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Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again is Ms Emily Barney Hey. Also back in the booth is mister Spencer Parsons.
Hello.
We continue Cheptember twenty twenty five with a look at Adakar Vavra's Romance for Bugle, also known as Romance for lugol Horn. It's a lyrical movie based on a poem of the same name written by franticek Kruben and adapted and directed by Adakar Vavra. The film is a classic love triangle about two men, Voita and Victor, and their shared fascination with the same woman. Tarina will be spoiling this film as much as we can, so if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast and
come back after you've seen it. We will still be here. So Emily, when was the first time you saw Romance for Bugle and what did you think?
So this was a new one for me. I know it was on my watch list. Odacar Babra is such a major figure in check film, so I'm always interested in seeing his movies. Of course, I've seen witch Hammer and Krakate his first kind of avant garde film, so I was very interested seeing it, and I really loved the movie. I'm kind of a sucker for sad social dramas, and it's a very sad movie. It's a really beautiful sense of nostalgia and sweetness before it kind of crushes
your soul. So I really enjoyed the movie.
And Spencer, how about yourself, Yeah, this is my first time seeing it and really loved it. This is a new filmmaker to me, Yeah, really terrific work, and I want to see more of his stuff.
This was also a new one for me. I remember seeing the DVD or poster image for this a lot for whatever reason, maybe it was in like the Facets catalog or something, But as soon as I saw Yerimer Hanzlik, I was like, Yeah, I love that guy. I love watching that guy. I really like to see more things
with him in it. So I said, yeah, let's do it, and had no idea really walking in what it was about that it was based on this poem, what the poem was, how significant it was for Czech culture, that they've made this movie several times or made the poem adapted it several times for usually the stage, but yeah, checking out this movie, and also that it was nineteen sixty seven, which is an interesting year in Czech history, just right before the whole progue spring, and seeing where
we were with the world at that point, and how this film kind of flex things back. It feels like there's not a care in the world sometimes but other times it feels like, you know, we have some looming danger. And then also noting a little bit of Vava's past and just how he was such a huge influence on Czech filmmaking and especially being a teacher at FAMU and teaching so many of the filmmakers that I know and love so much. So I'm always up for seeing whatever
he does. And then, yeah, like you said, Emily Witchhammer really blew me away, so again I wanted to see more of his work. This morning, I was on a podcast about Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and I was saying that one of my least favorite things in all movies is to start with a framing story and never come back to the framing story. I'm so glad that we start with a framing story and actually come back to it. And it's such a fitting end for this film.
And I like that we set up this relationship between these two men that just kind of meet in a bar and we know some thing has gone on between them, and that they start talking about this woman, Tarina, and the one guy, Victor, is like, oh, you want to see her? You want to go see Tarina and immediately heads to the graveyard on his tractor, and I'm like, oh, okay, what's going on between these two guys?
All right? Can we just also give due respect to this tractor ride as probably the most like alarming ride on a tracker in cinema. I've never seen anything quite like it. They're on their way and it is clearly a little frightening and heavy just on the ride there. It's filmed as if it's Alex and the drugs driving their little crazy car through London. What a way to open the film. As soon as the movie ended, I started it over again to go back to the frame
story because it is evocative. It's such a great way to start the movie. But I also had this desire to revisit because the rest of the store went into zones that had made me almost forget it. As evocative and intense as it had been, and as much as it was about her death right out of the gate, when we got to the mention of her death at the very end, I was like, Oh, but I just didn't want to believe it. I'm told upfront, and I don't want to believe this major event of the story. Yeah.
I revisited that sequence a lot as well. It's just such a nightmare kind of scenario, and it also it makes it kind of the tractor kind of makes it hard to place, like when in time is this happening and you're trying to orient yourself, you know, is this the present, is it just because they're in a rural area that this is a thing people do, or you know, is this the past. So it's a little insuttling in that respect. I wanted to point out kind of a
cultural thing with cemeteries. You know, here in the US we have lots of you know, one person. You know, you buy your plots and you're there forever or until they move it. But in the Checklands, you rent and usually like a whole family will be in like a plot together and then like every ten years you pay your cemetery bill. So that moment where you know, they go wake up the caretaker, we want to see her,
and he's like, well, someone else took the space. I don't know where she is now, She's she's not there any longer. You know, you don't know who these people are, but you know that they knew each other, they had this connection. And then here you know, this man Voita is just finding out oh not only is she dead, but like she wasn't cared for, you know, her body's just gone. And now this strunk Man is going to take him on a tractor ride through the fields, and it's like.
The wind in the willows. Suddenly.
