Hello and welcome to every single sci-fi film ever. I'm Aisha Khan. I have a slightly longer intro than usual for a couple of reasons. Reason one is the introduction of adverts which in theory you should be hearing on this podcast. If they seem long, excessive or inappropriate, please let me know on threads or Instagram at the handle at every sci-fi film.
linked to this introduction of adverts are subscription options that are being offered so you can listen to an ad-free version of the podcast and support the show more details on that at the end of the episode reason two for the long intro is the nature of this episode Today we'll be doing things slightly differently. There will be a large focus on Czechoslovakia, which gave birth to one of the most unexpectedly amazing science fiction films I have ever seen.
The film is Invention for Destruction from 1958, or as it was retitled for international audiences, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. It was made by Carol Zeman. The film is a visual delight and was, for me, completely unexpected. A black and white wonder of a film with sets and costume designs that were truly breathtaking.
The story is based on the Jules Verne novel Facing the Flag from 1896, and although it is a fun story, it is the imagery from the film, based on the late 19th century illustrations from the novel, that are mind-blowing. Stunning. Apologies for stressing this point, I'm still recovering from the shock of it all. As this is not a visual medium you can head to my Instagram to take a look at some of the images.
I really hope you were able to find a copy of the film, and although we may touch upon the themes in the plot, I wanted to learn more about Czechoslovakia around this period. Not just because of this amazing film, but because the impending 1960s sees more science fiction output from the country and the Czechoslovakian new wave in film also begins in the early 60s.
Before I introduce my extremely wonderful guests, I wanted to give a quick overview of Zaman. Considering George Melies was a big influence on Zaman, I did want to mention a few similarities in their lives. Now, George Méliès was one of the earliest filmmakers from France. And if you want to learn about the first science fiction film ever, you can go to episode two of the podcast and learn more about him. So Zaman was born in 1910 and as a small child had a strong affinity for the art.
Zaman's teachers suggested to his mother and stepfather that he pursue his creative talents. But, and again like Melies, Zaman's parents wanted him to pursue business. So he went to France and studied advertising. He also travelled widely for the time, including places like Egypt, Yugoslavia and Greece, before returning to his home country.
Similar to how Melias had experiences with factory machinery which helped his practical effects in filmmaking, Zaman worked as a car salesman which gave him the ability to work with motors which would again serve him well in his cinematic future. Zaman eventually began working in advertising again, and although he was very successful, he walked away from it all to pursue his passion for filmmaking, beginning with an animated stop-motion and live-action film, The Christmas Dream, in 1945.
The man's work in the 1950s is often cited as the inspiration and sometimes origin of modern steampunk. It's time for a short break. Do you feel like you're rushing around, forever completing to-do lists, cramming in social events? This is your reminder that self-care is essential. It's not selfish. It's a must. Suicide bereavement charity Suicide & Co are holding a self-care fair. There'll be shops and talks from wellness experts to explore.
Join them on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th May in London. Tickets are just £10. Get yours today. Hello, I'm David Hepworth from the Word in Your Ear music podcast. And I'm Mark Ellen, and we're sponsored by Specsavers, which has been around for 40 years and providing hearing services for the last 20. Which is useful in a world of misheard lyrics. Such as? Creedence Clearwater's Timeless There's a Bathroom on the Right.
Bob Marley with a roof rack over our heads. We built the city on sausage rolls. We all remember the police singing about Sue Lawley. And Madonna being touched. for the 31st time. I can see clearly now Lorraine is gone. So, Mark, where will you get your hearing checked next? Specsave ears. Book your free Specsavers hearing check today. Sweet dreams are made of cheese.
Hi folks, it's Dan Snow here from the Dan Snow's History Hit podcast, and we are currently sponsored by Audible. There's nothing quite like getting lost in great storytelling, something that totally immerses you in an extraordinary new world. Well, that's where Audible comes in, folks. They offer an enormous selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and award-winning originals, and all on one easy-to-use app. There's more to imagine when you listen.
Listen on Audible now, subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms. And now time to speak to my amazing guest. Thomas Lamar is a professor of film, media and East Asian languages and civilisations at the University of Chicago. He is also the author of the steampunk cinema chapter in the Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinema. Welcome to the show, Thomas. How are you doing? Good. Thank you very much.
Joining Thomas is Mary Hyman, a professor of modern history at Cardiff University. She's also the author of the book Czechoslovakia, The State That Failed. Great. I wanted to go to you, Mary, first just to talk a little bit about Czechoslovakia in the post-war period. So the film is 1958.
