The Czech New Wave – How Famous Don’t You Want To Be?
"Daisies" - Chytilova
Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut - Two names
that immediately spring to mind when one thinks “French New Wave.” – films like "Breathless" "The 400 Blows" and "Jules et Jim" each revered and deserving of
merit.
"The 400 Blows" - Truffaut
But it is actually the Left Bank directors, Alain Resnais and Chris
Marker, ranking top of the list for me, as demonstrated by their radical
experimentation in technique, complete renouncement of narrative and flagrant
rejection of classical cinematic form – all elements that exemplify ‘What is French
New Wave?’
"Last Year at Marianbad" - Resnais
My attraction to the experimental and avant garde
extends across many different art forms, but as a cinematically-oriented visual
artist, it is here within these films I feel most at home and from which I continue
to derive a subtle but powerful inspiration.
At the start of the 1960’s, following The French New
Wave, an equally ambitious but lesser known cinematic movement was beginning to
take shape in Eastern Europe.
Born out of dissent against an oppressive Communist control of Czechoslovakia, and rebellion against the pacifying blanket of 20 years of Socialist Realism, "The Czech New Wave" film movement spans a period of only 5 years from roughly 1963 to the Prague Spring reforms of 1968.
Tereza Petiskova
During this period, courageous filmmakers like Milos Forman, Vera Chytilova, Jiri Menzel, Milan Kundera and others produced not only socially and politically relevant, but deeply moving films.
Unfortunately by the fall of '68, Soviet invasion returned Czechoslovakia to near Satlinist era repression. While some remained, many of the artists that defined the Czech New Wave fled the country - their films banned for political reasons, not to resurface until the late 1980's, and even then to harsh scrutiny by Western film critics as lacking any substantial political message - Godard himself denouncing Chytilova's film, "Daisies" as 'apolitical and cartoonish.'
Yet it was Chytilova
who was perhaps the most similar to the French directors in her approach. Often referred to as the ‘First Lady of Czech
Cinema’, Chytilova shared the French New Wave ethos of auteurship - demanding
complete control of all creative decisions.
She wrote both the stories and screenplays, employed the typical French
New Wave characteristic of having the actors stare straight into the lens, and
like Godard, used jump cuts and other defining camera techniques.
With the
exception of Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad,” my personal favourite film of
all time, Chytilova’s use of the experimental and surreal as demonstrated in
her film “Daisies,” wherein the two main characters, strangely both named
“Marie,” realise their purpose in the world is to rebel against morality by
destroying everything around them, far surpasses that of any of the French New
Wave directors that come to mind.
A definitive description of
what is “Czech New Wave” is difficult to define. Unlike the French New Wave, there is no firm
blueprint of style, nor uniformly recognizable elements that define it, and yet
that is perhaps exactly the most intriguing aspect of this obscure film
movement.
Each filmmaker employed
uniquely different yet equally complex approaches to a common objective, which
was to expose the lies and propaganda and replace the government’s
rose-coloured fabrication of daily life with reality as seen through the eyes
of an average proletariat of the Eastern bloc, rendering this vision as
expressively and ‘humanly’ as possible in deeply subjective ways.
1989 brought with it the collapse
of the totalitarian regime and a return to democracy and relative artistic
freedom. As such, it spawned an entirely
new class of Czech filmmakers including Jan Sverak, Sasha Gedeon and Jan Hrebejk,
and of course many of the original filmmakers continued to produce noteworthy
films; but in my opinion, the passion that defined the stunning urgency of the original
movement is difficult to surpass.
"The Sun in a Net" - Uher
"Loves of a Blonde" - Forman
I believe Czech New Wave is
seriously underrated if not a little misunderstood, and wish to share some of
the films and filmmakers that have affected me. Perhaps you will see a
reflection of these films mirrored in my canvases - whether an inscrutable undertone or direct replication. Their creation has influenced the way I look at art and society.
"Closely Watched Trains" - Menzel
In no order of importance,
my list of must- see Czech films is as follows:
The Joke –
Jaromil Jires (1969)
The Sun In A Net
– Stefan Uher (1962)
Closely Watched
Trains – Jiri Menzel (1966)
The Shop on Main Street - Elmar Klos and Jan Kadar (1965)
Loves of a Blonde - Milos Forman (1965)
Pearls from the Deep - Chytilova (1965)
Daisies - Vera Chytilova (1966)
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