Oh yeh is bot it's shut.
People say good money to see this movie when they go out to a theater. They are cold sodas, hot popcorn and no monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring a Diagnosa Jodensa Naples ad Horace Bolotchnowski, mister Justice Lupus labna to hold, not to dizzily have a regime.
Dizzily have Miss Sammi Rannie the hanaka.
Not Boy. Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White join me once again. Is mister Jonathan Owen.
Hello, happy check Timber.
Also back in the booth is ms Angela Mack.
Very nice to be that.
Thank you.
Check Tember continues with one from Slovakian filmmaker Dushan Hannok three twenty two. Released in nineteen sixty nine, the film was banned immediately after its premiere. We'll be discussing why and ruining the film as we go along, So if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen it. Pro tip. The movie is available in full with English subtitles on archive
dot org. So Jonathan when was the first time you saw three twenty two and what did you think?
I think I saw it maybe about fifteen years ago, and I've seen quite a lot of the Czechoslovak New wave film by then, and it was probably the second film that I saw by Hanak. I must admit that the first time I saw it, I don't think it fully landed with me, because I think there's so much going on in it, and I think, in comparison with some of the other Slovak films of that time, it quite subtle and restrained, and I probably just found it a little difficult to get a handle on when I
first saw it. I was impressed though by the visuals, I think, by the editing, the composition. I think I was just also really taken by the fact that there were hippies in Ratislava in nineteen sixty nine, and subsequently other films I've seen have confirmed that. And so yeah, I think I was very taken with the Vladco character and angel.
But how about yourself? Was this the first time viewing?
For you?
God, this's feel familiar. And then I got to the slaughterhouse part, it was like, oh, I have started to watch this before, and then I thought it getting into like cannibal holocaust territory or something and turned it off. I had only watched the bad parts and then miss the rest of the movie. So I was glad that you steered me towards it, because I'm glad I watched it. It certainly lingers in your mind, and honestly, I don't know if we could actually spoil even though you could
tell a person everything about it. It's an experience, certainly, it.
Definitely is, And yeah, I think it might be better this one might be better to listen to our episode first, just because yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in here. This was a first time watch for me, so you guys both have one up on me. I first heard of this film because even though I found an article where this was voted the best Slovakian film of all time, and a lot of those films it's nicer. All from the sixties my sweet spot with this stuff. But it give me a lot of good things to
look up. I hadn't heard of it until I watched Martin Sulik did that whole series of the Golden Sixties, but plus he also did one called twenty five from the sixties or the Czechoslovak New Wave that he directed and Jan Lucas wrote, and that's where I first heard of this film, and just the visuals from it were so striking that I wrote it down was just like I have to see this movie. I want to talk about it in check timber because it just feels right
up my street. And it didn't disappoint. This is a movie where I was like, Okay, these are the kind of things. It's almost we talk about the Czech New Wave, we talk about our front Guard films, but this feels really out there. It's maybe not as out there as something like Daisies, but it's very avant garde.
One of the interesting things about the way that the two different parts of Czechoslovak cinema develop during that time is that obviously, people I think generally are more familiar with the Czech side, and I guess Czech cinema has a longer history as an institutionalized film industry, and Slovakia is often seen as the one that was slower to
develop as a set of institutions. And yet in the sixties you see this development where I guess by the end of the sixties, I would say some of the things that the Slovak filmmakers are doing are almost about doing what the Czech filmmakers were doing in terms of just their commitment to the avant garde and to experimentation. And it's just people like Hanak Yakabisco in a more kind of overt or extravagant way. They're just really throwing things at you that are very experimental, and as you say,
it really delivers. If you want that kind of avant garde's sixties experience, this really does deliver.
As that speaking as an American, there's just so much propaganda about the communism and the Eastern Bloc and just the oppression that it almost paints everything gray and drab, that you just assume the books are great and dred like you hear about like war and Peace and things like that, that you're not really jumping at the bit to read or it's not going to be this exciting psychedelic experience. And yet all of this was being created.
It's just such a travesty that it was buried for so long, not being able to get out into the rest of the world, into what the late eighties, and I'm so glad that the projection booth can cover things like this and get it out there.
Not a ton of podcasts on three twenty two, as far as I've found. There might be a whole group that's doing that, but I haven't found them yet.
They're probably are rated. Something that I love about sixties European cinema is the Americans did too, but I think a little more different angle. So it's surprising to me to see it that the sexuality that's discussed is just so much more cansually brought to bear. There are so many nods to sexuality in this, just a alide from the cuckholding, but seeing so many ladies bending over and
nods to things that people would find arousing. Western cinema has to ham fist those things or shy away from them. It's like they're either blatant or skirted around. So it was nice to see it through it, and especially that grappling with oppression through sexuality in a way.
It's very striking. And just the visuals for this, and of course I love visual rhymes, and I'm just seeing visual rhymes throughout this whole thing, even from the attack on our main character in the beginning of this film, and how these thugs you put shaving cream all over his face. And then later on we see his ex wife in how she's putting cold cream on her face, and there's a moment where she moves from one room I think, into another room and she's got the cold
cream on both places. But I think they're separated by time and space, but the cold cream ties the rooms together, which is interesting.
When he gets the cream on his face, it's not a good end and it's compromising to him, but he's accepting of it, whereas when she has the cold cream on her face, she's expecting happiness from it, like she has a totally different sett and she's not going to accept any or she's at least not going to feel satisfied with anything less than that. It was so smartly done, how brilliantly done.
Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it with the shaving cream at the beginning, And I think it takes maybe a couple of viewings to get what's going on there, isn't it? And you have the yeah one of the third she's carrying the shaving brush on the top of his head at the beginning, and then he's actually like lathering it on Loudcow's face, and it's easy to miss that. You just see the scream on his face and you think, like,
where has that come from? And then yes, second viewing, you get what they're doing because it's such a strange thing as a sort of a method of assault. It's very original, isn't It's very strange thing to do. And then yet he's forced to thank them, And yeah, I guess you get that idea of like masks, don't you really? And I guess shaving is an ambiguous image. It's a way of revealing the face, isn't it. Whereas what she's doing, she's like masking her face. And it's all about the
display and the consumption. And yeah, there's a lot of those loaded motifs like that. Really, there's a lot of imagery of like eyes and of covered eyes as well, isn't there. I think you get the eyes of the cattle, you get like image that you get of course Joseph Abraham with those joke glasses that he's wearing. You get the sunglasses that Mata weez when she crashes, and you
get the blindfolded cow. And yeah, there's a lot of imagery of light COVID eyes and there's a paratly multiple meanings that you can get from that.
What was that odd at the beginning that one of the thugs was female. It almost looked like pieces of paper instead of eyelashes that she had glued on. It was so bizarre, and I was hoping they'd be an explanationally.