But can you give us a little bit of an overview of what happened after the war ended and into the 50s? Sure. So Czechoslovakia was divided during the war. So there was one half. Today's Czech Republic was a protectorate, a colony of Nazi Germany. And the other part, which is today's Slovakia, was an independent. fascist Catholic state which was allied to Nazi Germany.
Halves of the country were reunited after the war. And then I believe that elections were held? There were free elections held in 1946 and the communists won a sort of landslide victory. They did not yet take complete power. That happened in 1948 during a sort of manipulation of the kind of cabinet reshuffle that then ended up with the communists taking full power and then being able to implement. what became a dictatorship.
OK, and I believe you were saying that during the war, there were like two separate kind of governments of Czechoslovakia that were waiting in the wings, so to speak. Yeah, so there was one government in exile based in London, and that was the one that came back after the war. And then there was another alternative. government in exile based in Moscow, which was a communist government. And interestingly, that was not the one that came back to power in 45. It was the democratic.
Western-leaning government that came back to power, but they were undermined in 1948 and then the Communist Party took complete power at that point. And once the Communist Party took power, and I think this is where things get interesting, how much influence... did Soviet Russia have in Czechoslovakia during this time?
So the Soviet Union, which liberated Czechoslovakia after the war, and except for the Western bit, which was liberated by US troops. So they both simultaneously left the soil of Czechoslovakia. So this wasn't like Poland. The Soviet Union was not present. And as I say, because the communist government came to power through the ballot box, they didn't need to be present. However...
Very rapidly after the dictatorship, the Soviet Union became a kind of model which was followed by the Czechoslovak Communist Party very closely. And Czechoslovakia had its own sort of mini Stalin, someone called Clement Gottwald. So it became very Stalinist without it being necessarily Soviet dominated, if that makes sense. And what kind of influence would that have had on the arts and film?
So socialist realism was the sort of obligatory style in the early 50s, although I think, funnily enough, I think animation was always a little bit treated a little bit differently. And I think that is probably why Carol Zaman was able to make very, very fantastical, really kind of beautiful films because they were not considered for adults in a way. Exactly. And there was also a very strong Czechoslovak tradition of animation, which goes back to the 20s.
they were somehow immune from the obligatory socialist realist style. And I just wanted to mention, Carol Zeman's first film that he worked on was called A Christmas Dream. And that was originally made by Hermina Tirlova. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. And she was considered the mother of Czech animation. So prominent Czech filmmaker. The reason she wasn't able to finish it because the negatives were lost in a fire.
and she was unwell so the studio passed it on to um carol's man and a man called borrow who I can't find out if they were related or not. Sorry, listeners. Thank you so much for that, Mary. So can we talk a little bit about the state of animation? Thomas, can we talk about what was happening? I mean Walt Disney was around and what else was going on in the world in terms of anime? I mean, the history of animation in 1946 is not an exception, is always one of incredible diversity.
And it's interesting to watch a film like Christmas Dream. I mean, it's really brilliant, but it also reflects one of these deeper dreams in the world of cinema of combining live action and animation flawlessly. This goes back to the earliest part of film history, even back to Melies, but especially in the 1910s and 1920s. You see all kinds of filmmakers wanting to do films with toys in them and have the toys come to life and just be flawlessly inserted into live action film.
And I would say this film does it brilliantly, right? Like it's really a technological accomplishment. And I underscore that a little bit because... At the same time, we can think of these animated films across the world as enjoying a different status under state censorship. This is true in China and Japan, Soviet Union. They are spaces of fantasy, often for children, but at the same time, they are objects of intense technological interest.
And you see that in A Christmas Dream, right? It's quite an accomplishment, not simply as a film for children, but this technological investment. But by the time you're in 1946, as you said, Really, the great side of technological investment or technological dreaming is cell animation. Disney, and to a certain extent, the Fleischer brothers, are everywhere in the world with these incredible new technological apparatus, multi-plane camera systems, stereotipal processes.
industry on a global level is pushing towards feature length films. So Snow White in 1937, Princess Iron Fan in China in 1941. and then the Japanese film Momotaro, Sacred Sailors in 1945. So this incredible rush to produce these high-tech feature-length animated films. using technologies that would combine 2D and 3D almost flawlessly. But in that process, other histories of animation, like check animation, which...
you know, is brilliant. Like it has a deep history. We're working in a very different register. But there was still room in the global film market. for animated shorts to show before feature length films. So there was still a diversity in the world of animation, right? It wasn't shut down despite the growing hegemony of certain kinds of forms of cell animation. And I think...
you know, Zayman or whoever these two Zayman were together, were really able to fit that lingering slot, right? Where you could produce these very brilliant short films. global audiences to insert before a feature length film and that film um christmas dream actually won a short award at the very first Cannes in 1946. So that was quite an accomplishment, which probably gave Zaman the kind of power or some influence to make his first feature-length debut, which is The Treasure of Bird Island.
which was also very beautiful. So if you can check that out, I would recommend it. And so I want to touch upon Journey to the Beginning of Time, which he made in 1955. And then we will go on to the film that blew my mind, which is The Fabulous World of Jewels Verne. And I'm very upset with people for not talking to me about this more in my 47 years before I discovered it. So yes. So the journey to the beginning of time is...
