the King of England treads lightly through a dark time–before, during, and after World War II in Eastern Europe. This cinematic fable follows an impish Czechoslovakian man who leads a modestly charmed life as a waiter at hotels and brothels, sleeping with prostitutes and chambermaids as he dreams of wealth and plays pranks on the rich and bourgeois. But when he falls in love with a fervent Nazi woman, glimpses of a bleak reality intrude into his whimsical life. I Served the King of England doesn't delve in to the horrors of the concentration camps (though it does explore some strange, lesser-known corners of the Nazi psyche). This is the story of a man who leads a shallow life, who evades atrocity almost by accident, and who grows haunted by his lack of engagement and pursuit of meaningless goals–and yet, he survives while others do not.
Starring: Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Marián Labuda, Milan Lasica
Director: Jirí Menzel
