Czech Modernism, 1926–1949

May 27, 2007 - June 24, 2007

Tonka of the Gallows, June 15

Czech Modernism flourished in the time between the world wars, spurred on by a growing exposure to world cinema, by the freedom of the Jazz Age, and by a homegrown avant-garde (the Devetsil movement) that reveled in the promise of the moving image. The cinema that emerged is like no other, a dizzying cut-and-paste compilation of outside influences and Czech artistry with a delightful sense of experimentation. Geographically situated between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Czechs blended the dark moods of the German Expressionists with the disorientingly quick editing styles of the Soviet avant-garde, then added Hollywood glamour and Surrealist dream imagery. (Often, all this could be found in one film!) Their narratives ran from social realism and agitprop to cautionary tales of excess and strange Surrealist whatsits.

The credits for these films read like a who's-who of the Central European avant-garde in visual arts, literature, and theater. Photographer Alexander Hackenschmied (later Hammid, husband and collaborator of Maya Deren), Surrealist poet Vitezslav Nezval, and Modernist novelist Vladislav Vancura all turned to film, as did Alfred Radok (legendary founder of Prague's Laterna Magika), Jirí Voskovec and Jan Werich (Liberated Theater), Jaroslav Jezek (initiator of Czech jazz), and the founder of structuralism, Roman Jakobson.

This free-spirited era came to an end during World War II. The films are breathtaking even today, like a secret history of cinema revealed—they are of their time, yet so far ahead of their time, cinema still hasn't caught up to their energy and invention.

Jason Sanders
Associate Film Notes Writer

Sunday, May 27, 2007
3:00 p.m. The Kreutzer Sonata
Bruce Loeb on Piano. A wealthy man recounts his wife’s courtship, betrayals, and finally her murder in this vividly Expressionist silent Tolstoy adaptation by Gustav Machatý (Erotikon).

Sunday, May 27, 2007
5:00 p.m. Faithless Marijka
The writer of Markéta Lazarová goes agitprop in this tale of worker’s fury and spurned love in the wild Carpathian Mountains. With lightning-fast Soviet montage and breathless peasant-melodrama flourishes, it prefigures Guy Maddin.

Thursday, May 31, 2007
7:00 p.m. On the Sunny Side
The Czech literary avant-garde came together for this manic, eye-opening subversion of conventional cinema and society itself, loosely based around an experimental reform school. The missing link between the Surrealists and the Soviets.

Thursday, May 31, 2007
8:40 p.m. Heave Ho!
The manic comedy team of Voskovec and Werich fashioned this anarchic intellectual-political musical involving a good-hearted businessman, a fiery worker, and their plan to escape the Depression. With music, romance, and slapstick, it’s a parody of Hollywood happy endings and Soviet workers-utopia films.

Thursday, June 7, 2007
5:30 p.m. From Saturday to Sunday (Free Screening!)
Gustav Machatý joined forces with Surrealist poet Vítezslav Nezval and the founder of Czech jazz for this sensual and romantic look at an office girl’s night out in Jazz Age Prague.

Thursday, June 7, 2007
7:00 p.m. Such Is Life
Judith Rosenberg on Piano. This landmark precursor to neorealism captures everyday 1920s Prague—coal workers, beer drinkers, slums, the Charles Bridge—through the life of a washerwoman. “Part semi-doc character study, part tenement symphony.”—Village Voice

Friday, June 15, 2007
7:00 p.m. Virginity
The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in this fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era.

Friday, June 15, 2007
8:45 p.m. Tonka of the Gallows
A small-town girl becomes a big-city prostitute, but destroys her career by joining a condemned man on his last night, in this wondrously pulpy tribute to female martyrdom. One of silent cinema’s great undiscovered melodramas, with an Expressionist flair worthy of The Last Laugh.

Thursday, June 21, 2007
7:00 p.m. The River
A Borzage-esque portrait of the fledgling love between a tousled country boy and a sweet girl. This fine example of the European pastoral movement concentrates on the rhythms and moods of the natural world.

Thursday, June 21, 2007
8:45 p.m. The Strike
The first postwar Czech film to receive honors at a major film festival, this agitprop classic surveys a worker’s strike in late-19th-century Czechoslovakia, complete with noirish photography and black-coal realism.

Sunday, June 24, 2007
3:00 p.m. Crisis
This powerful 1938 collaboration of the international Left documents the emerging Nazi threat around Czechoslovakia, and stands as an example of frontierless, truly committed political filmmaking.

Sunday, June 24, 2007
4:30 p.m. Distant Journey
The founder of Prague’s famous Laterna Magika theater ventured into cinema with this revolutionary look at the Holocaust, the first film to tackle the subject. “A stylized danse macabre. . . . Audacious and grotesque, the movie looks back to Caligari and forward to the unsettling puppet animation of Jan Svankmajer.”—J. Hoberman

PFA wishes to thank Irena Kovarova, New York City, for all of her efforts curating and coordinating this North American touring film series. In addition, we are grateful to Vladimir Opela, Narodni Filmovy Archiv, Prague; and Anthology Film Archives, New York City, for their generous loan of the archival prints showcased in this series.

Archival and restored prints are presented with support from the Packard Humanities Institute.