And yeah, in one scene, josepher Brown is walking around with sunglasses on that only have one lens in it. And then later on you see a still image of Lauca's wife and she's got the sunglasses on with one glass in it. Because we should probably say this right here at the beginning, this movie, like I said, it's avant garde, so they're doing a lot of interesting things in here. There's a lot of still frames, there's some animation, which we'll talk about in a bit, but the little
things like the apple disintegrating, that's actually Jan Swankmier. I didn't realize that that he did that, and that actually covers some material that was cut out of the film. So what we're watching is actually slightly censored version. That original version does exist, but with burned in subtitles on their German subtitles. I believe, which is also interesting because you get a lot of languages in here. Even during the opening credits, there's people talking and it's not subtitled,
and I'm just like okay. And then throughout the movie, I kept and I don't know if this was just a bad subtitling job or not, but there were a lot of times where people would say things and they weren't being subtitled, which was a real pain, but especially like on screen titles and quotes and things like that.
Even during the opening credits, you have those very stark stenciled credit letter and then you have the fragmented body parts that look like they're being taken right out of like Gray's Anatomy or something, and you have the whispering stuff going on, and I'm just like, oh, I'm in for a ride with this movie. It's already presenting me with three very disparate things just right here in the opening credits.
The opening credits, even though I had that grating sound, there was like a tension sound for grinding I don't know how, but grinding your nerves. But it was exciting that it was like, oh, this is something that's.
It probably takes a second viewing.
At least it did for me to realize that kind of harsh sound over the credit is actually the sound of the machine during his scans, isn't it later in the hospital there's that there's like an interplay I think
in his work between diagetic and non diagetic sounds. So are the sounds that could be part of the movie's world and then the sounds that are just being layered off on as part of the kind of formal arrangement, And it's sometimes difficult to know, and often it happens, I think, Mike you mentioned this in your notes, that it's sometimes difficult to tell where voices are coming from and who's speaking. And the sound really is very playfully used, isn't it really?
Sound?
And voices and captions they are an element in their own right, As you said, like with the captions, they're not really designed to illustrate or clarify the action, but they are texts that I guess work in interesting ways with the images, so you're meant to think about them and can compare or contrast with what's happening on screen, and they're never really doing a sort of just a
simple thing. They may be quoting sometimes from the dialogue, but that in itself is interesting because you think, what is it doing there? Why is it highlighting this line or this idea? And one of the ones that I find particularly amusing for some reason is you get that action that says the influences of literature, which comes at twice, and I still haven't worked.
Out what is the point of that.
I'm wondering, maybe because I guess the sort of whole Marter plot is the part that comes most directly from the original story, so maybe it's indicating that that was closer to the original text. But even that doesn't seem satisfying really, So yeah, there is that constant, sort of playful juxta position. It reminds me a lot of macave of actually, although I think they have quite different techniques.
But I was thinking a lot of the Switchboard Operator, especially as I was watching this, and there was even specific things that reminded me. I think one of the things especially was the when you have that couple, they seem to be on stage performing and there although it's black and white, they seem to be painted gold. And I've been various kind of tableau and there's like elderly people in the audience watching in a kind of amused way.
And Yeah, that really reminded me of the Switchboard Operator.
And I think just as you do in Switchboard Operator, you have that feeling of it's like a society itself that's almost like a collage too, because it's this juxtaposition of you have very traditional styles and traditional ways of life, and then you have this very modern element, very kind of sixties style Western style clothing or cosmetics or kind of commercial products, and then you have the sense of this older, more traditional society where you have chickens wandering
around and people in the kind of the traditional costume, and it's almost like the society itself is this hodgepodge of different things, just as the style is.
Yeah, whenever I talk about visual rhymes, I always think of macave of in just the way that he would bring in things and then you had because he would always have multi media stuff going on, so like you would introduce documentaries in introduced still images and all of these things, and you could pick up on, oh, that thing from that documentary is very similar to this, or you'd have fake documentaries like in Switchboard Operator, where you had the little movie about ridding the city of rats,
and then you find out that the boyfriend in that is a rat catcher, and oh, he's actually in the documentary. I think that was all stage. I thought it was real at first, or even man is not a bird, where you get like the ideal Soviet images countered with what people are actually doing and just how slovenly and just trying to get along in life that they are. They're not these men of marble to coin a phrase, and with this one, it's a simple story at the heart of this. For me, it's really a story of
a relationship and a man with cancer. But as far as I can tell, and now please correct me if I'm wrong, Lauko, our main character, played by vaklav Lo Lonninsky, he doesn't get told throughout the entire film that he has cancer, and does he even have cancer? Does he come out with a clean bill of health at the end.
I assume he had the gallstones and that was just spreading infection in his system. I assume at the end he is healthy. But I wasn't one hundred percent on this, which I think is the problem. That maybe the truth of the communism is that they'll tell you what they want and you have to take it. So three two two. But he wasn't even told.
He wasn't told that because three two two. The title of this is the medical coding at this time for cancer And yeah, I think it's our old from Miroslav matcha match a check from Fifth Horseman is fear in here. Great seeing him show up again, and he doesn't seem to be a very his bedside manner would be better as a doctor.
I love the fact that he asked Lauco about smoking, and then in the same scene he himself is actually smoking and he has a big bottle of I think maybe whiskey.
Or something on his desk.
And yeah, slightly rather relaxed approach in regard to the illness. I got the same feeling. I think that probably he's okay at the end. But yes, it leaves you hanging. It doesn't have that big moment of relief, and I guess there is a tone. The tone is one of relief of affirmation, but it doesn't link that explicitly to
him having a clean bill of health. But yes, I think we are meant to construe that it was just the gallstones and that those are past, and I think by the time you get to the end of the movie, it's preoccupied with another level. Really, I think it's more I guess we might say like a spiritual, psychological kind of relief that he's going through at the end. And yes, it doesn't really give you that kind of moment and of clarification really, And yeah, I think that use of
the number is really interesting too. Isn't it the three two two, Because I think that's another kind of recurring motif throughout the film. I think, isn't it the idea of numbers and bureaucracy and the way people and things are categorized or codified. And you have the I guess, you have the children with the number tags, you have
the cattle with the number tags. And one of my favorite things is that you have the hippie character of lad Coo who has the his I believe it's like identity number that he's painted on the back of his coat. So he's taken that principle of like classification and turned it into a kind of art object. And that's a beautiful piece of subversion I think.
So we've got the whole story of the cancer with Laco. And then we also find out that Laco, who works in a restaurant, he lives with his ex wife, and again, please correct me if I'm wrong at any of the stuff. He lives with his ex wife and she's having an affair with Joseph Abram, who plays Peter, and they're pretty open about it. She's definitely an older woman for him.
I'd love seeing him show up and stuff, and I just I was finding him to be such a great actor, and at this point in his career, he's just so handsome, I think, and I just I always find him very captivating. So those two going at it together, and then there's also at one point another woman that shows up and he is maybe I should go with this younger woman. But we get to see a little bit of him at work, and mostly it's him and Marda just going
out and dating and doing their thing. And you do get to see them, not necessarily in flagrante, but you see them sharing a bed together, and at one point Laco even walks in on them, and like you were saying, Angela with the cuckholding He's just like, oh, hey, yeah, you left your light on or whatever I thought. Sorry, I didn't realize anybody was up. It's okay, just walks right out and then yeah, you've mentioned Vodko a few times.
Vlodko's the wild card for me because there are times with v Loodko the hippie, where I'm just like, is this guy even real? Is he a spirit that's been conjured up? Because he just seems to like show up. He hangs out with Lauco at times. Laco's in the hospital, all of a sudden, v Loadko's there as well, talking about glasses and eye stuff. He puts on the one patience really super thick coke bottle glasses, and he's wandering around in the room with his arms outstretched like Frankenstein.