I love the string music that kind of comes in and just really like reinforcing, like, yeah, this is terrifying. It's not just you. This is kind ofa's nightmare that we're witnessing, and just seeing him looking like he's about to throw up on the tractor there.
Yeah, the soundtrack of this, and I don't mean just the music, which is obviously majorly important. We start off with an accordion playing and then we go into Victor playing his bugle, and the bugle comes back when they end up right before the credits start. They end up in this kind of open area and he starts playing the bugle again. But I'm talking about the sound mix of all the dogs barking. There are some sirens. Whenever he Voita goes to see his grandfather, there are these
flies that are buzzing like crazy. I think they do a great job of just setting so much of the tone with the music bed or the soundtrack that's going on with the sound effects, and it's not always just the music, it's just the sounds of what this world is that they live in.
Yeah, the sounds of bugs in this movie are really intense, and I love the dogs. The dogs make that seem so unsettling. It's like all the dogs in town are all barking at once at night. How can anybody manage it? But it's yeah, wonderful and nightmarish.
The clock in their cottage just always ticking, just this sense of time is coming.
And it wasn't until the second time I watched it that I realized what the opening credits were going over. That it's this kind of carousel that they have, and it's all of these beautiful paintings that they have on the carousel. And it's such a lovely way of having the credits and showing these beautiful images and also getting to see that one of my favorite people, Esther Kombakova,
did the costumes for this. Interestingly, it's listed as a sixty seven film every place I look, but the copyright on the actual film is sixty six.
That's when they shot it, Okay.
I wasn't sure if there was the and release or whatnot. And then having that little I wish he had subtitles for this. The OVID quote that opens up the.
Film, I translated it, oh please, So yeah, it's it's Ovid's version of the myth of Phaetone, and it says, you ask for great things, Faeetone, but this gift is beyond your power. Your boyish age cannot achieve it. You are mortal, but what you desire is not mortal. And I guess the myth is Fayetone is the mortal son of the god Apollo. There's different versions of it with different gods, but in his it's Apollo. And to prove that he is Apollo's son, he wants to drive Paula's chariot.
So the quote is Apollo saying, like you're too young, you can't control it. And then the myth, he does end up taking the chariot and it goes terribly and causes a lot of destruction and death, and so then Jupiter throws a lightning bolt at him and kills him. So another little tid that we're not in for a fun.
Time here, no, And I have to say every version of this that I've been able to track down horrible subtitles, really bad subtitles like broken English, bad spelling coming up sometimes at the wrong time, and I hope that the DVD of this has better subtitles, and I hope that there's a blu ray of this on the horizon, because it looks gorgeous. Even with these bad subtitles, the movie looks fantastic.
The Check DVB. I looked into ordering it and having it shipped, but it didn't have English subtitles, so this is definitely due for a restoration and proper subtitles.
I really hope one of our boutique disc companies can see clear to put this out. I think this movie is really remarkable. It's definitely my favorite new to me movie of this year. As a filmmaker, Vabra feels incredibly important, spanning the history a lot of complicated stuff about his life, but this particular film, and when I was watching it, I really just went in cold. I did not read any of the materials in advance. I didn't look up anything about him. Part of my approach was like, Okay, yes,
it was a very check new wave filmmaking. It definitely fit into my notion of that. And now I'm really interested in what really were the styles of check filmmaking before the New wave, because that's where my clock on Chech filmmaking begins, and then finding out that Vava's an older filmmaker. Yes, he has a big influence on Check new wave filmmakers. It really did have me asking questions about check style in general, and that, for instance, some of the writing on him says that his style is
not that unusual. And I didn't pig this movie for being a big innovative film. But the shooting, cutting and blocking is impeccable throughout and also very it feels very particular, very handmade for this particular story, really careful and beautiful work, even some small things. The sudden cut early on in
the movie from the carousel. It's a carousel, but it's on these long chains that are I will admit a little bit frightening to me, which just wonderful, but it's a very sudden and jarring cut to the razor blade as he's shaving, and then not long after that, it's very disorienting that little scythe pricking at his back. Beautiful shot of his shoulder blades, and then the scythe comes
in and we start revealing the scene moving out. Yeah, this initial cut from beautiful, romantic but also slightly dangerous feeling moment to these like sharp objects is really beautiful visual storytelling, and the movie is full of that all throughout.
Lava. He started making movies in the thirties and was kind of an avant garde filmmaker, active in kind of The Left Bank. His kind of second film he worked on with Alexander Hackenschmied The Future Mister Maya Darin. So he kind of has these avant garde bona fides that you know, as time went on, as he worked under different authoritarian regimes, you can still kind of see little
bits of that in his movies. And then I think, just yeah, working with the New Way filmmakers, you know, he learned from them as much as they learned from him, and he really was able to kind of embrace that side of himself again, which is really, you know, lovely and it's too bad it didn't last, but you know that's the best films of his career, and you know that he felt himself as well. They were the films he loved the most that he made.
