In the evening, three boisterous young men get drunk and take a young sales clerk from the station with them. The next day, she reports a rape to the police. An eager young officer, who strictly adheres to the rules, takes over the investigation under the supervision of the chief inspector. And because the young man has neither experience nor tact, he causes chaos right from the start. Nevertheless, the officers soon manage to catch two of the suspected perpetrators. As it turns out, the missing third is a shy young man who is getting married - and who was so drunk that evening that he could hardly move. Whether there really was a rape remains unclear for a long time, but the crime has been reported and the police have to investigate.

This timeless Czech comedy with a long line of popular actors - most notably Jan Vostrčil and Vladimír Pucholt - is the work of director Jiří Krejčík, who worked on the screenplay with Zdeněk Mahler. It is a fine example of those popular Czech films with the special humor that doesn't make you laugh out loud all the time, but still works well decades later. And it also shows the typically Czech ability to skillfully weave in serious and critical aspects. The highly unvarnished and credible, i.e. obviously too negative, portrayal of state authorities was the reason why the film remained in the vault for 22 years.

This film will be shown as part of the "Czech Film Wednesday" series, as always in the original version with German subtitles.

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Due to popular demand, we are once again offering two screenings. The one at 8 pm is already almost sold out (remaining tickets may be available here).

(This is an automatic translation by DeepL Translator.)

This film is a work from the heyday of Czechoslovak film in the 1960s before the suppression of the Prague Spring, but - at least according to Wikipedia - is not counted as part of the Czechoslovak New Wave. It does have some similarities to "Hoří, má panenko" (The Firemen's Ball) by Miloš Forman: Both films were released in 1967 and they share a leading actor in Jan Vostrčil. More importantly, however, they both paint a fairly unvarnished picture of Czechoslovak society at the time, with virtually no one coming off particularly well. You could almost think that Forman and Krejčík wanted to tackle the same subject differently.

The reason why the film ended up in the vault is the overly realistic, i.e. too negative, portrayal of various state authorities (police officers, civil servants, soldiers). However, a closer look reveals that the authority in the foreground, the police, does not come off so badly. Although the young policeman sometimes goes overboard out of inexperience and overzealousness, his older colleague deals with this relatively good-naturedly and with understanding. The police officers do not abuse their power or use violence, they solve the case and even show humanity. They are well aware that nobody likes them. The other representatives of the state also show minor human weaknesses rather than behavior that was really bad at the time.

On the other hand, various "normal" people get their comeuppance by being shown with less attractive character traits. There is a lot of selfishness and little consideration, the treatment of women is shown in various critical ways, there is abuse of power in unexpected places, against which the good policeman unfortunately feels powerless, corruption appears several times, the social pressure seems enormous, and even the way families treat each other is sometimes aptly described by the term "hyena", which appears in the film.

(This is an automatic translation by DeepL Translator.)

Czechoslovakia, 1967, 94 min, OmU

Director: Jiří Krejčík

It stars: Iva Janžurová, Vladimír Pucholt, Jan Vostrčil, František Filipovský, Stella Zázvorková, Jiří Hrzán, Alena Walterová, Pavel Landovský, Jan Schánilec

(This is an automatic translation by DeepL Translator.)