One of the very best films of the 1960s Czech New Wave, Academy Award winner for the best foreign language film of 1968, and still comfortably Menzel's finest film. A touching, blackly comic tale of a young stationmaster's adventures, the film miraculously avoids both sentimentality and overt political point-scoring to create a genuinely moving and beautifully observed portrait of small-town life.
One of the great favourites of international cinema comes up as fresh as paint in this DVD premier. Milos, a dispatcher's apprentice at a village railway station in oc... more >
One of the great favourites of international cinema comes up as fresh as paint in this DVD premier. Milos, a dispatcher's apprentice at a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, longs to lose his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, he embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure. Menzel’s delightful film won numerous awards including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968. < less
“Everything is so difficult in life.
While for others it’s all child’s play.”
So says Milos Hrma, the hero – for want of a better word – of Jiri Menzel’s ... more >
“Everything is so difficult in life.
While for others it’s all child’s play.”
So says Milos Hrma, the hero – for want of a better word – of Jiri Menzel’s ribald classic, Closely Observed Trains. But, of course, when he says “everything”, he doesn’t mean everything – like the trains that Milos directs in and out of Kostomlaty Station each day, he has a one-track mind.
The movie opens like an Aleksander Hemon short story – we greet Milos on his first day, watch as his mother dresses him for work in a room filled with portraits of his relatives (one of whom attempted to halt the German invasion of Prague by hypnotising the approaching tanks – needless to say, the tanks paid little heed to the strange man with the outstretched arms and the hypnotist lost his head).
From here on in, Closely Observed Trains is more concerned with life, love and lechery. Wayward signalman Ladislav Hubicka takes young Milos under his wing, offering aphoristic advice on the one hand, and bedding young Czech ladies with the other – one particularly lovely scene finds Lubicka rubberstamping the telegraphist Zdenka’s bottom, an act that sees said bottom paraded through the Czech high courts.
But what for Lubicka comes as easy as child’s play is, for Milos, so difficult.
Betraying all of the naivety of Dostoefski’s Myshkin (albeit by way of the occasional gormlessness of Kes’ Billy Caspar), Milos struggles to rise to the occasion on a first date with Masa, a conductor who passes through the station each day, and can only stare agog as a group of passing soldiers take advantage of a broken down train filled with nurses.
Filmed in a black and white so crisp as to leave you feeling the chill of a cool autumn morning, Closely Observed Trains is many things: an intimate sex comedy, a bawdy piece of period slapstick (the movie was shot in 1967, and is considered a crucial fixture of the Czech New Wave), a surreal war movie a la Catch 22 – all in all, a charming ragbag of comic set pieces, hilarious dialogue and saucy delight.
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