Yeah, there were I think a few filmmakers him and I can't remember the gentleman's name that did The Devil's Trap and the Fifth Horseman is Fear. They really got a shot in the arm when it came to the New Wave and being able to have a new lease on life, which was very nice to see. And then even yeah, posts Prague Spring, I mean witches Hammer or witch Hammer, whatever you want to call it. It is such a great film and you know, such a condemnation of all the show trials and things that had happened
in Czechoslovakia. So even though some people had real problems with him, he didn't necessarily you know, in the US, like he didn't name names kind of thing. But he wasn't as loved by the younger filmmakers after he aligned himself with more of the Communist government after the Progue Spring. But I feel that Witch's Hammer really redeems him, at least in my mind.
I guess the first kind of instance of it is with Alfred Roddock in nineteen forty nine he made Distant.
Journey, and god, that's such a great film.
Yeah, so Bavra was very outspoken, this is bourgeois and this is a terrible movie, and you know, so they didn't like ban it, but then you know, they didn't didn't have a wide release, and it destroyed his film career. You know, he never could quite get back to film. So I think a lot of people, especially you know, because that was before the check nude wave and everything, like, he was a party man and it did some damage there.
So I think there's kind of a long history of you know, he is the establishment spencer.
You mentioned the cut to the razor blade and then the little scythe that goes into his back as he's shaving. The sudden cut to the grandfather character was pretty startling as well. The way he is there saying home, we have to go home and things, and I'm like, okay, I'm not sure exactly what's going on. I mean, I'm pretty sure that he's got dementia of some sort. He
just seems pretty out of it. And it really feels like Vadka as spending most of his life taking care of his grandfather and putting a lot of other things on hold. Though he is going to be a teacher, even though it sounds like that's not necessarily what he wants to do. It sounds like what his father wants him to do. And it's nice that we realize from that opening framing device that that's what he ended up doing so, he ended up not following his dreams.
Part of the beautiful structure of that scene is that because there's been a framing device, I initially took the pictorial elements as being possibly out of time, cross cutting two different timelines, and we're not. But it gives us that feeling, which is then very important to understanding the character of the grandfather, who, in his own weird way,
because of his stroke, is unstuck in time. There are really wonderful kinds of poetic devices that Devabra is finding within setting up a very simple scene to get us a little bit wrong footed in one way that then gets us very right footed for the rest of the story.
This is actually the third film that Barbara made with the writer Frantisha Khrubin, and the movie before this one the Golden Rennet. It's based on a book, but it's very much like the timelines are kind of interweaving together. And it didn't do very like it won you know, awards.
It did great critically, but audiences didn't understand it. So they really kind of use that experience to refine kind of the timeline because the poem is very mixed up, so they kind of made it a little more audio and is friendly.
I wasn't able to see that movie. Did you manage to track it down?
Yeah? There's no English subtitles though, And I could understand the check, you know, if I'm like Kyd of rewinding and relistening, So it would have taken me like six hours to do that, so I kind of just let it ride, you know. And so I did understand a fair amount of it. And it's very, yeah, surreal and dreamy, so maybe it's not totally necessary, you know, it's very beautiful, and I mean that would be like a great double feature, I guess, or double package Golden Rennet and Romance Rebeugal.
And it's a very similar story as well. A man in his fifties who's kind of disappointed with the choices he's made and goes to visit his home village and you know, there's a girl he loved where he didn't show up to their meeting, and you know, so it's there's very similar themes happening. They're kind of cosmic twins. Yeah.
I saw there were clips of that in that Golden sixties episode about Vavra, and they had subtitles on there, so I was very excited and got to see a few clips and I said, oh, I want to see this, but I couldn't find a version of it. So I'm glad that you were able to see it even without subtitles.
You know.
I searched everywhere for subtitles, but so I'm sure somewhere they exist.
I am surprised that Tonka doesn't play more of a role in this film. She's very present in the opening of this and that's also where we get a lot of the more avant garde kind of things, the way that were cutting to her in the river and cutting back to him on shore as he's reading this book with this big spider crawling up the book. I thought it was a really nice image, and just the images
of the insects. And he was talking again in that Golden Sixties episode about how his cinematographer on this was very patient and really understood what he was going for and wanted to capture some of these images of these insects because they weren't cgi, you know, and they weren't a little puppets on strings being pulled by a fishing
wire or anything. These are real bugs that they were capturing and this lyrical you know, I used that word before, but just the use of nature and these insects and things. And again going back to the insects, sound of the grandfather being tied into that almost like he's rotting before he's dead. I think it's gorgeous. And some of these images of those two Tanka and Vatchya in the river floating around very erotic stuff.