You're just like, is he does anybody else see this guy? Like I wrote my notes, is he a ghost? I don't get this guy.
There was an interview with Slush Michael's tripping over all these names and Okay, the director, so he has a strong background in doing documentaries, and I guess it kind of merges, which makes sense. You wouldn't have thought it watching it, but thinking about it after and reading about it. Vlad Co, in reality, the actor was a hippie nearby and some nudist hippies hanging out in the woods, kind of commune Panac liked, he wanted to film them and
wanted to just capture that freedom on film. So I guess the character of lad Coo is a mixture of basically him just being given a very small directive and doing his thing, which seems right because he's so whimsical and just so captivating, And then it seems so right that's him, and there's so little like I tried to look up things about there's nothing, like he's into movies and doesn't exist otherwise, and he was so wanted him film like I would have loved to have seen more.
But yeah, he's such a just naturally sympathetic presence, isn't he really? And that's right about the Yeah, the documentary. I think that's a really important point to bring up, really because ya Hanakh by this point had only made documentaries.
This was his first.
Feature film, his first narrative feature. And despite the fact that at the beginning it's clear to tell you that this is a work of fiction, it is very much like an integration of documentary and fictional techniques, And I guess interesting in terms of Hannah's career, because I think this is really the only place where he fuses like a narrative feature film with the kind of techniques that he was using in his documentary work, whereas his other
films tend to be they're either documentaries in a kind of poetic essay style or they are more kind of straightforward narrative features, and I guess this is the one where he's doing both together, and probably one of the reasons why it is rather overwhelming, I think first viewing, because yeah, I think the kind of the narrative, the fictional narrative, it's not that it gets lost, but it just blends together, doesn't it with a lot of the
other things that are going on. And I think in regard to the use of non professional actors like the guy playing vlad Co, I think that again, I think fits in with I think Hannah being really interested in He was really interested I think in the happening, like the idea of the happening. And he made a film a few years later called A Day of Joy, which is a good title because it is a really joyful
short film about this. It was actually a record of a happening by a Slovak artist called Alex Minacik, and that's full of this kind of imagery of these kind of like young hippies and people just celebrating. It's all about this train ride, and it's just really hard to imagine that this was made like four years after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. And yeah, I think he was really captivated by that sense so of just like joyful anarchy and of this sense of being an outsider. I think
this is like an important idea for him. He's really fit fascinated by the outsider. And one thing I love about the street scenes in the film is I think it does show that it's that kind of ambiguity, isn't it. I guess on the one hand that you have this sense of control that's ever present. You have the police car, you have these At one point, there's this strange voiceover, isn't the announcing like prohibitions and telling people what to
do and what not to do. But then in other scenes you have these beautiful kind of just demonstrations of this anarchic freedom. And it's almost like he's filming a kind of there's a constant like street theater going on.
What's so interesting. I think one of the very first times that you meet for that CO, you see him and there's an off duty cop that is starts harassing him, and the camera's in I believe it's inside of a place, and Vlodko's outside, as is the cop, and Vlodko's just walking and talking with this guy, and the cameras panning along with them, and we are, like I said, we're
inside the building. And as the camera pans there's a guy standing there inside of the building, it almost looks like he's wearing like a groucho mark snows and glasses, and I'm just like, is this the Secret Police? What is going on? And they just move right past them.
That's the scene that I or the shot that I saw, I believe in that documentary, and plus it was definitely in that Golden sixties episode about Hannak and I'm just like, Okay, we're not going to talk about that at all, But just to have this person standing there draw so much attention to itself, and I love it.
There are so many small nuts, like the thugs at the beginning. One guy has a mask on the back of his head, and right, it's interesting the disguises that are just subtenly done in the background almost along the way that are just never explained.
The other thing I didn't mention about this is that mirrors are everywhere in this film, and there are so many times where you think you're looking at a real object quote unquote. I know everything's reproduced because it's film, but we're looking at something and we realize, oh, we're
actually looking at the reflection. I mean, even just like little things like when we go to Matarek's office and he's taking the little mirror and putting for the flame, and then he's got a big mirror on the there's cap or whatever you call that thing, like the how it reflects the light and all that. I mean, that's just one example, but you get mirrors constantly. There's even talking about the street scenes, just a random dude carrying
a mirror across the street. It's like they are every place in the movie, and it's wild how much they integrate into this and the camera work required to do some of these shots with these reflections is fantastic as well as just like when they introduced the character of Sisnick, eventually we find out she's a pregnant woman and one of the first times we see her, it's maybe the second shots she's in. There's a guy in the back. I want to say, he's like the mar d or something.
He's filling these glasses with the fruit juice and then watering it down, and we go from him, we rack to another guy, and then we rack to Sisnick. Yes to Sisnick. I'm just like, that's so nice. It's like triple rack focus that we're doing. Just little things like that. But I'm just like, this is really well shot.
Do you see why? He's one of the what was it out of sixteen people in the program.
Who was like the four the yeah, yeah, one of the few FAMU graduates of that class.
It's so weird that habits never die in film, that one of the cutest girls in the movie is supposed to be less than average looking. It's like she's one of the cutest ones. She alluded to a lover that she had. I assume the lover hid, But then again, I hope that the main character ended up with her. I mean, it was my impression that he did. I don't know what else was the.
Way and who got her pregnant? Was that our main character was that somebody else.
Another of the few things that are actually in the story as well, I think, isn't it. I think that the silk subplot and the story, I think it does seem to indicate that, yes, she's pregnant by another lover. But yes, it does establish the relationship, I think a bit more solidly than in the film. But yeah, hopefully they do go off together at the end. And in
regard to pregnancy. That just reminded me as well about the scene with Joseph Abraham at the end with the girl, the other student, And that's another interesting scene, isn't it, Because initially she tells him she's expecting and that it's his, and then she just says that she lied, And I don't think there's any other mention of that at any earlier point, and we don't really get what the relationship is between them, and I think Abraham's character at one
point also says to Marta Lauku's wife that he's a virgin, So we don't know has he slept with the other girl. It's very kind of unclear, isn't it. I think the sort of that set of relationships.
Yeah, and then who's to believe what you know? When she tells them, oh, I'm pregnant, and then within two minutes now I lie, I'm like, wow, okay, no.
Mystery here, and the cadence these things are done with it. It almost I mean, it brings to mind like absurdism to me when you're reading something and it's just so abrupt of this thing happened, this disjointed thing happened, And there seems to be a touch of that throughout it, of just things blatantly happening that I have no rhyme or reason to anything else unless you really think about it, and then maybe you could draw a line between the two.
At the opening with I thought it was so tremendous of someone who has lost faith, but it hasn't the courage not to believe. It tells you straight up that's what the movie is about. But as you're watching it, I don't know if I would have ever concluded that on my own, of all the threads I would have weaved together, I don't think believe for faith or not to believe it would never have come up for me.