This beautiful story of four young boys who go on an adventure, and it is a mix of kind of like live action and animation. You've mentioned that this was an aspiration, but was this quite common at the time? Well, as I said, it was always a deep dream of cinema to have this fusion of live action animation. Even Disney Studios did them early on with Alice in Wonderland. When you look back at them, they look quite flawed.
You know, there's tricks to doing this. And then the question is really, is the trick fully technological? And I would say the Disney lineage pushes towards that even through digital. cinema, like solve the problem technologically. I would say the Czech animators are ingenious because they're trying to solve the problem aesthetically. as much as anything. So if you think of film, a lot of the effects that he's doing are called in-camera effects.
They're not added in post-production, layered into the film. They're really happening while you're filming. And this gives them a really different kind of quality. And I think can add a dimension of realism that might not be the same if you were adding them digitally or in post-production. Yeah, they are practical effects. So they'll get like paintings and they'll put them down onto like in front of the camera.
in really really beautiful ways which means you've got a river you've got a painting that isn't in the background but they put it there so it looks like it's the background and then when they do like underwater scenes they'll they'll put like which is you can see little patterns and stuff moving towards it which isn't actually underwater and it's just
so shocking to me how this film was made so so very very long ago i wanted to ask you mary is is there because obviously these films are recognized and when you start reading about them there's loads of information there But I had not heard of this film. And I'm not saying I'm like a huge, huge kind of, you know, cinephile, but I love films. And I hadn't heard of them until I started doing my research for science fiction through the ages last year.
Is the reason that potentially it wasn't as well known is because it's under like a communist government, which tends to keep everything inside? I'm not so sure about that. I mean, well, perhaps... There are a lot of cultural features of Czechoslovak life that were very well known within the Eastern Bloc, but that didn't spread to the West. So that's part of it, I suppose.
A sort of cultural iron curtain, perhaps. Yeah, although I'm not so sure. I mean, it may just be an anglophone, the anglophone world, because certainly I think a lot of animation and films were known in Germany, for example, even in West Germany. So, and, you know, things like, I don't know if you know, the little mole.
So those sort of cartoons, I mean, they were known all over the world, but yeah, some places missed. Not in every place. I think the Anglophone world may be has it is its own bubble in some ways. My impression of these films actually is. They circulated quite widely at the time. There was a real demand for general audience films or family films. A lot of these animations from Czechoslovakia circulated in France as well.
And I do think a film like Zayman's film circulated in North America and clearly was quite memorable for audiences. What's interesting more is the afterlife of film. When you look at directors who are interested in it, it's Tim Burton, it's Terry Gilliam, it's the Japanese director, Miyazaki Hayao. So they seem to move later into more of a cult.
slot or a different aesthetic slot than these big budget Hollywood films. So I think some of it is just the way in which a certain kind of global entertainment from the U.S. began to dominate our visual aesthetic. Yeah, and that is really interesting. So I've been watching a lot of these science fiction films through the first half of the 20th century so far. And so we've got something like...
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which comes out a year later in 1959 or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which is 1954. And another Verne-based film, which isn't science fiction, which is Around the World in 80 Days. And they're very slick and they're big budget and they're full of colour and they... For me, when I'm watching them, there's something strangely, and it's kind of ironic, it's something strangely childish in those films. Whereas Zeman's film is made for children.
But it just appeals to me so much more because of the kind of artistry involved. It's quite shocking. But we should obviously mention Melies, because that's a huge influence, as well as Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. So Zaman's obviously grown up with these kind of influences. in his childhood. And also there's this kind of long-standing
Czech influence with science fiction, which is probably most memorable with RUR, which is made by Carol Capek, which is where the word robot comes from. Mary, can you talk a little bit about... the kind of science fiction and futuristic kind of culture of Czechoslovakia.
Yeah, so Karol Čapek was very much closely associated with the first Czechoslovak Republic. So he was in a small circle of favoured artists and creators that were very close to President Masaryk, to the founding president of the... country. And I think right from the first, Czechoslovakia was very good at promoting itself in the cultural sphere. So Karol Čapek, I mean, he wrote the, I don't know if it's so well known.