This is a wonderful lesson in eroticism with like minimal minimal nudity or specific action. And it isn't just this, it's this scene is the big one and the most obvious. This is a very horny movie, and in a really wonderful way, from right out of the gate introducing the younger versions of our triangle characters. One the very first shot of this young woman is not necessarily so erotic,
but she is riving. She's absolutely riveting. And then it does the cuts to the male gaze kind of things, and then she returns the gaze towards them, and that little sequence is like a really beautiful kind of reciprocal kind of experience of at least two people within the situation seeing noticing each other and wanting to be together in a way that is done without any words, done without a whole lot of action, an invitation to ride the ride as it were, and really beautifully done, and
the introduction of Tanka with the side of touching his back. The movie is really full of this, and yeah, placing it within and nature that is not precisely eroticized, but these images of nature definitely placed them into the natural flow of things. The whole movie until the end really
takes on a kind of beautiful eroticism. The shapes created by their faces in relationship to each other in a number of tight two shots are just beautiful, really lovely, and the kind of thing that we're in a little bit more censorious moment commercially within American cinema and whatnot.
These are the kinds of tricks that I wish people would learn if they're uncomfortable with nudity, if they're uncomfortable with depicting a sexual behavior, than a movie like this is a perfect example of how to visualize this kind of attraction. And yes, the one scene in the river that one's more traditionally much more traditionally erotic, but the whole film really has a kind of really beautiful observed eroticism to it that is extremely important to the story's
ultimate turns. This is a life and death and sense of disappointment. Again one of the things going back to the very beginning, looking at the first shot of our main guy as he's sitting in this the teacher's suit on the corner of the bar, the sense of a disappointment is a great tension with all this eroticism and romance.
It's such a great look that the man that they cast as a fifty year old voit. He looks like he's seen things and just you know, just looks haunted. I'm sure he's, you know, a lovely man, that just just the structure of his face, he just looks very drawn.
And he looks very much like the young actor. He's passed well for believability. But then he's also he has an incredible presence in what I guess is the present tense, not the flashback of the film. And all the actors in this movie are incredible. I really love all the performances, and Voyce's patience with all of them is terrific.
I'm so glad that there's no doubt in my mind when we go from the frame into the flashback. Who is who? You know? I immediately know, Oh, that's the teacher and that's the bugle player. And I don't have to wait until, you know, minute twenty five or whatever for him to pull up the bugle and start playing for me to go, oh, that's who that is. No, I immediately I think he's probably wearing the same hat,
he's got the darker features and everything. Yeah. I like that we are told this without having to have like a slow dissolve on their face. No saving Private Ryan and shot right, we go from Matt Damon to old man kind of thing. No, No, we're smart enough to realize who these guys are.
This is also an argument in favor of not doing aging or de aging kind of stuff. Just cast the different actors and get the right people and put them together in a way that makes sense. Because one of the things that's really important here that obviously actors are capable point to like Maximon Saido and The Exorcist as very capable of physically embodying somebody much older than he was.
But again, one of the things that's really important in the setup and payoff is that these are people with older bodies it's not just makeup or obviously we do cgi Martin Scorsese, he has pol tricks among others. But it is really important to say that we see the bodies at the ages that they're inhabiting at the different times, and that yeah, and that the filmmakers make absolutely clear
who everybody is in a way that really is. Other films have done this, but this is one of the strongest examples of perfect casting and then framing and presentation to make clear who is who.
Well, Victor was played by the same actor, both young and old, and you know he would have been like, yeah, so he would have been.
I looked it up even because I was like, I was going, oh, is that makeup? If that's makeup, that's really good. Wow, I'm wrong, I've gone well right on one point. That's really interesting because I had a little bit of a suspicion at first, but I kept watching him. What a great actor to get on that tractor the right way. But I really did think I looked it up on IMDb trying to figure out who is who, and I guess somehow I mistook that there were I thought there were two actors for him.
And he just passed away in twenty twenty five, which is remarkable that he was one of the few surviving actors. I don't know if if Tarina was still around or if she succumbed to disease two months after this movie was released, but I hope not.
She's still around.
Okay, good, She's a really remarkable actor. I want to see her in other films. One of those instant things of just seeing her with the Merry Go Round and her reaction and trying to sell it and everything just instantly she's riveting and then really incredible performance throughout the film.