It doesn't really do anything very explicit with that, does it With that idea of faith. It's definitely not religious faith or political faith. There's a critic of Batslav Martzek who's written quite a lot about Hannakh, and I guess his interpretation is it simply this just affirmation at the end of humanity. So I guess that's as much of a faith as we can have at the end. And
you get that scene. I guess, again, vlad Coe is quite significant, isn't it, Because I think if to the extent that he is, that's why I like the idea that he may be a ghost. He may just be the simply symbolic figure, because I guess in and of itself, the fact that he kind of bonds and forms his friendship with Louco is a little bit improbable, isn't it?
Anyway?
But I think that, yeah, he does have a symbolic purpose by the end of the movie, because yeah, I guess he's showing Louco those drawings, isn't he. He's they're naming things like apple, apple, meadow, tree, isn't it?
I think?
And I guess relating back to the image of the apple that decays, So I guess you've got a kind of an inversion of that. So you're seeing earlier on this apple that decays, and then at the end, I guess you have this image of the apple, and I don't know whether I'm like overreading, maybe I've just watched Kitty Loo Ours films too much, but I'm thinking there is a kind of like an Edenic motif there somehow, But it could also be paganistic as well, because it's
things to do with nature. I guess there is some kind of affirmation, but as you say, it's obscure as to what kind of faith or what kind of affirmation that it's really showing us.
And this is yet another movie that I see from Czechoslovakia during this time that has butterflies in it. I don't know if it was a cultural thing or a symbolism thing, but there are always, not always, but there
are so many butterflies that are in movies. And this is another one where you even have led Coo going into a bookstore and picking up a book about caterpillars and butterflies, and then there's in the doctor's office there's a big butterfly over one's shoulder, and I'm just like, all right, I mean, of course, butterflies transformation, but I'm surprised it wasn't what I usually see in these movies, which is butterflies that are inside of glass case, pinned there.
Because you see that a lot. I'm thinking of like Valerie in a Week of Wonders, And I know almost every single time I see one of these movies, I'm just like, here's more butterflies. Oh they're on the wall in all my good country men, just that it's everywhere. So again, it could be a culture thing, or could be a symbolism.
You can hatch at a horse, but pinning a butterfly is just one to trustee too far for here.
It's really interesting that you mentioned that, because yeah, I was just trying to wrap my brains then, and maybe it was just yeah, I had a bit of a false memory. Yeah, did I actually see a pin butterfly in the movie, because it would make sense given the style, Because the style is very composed and very framed. The actors themselves are almost like butterflies in the within frame, aren't they. I remember from reading an essay on daisies by Petro Hanakova, she said that apparently the line in
check would you like to see my butterfly collection? Is it's like a sexual invitation. Basically, so I don't know how relevant that is to this film. I just took it as an image of freedom, really, because I think there is a kind of consistent interest in a number of Slovak films in flying. I guess you see it in Birds, Orphans and Fools. You see it a bit later in another film by Hanak Roast Into Dreams from the mid seventies. There's a kind of constant motif in
that of flight. And yeah, I just took it as another kind of use of the idea of flight as an image of freedom, because I guess when you see blad Co for the first time, he's waving his arms around, isn't he as though he's flying? And yeah, I just took it as meaning that, really.
I guess that's the old would you like to see my butterfly collection? My mom used to tell me that when men were trying to pick up women, they would say, do you want to see my etchings?
I kind of walked away with the thought that everything is what you make of it because of being an overall theme, because he and his ex wife were inhabiting the same apartment but having two very different existence and I I just felt like there throughout is I didn't feel that it was explained in depth, but the idea that he had been someone in a place of authority in communism and possibly I don't know if he would have been responsible in part for the deaths of people
or maybe just the terrible demotions, but it alluded to that repeatedly of him having to make decisions, and the wife mentioned a few times asking if he felt that people reached what they sewed, and that all seemed to come into play. But it was like the wife didn't do anything that he didn't allow, even though she was called a hussy, and she was really thought ill of by the neighbors and the people listening with the stethoscope on the wall, which wow, it's good use of a stethoscope.
But she was doing what she was lost. Was she really a bad person? Of the guys that letting her do it is inviting her to do it. He walks into the room with her lover, and it's like, oh, oh, you guys are fine. Carry on. Why would you stop?
Carry on? Carry on? She says, as you see her looking at them in a mirror. I mean, the very first time you meet Marta, she's in a mirror, and then she the next scene she's also in a mirror, and then you go back to her and she's got I don't know if that's a kendole in front of her face, but her whole face is split in two with this line, and you're looking at her like, is it even is the side of her face even like this? It was such an interesting way to have this character.
And you're just like, I mean, these characters having their faces split or you know, being reflected in mirrors. I'm just like, is this just how duplicitous all of these people are? Just this era of communism, like where you do have to worry about people listening to you through with this stethoscope. I mean, this is maybe the same year that the Year comes out, I think, And you know this, it's odd that this comes out in sixty nine because this is post prime Spring.
It was one of those films that was initiated before the invasion, so I believe it was first approved I think as a script in about sixty seven, and then I think they started filming it after the invasion, but in that period where it was still liberal before the
normalization kicked in. Really, so it was just in that weird window that you get of very like audacious and radical films that are made like after the invasion, but before things like tighten up again, and it's it's just such such a strange period because yeah, you get a lot of the most like outspoken and critical and experimental films in that time, and yet the invasion has happened, and I guess filmmakers know that the end is coming.
Things I think in a way almost like defiantly in regard to the politics, I think it's very subtle, isn't it. It's very densely woven into the story. And what his job is meant to have been before is that he was part of the I think they say the KNV, which was the regional National Committees, which was basically a kind of an arm of the Minute. I think came under the Ministry of the Interior, so basically they were
part of the state apparatus. And I think Lauka makes a reference at one point to going to the countryside, and I think we could maybe surmise that he was involved in the collectivisation of agriculture, which would have been in the early years of the communist regime, and at the end when he's in the going through the operation. I think those little fragmented senses that are coming out are a confession to things that he had been involved in.
And it doesn't really make it clear though exactly what he did. There are certain crimes that he either was complicit in or that he actually carried out. And I felt watching it again that when they go to the slaughter when he goes to the slaughter house, that there's almost a kind of like a re evocation of that, and that that's possibly the reason why he feels sick in that moment, that maybe it re evokes because I
think he mentions like a gun. I think there's a gun shot, isn't there in the slaughter house scene, and then during his confession in the bed he mentions like a revolver, And so there's possibly some flashback there that he's having. But yeah, it's very it's almost subliminal. I think that whole level. Really, when you read like synopsies of it, it sounds like it's very clear cut, doesn't
it really that he was the former political functionary. But as you watch, it's difficult to keep handle on that really. And one thing I find really interesting is that this is coming in sixty nine, or it's in that period when they find have the freedom to look back at this sort of the crimes of the Stalinist period. And yet he's actually a sympathetic character, isn't he.
Really?
They could have made that kind of figure like the villain, and they could have made the Joseph Abraham character the hero. But I feel it's almost the other way round in a way. I feel that Abraham's character comes off much less sympathetically than the character of Lauco.
Really, I think that's a non to. Surely at the time, Hannah couldn't he couldn't make a movie where he boldly said, oh, this guy used to be a communist figurehead and now all these horrible things are happening. I guess he would have had to have done it subtly. His hands would have been a bit found with that you're.
