The Czech or Czechoslovak New Wave was a period in the 1960s during which a group of filmmakers made movies that were at once humorous and humanistic, artistically engaging and politically challenging, pushing back against the way things were in their socialist Eastern Bloc country. However, the period of political liberalization and reform known as Prague Spring essentially came to an end when members of the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviets, invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. As “normalization†and a reversion to the status quo set in in 1969, many of these movies were banned by the new Soviet-backed Czechoslovak authorities.
Fortunately, they outlasted their eternal bans, and we, 55 years later, can watch and appreciate them. So too can we explore what came after: the less overtly political but still comic and touching Czech movies of the 1970s and ’80s, and the movies of the ’90s and aughts that drew on past moments of tumult and transition. This list is intended to showcase some of the best.
A few notes: About half of this list is from the Czech New Wave. That’s not a knock on the movies that came after the 1960s, but it’s hard to compare with what was one of the most productive and artistically significant moments in world cinema.
This list is also very (very) heavily dominated by male directors, as many more of the most notable Czech movies have been directed by men than women. I have made an effort throughout, however, to highlight the work of women writers, artistic directors, costume designers, and actors, without whom this cinema would not be as significant as it is.
And finally: This list is incomplete. There are 16 entries here; they could have been 16 different movies. I chose only those that an American viewer can stream with relative ease. I considered movies I’ve enjoyed; took into account analysis and writings on Czechoslovak and Czech movies by film scholars and critics; and consulted rankings of films compiled by actual Czech viewers (I found this list and the Czech version of IMDb quite helpful). Mostly, though, this list is intended to offer a glimpse of the breadth and depth — across the decades — of the wonderful movies that constitute the huge contribution this relatively small country has made to cinema.
Daisies (1966)
It’s hard to describe Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, which is driven more by sensation than by plot, but here goes: Two young women, both of whom have the same first name, decide that, since everything is spoiled, they’ll be spoiled, too. What follows is a series of dates in which they take all the food and drink they can from men; dancing; dressing up; and being bored, but never boring. The movie switches between black-and-white and vibrant splashes of color and is bursting with song and style. It has to be seen — and experienced — to be believed. The Czech New Wave, and Czech cinema overall, was quite male dominated, but Chytilová is a significant exception, and she was not the only notable woman involved: The art direction and writing was completed in part by Ester Krumbachová, one of the largely unsung heroes of the Czech New Wave, who worked on everything from screenplays to art direction to costumes.
Available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies.
Further viewing: Krumbachová also worked with Chytilová on her 1970 movie Fruit of Paradise, a surreal retelling of the story of Adam and Eve.
A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966)
Jan Němec’s work starts out at a picnic held by some friends. Soon, though, the friends are interrupted, ordered about — and brought to a banquet where a strict hierarchy is maintained. The movie, a semi-surreal depiction of authority and the ways in which it is empowered by the cowardice and spinelessness of the many, was banned from 1966, when it was released, until 1968, and then again after Prague Spring for 20 years.
Krumbachová, who was for a time married to NÄ›mec, co-wrote the screenplay with him. She said of the script, “I tried to create conversations in which the characters said nothing meaningful about themselves. The audience heard only isolated fragments of sentences, as if they had walked suddenly into the midst of a sophisticated party and had no idea what the conversation was about … it was my intention to demonstrate that people generally talk only in terms of disconnected ideas, even when it appears that they are communicating with one another.â€
Available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies.
Further viewing: The two also worked together on Diamonds of the Night, a beautiful, haunting film about two teenage boys who escape from a transport train during the Holocaust.
The Firemen’s Ball (1967)
American audiences will know director Miloš Forman for such Hollywood hits as Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But before he found fame and fortune Stateside, he was part of the Czech New Wave, and the darkly funny, deeply cynical The Firemen’s Ball is arguably his most famous Czech work. It tells the story of provincial firemen trying to throw a big bash for their chief’s retirement. The party features a beauty pageant, a raffle, song and dance — and petty corruption and ineptitude. Forman shared a story in an interview about how the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia screened the movie for some of the firemen who appeared in the film and encouraged them to say how offended they were, which backfired when the firemen expressed that it was a great, true-to-life depiction.
Available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies.
Further viewing: The Firemen’s Ball is not the only film in which Forman used professional and amateur actors: The woman who plays the part of the mother in Loves of a Blonde, his excellent 1965 movie, was someone he met on a streetcar.
All My Good Countrymen (1969)
Vojtěch Jasný’s All My Good Countrymen earned him Best Director at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival — thanks to a print of the movie that was smuggled out of Czechoslovakia, where the movie had already been banned. All My Good Countrymen is the story of a (gorgeously shot) Czech village between 1945 and 1958, during which time people slowly realize that their new political system is bringing repression, not respite.