Yeah, I looked her up because she looked familiar and she did a lot of like Slovak TV, so that was the majority of her career. The one movie I had seen was Celebration in the Botanical Garden. She has kind of a small part in that, but yeah, it was kind of surprising that she hasn't really done more that that we would be familiar with, and that Miriam kin Torko played Tonka. You know, she's been in quite
a few things that I recognized her from. She's wonderful with such a I mean, she's not in the movie a lot, but like we know, who she is.
Oh yeah, she's so striking. Those features are just amazing, and I love how we keep flashing back to her. We really enter into people's heads in this movie and will be part of their flashbacks to other things. Just a little brief, entire scenes kind of things, but just little images that will flash through their heads. I really like that too.
There's an image of her standing by the water that had me very worried for her, but said night and she's gone out there and there's a sense that she's looking for him and expecting maybe to meet and it's very brief, but she grabbed my heart. And that's a tribute to the performance and then to the filmmaking, the
very careful work with each performer. There's a beautiful shot where the camera moves with her as she's in the foreground and kind of a little bit dark and out of focus, and he and the grandfather are in the background, and as they move, she moves and the camera moves with her, framing this foreground background. That again, for character who's not in the movie that much, is really given a kind of care to make sure that she is a full part of the story, even if she's not
on that much. Even if her kind of final moment is just recognizing she's trying to do a seduction and then recognizes that the grandfather has died and suddenly breaks away. There's not a huge melodrama that she goes off and
kills herself or something. But she has a really important place in the overall structure of this story and in the gentle sense of again that tension between the eroticism and disappointment then where things go, because yeah, again the scene with the two of them in the water is just it's so fun, and then getting called back to the grandfather. But that's it for them. This is not a romance that's going to develop. But yeah, all four points on the because it's not really quite a triangle.
There's a more laid out triangle, but we've got a we have a rectangle or something on here.
The scene you were talking about with her in the foreground, you know, right before that she's you know, says, oh, you know, Grandma, you don't have to worry about me. I'm gonna have lunch at the farmers. And it's like that kind of says everything, like because at the beginning I kind of wondered, like you know, she's she's clearly older than Foeita, and it's like, why is she going after this kid? You know, she cuts grass and nettles.
She's living with her grandma in this little village, working on a farm, like there's probably not a lot of options. And then you know, here's a strapping young man comes home from on vacation and it's like, hey, here's here's like my shot to have a man here. So it does.
It does really kind of make you feel for her, especially those scenes where she's waiting by the river, like you know, she's very very flirty, very you know, thirsty, but she has this heart to her and like she's really sad that he's not, like she really does care for him. So I think at those moments are really beautiful.
And this does feel so much. I mean, before we were recording, I was talking with Spencer about August and just how August feels like it's I said, a month of Sundays and so far as that dread of going back to school. And even though I haven't had a summer vacation in ooh thirty some years, thirty one years, I miss that feeling of being on summer break but then that dread of going back to school or back
to work or any of those things. It feels like this is in that spot where everything's about to change. You know, he's home from school, He's there for a brief amount of time, and then Eventerarina she's there for briefmount of time because she is a circus folk. They are saying, oh, well, we're going to be moving off pretty soon because this area is dead. And also we find out later in the film, Oh yes, and I've been promised to Victor as well. Major bombshell that goes
off for him. But what was going to happen? She was going to have to go on with the circus anyway. It's not like she was going to be sticking around. She's not even seventeen in this she says she's going to be seventeen in a few weeks. I don't know if she would even be allowed to get married off.
Yeah, she or she was seventeen in a few sundays and then he was almost twenty. It's cute the conversation they have where like, oh, we could get married and you know, my dad will buy us our own you know, kind of circus caravan and you know, we'll stay at our cabin in the winter. But it's it's not you know, we know that that's not going to happen. Even even if this tragic event doesn't take place, you know, it's not going to well for them.
The relationship has to go through a lot in this short time, and one of the things that goes through is when she puts on Victor's hat and then Voita becomes very angry in that moment, like out of proportion, and that maybe is the weird moment of tragedy between them in a way, because what happens with the grandfather is the natural passing of time and Voida has to make some choices about attending to his dead grandfather and whatnot.
But if they had left off at a better moment, then there might even be like some kind of a more pleasant goodbye that would be possible. And so yeah, there's something really interesting and that kind of moment. Yes, he's twenty, but he has the teenagers kind of sharp anger over such a small kind of thing when she's
actually just trying to be amusing to him. She's trying to be funny, but because she's wearing the other guy's hat he can't have it, and that poisons is what we know is not necessarily going to be such a wonderful outcome, but doesn't quite have to be as as bad as it is.