The white, I don't know how it's translated either, it's the white disease or something, which is really prescient. It seems to predict the Holocaust, actually. And it was, yeah, it's really quite interesting. And as you say, eruer, which is where the word robot comes from. I think today the Czech Republic, I mean, there's a long tradition of the state supporting the arts and these arts in particular. Yeah. And animation in particular, again.
was very much promoted. And 1958 was an important year for Czechoslovakia because it was when Expo 58 happened in Brussels and the Czechoslovak pavilion sort of won hands down and everyone was talking about it. That's the very same year that this film came out. And what kind of, do you know more details about the exhibition they had there? What were they showcased?
So it was a day in the life in Czechoslovakia or something like that. But it was promoting this very excitingly modern world. So the pavilion itself was an incredible kind of tour de force of brutalist art, I suppose. It was, you know, technically astonishing. Czechoslovakia felt it had sort of arrived in 58. It was an important, the whole thing was re...
was brought down and then rebuilt. You can still see the building in Letna in Prague today. Oh, wow. That's amazing. And a little tidbit is that the first ever World Fair on Record was organised in Prague in 1791. which was for the coronation of King Leopold II, which is not to be confused with King Leopold II of Brussels. So just wanted to get that out there. And actually, Expo 58 was the first.
World Fair after the war as well. So it was really important for that reason too. That's very interesting. Thank you for that. It's time for a short break. Do you feel like you're rushing around, forever completing to-do lists, cramming in social events? This is your reminder that self-care is essential. It's not selfish. It's a must. Suicide bereavement charity Suicide & Co are holding a self-care fair. There'll be shops and talks from wellness experts to explore.
Join them on Saturday the 3rd and Sunday the 4th of May in London. Tickets are just £10. Get yours today. Hi folks, it's Dan Snow here from the Dan Snow's History Hit podcast, and we are currently sponsored by Audible. There's nothing quite like getting lost in great storytelling, something that totally immerses you in an extraordinary new world.
Well, that's where Audible comes in, folks. They offer an enormous selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and award-winning originals, and all on one easy-to-use app. There's more to imagine when you listen. Listen on Audible now, subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms. Thomas, I want to talk about steampunk, which is a sci-fi, largely literary, but also lots of other mediums.
genre that kind of surfaced around the mid to late 80s is that right and yet This, for many people, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne is a kind of origin story for that genre. Yeah, it's really interesting. I actually went back to Seyman's film in the context of teaching steampunk in cinema because...
There is a way in which steampunk, as you know, becomes very dominant by the late 90s. And you see a lot of films that are very explicitly steampunk. But in fact, when you look at the steampunk movement itself, it emerges more in literature. That's where the term is coined. And it's by a bunch of writers who are...
adding a twist to cyberpunk that we can go back to, which is in itself interesting. But these early writers of steampunk who coined the term, they say, well, they'd already visualized or seen what they want to do. through the film of Carl Zeeman. And particularly Invention for Destruction is often evoked precisely because he's doing the same thing they're trying to do in literature, which is to return to Verne or H.G. Wells.
or to the world of the Victorian world, if you will, and to extrapolate its technologies into the future. They're not doing this simply as an exercise to produce a simple alternative history. They're really thinking about history as a virtual space in the manner of cyberpunk working in virtual space. So they're trying to produce this feeling that you're looking at a history that never was, but might have been.
It's a very strange kind of literary movement, but what they do is adopt the styles, say, of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells or of the Victorian period. And they write quite consistently in that style, often introducing fictional characters and real characters alongside one another, but extrapolating one technological. variable steampunk into some kind of future that they think follows from the fact of steam.
Like cyberpunk coming around in the early 80s, there was a lot of kind of neon lights and kind of synthesized music and, you know, everything, computers, everything became very cyber. But why do you think... The mid to late 80s suddenly had this call back to almost like 100 years ago, prior to that time.
I think we can explain it a little bit in terms of the history of science fiction literature. Often when people talk about the history of science fiction literature, The 1950s in particular are still outer space adventure. exploration narratives, which build on much earlier tendencies. Sometimes they're called Edisonade.
Right. Because it's extensions of Thomas Edison in the world of science. So that kind of science fiction really dominates. But then in the 1960s, there's the so-called new wave or speculative science fiction. And it's that point, actually, that. You know, science fiction we associate with the Eastern Bloc and even the Soviet Union starts to have an impact on the way in which people are thinking about science fiction, say, in Japan.
and the U.S. because it's considered much more speculative than I believe it is. But this is a moment where people are turning away from outer space adventure. There's gradually a sense that we are not moving into outer space by the 1970s. So what is the space of adventure? And people took these inner adventures, if you will, inner world exploration. where, as in Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris, it's a journey into the mind. It's not just a journey into outer space.