Available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies.
Further viewing: Jasny’s earlier work, Cassandra Cat, a movie about a cat who wears sunglasses because, when he doesn’t, he reveals people’s true colors just by looking at them, is streaming on Criterion as part of their series on cat movies.
The Cremator (1969)
Rudolf HruÅ¡Ãnský is in quite a few movies on this list, as he was one of the most popular Czech actors of his day. And the titular role in The Cremator, directed by Juraj Herz, is one of his most famous. HruÅ¡Ãnský is a cremator who takes arguably too much pride in his work. During World War II, on a quest to be as Aryan as possible to please his new Nazi friends, he ends up trying to force even those closest to him up in smoke. It was banned shortly after being released for two decades (given that it’s at least in part a warning about totalitarianism, this is perhaps unsurprising). This is the creepiest movie I have ever seen.
Available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies.Â
The Joke (1969)
An adaptation of a novel by Milan Kundera, Jaromil Jireš’s The Joke is the story of a young man who is kicked out of the Communist Party and sent to work in the mines after his friends turn on him over a joke he wrote to his girlfriend. As an adult, he has an opportunity to get revenge on one of his former friends, who betrayed him by sleeping with his wife — or so he thinks. The movie plays with time brilliantly. It doesn’t have flashbacks so much as it has the protagonist, in the present, walking through the same locations as he was in the past, interacting with them as though they’re playing out before him even now. It was banned for 20 years.
Available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies.
Larks on a String (1969)
Jiřà Menzel is my favorite Czech New Wave director, and while it was 1966’s Closely Watched Trains that won him the Oscar, it’s Larks on a String that I think represents what makes his work so special. Adapted from a series of stories by the author Bohumil Hrabal (on whose work Closely Watched Trains and other Menzel works are also based), Larks on a String depicts a group of men who are forced to work at a junkyard so as to be rehabilitated for their bourgeois ways. They labor alongside a group of women whose crime was trying to leave the country.
Their stories overlap and intersect, but what holds them together, per Menzel, is the spirit of a joke from the 1950s: Workers attend a lecture on their beautiful political future, after which one asks, “It’s good that we have socialism and will soon have communism, but where is the bread, where is the milk, where is the butter?†The lecturer tells him that that’s a complicated question, and to ask again next week. The next week, the same lecture happens. Another worker raises his hand and says, “It’s good we have socialism and will soon have communism, but where is the bread, where is the milk, where is the butter, and where is the worker who asked about this last time?†This joke — both funny and sad, proof that humor can be found even in incredibly dark situations — is at the heart of the screenplay. Although Menzel began making this film in 1968, it was not ready for release until 1969, at which point it was immediately banned, only to be officially released in 1990, when it won a Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Available on Amazon and Eastern European Movies.
Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973)
The movies that were made post–Prague Spring, during the era of “normalization,†when reforms and reformers were removed and the status quo was reverted to and preserved, movies were less overtly political and, generally speaking, less artistically daring. Still, there were some eminently watchable films from that time period. This one is a cozy Christmas classic. Our star is Libuše Šafránková — who appears in movies in every subsequent decade on this list, too — in one of her earlier roles. It’s basically the familiar Cinderella story, but this time she’s given three magic nuts, each of which contains a costume of sorts that allows her to win the heart of the handsome, headstrong prince — and pose a riddle he must solve to win hers in turn. The movie is also hugely popular in Norway, which funded a digital restoration of the film and more recently made its own version.
Available on Criterion and Eastern European Movies.
Maracek, Pass Me the Pen! (1976)
Oldřich Lipský is one of the most beloved directors in Czech film history, and this is one of his most cherished movies. It’s the story of a man who, in order to get a better job at the factory where he works, has to go back to high school for adult evening classes — in the same high school where his son takes classes during the day. Fellow classmates include a pair of mischief makers, a man who can’t distinguish between instructions for teenage students and himself, and an insufferable suckup. This sounds quite culturally specific, so I was surprised that, over the course of this movie, I was not only hooting but also hollering. I made my husband, who is not a Czech-movie aficionado, watch it with me, and he, too, laughed out loud.
Further viewing: Lipský’s Adele Hasn’t Had Her Dinner Yet is likewise very popular.
Give the Devil His Due (1984)
This is a famous fairytale movie and one of the most popular movies in Czech cinematic history. I think it is supposed to be for children. I say “I think†because the plot is this: A woman marries an older miller and then works him to death and tries to disinherit his son. The Devil thus decides that she needs to be brought to hell and so sends a devilish assistant to bring her down. He teams up with her stepson, who is pining after a selfish princess while her sweet sister yearns for him, to take the wicked stepmother down … to the flames of hell.