Yeah, I mean, she's clearly, like Pross, you know, she just found out that morning. She's clearly she's trying to make light of it, like you know, you can see she is terrified, and so she's just kind of joking,
but he's taking it personally and being jealous. There was an interview with Rubin and Fabra and Hrubin felt like Vota's tragedy was that he didn't try hard enough to get the girl he loved, whereas Barbara felt like, well, you know, like you were saying that, no, he had to attend to his grandfather, and he did the honorable thing. He was still faithful to her. But I agree like the moment when he hits her with the hat, like that's the lynch, Like that's the moment that destroys everything.
Well, and also that that hat is kind of a sign of rebellion as well, because it was Victor that told her go get some sour cherries and gives her the hat to put the sour cherries in and then rather than taking those back to him, she takes them to Vatya instead, and it's like, oh, hey, look at me, and let's have these cherries as kind of literal forbidden fruit. And then you know when she puts that hat on,
that's when it gets really super angry at her. So I'm like, oh, well, we went from this light moment or even this rebellious moment of you know, I'm getting away with things with Victor, but now it's something completely different. And yeah, he kind of ruins the whole moment and ruins any chances that he's had.
And you know, if he hadn't done that, it's like if they had parted on good terms, things might have turned out better, because you know, it looks like they just missed each other where Like, you know, he shows up, even though he has to tend to his grandfather, he still shows up, and he kind of goes to the caravan and sees their asleep, So you know, I'm sure his mind he's, oh, I ruined it, she's not coming.
I better go. But then she does show up, and then I'm sure in her head it's like, well, he doesn't want me any more I'm going to go back home instead of it might have fought harder to connect if that hadn't happened, which.
Is kind of the same thing that he had done with Tanka, where she's out there waiting for him, thinking that he's going to show up, and he never does either, so he stands her up and he probably feels stood
up by Terarina. Yeah, it's just it's tragic, and it's so bittersweet in the best way that that term can be used, because you're sitting here, you know, on the verge of tears, or at least I was watching this horrible thing happen, but at the same time like, oh, you know, this is just the way that I had to happen and play out. And then when you find what actually happened with Trena afterwards, that she basically dies of a broken heart, that really just is the real kick in the teeth.
The end of this film, the last shot of her riding with Victor in the whatever that carriage is that they're on at the end of the circus carriages, they're headed to the next place. Again to her performance, very simple in putting on a face and an affect a wild riding. But it's really heartbreaking that last image of her, because again, we could still be an unhappy moment, but if she cried in blue Kisses, that's a very different
kind of an ending. But this sense of a real heartbreak, as you say, is something that comes into her character, her performance and that last Yeah, that this last image, especially going against the first image. I do think that's its own. We have a frame narrative, but then there's also a kind of frame of how she's presented as a character incredibly rant, vibrant and full of life and then really hurt and deadened in that in the final shot of her, really beautiful and sad.
I don't know if it's the circus setting or not, but there were times where I was reminded of Lestrata with Victor doing that Anthony Quinn role.
The hat moment is actually like a little bit of a Julietta Messina thing. Yeah, really interesting. You're reminding me how much I love Lestrata. It's a really beautiful and again I keep saying careful, but it is. It's a careful movie, and it's not a big grand plan movie, but it's observant and there are particular choices that are made that have they carry the weight of more of a grand plan, But then the way that the action unfolds is so much more lively and casual and unpre predictable.
And my feelings at times of that I could predict where the story was headed, I wasn't right. I'm picking up on little melodramatic cues that remind me how American my view of things is. Maybe it might be more predictable to a check audience used to a certain kind of storytelling, but really human and paying attention to all these little moments and little changes that are that have the intensity of melodrama without having the structure and the
kind of wild repercussions of melodrama. Very small drama here can be very tragic as well.
You know, remind me a lot of Thomas Hardy, his books and the films based on them. With him, there's this sense of like injustice and you know, this is not how things should be. We should treat women better, but you don't get that with this film. It's kind of like this is how it is and this is
how it will be. So that part does feel very check about it, you know, like where if it was American you know, of course it would have some great romantic moment or you know, one last beautiful kiss or something, but it's just like, no, she is assaulted and then they just go off and she dies and Voita lives in regret his.