So with that setup, cyberpunk emerges or cyberspace as something that's not outer space or inner space. And it generates all this excitement. Although the science fiction community at the time, they said it's not even science fiction. It's hard-boiled fiction set inside a computer. some other kind of fiction inside a computer. But the fact is that was the draw of science fiction is that you could have outer space adventure and inner space adventure.
And there was some kind of strange melding or working across those. to impulses in science fiction. And it's in that context that Zaman's film begins to make sense in a very different way. Very interesting. Can you talk to me about your personal experience with the film? It is a phenomenally visually stunning entity, but what kind of personal experience? When did you first watch it? What does it mean to you in the kind of history of either animation or science?
Well, strangely enough, I'm one of the people who saw it as a kid and I remembered it. It made a deep impact on me, but it wasn't until years later and I was teaching classes on global science fiction because... you know, for the development of world cinemas in the university, I was... was teaching at and i really had to dig into science fiction from other parts of the world more seriously so i no expertise in these languages or these cultures
blown away by the wealth of science fiction from so-called Eastern Bloc countries. I mean, and it goes across the board. I mean, it's Czechoslovakia. Actually, one of the great critics of science fiction, the first, is Darko Suvin, who... former Yugoslavia, Serbia. So there's even a deep history of science fiction criticism coming out of these countries. In that context, I started to watch these films and I saw Zayman again. Obviously, I sort of remembered it. It's like, oh, it's that film.
But watching as an adult, I realized that a lot of the materials I worked on Japan were drawn from Seyman. Like I could clearly see the impact of this film in areas I would never expected to see it. And then you start to dig a little bit deeper and you realize that Terry Gilliam is indebted to the film. Tim Burton's indebted to this film. It's Lucky Hayao, of course, in Japan.
And it really spurred my interest. And as you're saying, in addition to all of this, it's just a brilliant film. You show it to students and they're dazzled. Yeah. Can I just say something there about the, I was quite struck by some of the checks.
aspects of it which may not be as obvious um to others so i can see a kind of link with the new wave as well in this there's this common thread of humility and humanity and it is One of the reasons you can see that this wouldn't have caused a problem for the sensors is that it is... it does fit within a socialist framework, you know, the way the... Like the messaging. You know, the sort of...
The messaging about peace and about implicitly the Western capitalist warmongers are the enemy and so on. Yeah. And that is interesting because although the style isn't at all socialist realist and you think it's quite surreal. And so the man's gotten the illustrations to these old Jules Verne books, which are kind of engravings and carvings, which are stunning and they're kind of very lined. And he's made.
The whole image, just black and white and real people walking through very, very two-dimensional spaces, which aren't quite two-dimensional. As I keep saying, it's a visual delight. But it kind of it's interesting because although it's surreal and quite absurd. it still fits within, like you said, the messaging still fits within what is acceptable. And a lot of the filmmakers from the Checkney Wave...
ended up going into exile after the Prague Spring because they were having the time of their lives, obviously, before that happened. And I believe you were saying that they had more access to funding and kind of a better structure in a way. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, I mean, the state very much, of course, everything was owned by the state, but the Czechoslovak state put a lot of effort, a lot of money into culture, and particularly visual culture.
And there's also continuities, pre-communist continuities, because... Czechs, if I can put it that way, or Czech bohemians were traditionally always a bit socialist anyway. That's where it's different from somewhere like, let's say, Poland. De-Stalinization in Czechoslovakia. came about a lot later than it did in the Soviet Union. So in the Soviet Union, you had destalinization from, in a way, from 53 and then...
really and seriously from 56. In Czechoslovakia, it didn't begin until 1961. And I always understood de-Stalinisation to just being, oh, Stalin's dead and now we're going to not listen to his rules. But is it more to do with the concept of now socialism has arrived? It's more the message, well, it was...
Stalinization was condemned by the Communist parties as being the so-called cult of personality. So the idea that it was too much focused on one person, whereas the idea was that there would be collective responsibility within the Politburo. And there would be more room for more opinions and more styles and so on. All within, of course, within a dictatorship.
The Prague Spring never let go of the control of the Communist Party. And so when you said it arrived later in Czechoslovakia, why was that? I'd say the most immediate reason was that the political show trials, which had happened in Czechoslovakia in the 50s, which were some of the worst political show trials in the whole of the Eastern Bloc. some of the people who were in power when Stalin died. you know, those people were still in power.