Talking about what he might have been guilty of. And I love that. As he's on his way to the slaughterhouse, there's a girl in front of him on the back of a motorbike and he's flourid with her, and he's looking at a newspaper that says no one is guilty, I'm like, oh okay, And I'm like that looks like a headline from a trial, and probably not a show trial, because I imagine everybody was found guilty at a show trial.
Oh that's right, because the driver was saying something about they were found not guilty because they weren't experienced enough with that, So how could they be responsible when they weren't even experienced enough to do the job they couldn't
be expected to. I liked the idea that depending upon which angle you see any character from, if you're the policeman vlad Coo, this kind of loser, hippie, possibly a nayer do well wandering about, and if you're the neighbor, you think the wife's a hussy, but if you're her lover, you think she's amazing. And if you're married or your ex husband is loud co you think that he's a
good guy. But if you were the person who was on the receiving end of that gun shot all those years ago, he would never be able to be a good person. That's so far removed from the what it says at the beginning of a loss of faith? What does any of that have you?
Mart is quite an interesting character, isn't she? Because she could have been portrayed very unsympathetically, because I guess on paper she is like a bad character because she's materialistic. She says that one like thing. She's very like upfront about that. But Lauco says in the story, because I guess I think Luco's narrating the story, is that he admires her desire for happiness. It's the willingness to just
go out and grab happiness where you can. And although I don't think I can't remember if that line is actually used in the film, but I feel that is the tone in regard to her, that yeah, she could have been an unsympathetic character, but somehow I think there is something about that strength of will that she has and that just that straightforward desire to be happy.
Why not, It's what we all want.
And yet it's sad that he's drawn to her rainbow coat and it feels like he's drab and she's all colors. The reality is she was so unhappy that he was actually living this drab existence where he was walked on and was rather ambitionless, so much more satisfied. And also the actress I don't want to butcher her name. Lucina Winnica. What a wonderful actress, like what a Polish Gina Rollins or Angie Dickerson.
Yeah, it's interesting that she's in it, isn't it that there are a few occasions of that, but not a lot of Yeah, like well known Polish or actors from other Eastern Bloc countries coming to do performances in Czechoslovak film.
And yeah, it's great to see her, isn't it?
Because she's famous from Mother Joan of the Angels and Night Train?
And yeah, it's nice to.
See her doing not even a lead run, it's I guess second lead role, but still, yeah, it's nice to see her in there.
I think how sixties that you mentioned night Train? So Night Train causes a big stir at the Cairns sixty eight and then in sixty nine was the hoop Lover three twenty two, So two years in a row she's the rebel.
I'm trying to remember, and please Jonathan correct me if I'm wrong. But wasn't Fifth Horseman a sphere? Wasn't that also censored or pulled?
Fifth Horseman? I think was okay?
I believe I think the issue that had was that was that whole weird thing that happened with the distribution via Carlo Ponti when they added the brothel suit. It's an interesting case of not being sent but rather than things being caught, things were added. So yeah, you could say another kind of betrayal of the original intention.
Well, I have to thank you for connecting me with Radoslav Storenka from the Slovak Film Group, because he was able to send me a little bit more information about speaking of being censored, about the censored version that we're watching of this and the nonsensor version, which they call the Mannheim print because it was smuggled by Fee valent I believe it's how you say the person's name via Vienna to Mannheim in the trunk of her car, and she got pulled over at one point, but they didn't
search the trunk, which was pretty good, and she had this original print of the film in there, and he was able to share a little interview with me and they showed here's the original and here's the censored version, and it was for instances it wasn't a but you can kind of see when you're watching the movie. Now there's a couple of times where the film almost stops, Like I mentioned the apple shot being thrown in there.
You know, it's it's got to be easy to censor this film because it cuts away to so many things so often. And plus one thing that we haven't said yet is that these scenes are very very short. But this movie moves along. It's not like you linger on stuff. This is not like this plotting art house kind of thing. It's just like you're going from one thing to another and there's no real transitions. You just move into another space.
And like that also helps confuse people sometimes, where it's just like, oh, now, suddenly it's this person talking over here. We've not met them before, but okay, here we are. We're now in a new scene. And yeah, a lot of the stuff that was censored was writing on walls about the Red Army and things, and it's just like, oh okay. So even though Hannak agreed and made those changes, the film still ends up being banned. I think they showed it once the censored version and that was it
no more. And thank goodness, there is this other version of it out there. I would love to see that restored. I'd love to see this whole movie restored and just out in a much easier to find version, because it's a great film. I had so much fun watching this.
It really was that and a little marvelous story. I love the heroism of tucking it under her clothing and getting it out of the country.
It's sad that I think the Slovak clide of the New Wave really came to fruition just at that point when the invasion happened, and then suddenly we were seeing the film industry being reorganized and shit reimposed, And I think it's amazing what they managed to do really under the shadow of the invasion and of normalization. For me, I think is one of the few filmmakers I think who's able to really continue in fairly uncompromising vein into
the seventies. Really, I think he albeit having his films banned along the way. I guess this was banned. He made a film couple of years later, Pictures of the Old World, which also went through a similar process where he was asked to cut it. He cut it, but it was banned anyway. And that's a really beautiful film. That's an amazing kind of poetic documentary, which again is integrating like still photography with cinema. It's using like electronic
music and classical music together. And it's a beautiful, sort of poignant documentary about elderly villagers.
And it tears your heart out, the thing with the old man who is the plowhorse and plows his own field with the yoko. I'm like, oh, oh my.
God, that's such a beautiful film. But not in a kind of sentimental way. I think it's able to keep that balance of that sense of absurdism. I think, like Angela, like you mentioned, which is there I think in this film too, but also that sense of poignance and of respect for people too. I think he was really interested in life at the peripheries, and I think you see it in this film too, done in a kind of
patronizing way. It's this there is this sense of sympathy or empathy with outsiders for want of a better word. And yeah, and in regard to absurdism, I think there are these nice little touches here of that kind of that kind of comedy of bureaucracy, isn't there, which I guess is like a recurring feature throughout works that were
made under communism. You have the little episode about the man's lost briefcase, don't You, where you have the porter and the man arguing about whose responsibility it was that this briefcase has gone miss And then you have that story about you at a collapsed house, and then the work is not being held responsible for it, And you got a few of those nice little touches of just absurd realities of the time.
Well, just the absurdism of our main character who might be dying of cancer but nobody's going to tell him that. And there's even that story about, oh, they told this woman that she had cancer, she went home, gassed herself, They did an autopsy and she was fine.
It seems like he's so drawn to the outliers and how they're different from society, but at the same time he's also portraying just how everyone is truly an outlier, Like when you get past the surface and the sacarine smiles, everyone's a little weird. Everyone is looking at the lady bending over or using their napkin to go catch chicken.
Notes.
But also on the censorship, when I heard that there were four spots that had been censored from the original, I assumed that you must have sent us the uncensored version. I was so surprised at the things that were sent me. It was the government that was censoring, not the MPAA, totally different. Just given everything we saw the slattering, I just assumed it was unsins It was like, oh no, it was just words on a wall. They didn't want
the words on the wall that was censoring. I think we saw the slattering, I just assumed it was unsins It was like, oh no, it was just words.
On a wall.