Life for his entire freaking life, and Victor's not too much better off either. No, the episode, that Golden Sixties episode, Don Vava, he ends with him talking about how much he dislikes Hollywood films, and he's just talking about how they're great grafts people, but you know, they're just not filmmakers, and he drops Felini's name. He talks about Gosh Karne and Felini and Bergmann and a few other filmmakers, and he's just like, these are the guys that make the films. Okay,
I can kind of see where you're coming from. Of course, growing up with American films, a diet of purely American films for so long, I find a lot to love about them. But yeah, he was not a big fan
of what was coming over. And I think the whole idea of this being based on a poem and not having a traditional structure, because in between those frames, it's not like we have those things where we're like, okay, well here's this love triangle and oh, here's the dark woman Tonka who comes in and upsets the apple cart, possibly literally, and just you know, like we're not sitting there following these beats, you know, the whole thing of him hitting Terina.
With the hat.
You'd be like, oh, well, this is that moment in the romantic comedy where they have a misunderstanding, and we're going to go for maybe ten fifteen minutes, and then we're going to find out that, you know, oh, she actually really wants him back and he wants her back and all these things, and everybody's going to hug and we're going to have a great time by the end of this. No, it is just one tragedy after another. I mean, think about how many times we see people
caring for their ailing grandfather in movies. Not very often, and the grandfather is a major character. Every once in a while, the dad will stop by. That's always interesting when he comes in. But yeah, this does not follow typical beats of narrative whatsoever.
Yeah, to go to the Hollywood point, I'm gonna pick on Hitchcock and not necessarily just Hitchcock, But I had this thought while I was watching it. Hitchcock had that's saying that a movie is like life, but with the boring parts removed, and it's you got to ask a big question about what's boring, And for instance, the answer to that would be taking care of your grandfather's of course after and making sure that his body is well
cared for and that you do the right thing. An American film often will would for instance, follow through with something like that, but it would reduce it to a montage. And this is a movie where we spend time on every pure and assume that every gesture that is in the movie is not boring. That's one of the things
about the whole idea of the boring parts removed. There are a lot of parts of life that we might think of as boring because they could take time, or they're unpleasant or difficult, but in fact, this is a movie about how anything, any particular moment could be full and definitely not boring. And it's a matter of not eliminating the boring parts, but of choosing what you are going to present and for how long and how you
pay attention. And one of the I think one of the directorial tactics for this over the course of the film, and I've not seen other films by Vava, but the intimate movement with each character. We do get our share of close ups, and we get our share of wide shots, but the meat and potatoes level of visually telling the story is a kind of roving camera that moves among the people and from one to another in different moments
and really pays. The distance of the camera is decided by what is necessary to see of the person in an intimate way. That's again granted to every character except maybe the father. The father is the figure in big, wide shots for the most part, but he also has a smaller part of the movie, and maybe also there's
a way of that that represents a psychology. But every single other major character is given a kind of beautiful intimacy of deciding where the camera is going to go, deciding how the camera is going to frame them.
Well, and speaking of intimate, this kind of reminds me of the film we talked about three years ago, intimate lighting. There was something maybe it was the what was it? Didn't he play Cello and that one the main character, and there's the rival band members kind of thing. So as soon as I saw Victor with the flugel horn of the bugle, I was like, oh, we just watched something recently three years ago with musical instruments and kind
of a return to the village kind of thing. So it's like, oh, okay, that would probably make a nice double feature as well.
There's a saying every check is a musician. I think it's just something that that's just common for them that to have, you know, play some kind of instrument. You know, they're not concerned about, oh you have to go to school or conservatory. Just no, just play it, sit in the pub with your friends and you know, with your accordion and your bugle. And I wanted to mention like Vavra and hru Being they were about the same age.
Who Being was born in nineteen ten and Barbara was nineteen eleven, so they were fifty five and fifty six when they made this, and it was really important to them to make a movie about people of their generation who went through both world wars and went through all this upheaval. And I mean, you see, they don't really explicitly say when the movie takes place that the poem
is like nineteen thirty, thirty three, and thirty four. The poem is written in nineteen sixtyes, so you figure it's probably like early thirties and then the present day's early sixties. But I think just the way they handle things, the fact that Voita does, he does go and be a teacher, he does take care of his grant. You know, he does what his father wants him to do. The check new wave films, it's the children are rebelling against their parents, and you know Voita kind of wants to. He has
those inclinations, but he does follow the path. And so I think, even though the movie doesn't state explicitly when it is like, it really does only it really only could take place during that time period. I can't imagine a story present day being like that or being responsible.
And that's sadder than the story in this movie. In a way. Viously, American storytelling and artwork is very wedded to notions of rebellion, a kind of elemental sense that you have to rebel and not simply against momentary politics, but rebelling against larger structures where you could end up
in life how things go. And there's especially given what they have lived through in the time span of this movie, and without mentioning any of it, obviously the audience in Czech Republic is going to be very aware Czechoslovakia at the time. Yeah, there's the sense of the time, and there's the sense of what you do, and maybe a bit of an autobiographical way. There's a disappointment in doing the thing that was expected and socially necessary and everything.