Stalin and Gottwald died at the same time, but the rest of the Politburo had people who were implicated. So they couldn't afford to liberalise too much, or they feared being condemned as Stalin had been condemned. So they retained power for as long as they could. And when Novotny began destalinization in 61, it was very token. You know, it was just... overlooked Prague, for example, was built in 1955. So it was the largest statue of Stalin in the world.
And then they had to blow it up a few years later, which took two months of jackhammering because it was this enormous granite monstrosity. The party was holding on tightly to Stalinization to keep their own. They were then, by 1961, they were under so much pressure from the Soviet Union to destalinize that they finally had to. But they tried to keep a lid on it.
And it wasn't until Dubček came along in 68 that they began to really, if you like, liberalise, if that's the right. So that would be the prolific spring in 68. Yeah. And it began in Slovakia, actually. It began in 63. So there was a kind of... Slovak wave, even before the Czech wave. The Prague Spring was a reform movement within the Communist Party, and one of the first things which it did was lifted censorship.
So a lot of the progress made it come about partly through pressures from the writers' union. So it was a lifting of... the censorship on the arts, especially on expression. New Wave and film already predated the Prague Spring. Can you talk a little bit about how that ended and also why people had to go into exile at that point?
So the reform movement known as the Prague Spring was so popular and flourished so much that it... began to look to neighbouring countries as if it was going to destabilise the entire bloc, particularly East Germany and Poland, which then went to the Soviet Union and kept saying, look, you've got to do something about this.
Eventually, the Soviet Union, which originally had supported Dubček, began to try and get him to reel in the reforms. It began to look to most of the countries in the Warsaw Pact as though the Czechoslovak Communist Party was losing power. And because Czechoslovakia was right on that fault line with East and West. The consensus within the Warsaw Pact was that they needed to do something, although famously Romania, for example, didn't support this. But what they did...
Five Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia in order to put down the reforms, which they successfully did. And then they brought Dubček back. They took him to Moscow. And then he was the one who began to reel back the reforms, so came back. reimposed censorship, for example. And then within a couple of years, there was a whole new regime, which was very oppressive.
so for example uh probably the most famous person i think out of filmmakers who did go into exile would be milos forman who made the czech film the fireman's ball and then he went on to an academy award for one flew over the cuckoo's nest he made hair he made amadeus he made man on the moon um so very famous
the country at that point. And that was like, as in, were they leaving because they were like, we want to get out of here? Or were they leaving because there were serious repercussions if they stayed? I mean, someone like Miloš Furman, I mean, he could have a whole career after he left. For him, you know, the fireman's ball could be read as an allegory of the Communist Party as incompetent and idiotic and corrupt. So it wasn't a great, you know.
He wasn't going to be allowed to make films like that. So for him, it was better to leave. There was also harassment, often by the secret police, you know, being questioned, being monitored. which was oppressive. But then, of course, some people stayed. So, you know, and some of the, to me, one of the greatest Czech filmmakers would be Jan Schrankmeier, for example.
So, yeah, people didn't have to leave. They weren't persecuted in that sense, but they weren't free to do what they liked. Interesting. It's time for a short break. Do you feel like you're rushing around, forever completing to-do lists, cramming in social events? This is your reminder that self-care is essential. It's not selfish. It's a must. Suicide bereavement charity Suicide & Co. are holding a self-care fair. There'll be shops and talks from wellness experts to explore.
Join them on Saturday the 3rd and Sunday the 4th of May in London. Tickets are just £10. Get yours today. Hello, I'm David Hepworth from the Word in Your Ear music podcast. And I'm Mark Ellen, and we're sponsored by Specsavers, which has been around for 40 years and providing hearing services for the last 20. Which is useful in a world of misheard lyrics. Such as? Creedence Clearwater's Timeless There's a Bathroom on the Right.
Bob Marley with a roof rack over our heads. We built the city on sausage rolls. We all remember the police singing about Sue Lawley. And Madonna being touched for the 31st time. I can see clearly now Lorraine is gone. So, Mark, where will you get your hearing checked next? Specsafe ears. Book your free Specsavers hearing check today. Sweet dreams are made of cheese. Thomas, what do you think the overarching message is of this film, if there is one?