Which I wonder, is it some sort of allegory on the loss of innocence or how horrible things just splatter onto everything around them, or is that a sixties thing? Was that an edgy trope in the sixties, I don't.
Know, showing the horse being killed three times? It's fine. I was distressed to even just seeing those guys on that pig by the ears and the hearing it squeal. Oh, this is really unnerving. And yeah, even a dead catling in an alley and I'm like, ah, what was that documentary from?
Oh?
Was it Chile?
Yeah, that's right.
Our are the furnaces? Yeah, because there's a lot of slaughterhouse in that one too.
That's rough, and I guess it was part of the sort of culture of happenings too, wasn't it. I think Hudderofski when he was doing those kind of crazy performances with the Panic Theater, I think there was probably a lot of very dubious treatment of animals in that, And so yeah, I think Angela, as you said, I think it is part of that vibe. And I guess this is maybe a little bit too stereotypical of a reading, but I guess in regard to Slovak cinema, I feel
this is more probably relevant to someone like Yakabisco. But I think there's an argument that I think Anthony Leam, the critic, makes in regard to him, where he says that somebody like Yakabisco is coming from a context where, you know, animal slaughter and blood, we're just very much part of everyday life. I'm not sure how true that is of Hannak too. I feel Hannah has a sort
of a rather different sensibility. But yeah, I think it certainly does tie in with that whole sort of sixties thing vibe.
I think I don't like to put a lot of stock into listicals or lists of things. I'm very anti high fidelity that way. But going back to that list of Slovak films of the century from film dot Sk to Hannak is in there in the first spot, with three twenty two in the third spot with pictures from the Old World. I didn't realize that The Sun as a Net was by a Slovakian filmmaker, because that, to me has always been I've been told that's one of the first new wave films, Like that's what really helped
kick off the movement. So many of these films on this list from sixty seven, of course, with like Return of the Dragon, but then you get quite a few films from sixty nine, so like saying as far as like they are in this wrong place at this wrong time, or like you get you know, Christoph Rocky at sixty seven, you get Birds, Rifins and Fools at sixty nine, you
get Celebration in the Botanical Garden also in nineteen sixty nine. Yeah, all these great films all coming out right at the wrong time to actually find their audience because they're about to get centered and just shut down completely. It is remarkable, like you said that Hanik was able to continue on and do his thing. But in a much different way. But I think that pictures of the Old World might even be moreb versave than this film.
I'm not a drug person, but when I watch these movies, I want to get a way back machine and go back and just smoke some the reefer in sixty nine and create something amazing.
It was so fun to watch, and I just love again the idea of these visual rhymes. I mean, even when you just talked about using the napkin to capture the chicken, I'm like, Oh, it's kind of like blindfolding that horse before they hit it over the head.
They take the time to be nice before something awful happens. I hadn't thought about it, but it goes along with are they being kind in a way of, Oh, we're not going to tell him that he might have cancer because that would be stressful, so we'll just tell me has to come in for another exam or another test. Is that kind of like putting the blindfold over as well.
One of the other rhymes I noticed was between those kind of gold painted bodies, where at one point you see the bodies trembling a bit, and then it cuts to the elderly man's handshaking I thought that was a very nice little juxtaposition of I guess it's like these kind of like primal nearly nude bodies and then this mantane. That was just a nice kind of juxtaposition of youth and age. And yeah, there's a lot of those little touches like that.
With the gold dancers, it seemed I don't know if I was just ready into it too much, but it almost seemed like they were purposely past their prime, like just age wise, body wise, but they were still obviously capable. They were doing amazing things, even if perhaps more slowly than they had done them in the past. But isn't that like they sprayed gold on them? Oh, it's a good show, isn't that what everything.
Is going on? There?
Just spraying a little something on it, putting water in the orange juice. It's fine.
And you get that scene at the cemetery where it's like all the cracked faces too. It feels like everything is not repair either, being done in black and white. There are so many things where it just feels like this is dirty, you're disused. And sometimes in the cemetery scene, there's this big oval and I swear it looks like rather than a sculpture. It almost looks like a person sticking their face out of it. I was just like,
what am I looking at right now? And I just or that beautiful shot of the crosses where you get all the Jesus Jesus ie. I'm not sure is Jesus a Greek or Latin? I don't know, but all the different jesus Is on crucifixes going off into the distance, and just how rude the guy who's running the place is and that he's like, oh, yeah, here's your mother's a grave and he's like, no, it's not.
He didn't know where his mother's grave was, had he not been to that town since his mother. That was just it was one of those things that's just dropped in your lap with no explanations. I don't know if maybe there was a tradition or something that I wasn't quite good, so I don't know.
Well, the only other traditional thing that I was seeing was the whole idea of buying the fish and keeping the fish. I kept wondering, is this Christmas time? Because I kept thinking of the cremator. Yeah, if you're sensitive to animal cruelty or animal death, you're not going to have a good time with this one.
Yes, Teaching checkers labac cinema to students needs a lot of you need a lot of trigger warnings. I think, especially in regard to the treatment of animals. I think if you've seen some of these movies a few times, it's easy to forget and then you show it to somebody and then you realize, oh, no, there's a really horrible scene. Even in something like Valeria in a Week of Wonders, does that little scene with the pole cat isn't there?
Which is in the Chicken?
Going back to the landscapes and stuff, Like I said, everything seems so run down, but then you're talking about that influence of literature subtitle that comes up twice, and the first time we see that, it's it's a shot from I believe from a car moving across in this
landscape that they're showing. It reminded me of It reminded me a little bit of Iceland where a volcano was and you get the steam coming up because it feels like they're going across but it's a very flat field, but all of the smoke coming up, and I'm just like, I don't know what I'm looking at it doesn't look good.
I just love the sort of texturing of the imagery, really, because, as you say, there is a lot of rundown imagery, and there's a lot of cracks and crumbling buildings, and just as there is in pictures of the old world. And I guess, on the one hand, that does represent this sense of decay. And yet I think his whole esthetic embraces this love of grain and of texture, and the image itself is grainy and in a beautiful way. And I love the way that when you see like
the snow coming down, it really it looks it's animated. Surely, isn't it that it's not even like real fake snow.
The animation gave it just a charm that I love, though some parts sounded really jazzy, and it was like wow. Sometimes when I'm watching older films, I feel like those kids in the reaction videos who were like, we're gonna watch a video from the nineties, and how different can
that be? And then they're shocked. They're so shocked that Salt and Pepper were saying about sex or something, and they're like, wow, I thought they were more like puritanical in the nineties so I guess I feel like I shouldn't be surprised when I hear jazzy things in an Eastern black film from sixty eight. And yet if it had been dubbed well and you just showed full scenes of this to someone, they would have no idea that
it was a Czechoslovakian. It looks like something from what we're familiar with as sixty eight or so, except for the blown out buildings.
Gerhardt is the composer, and I think get a lot of jazz stuff.
You mentioned the role of Schweink in this, and yeah, of course frank Meyer was also involved in Pictures of the Old World and helped to construct that amazing kind of allegorical contraption. And yeah, I really love the way that I think he worked with a lot of the most interesting people from Checkers that art scene of the time.