Available on Eastern European Movies.
My Sweet Little Village (1985)
Menzel’s second Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film didn’t see him bringing home the statue, but does make this list of essential Czech films. It tells the story of a sweet-tempered, mentally challenged young man who works as an assistant truck driver with his older, more sensible neighbor. At first, the neighbor wants to be rid of his young charge. However, when a plot comes to push the young man out to steal his home for a crooked politician, he discovers the depth of his feeling for his friend. But it’s really a portrait of a village and the messy lives that reside there. It also features a cameo by FrantiÅ¡ek VláÄil, who directed Marketa Lazarová, a medieval epic considered by some to be the best Czech film ever made.
Available on Amazon and Eastern European Movies.
Further Viewing: Marketa Lazarová came out in 1967, at the same time as the Czech New Wave, but VláÄil was slightly older and to call the film part of the movement would be not quite right.
The Elementary School (1991)
Directed by Jan SvÄ›rák (and written by his father, who also wrote My Sweet Little Village), The Elementary School is set during 1945–46 and tells the story of a class of unruly boys and the Casanova teacher who whips them into shape with stories of his time fighting in the resistance. It’s really smart in how it depicts the struggle of male identity during a time of national transition while coming out at another, different time of national transition, as the newly independent Czech Republic emerged and the country’s newfound capitalism and democracy challenged what it meant to be a man — and indeed to be a person. Å afránková plays the main boy’s mother, and HrusÃnský is pitch-perfect as the exasperated school principal.
Available on Eastern European Movies.
Words, Words, Words (1991)
Words, Words, Words is not really an essential Czech movie, but it’s animated and short and smart. This Michaela Pavlátová piece was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Set in a café, it’s a roughly eight-minute visualization of what different forms of speech — and, really, different kinds of communication — look like. Lovers’ words are puzzle pieces that fit together; when they argue, their speech turns into little mouths, chomping one another’s musings. Unwanted advances slither like a snake. Gossip scurries between speakers like mice. If you have read the Phantom Tollbooth: It looks like something that could have been a scene in that book.
Available on YouTube.
Kolya (1996)
Also directed by Sverák (and not only written by but also starring his father), Kolya was the first (and, to date, only) Oscar winner for the independent Czech Republic. Kolya is set in 1989 and tells the story of a lothario Czech cellist who fake-marries a Russian woman (she gets papers; he gets paid). But she absconds to West Germany, leaving him with her 5-year-old son, Kolya. What happens next is predictable enough — he grows fond of the kid and so grows as a person — but there’s a kind of parallel between the passage of personal and historical time that adds to the movie. It’s also just beautifully shot. I spent the first part thinking that it was pleasant enough, but perhaps not Oscar worthy. I then wept on and off for the last 30 minutes of the movie. Call it Kolya karma.
Available on Amazon.
Cosy Dens (1999)
A Czech friend of mine showed this to me on my 25th birthday. I will thus always remember my 25th birthday as the day that I fully appreciated that the Czech sense of “comedy†is significantly darker than its American counterpart. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the 1960s — including Prague Spring and its unfortunate end. Directed by Jan Hřebejk, the movie is about intersecting families and generations and growing older and growing up, but it’s also about how dreams and ideas crash into reality, both political and personal. It’s been voted as among the best — if not the best — Czech movie in various polls.
Available on Eastern European Movies and YouTube.
Divided We Fall (2000) and The Shop on Main Street (1965)
Divided We Fall, also by Hřebejk, also an Academy Award nominee, is about a young couple during World War II. The husband cannot father children. He is also dispositionally an unlikely hero, but he and his wife have heroism thrust upon them when they take in, and hide, a young Jewish man. This would make an interesting double feature with The Shop on Main Street, a Slovak-language movie from 1965 that won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for its depiction of a carpenter who takes over an old Jewish woman’s shop as part of the country’s Aryanization efforts (Aryanization being the process by which Jewish property was transferred to non-Jews). The role of the Jewish shopkeeper was played by Ida Kamińska — daughter of Ester Rachel Kamińska, known as the mother of Yiddish theater — who nabbed an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Available on Amazon.Â
The Teacher (2017)
Yet another Hřebejk! This is a satirical Slovak-language movie about a politically well-connected teacher in 1980s Bratislava who bullies her students and their parents into doing favors for her — and punishes the students if the parents don’t comply. The movie cuts between scenes of the teacher’s treachery and a secret meeting between other students and the parents that asks, “What if Twelve Angry Men were about a corrupt teacher in 1980s Bratislava?†Again, it’s the brand of Czech comedy that is funny but also bone chilling. I saw this in theaters around the time it came out as part of a film festival and still think about the ending probably once a week.
Available on Amazon.