But that disappointment isn't necessarily the same thing as a huge injustice. The real disappointment is about the interpersonal choices that are made, rather than Ah, God, I ended up a teacher and I didn't want to be a teacher. He could have run away with the circus, which maybe that's an interesting story, but not having run away with the circus is not the main source of the disappointment.
And even if he's disappointed by quote unquote only being a teacher later in life, that that's not the worst that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is that slap with the hat.
I really enjoyed just learning more about well about Barbara, but also frontishek Rubin. He's someone where I guess his name isn't brought up so much for us Americans, but he starred as a poet, and then when his daughter was born, he got really interested in children's literature, so he started writing fairy tales, which that led him to working with the animator Yhnka, and so he started going into short film and he did plays and books. So
he's very present in Czech culture and in film. He ended up writing the screenplay for Correl Zemon's Invention for Destruction, just an incredible movie. And then besides these three films he made with Barbra, there was a fourth called Us that they wanted to do after Witch Hammer, but the political circumstances had changed and so they weren't allowed. He died in seventy one, so Fabra did end up making that film in the eighties, when I guess things had settled down a bit. He also has a bit of
a role in film. He wrote a play of the Check version of Beauty and the Beast, which through various iterations became your eye Hers's Beauty and the Beast. So I really loved learning more about him and his work. It's a shame, you know. Check Definitely check out Invention for Destruction if you haven't seen it. Yeah, if this film and Golden Rennett could get released. You know, he's really someone that should be studied in the lest more so,
I really enjoyed learning about him. It was a nice opportunity.
Well, and I appreciate all of the stunning materials that you brought to the table as well. I really can't thank you enough for doing that.
I love having this excuse to go look at books and by books I don't need, but they're really fun to.
Read and.
Translate OVID from check.
They're really great reading. I have to thank you. Yeah, they're terrific stuff to read, really fascinating. And this I have to say, this has been a great introduction to Babra And then I'm sorry, Emily, can you say that say for me the name of the poet.
I'm sotry Oven, so like Kruben hr u.
B I n. Yeah. Really an incredible introduction to Babara and Ruben. Definitely both artists that I want to pay more attention to in the future.
Well, I just thought today, def Crocodile is going to be putting out Krakatite Fabras Select nineteen forty eight I believe movie, which is excellent. So that's an opportunity to get more into BABRAA.
All right, we're going to take a break and play preview for next week's show right after these brief messages. Looking for something superior to streaming, a place with more than five times the selection available on all streaming services combined, check out Scarecrow Videos Rent by mail service. Select from an unparalleled collection of over one hundred and fifty thousand films and get Blu rays, four k's and DVDs delivered
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Ever m f f f.
H m hm hm h m hmm.
That's right. We'll be back next week with a look at Jan Smackmyers Conspirators of Pleasure. Until then, I want to thank my co Emily and Spencer. So Emily, what's the latest with you, ma'am?
Will have happened by the time this episode comes out, But I am going to be introducing ri I hers Is, Beauty and the Beast and the Ninth Heart for Super Horirama's midnight movie screenings at Music Box Theater on August fifteenth and sixteenth. Then we might be doing some more Check films in the future, so I watch out for super Horima. I am going to be on two episodes of Hour Juan on One with Doctor Ac on YouTube
in November and December. And I started a blog kind of about just studying Check and learning about Check culture and movies. So that's at Emily Dashbarney dot com. And I wrote a bit about odacar Vava's film as well as watching this, and I'm going to try to keep watching his movies and just you know, it's kind of a nice survey through the history of Check film getting to watch his movies and.
Spencer, how about yourself, sir.
I have a short film that I made several years ago is now airing on Means TV. It's just shown up. It's the film itself is I shouldn't have given it such a long title. It's a partial theory of commodity fetishism and three scenes plus epilogue. Pretty much the synopsis is in the title. So the downside of a long title like that is obvious, but the upside is that I just told you what it's about and how it works.
See title for synopsis. So that's coming up and crawling towards the finish line with a feature and hoping I can finish that sooner than later, because I have another short that I want to ruin my life making in the coming year. That's what we learned from this movie, right, find a new little way to ruin my life with the choices I've made. Yeah, but this has been great. Thank you so much.
Well, thank you and thanks again guys for being on the show, and thanks to everybody for listening. Do you want to support physical media and get great movies in the mail, head on over to scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by mail service, the largest publicly accessible collection in the world. You'll find films there
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