So I guess in relation to the music, in relation to the sort of visual artist that he was employing, he not only is a great artist in himself, HANNAHK, but he's also I think he's also collaborating with other great artists and giving them something of a representation too. And yeah, you get this lovely fusion between different artists and different art forms. And yeah, I guess that too is ahead of its time as well, isn't it. I guess it's idea of like multimedia forms, where you're mixing film,
you're mixing photography, you're mixing like plastic arts. And some of the images they're really like assemblages, aren't they really like the things in the Grizzily example, but like the in the slaughter House for example. And yeah, he clearly had quite a very refined awareness. I think of other art forms.
Great visuals with him swirling around and just wearing those boots, and that does such a marvelous job of capturing freedom, like whether it's lovers in a field or even bucking the system at your employment. He does a good job of just always showing the rebellious heart.
Yeah, those jawbones or that collection of eyes or I'm not sure what that is that hanging is that otters?
Yeah, I couldn't. I was thinking, is it tongue maybe? But it looks synthetic though, doesn't it really? So I couldn't quite Yeah, I paused that a few times, but still couldn't quite. Yeah, I couldn't quite identify it.
Yeah, And the very frank sexuality. I'm talking like, oh my gosh, this is nineteen sixty nine and you know, people are people are still having sex and there's a lot of flirtation going on. I forgot that he also flirts with a woman in a restaurant as well. He keeps doing this thing where he's like nodding at her and waiting for her to nod back, and you know, like I said, he's flirting with that girl on the motorcycle.
And then yeah, the relationship with says Nick as well, I'm like, okay, Like I said, I wasn't sure if that was her being pregnant by him or not, but yeah,
they definitely have a relationship. I don't think it's the same type of relationship that Marta and her boy toy have, but yeah, it's it's very frank when it comes to that, and like the affair of Marta and Josephabrum's character, it's very out there and I'm just like okay, And they seem to be having a really good time until the other woman comes into the picture, but until then it's you know, they're having a lark, even out in that field, running around with the car circling them, and then you
get some of those still images, and there's that image of her with the big fake mustache and she seems to be having the time of her life.
I was thinking of how the cuckolding is alluding to the communism of You're going to give me everything that I need and I'm going to use you as a stepping stone, and so I'll be having a wonderful time, but you won't. Oh. I guess I hadn't really thought about that. But he was right to merge those things because I don't think in the short the short story I didn't get Obviously it did take place during communism, but I really didn't get that much heaviness on that aspect of it.
Yeah, please tell me a little bit more about the short story, because I did not have a chance to read then, and I know you two did.
Oh God, Mike, it makes me feel so good that we read something you didn't, which.
Is my fault because I was too late.
It would have been fair, because I think sometimes it's the most frustrating thing when you get this tantalizing nugget that just comes like an hour before you're recording something, and it's so Yeah, I totally get the pain of that.
Yeah, but yeah, tell me more about the short story. I'm so curious.
It was very much the core of the story between a guy getting diagnosed, but I think in the story he knew he had cancer, right that. I don't think it was ambiguous at least I don't know. I just read it. I should know.
There's definitely nothing. I don't think there's anything about gallstone. So yes, I don't think it. I think it is cancer. I don't think that really resolves either in regard to the illness. And what I found quite interesting was how focused it was on the story of Marta really and so basically that story is the same, and the sort of the true jectory of her character is the same, where she dies in a car crash with the lover,
or the lover gets injured but he survives. Interestingly, though, the lover is quite different because in the story the lover, I think he's described as like a young author. He's like a budding writer, rather than I think Abraham's character is meant to be a student. Isn't here, although he seems to have a job as well, But definitely he's not, as far as I can tell he's not meant to be a writer, and the lover in the story is
much more sympathetic. He's much more he's really grief stricken at the death, and he's much more sincere, it seems, in the relationship. And yeah, he is presented much like I would say, less sympathetically in the film, which is interesting. That's the part of the film that is most closely
based on the story. The character of Silka is also there, and the colleague that he has, who's also being I think, who's also in a sort of a rather dire marital situation, and the one with whom he goes to buy the Teddy Bear at the beginning.
So that stuff is there.
But yeah, there's as you say, I don't think there's really any references to politics or to Louco's past, and definitely no Vladco as far as I can make out.
Yeah, the film added so.
Much Now it's more like a slice of well, I don't know what the timeline was, but like a few days of introspection as he's going through the motions of his life in his way, his ex wife gets killed, I mean, after he's diagnosed with cancer. That's basically a much smaller bite than the movie is.
I'd love how they have to point out that she was killed, but the car is Okay, do you want to sell me your car?
That's been the story, but the film, I think the film takes that a little bit. I think the film plays a bit more again with that is that comedy of official dermin of just really callous.
I guess they're police policemen, aren't they, I think?
And yeah that I think the film gets more painful comedy out of that than the story does.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's more more interested in the car and whether it can be resold.
And I forgot that Joseph Abrams got the ie trauma
from that as well. It's the same eye that was uncovered by those sunglasses as the eye that is bandaged later on, which I was like, okay, it kind of reminds me of Chinatown a little bit, with all of the bad eye type of things like broken glasses, you know, spoilers for Chinatown, Evelyn Molray getting shot through the eye, like all of those things to go all the way back when we're talking about playing with the form, I was surprised that there's no end to this, you know,
I always count on seeing Qunich at the end of all of these movies. And then that moment and after the credits are over, when we see a person on a bicycle and there's a wall it looks like an apartment building that's being held up by speaking of crumbling infrastructure, it's being held up by like these giant poles or logs with rocks underneath. I'm like, wow, that looks like that whole thing's going to collapse. I mean, that might be the building that they're talking about later on in
the movie. Is that building we see at the beginning and you get that still frame, like the movie doesn't want to start at that point, like it is a still frame. The person on the bicycle is sitting there for a while before finally starts to move, and you know that kind of like I was saying, like, oh, it's easy to censor this movie because it is so odd at times. I mean, there could have been something there.
I don't think there was, but you know, like later on when the one thug at the beginning comes up to that woman that you're talking about, Angela with the the very yeah, the very weird paper eye thing, like he goes up to her, and the whole movie stops there too, and I'm like, okay, it's not just a cut away to a still image, just the whole thing just stops and then it carries on again. I'm like okay.
And that was closer to an area of censorship. But like I said, I think that apple being put in there is what covered up the you know, the the graffiti that they wanted to hide. And that there's a character later on in the film that he meets I'm trying to remember where it is, but that that was also censored. And with that I couldn't tell what was being censored because, like I said, that Mannheim Print has
German subtitles. I don't read German, unfortunately, but I could hear and even in the interview about that, they're like, oh yeah, he talks about the Beatles, and I could hear beatles being said in you know, check, but I couldn't read what the subtitles were saying in German, So shame on me. I don't know if you picked up anything from that, Jonathan, but it was all Greek to me.
I could tell at the beginning the censored part when they had the German subtitles that they were talking about to thank you, I got the talking part.
Watching this really makes me want to see more of Hannock's work. I love this whole thing of him coming from this documentary world and being able to bring that to this, and then I'm so curious about some of his other narrative works just because it was a I want to say it was a little while before he made another narrative film after this, But what a fascinating guy.
