»Svatba jako řemen« (The Unfortunate Bridegroom) on May 7 at Czech Film Wednesday
29.04.2025
At Czech Film Wednesday on 7 May, we will be showing the 1967 comedy "Svatba jako řemen" (Wedding on a Knife's Edge), which, despite its timeless humor, was so socially critical that it disappeared into the vault for 22 years.
In the evening, three high-spirited young men get drunk and pick up a young sales clerk from the station. The next day, she reports a rape to the police. An eager young officer, who strictly adheres to the rules, takes over the investigation. And because the young man has neither experience nor tact, he causes chaos right from the start. Not just one, but several weddings suffer as a result, but the investigation still yields results.
This comedy is a fine example of those popular Czech films with a special kind of humor that doesn't make you laugh out loud all the time, but still works well decades later. It also shows the typical 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 ended up in the vault.
But if you look closely, the police don't come off too badly in the movie. Instead, various "normal" people with less pleasant character traits are shown: a lot of selfishness and little consideration, bad treatment of women, abuse of power in unexpected places, corruption on several occasions, social pressure that is not due to socialism, and even the way families treat each other is sometimes aptly described by the term "hyena", which appears in the film. The whole thing has something of a morality tale about it. Perhaps the motivation for the vault was not the thought "Our state authorities are not like this!", but rather "Our people are not like this!"
The best thing to do is to see for yourself.