Yeah, I wanted to go back a little bit to the previous conversation about the film, because as we've already noted, there's a level of the film. That is kind of a lampoon of the Western powers. It's, you know, the kind of ideological messaging is pretty clear. It's fairly straightforward at that level. And actually, even the choice of the Verne novel is strange.
you know, facing the flag, face au drapeau, it's not a book anyone reads or even knows. So there's a way in which that verb material allows for this kind of broad commentary on the nature of... science and power. But at the same time, it's a film that we all like because it's also engaged with techniques and technologies in a very subtle, masterful way. You know, that would be the question. You could analyze that and say, well, it's kind of a split consciousness, right?
messaging that science is really bad and at the same time saying, look, we can do all these things technically or technologically with film, or you could read as a science versus aesthetic divide. I think actually what makes the film interesting is it's hard to make those decisions. You're drawn into this film, I think, not simply because you want a moral message.
There is, again, as in steampunk, this strange way of reimagining history and you're losing easy ways of finding a point of reference for coming up with a moral decision on. what science and technology really is. So I'd say in that sense, it really is an experimental film. It raises a lot of questions. Probably, as we were saying, due to the time period, it also needs a certain ideological anchor to make it.
palatable, but we'd all say a lot of films in the world are that way. All the Hollywood films are deeply moralist. perhaps even worse than this film, right? Much more so, I would say, yeah. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it just hits you over the head. Which is a very similar story. They do take a bit of facing the flag in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and stick it in there too. So, yeah, I kind of want to stick with that kind of quality of the film where in.
Going back to Melia's techniques in combination with Verne, it produces, it makes us re-ask what this history of science and technology is. I would say, and again, this is coming from my bias because I work on science and technology in Japan. I mean, one of the things that happened in Japan is people very quickly separated science from technology. Because in the late 19th century, when Japanese scientists came to Europe...
Everyone was saying, well, Japan doesn't have science because you don't have this deep history of ancient Greece and rationale and so forth. Japanese said, yeah, but in fact, sciences are utterly disunified in Europe. In fact, technologies are their own thing. And Japan set out quite happily into the history of technology and didn't think it needed science in this other sense.
I think this film, for me, feels like it poses very similar questions. What it means to experiment technologically, how it could go wrong, how it might do something very interesting. So I don't feel it's quite as pat in the way it works as science fiction. And do you think, because when I've been reading about it, it feels like there's a huge appreciation of this film and Zaman's work in Japan. And do you think that could be one of the reasons why?
Yeah, I think it is. I mean, Miyazaki Hayao, I mean, he's very famous for this. And one of the things that motivates him is people talk about his lot. His father was a... weapons manufacturer during World War II. But Miyazaki is also a bit of a technophile himself. And so his films are kind of imbued with...
a real delight and aesthetic interest in technology. And these are the studio, is it Ghibli or Ghibli? I just want to get a final answer on that one. Ghibli. Ghibli, yes. It's the studio Ghibli films, if anyone's wondering. Right. So these Studio Ghibli films are very much engaged and fascinated with technologies, but also aware of the dangers.
When you look at Miyazaki's real breakout film, Castle in the Sky, the title sequence is Carl Zeeman. He borrows everything from Invention for Destruction. He's creating this trace of wacky, weird, odd, steampunk-like technologies. And again, it makes you open the question of technology rather than close it. Interesting. We've touched upon this, but can we talk a little bit about the legacy?
I was a man and the film, Mary. I don't know so much about the legacy of the film itself, but I think what you were talking about there, about the... lack of this kind of didactic certainty in Czech. Again, I think that's very typical. I'd kind of caution against thinking that Zeman was making something despite the censors or to try and get around the censors.
I see this as much more part of a long Czech tradition of this kind of ambiguity and humanizing. They're not strongly didactic in that way or moralistic. There's a huge Zeman museum in Prague. Zeman's legacy is absolutely enormous, of course, in the Czech tradition, not just in animation, but he's a well-known cultural figure.
Okay, Thomas, we could talk a bit about his films and his influence. As you've mentioned, you've mentioned Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton and what other legacy do you think he has? Well, in many ways, as you mentioned previously, this film, but also Zayman, perhaps a little more generally, is almost like an origin, right?
You know, obviously it's a retroactive origin and it didn't really serve that purpose, but it's selected as an origin for a certain kind of steampunk movement. And I think that... His legacy then, and I guess I'm kind of stressing it because I had difficulty reading this myself.
wondering like why what is this film doing that it can do so much work for so many people and people don't feel it's exhausted right they go back to it and they keep finding things and moving it forward and I think Part of it for me is really this tension within the film. between what you think of in cinema as a kind of narrative absorption.