And he's still around, he's still kicking. Tried to get an interview with him, but unfortunately he does not speak English and he's in his nineties I think, And yeah's apparently he's not one for doing a whole lot of interviews right now, so I completely understand maybe when he hits.
One hundred he'll have a change to heart. Speaking of his other films, vyz Va Do teach scha, he said that he met a writer who had written up accounts of schizophrenic patients, and so he recorded some things about them, but he didn't want to film the actual patients, like he didn't want to film actual schizophrenics, just where they were and things they were involved with, which I guess
that's novel. He went on to say that he was talking about a psych hospital we went too, that they would let if the people thought they were royalty, they would let them walk around in costumes all day. But they also had one section that was very private that was called Hell. They had a section for the men in a section for the women. I don't know if it's because the schizophrenics believe they were in hell, or if it was just hell for the staff alluded to.
So I don't know what about this is contained within the film, but I'm very curious just on that. Boy, I don't know if you could raise curiosity any more than that to see a movie.
Apparently that one is called an English and appeal made into silence that rolls off the tongue almost as easily as the sources of the sea attract the diver. The short story that three twenty two is based on.
Yeah, I admire the propensity in more in European cinema for longer titled. I think English language titling tends to go for the more snappy, succinct titles, and sometimes a longer title is.
Fun, isn't it.
I think I like the fact that the fruit of Paradise. For instance, in check is we eat the I think we eat the trees of the We eat the fruit of the Trees of Paradise, which I think is Yeah. I guess it's easier to make that kind of long title in check because tends to be fewer wor needed to say more. But yeah, we tend to shorten things in English language distribution. Yeah, I would really recommend Day of Joy. I think that's a really really great example.
I think of his colarage aesthetics and of just this sense of just pure anarchic bliss. And he made a documentary in I think in nineteen ninety called paper Heads. So I think if anybody, if you are enamored of those masks that you see in the street, in this film there's a lot more of those in paper Heads. And I guess that was the film where because it was made just as communism or just after Communism ended,
where he was able to say everything explicitly. And this is similar to the short film by schwank Meyer called The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. It's got a similar vibe to that, where it's just this kind of cathartic release of just that kind of anger about the oppression. Yeah, this is a film that's kind of contrasting, it's juxtaposing.
You get these images of people in the street with these huge papya mache heads, of communist leaders, with documentary footage and testimonies of people who suffered under the regime. And Yeah, that's a really quite quite harrowing but also very esthetically still very striking film.
It reminds me speaking of the masks and artistry. I think one of the most horrifying moments of three twenty two is at the end when vlad Coat is actually telling him this is an apple, this is a meadow. Oh God, as an artist, how horrifying that you would have to hand a person in your art and explain that's an apple, that's a meadow, that's a tree. God, Like, how bid? I so wanted to see more of those photo of those drawings.
You know what.
I guess this is taking place at Christmas because you're talking about the trees, and isn't there a Christmas tree on like a piece of paper like hanging up and he kind of draws over it.
Yeah.
Interesting, Yeah, I totally forgot about that perfect movie for Christmas. I think the real miracle is that not more people die. I'm surprised that it's just the wife that gets killed, because it feels like, you know, so many people make it out of this film unscathed, you know, and we even have I was surprised that he didn't die at the end of this because of the the whole tit for tat thing that movies love to do, you know.
I think about Parenthood, you know, or some of the other films where it's like, okay, if somebody dies, and yes, I know that Marta dies, but I was thinking if Lauco dies, then we would get the shots of cys next baby. But I guess this next baby is taking you know, because there's always that, you know, one person dies,
one person is born kind of thing in movies. And or to die is Sysnick has her baby, and then we see all those babies, and yeah, once you start seeing those babies, in fact it's twins, I believe she gives birth too, or maybe not, but because the nurse is picking up the two babies, I assume that those were Sysniics, but maybe not. Because they show a ton of babies, and like you were saying before, Jonathan all those babies with the numbers. They all have the numbers
on it. It's just like, welcome to the world. Here's your new number. And just that this whole movie is called three twenty two and which is coded for you know, cancer, but also coded for Lauco. It's like, here's your new number, you know, just like you're saying, like Vladgo's numbers on his back and we see that right from.
The get go.
And boy, those babies must have been made of wrought iron the way the nurse was like, whoop them up?
And it was like, oh, I think there's another little reference to three twenty two, isn't there? When I think the I believe it's the young nurse and she's talking on the phone about sweaters and I think think at one point three twenty two is a reference to the is.
It the price?
But definitely it's in some way it's related to these sweaters that she wanted to buy. And yeah, that was like an interesting twist on the use of numbers.
That what a great film. I am so glad to have watched this. I'm just really thrilled because sometimes you never know. It's not that we've ever had a dud on check Timber. But sometimes it's just like wow, this is really snow moving, or you know, it's just not connecting with me nearly as much as I would like a film too. But this one, holy cow, it was just it grabbed me from the get go and I
was with it all the way through. And then having this conversation, I'm getting so much more out of this me too.
Yeah.
I was a bit worried that I would be a bit overwhelmed and I would lose my thread, which I do anyway, but I guess especially in regard to a film like this where there's just so many things happening, and yeah, in this conversation has been really great because it's drawn things out that I didn't see, and yeah, it's something to go back to and go back to.
I think it's wonderful when you see a film like this, you're like, oh, you want to discuss it with someone, and who are you going to discuss it with? Yes, So thank you guys for being here to discuss.
So let's go ahead and take a break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Associates all the way, Elsie, everybody hearing the height Manti, would you eat this?
You are?
Yeah, what's actually coping up?
Saying we have no.
Thanks distens Pati.
Jesuists at the book and it's easy.
That's right.
We are wrapping up our abbreviated Checktember next week with a look at Frantic Check Flockel's atal Hyde. If you want to hear more of me discussing Blaco, please be sure to pick up the new second run Blu ray of his film Valley of the Bees, which features Robert Blissimo and me on the commentary. Until then, I want to thank my co hosts, Jonathan and Angela. So, Angela, what is keeping you busy?
Ma'am still working on scripts, hoping to get something finished and out into the world.
And Jonathan, what new and exciting projects are coming our way from you?
Sir.
I've just written the essay for the one of the essays I should say for the release of Adela Hasn't had Stuff yet, which is now available from Deaf Crocodile in a really beautiful edition, so I think that's out now. And then I've also got a couple of things in the pipeline with second Run, which I think haven't been announced yet, but I think those will be out. I think one is going to be out the end of this year and then the other beginning of next year.
And I think the.
Title is probably not a big surprise for given the kind of things that I'm usually working on and usually interested in.
Yes, please look out for those well.
Thank you so much, folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. I was doing some looking up of numbers the other day and apparently the Chechchambers I was are lowest rated stuff. So thank you, especially to all of you people who are listening to this, because you're getting the good stuff here. So thank you for indulging and coming in and hearing us talk about this movie, which is pretty obscure but is so much fun and I hope that you have fun watching it.
If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at Wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thank you especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com. Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helse of Projection Booth take over the world.
It it.
It, it, it it.
M M.
Let's they're gonna be.
Let get a day.
Let's let's let's gonna let's letts.
H come back, come.
Come. That's consist.
Tell me a little, a little dotting cop, the cop of co co cons the complay.
A little bottle, a little about it
And sad