Really, the Hollywood industry is so committed to pulling you into the narrative, making you identify with characters, and then having kind of goal-oriented action and closure. It makes some of those gestures, clearly, because it's, you know, it's a movie with a story and so forth. But at the same time, by drawing on Melius, it moves into what people think of as magic shows.
very expositional and overtly didactic gestures and a very different way of engaging with film. And these two different ways of engaging with film are in one film. And I think that it's one of the strange things about steampunk when you try to define it as a genre. None of the titles seem to match one another. There's no coherent.
Explain that a bit more, Thomas. It's very strange. When you look at what qualifies as steampunk across the world, you're going to find a movie like... 20,000 leagues under the sea, but then you're also going to find Terry Gilliam's Brazil and then Miyazaki Hayao's Howl in the Moving Castle. And this is not like a Western, in other words. It doesn't have the unity of a musical, but it's recognizable for people who embrace the genre.
So I guess that was my question a little bit. How can films so diverse be put in this category? And mostly I think it's the exploration of this kind of tension. There's a way in which people want to do world building with steampunk, draw you into a world, make you feel you're immersed in it, absorbed in it. And at the same time, they want to push you out of it and treat it all like a magic show or a set of tricks.
and do something else. So you get very, very polarized tendencies within steampunk on that basis, I think. Brilliant. Thank you. Another, sorry, another possible origin there when we're coming back to Czechoslovakia 1958 and the Expo, there was the Magic Lantern. Do you know about that? So again. bringing together a lot of those elements, right? Yeah. Yeah, magic lanterns. Animation, puppet.
Yeah. Yeah. Mime, dance, all those things together. Zayman has that impulse, like magic lantern. And he's part of that same sort of crowd of people as well. So I presume they were influencing each other. And that's beautiful. I think it's really interesting that. Because you said 20,000 leagues under the sea. And I was like, no, but that's a straight up, like, you know, that's not steam. Because to me, there's the...
But it is. It's just because I don't like it as much as I like Simon's film. But I also think there's no clear definition of science fiction, so we're not really going to get a clear science fiction definition of steampunk either. Thank you so much for those. Can we talk about giving our listeners a recommendation? to take home with them. Merry. This is For the Love of Prague.
which is billed as the true love story of the only free American in Prague during 30 years of communism. Sorry, it's Gene Dyke, who was an animator from the States, from New York. and who worked on um is it terry tunes or something like that and he ended up through a series of coincidences which he explains he ended up doing all his animations in Prague and he moved to
to Prague in 1959. So just about this time. And he gives you a really, it's a much, it's an eyewitness account of what it was like. So from landing in Prague airport with the neon hammer and sickle, you know, seen through the fog. to falling in love and marrying a Czech woman and staying there. And he was there. He only died fairly recently. He remained a fixture of Prague for all those years. Brilliant. Thank you so much for that.
Yeah, I guess, you know, on one hand, like a huge recommendation, watch Czech animation and Czech film. There's just so there's so many treasures people don't know about unless they study film history. I think with steampunk, I wanted to make kind of a strange recommendation because I work on East Asia and recommend Stephen Fung. film Tai Chi or Tai Chi in English. which is an encounter, it's a steampunk invasion of China that has to be countered by.
some analogous Chinese technology in a martial arts format. So it really gives you a sense of not only how contemporary steampunk is, but the strange configurations it can take.
Very interesting. And if anyone's listening, we won't be covering the 1962 The Fabulous Baron Munchausen by Zaman. So I never give recommendations because I'm definitely not qualified to, but I would... highly recommend people watch that if you want more visual delights and you want to be surprised again um check that out
And I love the fact that while doing research for this, I realized that Baron Munchausen was a real person. Well, it was based on a real person. And then the author, who is Rudolf Eric Rath. didn't admit to writing it because he was scared of libel. But the original, his name was Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Munchausen. And he was famous for telling these huge tall tales, but not just kind of, oh, I did these amazing things, just absolutely obscure, absurdist.
is very interesting and the film is fantastic. So that's from me. Thank you so, so much to both of you for coming on the show. Thank you. I enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Great. That's it for this episode. Next episode, we will be speaking about another film that I very annoyingly hadn't heard of.
The 1959 film The World, the Flesh and the Devil, which is a post-apocalyptic story starring Harry Belafonte as the last man on Earth. I will leave a link in the podcast summary of where you can watch that. Now on to the ads and subscription options. First, a little apology. I realise ads are not fun, but they will hopefully help a tiny bit towards the costs of producing this podcast, which does actually involve quite a phenomenal amount of time.
This includes all the types of research into films, history and guests, booking, recording and then editing into a relatively consumable podcast. I also have big dreams that one day perhaps I can focus fully on this podcast and free up time from paid work and both the ads and subscriptions will help towards making that potential delusion into a potential reality.
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